The Soul Machine Team

[offthewall]

 
This is a strange one, friends 

I just sat and listened through both versions, in two separate players, one minute each at a time to try and make direct comparisons.  Now, you know that I'm a headphon'ist, so it is all up close. 

First, I agree with Thom that HIS version is altogether brighter, more crisp and has a bigger stereo field.

But then, there IS something ....  strangely different  about Oren's version. 
I just can't put a finger on it.  It certainly has a 'duller' sound quality to it, but there is a sort of 'resonance' which, in comparison, gives something of a more 'bluesy' or 'soulful' feel. 

Many years ago, when I first started playing blues music at our local club, I had a home-made guitar which was not very good at staying in tune.  It would be 'in' with itself, so that I could get a tune out of it, but if I hooked up with another picker or harp player it never seemed to fit with them.  The upshot of that was that I was mostly quite happy with my old cigar-box ... and it usually seemed to be just 'very slightly' under pitch to everyone else. 

Now we are getting surreal 
I wish you hadn't started this one, Oren 

 
James

[Oren]

This production will likely address Thom's concerns - valid as they are...
The bass is brought up a tad, and the low frequencies are attenuated in the guitar tracks.

My inclination, when playing/recording electric guitars is to create a full-spectrum guitar sound. The only problem occurs when it's mixed in with a "band" - it tends to tread on the other instruments. I neglected to shave my bottom end appropriately for that mix... apologies... 

Regarding the slightly lower tuning: I've been looking for ways to make music more of an "experience" for the listener. This A=432 tuning looks promising in its tendency to affect the emotional state of the listener in a positive way.

Here it is in LAME VBR so it's easy to compare with Thom's original big, bright, and bold production:

[Oren]

... I had a home-made guitar which was not very good at staying in tune.  It would be 'in' with itself, so that I could get a tune out of it, but if I hooked up with another picker or harp player it never seemed to fit with them.  The upshot of that was that I was mostly quite happy with my old cigar-box ... and it usually seemed to be just 'very slightly' under pitch to everyone else. 

Now we are getting surreal 
I wish you hadn't started this one, Oren 

Fascinating! We could be on to something here...

[kara]

My inclination, when playing/recording electric guitars is to create a full-spectrum guitar sound. The only problem occurs when it's mixed in with a "band" - it tends to tread on the other instruments.

This has to be a typical axe man thing, I called it 'the I can't hear myself enough' syndroom 
Those of you who played live in a band, know about what I'm talking 

k

[elwoodblues1969]

Oren,

With great respect,I disagree with the tuning concept having a positive emotional effect....that is-with me,personally.I don't have your tech-savvy brains,nor am I-or will ever be,a guitar player...so I cannot grasp the concept.

All I have is my instincts & my ears & creating a big bold & bright version of your tune,is what effects me in a positive way.I've always had a grand obsession with very clean & pristine audio-which perhaps,has caused me to make less than natural sounding recordings in some instances.

This is probably a behaviour that would not make me ideally suited for the professional recording world,as personal preference has no place in a pro studio enviroment,as I would probably drive guitarists out of their minds.


-Thom

[kara]

This tuning concept is interesting.

I've done the test with Azell, who has what you call perfect pitch.
Well... she immediatly reconized that the general pitch of the song was off, and she didn't like it.

So, it looks like that 'a not general used pitch' in a song,doesn't please that category of people...

Very interesting !

Having said that, I even didn't hear that the song wasn't in A=440 Hz tuning, which says a lot about my pitch 

k

[folderol]

I've known one or two people with perfect pitch. They don't seem to think it's a good thing, for exactly that sort of reason One guy couldn't stand hearing cassette players because the speed control used to be so poor.

[Oren]

The concept that is presenting itself here seems to revolve around music as personal preference versus music as it "should" sound.

Computer music producers now have the freedom to make music based on their taste in sound and composition. Digital audio allows us almost infinite control, and as boundaries are broken, new approaches to music and audio production are showing up, particularly on forums like this.

Thom and I have a different idea as to how we want "Soul Machine" to sound, and this is a good thing. It demonstrates that there is no "right" way to make music, just individual artistic preference. That's why I encourage as many productions of a new Kara-Moon song as possible. They are all going to be different, and each one will explore another expression of the song.
A very healthy state of affairs, in my opinion.

[offthewall]

 
Just to expound a little further ...
when I was thinking about this concept of yours it came back to me that, when I first started listening to blues records back in the early 60's, they were actually 'records' ...  you remember those things? Black with a hole in the middle 
The old player that I had (and most of my mates had) did not run exactly smoothly. Each time I played along with Howling Wolf or John Lee Hooker I had to re-tune the guitar to the record, often re-tuning several times to match different records. One of the vagaries of old turntables driven round by a worn rubber wheel 

This could explain why I don't have so much of a hang-up about pitch as some folk 
When we started to play in clubs the pickers always tuned up to the harmonica ... again, often an old and worn piece of kit.
 
Food for thought?

 
James

[folderol]

Wow!

Hold onto your hats people. This all has a number of linked possibilities.

