Rick Beato goes ballistic thinking the public can't detect relative pitch errors.

[ElmerJFudd]

4 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

What's worse is the more your hear pitch correction, the more you recognize when it's being used...which makes it even more annoying.

True! Killing vibrato or creating unnatural vibrato is the worst part of it.  It actually has young singers copying the sound of their idols singing straight tone and doing mechanical moves in their replication without the software. That’s unfortunate but happening regardless. 

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, stoken6 said:

 

I don't have a problem with tuning being used as a creative effect. (Auto-tune was originally demo'ed using a Theremin!). But if it's the default on every pop record, it's lazy and uninspiring.

 

EDIT: @ElmerJFudd has posted something similar ahead of me.

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

Many are using it for an effect now since T-Pain and I've grow real tired of even the effect.  Even when it subtle it obvious. 

[Reezekeys]

2 hours ago, David R said:

His indignation is not that they (including his music playing kids) didn’t hear the out of tuneness, but that their response was somehow about having to know the song first before being able to render judgment. I find that very strange as well.

 

Or, as he says at the end, people are just not connecting the terminology of sharp & flat & tuning to what they can hear to be “bad” or unpleasant. [cue my rant about the death of arts education in schools]

Thank you. I thought I was the only one in this thread to actually get what Rick was talking about.

[jazzpiano88]

1 hour ago, Reezekeys said:

4 hours ago, David R said:

His indignation is not that they (including his music playing kids) didn’t hear the out of tuneness, but that their response was somehow about having to know the song first before being able to render judgment. I find that very strange as well.

 

Or, as he says at the end, people are just not connecting the terminology of sharp & flat & tuning to what they can hear to be “bad” or unpleasant. [cue my rant about the death of arts education in schools]

Thank you. I thought I was the only one in this thread to actually get what Rick was talking about.

 

I get what he's saying; I disagree with his analysis.    As I alluded to in my OP, I think people are just so used to hearing bad tuning they don't say anything.   Otherwise they'd never sit though the thousands of High School and College band performances or even your typical local bands.     

 

I think that thing about his wife not knowing their son was out of tune was a confusion in terminology:   She thought he meant the Song itself was not in key.    He meant the chord wasn't in tune with itself, which is a matter of degree that she may not have been as sensitive to.    His two sisters could clearly hear a bad guitar tuning as he himself demonstrated.  His son also proved it, saying he couldn't tell if Bright Size Life was out of tune because he never heard the reference key of the original LP.    So clearly they were just as confused by his terminology as his wife was.

 

It's just a bizarre rant over his own misunderstanding of terminology combined with civilians not being as sensitive to intonation errors as he is.  

 

On the subject of great hearing, I love this one of Joe Walsh setting up a Les Paul:

 

 

 

[El Lobo]

3 hours ago, David R said:

His indignation is not that they (including his music playing kids) didn’t hear the out of tuneness, but that their response was somehow about having to know the song first before being able to render judgment.

That was his point. I think his son and wife and whoever else said that not knowing the song was why they couldn't tell if something was out of tune can only be understood (by me) as a confusion of melody vs. tuning. I can't sing a song I don't know correctly because I don't know the tune. But I can hear if a string on the guitar is out of tune. If you know what out of tune means in the sense of a pitch being sharp or flat or not correct in relation to other pitches, that's one meaning. But if you hear the question as "is he singing the correct tune" then not knowing the song is a reasonable response to not knowing if you're in tune. I wonder how exactly Rick Beato posed the question and how it was understood by the people he was asking it to. People who are not musicians may not understand what being in or out of tune means. They may think it means singing the correct notes, in which case it makes sense to say I don't know if I'm in tune or not because I don't know the tune.

[jazzpiano88]

34 minutes ago, El Lobo said:

That was his point. I think his son and wife and whoever else said that not knowing the song was why they couldn't tell if something was out of tune can only be understood (by me) as a confusion of melody vs. tuning. I can't sing a song I don't know correctly because I don't know the tune. But I can hear if a string on the guitar is out of tune. If you know what out of tune means in the sense of a pitch being sharp or flat or not correct in relation to other pitches, that's one meaning. But if you hear the question as "is he singing the correct tune" then not knowing the song is a reasonable response to not knowing if you're in tune. I wonder how exactly Rick Beato posed the question and how it was understood by the people he was asking it to. People who are not musicians may not understand what being in or out of tune means. They may think it means singing the correct notes, in which case it makes sense to say I don't know if I'm in tune or not because I don't know the tune.

 

Bingo.   Thank you!

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, jazzpiano88 said:

On the subject of great hearing, I love this one of Joe Walsh setting up a Les Paul:

 

 

 

I've been a guitar tech for decades and I can tell you with absolute certainty that Joe Walsh is incorrect when he states that a properly intonated guitar has equaled out the length of the string from the nut to the 12th fret to be identical to the same string from the 12th fret to the bridge. One look at an accurately intonated guitar bridge willl reveal the discrepancy. IF you see the action of the strings the same from the nut to the bridge then the intonation might be a bit closer to center but wound strings do not intonate in the same way that single wire strings do. Further, tuning your guitar by using harmonics the way he does on the video is not accurate or correct either. Which is one reason why he tuned the high E string using the E note on the second fret of the D string instead. You could tune the B string to the harmonic on the seventh fret of the low E string, that is a B note. But if you do that and then tune the high E string using harmonics the 1st and the 6th strings will not match in pitch. I could only get about half way through the video before I had to stop watching, misleading and inaccurate. 

[jazzpiano88]

20 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

I've been a guitar tech for decades and I can tell you with absolute certainty that Joe Walsh is incorrect when he states that a properly intonated guitar has equaled out the length of the string from the nut to the 12th fret to be identical to the same string from the 12th fret to the bridge. One look at an accurately intonated guitar bridge willl reveal the discrepancy. IF you see the action of the strings the same from the nut to the bridge then the intonation might be a bit closer to center but wound strings do not intonate in the same way that single wire strings do. Further, tuning your guitar by using harmonics the way he does on the video is not accurate or correct either. Which is one reason why he tuned the high E string using the E note on the second fret of the D string instead. You could tune the B string to the harmonic on the seventh fret of the low E string, that is a B note. But if you do that and then tune the high E string using harmonics the 1st and the 6th strings will not match in pitch. I could only get about half way through the video before I had to stop watching, misleading and inaccurate. 

 

Well, at least it sounded good to me (both tuning wise and entertainingly).  We all know the difficulty in intonation of the piano which arrived at the equal temperament tuning as the compromise of un-in-tune.    Somehow Joe got to where he wanted to be without a guitar tech (which stands to reason given his musical genius and great ears combined with his background in radio and electronics and with Bob H.):

 

 

[David Emm]

I was once told that I have relative perfect pitch and how it differs from its sibling. Its been useful, but it mostly means I hear how OFF a lot of pop singers are, causing me to howl like a dog. On pitch in my case, but who cares, I'm already howling, OOOOWWwOoooo. The gods bless those who put an A440 tuning reference in their hardware synths early on.

[Motif88]

1 hour ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

I get what he's saying; I disagree with his analysis.    As I alluded to in my OP, I think people are just so used to hearing bad tuning they don't say anything.   Otherwise they'd never sit though the thousands of High School and College band performances or even your typical local bands.     

 

I think that thing about his wife not knowing their son was out of tune was a confusion in terminology:   She thought he meant the Song itself was not in key.    He meant the chord wasn't in tune with itself, which is a matter of degree that she may not have been as sensitive to.    His two sisters could clearly hear a bad guitar tuning as he himself demonstrated.  His son also proved it, saying he couldn't tell if Bright Size Life was out of tune because he never heard the reference key of the original LP.    So clearly they were just as confused by his terminology as his wife was.

 

It's just a bizarre rant over his own misunderstanding of terminology combined with civilians not being as sensitive to intonation errors as he is.  

 

On the subject of great hearing, I love this one of Joe Walsh setting up a Les Paul:

 

 

 

Love the detial from Joe Walsh….Who knew?