Almost all of us have grown up hearing concert pitch (or very nearly) music from birth, and possibly dimly even before that. Now the brain is a rather clever bit of kit and, especially with the young, learns damn fast if you don't mess it about. So we've all learned that the concert pitch is 'right'.

But,
What if it's actually wrong? What if as Oren's studies suggest, there is a natural scale that is being effectively erased by forced learning of concert pitch and the even tempered scale? I do know that there has been some research to show that a true pentatonic scale (where the notes are on exact harmonics) produces particularly pleasant music. I wonder if you should not only have this relationship, but also a direct relationship to an exact frequency - but then again, would the perfect sound be the same for everyone?

On another tack. Us more {cough} mature {cough} folks are used to pitch being all over the place, as James mentioned. Also, guitarists in particular haven't always had something to tune a guitar too, so just tuned it to itself and got on with it. Does that 'teach' a wider tolerance of pitch? On the other hand, keyboard players in particular are used to everything being pretty much spot on. It may be coincidence but the guys I knew with perfect pitch were organ and concert piano players.

Kids today don't realise it but they are being fed music that is very closely controlled. An mp3 player is never going to 'run slow'. Computerised sound generation is not going to be detectably different in pitch to what the numbers say, and any up-and-coming guitarists will have a handy little tuner in their pocket. I wonder what effect this will have on them as they grow up. Will more of them be intolerant of different scales and pitches?

[elwoodblues1969]

Well...to elaborate a bit more on all of this,I am actually old enough to have been raised on record players & cassette decks,   so I can relate a bit...but in addition to having such off-pitch items,I had myself an organ from a very early age and a few Casio keyboards thereafter in my youth.

Pitch wasn't terribly important back then,but the older I had become and the more serious I was about music,the more important pitch became.

I still can't grasp the significance of deliberately rendering something out of tune.It reminds me of a friend long ago,who had a recording studio when we were teenagers and he was so obsessed about tape selector settings,that if he made a recording on a chrome cassette tape,he insisted on playing the recording back with the selector switch on the chrome setting.

As a result,the recording did not sound as good,as when the recording was played back on the "normal" setting.


-Thom

[offthewall]

 
Well ...... can of worms most certainly open .... I think 

Young Folderol has just spelled it out, in no uncertain terms ... it is all the fault of those darn 'electronics' chaps.

When I was in my formative years, if I wanted to tune up to A  ... I would ask the harp player to blow a G ... then I would work it out from there 
If I had to go play in a pub, with a piano, I would have to tune up to that ... but how far from concert pitch was that old beast  (the piano, not the old girl tickling it).

It was all relative to the other instruments around you.
I never knew that A=440 wotsits before I started lurking round these music forums.    And that is only the last 5 years out of 61    To me, A was always relative to the dodgy instrument you had acces to for tuning purposes. This is the difference between all string instruments and the 'fixed' sound source such as a reed which cannot be easily tuned. That is the fixed point which the others have to adjust to.  And how much temperature, humidity, age, wear and, possibly drunkenness, can contribute to the reality of that 'standard' pitch is quite open to conjecture. 

I got my first guitar at the age of 13 in 1962.  I had nothing relative to tune it with apart from our old piano which had never been tuned since it was built.  Over the years I always tuned up, as stated, to whichever 'fixed' instrument was in the band at the time.  I can honestly say that I never used any form of electronic tuner until 5 years ago!

 
James

[Oren]

...It was all relative to the other instruments around you.
I never knew that A=440 wotsits before I started lurking round these music forums.    And that is only the last 5 years out of 61... A was always relative to the dodgy instrument you had acces to for tuning purposes. adjust to.  And how much temperature, humidity, age, wear and, possibly drunkenness, can contribute to the reality of that 'standard' pitch is quite open to conjecture...
I got my first guitar at the age of 13 in 1962.  I had nothing relative to tune it with apart from our old piano which had never been tuned since it was built.  Over the years I always tuned up, as stated, to whichever 'fixed' instrument was in the band at the time. 

Partly by nefarious design (like the miscreants who saddled us with the arbritrary A=440Hz standard ), but mostly by default, we have fashioned a "box" within which much of the creative leeway available to home recordists and computer music artists is effectively "squelched", or deemed inappropriate, or impractical.

Plus, the potential for music to be more than just a "nice sound" (but instead a genuine inspiration or effective emotional therapy) has been fundamentally impaired. How do you compose music at its best, when the notes that have the most potential for emotional impact are not even included in the scale we have used since the early 20th century?
With the tools we now have at our disposal as computer musicians, it feels like time to explore these possibilities...

[kara]

A very interesting discussion

k

[Oren]

Further to Thom's concerns about the lacklustre sound of my mixes of this song... Here's one that goes "whole hog".

The bass is mixed loud and with it's full audio spectrum intact. My guitars are mixed full spectrum too, but the rhythm guitar has the level lowered a bit.
Pitch-shifting each track 8Hz lower to achieve A=432Hz was giving the instruments an odd tonal quality, so I left it at A=440.

Then, the mixdown received some serious mastering to give it the authority it deserves.

Thank you, Thom, for your recommendations, and I hope this does the trick...