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

Well, at least it sounded good to me (both tuning wise and entertainingly).  We all know the difficulty in intonation of the piano which arrived at the equal temperament tuning as the compromise of un-in-tune.    Somehow Joe got to where he wanted to be without a guitar tech (which stands to reason given his musical genius and great ears combined with his background in radio and electronics and with Bob H.):

 

 

I don't disagree that it sounded good. I profoundly disagree that the string from the nut to the 12th fret is as long as the string from the 12th fret to the bridge. I was a guitar tech for 40+ years and still at it. If strings were all equal in length and intonation, why do they make bridges with 6 individual adjustable saddles? The Les Paul he was showing in the video has 6 separate intonation points and I guarantee that the 6th string was longer than the 1st string AND that neither string was equal in length from the nut to the 12th fret and the 12th fret to the bridge. Joe Walsh was simply incorrect on that point, no two ways about it. 

[jazzpiano88]

11 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

I don't disagree that it sounded good. I profoundly disagree that the string from the nut to the 12th fret is as long as the string from the 12th fret to the bridge. I was a guitar tech for 40+ years and still at it. If strings were all equal in length and intonation, why do they make bridges with 6 individual adjustable saddles? The Les Paul he was showing in the video has 6 separate intonation points and I guarantee that the 6th string was longer than the 1st string AND that neither string was equal in length from the nut to the 12th fret and the 12th fret to the bridge. Joe Walsh was simply incorrect on that point, no two ways about it. 

 

Ahh, I think I get it.  You like how it sounded but you don't like the way he achieved or described it.   Sometimes people approximate things for simplicity to achieve a good practical result, if I get what you are saying.

[ksoper]

20 hours ago, El Lobo said:

In talking with her, it became evident that she had no concept of what music was, how it was made, what was involved in playing an instrument. It was just sounds to her and she didn't see what the deal was about live music. To her, it was the same thing as recorded music. It was just sounds.  

 

I just had this conversation with my doctor. He knows what I did for a living but he confessed to me that he just didn't "get" music. He can't tell one note from another and while he can appreciate that some level of skill is necessary to play an instrument, he can't tell a good player from a bad one.  I can't fathom that, but these people exist.  

[jazzpiano88]

27 minutes ago, ksoper said:

21 hours ago, El Lobo said:

In talking with her, it became evident that she had no concept of what music was, how it was made, what was involved in playing an instrument. It was just sounds to her and she didn't see what the deal was about live music. To her, it was the same thing as recorded music. It was just sounds.  

 

I just had this conversation with my doctor. He knows what I did for a living but he confessed to me that he just didn't "get" music. He can't tell one note from another and while he can appreciate that some level of skill is necessary to play an instrument, he can't tell a good player from a bad one.  I can't fathom that, but these people exist.  

 

Yes, it's a thing.  Statistically, 28% of all people have no sense of humor as well  (38% in Nashville) according to psychologists.     It's what causes threads to get deleted here every so often. 

[KuruPrionz]

40 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

Ahh, I think I get it.  You like how it sounded but you don't like the way he achieved or described it.   Sometimes people approximate things for simplicity to achieve a good practical result, if I get what you are saying.

You are correct, up to a point. Yes, it sounded good. If you are a beginner and follow Joe's suggestions, your guitar will never play in tune up the neck. Never. 

That is not a good way to demonstrate one's expertise. It doesn't take long at all to explain the correct way to intonate an electric guitar, failing to do so sets up unexperienced musicians for failure. Not good. 

[analogholic]

13 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

A. he has perfect pitch and B. he cares, deeply.  those two facts are almost a curse

 

ironically, just about every act in popular music is using pitch and time correction on their songs.  so clearly they must feel the audience is capable of noticing their

 

AFAIK, Rick does not have perfect pitch. A good relative pitch. yes. His son Dylan otoh has high level perfect pitch

[analogholic]

 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, ksoper said:

I just had this conversation with my doctor. He knows what I did for a living but he confessed to me that he just didn't "get" music. He can't tell one note from another and while he can appreciate that some level of skill is necessary to play an instrument, he can't tell a good player from a bad one.  I can't fathom that, but these people exist.  

 

Probably not that much different from when I talked to a pro bowler. I know what he does for a living, but I confessed to him that I just didn't "get" bowling. I can't tell one nuance of bowling technique from another, and while I can appreciate that some level of skill is necessary to be a pro bowler, I can't tell a bowler with good form from one with bad form.🤣 

[CyberGene]

My New Year’s resolution was to stop watching YouTube. I’m happy to announce I actually did and haven’t been browsing YT mindlessly for months now. No wasted nights (that I felt empty after) anymore. No BS like this one. Highly recommended!

[adamcz]

Not going to click on that video and feed the worst parts of the algorithm, but I will chime in to say it's ok if laypeople don't notice/care about intonation. I think most non-musicians relate only to vocalists, song lyrics, and catchy beats. I know lots of people who can't discern saxophone from trumpet on a recording and who couldn't tell you the time signature of a song in 3. Lots of people don't listen to music at all - they don't drive with the radio on and they don't have a record player at home.

 

It's smart for us to keep this in mind, especially those of us who suffer from GAS and like to debate which organ patch is most realistic, etc. The little details of our craft are something we do for ourselves only.

[ElmerJFudd]

10 hours ago, analogholic said:

 

AFAIK, Rick does not have perfect pitch. A good relative pitch. yes. His son Dylan otoh has high level perfect pitch

Ah, I don’t actually know.  But point taken. 

[El Lobo]

13 hours ago, ksoper said:

 

I just had this conversation with my doctor. He knows what I did for a living but he confessed to me that he just didn't "get" music. He can't tell one note from another and while he can appreciate that some level of skill is necessary to play an instrument, he can't tell a good player from a bad one.  I can't fathom that, but these people exist.  

Thank you for that. That's yet another example of the kinds of conversations I've had with people over the years. "... can't tell one note from another and ... can't tell a good player from a bad one ... these people exist." Exactly. Musicians need to understand this. 

[El Lobo]

3 hours ago, adamcz said:

I know lots of people who can't discern saxophone from trumpet on a recording ....

I worked with a sound engineer once who called my sax a trombone. He was getting a level on my mic. A sound guy ... sheesh.

[Docbop]

18 minutes ago, El Lobo said:

I worked with a sound engineer once who called my sax a trombone. He was getting a level on my mic. A sound guy ... sheesh.

 

Back in my recording day I worked on a Elton John horn overdub session for the album Caribou.   It was Elton's producer Gus Dudgeon,  Greg Adams and TOP horns,  the engineer and I was assisting, the mic setup and mic selection was all mine, my big claim to fame.     Gus and TOP hadn't worked together before so both sniffing each other out.    We started with the tune The Bitch is Back.   TOP did a few takes so Gus could check out the arrangement, Greg Adams was still writing when he got to the studio.    Then they  started to do some takes and Gus kept stopping them and starting over.   TOP was not happy so Gus started getting more specific like...  bar 5 beat 3 trumpet quarter tone off.    Now TOP was ticked off so Gus said come into the control room and take a listen.     They come in and are in front of the console listening and then look at each other and say  he's right, dam he's got ears.   Suddenly TOP respected Gus and was into it.    Gus told them The Bitch is Back is going to be the hit record on the album so I want it perfect.   They ended up taking the rest of the day to get perfect horns on the Bitch is Back.    After that we took a dinner break after dinner in a few hours they put horns on all the other tunes that had horns and even did some organ overdubs.       So have to be careful some engineer/producers do have amazing ears.   

 

Another fun part of that session is Linda Ronstadt and Peter Asher came later to hang out.   Ronstadt started flirting with Doc from TOP on if they could play Country horns.    Ronstadt found out quick flirting with horn players was not a good thing to do.   Next thing I saw was Linda  back on the other side of the control room by Peter Asher trying to stay as far away from Doc as she could.   <grin>    That session was a lot of fun.  

[David R]

12 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Probably not that much different from when I talked to a pro bowler. I know what he does for a living, but I confessed to him that I just didn't "get" bowling. I can't tell one nuance of bowling technique from another, and while I can appreciate that some level of skill is necessary to be a pro bowler, I can't tell a bowler with good form from one with bad form.🤣 

Maybe not, but you know what strikes, spares, pins & gutters are. I may not know the name of when only the end pins are left but I know it’s not good. I think it would be exceedingly rare to find someone who would not have even a passing exposure to this, or have a conversation of:

”Did you see that gutter ball?”

”How could I, I don’t know the bowling alley.”

[slg1013]

57 minutes ago, Docbop said:

 

Back in my recording day I worked on a Elton John horn overdub session for the album Caribou.   It was Elton's producer Gus Dudgeon,  Greg Adams and TOP horns,  the engineer and I was assisting, the mic setup and mic selection was all mine, my big claim to fame.     Gus and TOP hadn't worked together before so both sniffing each other out.    We started with the tune The Bitch is Back.   TOP did a few takes so Gus could check out the arrangement, Greg Adams was still writing when he got to the studio.    Then they  started to do some takes and Gus kept stopping them and starting over.   TOP was not happy so Gus started getting more specific like...  bar 5 beat 3 trumpet quarter tone off.    Now TOP was ticked off so Gus said come into the control room and take a listen.     They come in and are in front of the console listening and then look at each other and say  he's right, dam he's got ears.   Suddenly TOP respected Gus and was into it.    Gus told them The Bitch is Back is going to be the hit record on the album so I want it perfect.   They ended up taking the rest of the day to get perfect horns on the Bitch is Back.    After that we took a dinner break after dinner in a few hours they put horns on all the other tunes that had horns and even did some organ overdubs.       So have to be careful some engineer/producers do have amazing ears.   

 

Another fun part of that session is Linda Ronstadt and Peter Asher came later to hang out.   Ronstadt started flirting with Doc from TOP on if they could play Country horns.    Ronstadt found out quick flirting with horn players was not a good thing to do.   Next thing I saw was Linda  back on the other side of the control room by Peter Asher trying to stay as far away from Doc as she could.   <grin>    That session was a lot of fun.  

 

That's an awesome story. Thanks for sharing...

[elif]

I agree with others - Rick didn't get it that non-musicians didn't know what "out of tune" meant. 

[stoken6]

4 hours ago, El Lobo said:

I worked with a sound engineer once who called my sax a trombone. He was getting a level on my mic. A sound guy ... sheesh.

That's crazy (and not in a good way)! The guy we use regularly will tell me things like "this mic is for your trombone player, it's amazing on baritone sax and cello as well". 

 

Cheers, Mike.

[marino]

This thread is a good excuse for some listening...
 

 

 

[John Tweed]

17 minutes ago, marino said:

This thread is a good excuse for some listening...
 

 

 

Very interesting listening. I really enjoyed the first piece, not so much the second. How does the organ play those notes outside of equal temperament? I’m totally in the equal temperament world, where lead instruments generally have artistic freedom to bend notes (eg blues). Other instruments within the ensemble don’t have that same freedom, otherwise we (all/some) would perceive things to be out of tune. Of course with 12 notes per octave and equal temperament everything is a little bit out of tune anyway.

My understanding of 19 notes per octave, 31 notes etc is to be more in tune, or more consonant. Would I notice if the first piece was played with 12 note equal temperament? Probably not. However in the second piece the harmony is not always consonant - some chords sound bad to me. Is that a result of the tuning being used or deliberate dissonance?

 

An interesting experiment I carried out some time back with a lap steel. Placing the bar across three strings at an angle between two “frets”, the note on the string in the middle is a quarter tone (or thereabouts), but can often sound surprisingly consonant with the outside notes. But what are these “chords” I am hearing? This shows me that there is a world of harmony out there that I am never going to access with my keyboards and guitars. On the other hand I recall reading somewhere that the Hammond tonewheels are only approximately in tune, due to physical limitations, but this is part of the sound that many of us love.