Jimmy Page's guitar is out of tune all the way thru "Stairway to Heaven!"

[RandomKoolzip]

Listening to Clear Channel Radio toight, they played a Led Zep "Three-fer." ("Heartbreaker" also features an out-of-tune J.P. Jones on Bass...but since "Stairway" is such a legendary song, I think the bigger offense is the one I'll rant about. Hey, the night is young, why not.) But, to get to the point, "Stairway....." Tonight was the first time I'd heard this song since college....Okay, first time I'd "paid attention" to this song for a long long time....and it's glaringly obvious that the acoustic guitar in the right speaker, the flutes/mellotron, and the acoustic guitar in the left speaker, are all out of tune with each other. I guess it sort of creates the same effect a chorus pedal on "full" would give, but tonight, it sounds like shit coming out of my radio.

Didn't this bother the Zepsters? Was Page too quaaluded out by this point to care? Why did it sound so bitchen for the first 14 years of my life, so boring for the next 14 years, and now, so glaringly sloppy to my ears all of a sudden? Sometimes I think that listening to the pitch-correction software features (Nuendo, etc.)used by modern musicians these days has made my ears hypersensitive to these anomalies.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Pitch Correction is an abomination before the Lord

Much of the best music was played out of tune and sloppy by super drugged out rockers.

The other batch of best music was played by consummate musicians - Zappa, Genesis, Yes, etc., and was played in tune.

But it was NEVER faked in the studio with computerized "pitch correction" BS.

I never realized Stairway was out of tune, but it's not surprising, and it's been probably 20 years since I've given it a real close listen to with headphones or the speakers truly separated. I do know Page messes up most of his solos in the Zep tunes, but that's why they rock - it's great, sloppy but heartfelt determined music.

[RandomKoolzip]

4. I MUST agree.

And this is coming from a guy who HAS used pitch correction on his bass work in the studio. (Old strings, dontcha know.)

ProTools has turned musicians into lazy hacks. It all sounds so slick...Slicker than owl shit!

Give me some clunky-assed Mothers bootlegs from the Lowell George tour anyday over any modern ProToolsed digital snakepit recording. Give me some Guided by Voices ep recorded drunk on a boombox in Bob Pollard's basement over Three Doors Down. Hell, I'd even take THE DEAD over most Clear Channel popmusik.


Unlike a lot of musicians I know, I can TAKE slop; in fact I kinda like it.

But tonight was the FIRST time I'd noticed that Page was out of tune on this song....and I believe that hearing Nuendo-riffic poptunage for the last 10 years has over-sensitized my ears to stuff I used to never used to hear.

[Rabrrrrrr]

33. lazy hacks - the problem with digital, whether music or movies

Your comment reminded me of George "I suck" Lucas and a number of other current movie makers who look at digital as either a crutch, or something they MUST use.

"Ah - just film it. We'll fix it with digital processing later."

or

"Whew! Now, with digital, it's easy to go back and rewrite the movie based on the opinions of a group of 200 teenagers and morons at the test screenings; good thing we don't have to write a good one to begin with. It's almost like interactive films, but not quite."

or

"Hey - you know what this scene needs? Digital crap overlaid and put in it."

"But the story doesn't require it."

"I know, but it's so COOOL."

[LastKnight]

22. amen amen...

and why does music suck these days?

-LK

[Rabrrrrrr]

25. Because it has no soul or heart

Not all of it, but rock is so much corporate product now it's disgusting. It's not about rebellion or angst or offering an alternative voice or trying to capture the mood of a generation any more - it's rebellion marketed to the rebellion demographic, and angst markets to the angst demographic, and etc., and even those demographics are subdivided into every increasing divisons so that the "rebellion product" can be produced to provide the maximum "demographic hit" for the product.

Sometimes I get do disgusted. Thankfully, there are still come valid bands out there, and new bands popping up that maintain integirty of their sound, but it's damn few.

maybe no fewer than in the past in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of avialable "stock", it's gotta be way lower.

[Ramsey]

24. That's so funny

We were in the studio on Sunday doing final mixes on our album, and the engineers had stuck the pitch fixer on my vocal on a blues song we do. Now, the vocal line slides between all kinds of notes before it gets to the pitch. It's a very sultry blues song.

I told them to leave the vocal totally raw. They wanted to pitch fix the whole damn thing. So we tried that, and as predicted, the resultant vocal sounded like cats in heat on a fence across the yard.

We compromised in the end. I let them auto-tune a couple of random notes here and there. But 99% is pure me! :evilgrin:

As an aside, we were having a conversation about mastering styles and in particular how Led Zeppelin albums (and Beatles albums) are full of "mistakes". I argued that nobody noticed and they were better that way anyhow. It is rock n' roll after all! It's not supposed to be perfect.

[TrogL]

2. That's why I've always wondered why everybody loves the thing

it's flat. Sounds like the Dead on a regular day (ie. when nobody's taken them in hand and actually attempted to tune).

[phaseolus]

3. If you really want to listen to wierd tunings --

find some Mexican folk music, performed on harp. Or some old Bach or Scarlatti or something, performed on a harpsichord or pipe organ using one of the old temperaments based on pure intervals. It all sounds wierd and microtonal, and when you get used to it our "equal temperament" sounds a little out of tune.

My wild guess is the mistuning was intentional. He might have been playing with pure intervals or something.

[RandomKoolzip]

8. "Stairway" was in EADGBE.

I know, I learned it in high school. Page used weird tunings in lots of other tunes, though. my favorite is "Friends...." Good song.

My ears have been accclimated to Sonic Youth and No ave and Branca and all that stuff....I LOVE weird tunings and can almost always pick them out.

Which is why I can discern a couple of loose strings on Page's guitar tonight.....And I'm not even high on Nyquil (yet)!

[Rabrrrrrr]

26. It's not about non-western well-tempered tunings,

it's that the guitar and/or the playing is OUT OF TUNE.

[dolo amber]

5. Gah!

And here I thought you wuz S-M-R-T...

How could such a mediocre song gain such legendary status if you couldn't sing along to it whilst drunk and slurring both words AND notes?

Sheesh...:eyes:

:D

[RandomKoolzip]

9. It's spelled "S-M-U-R-F," D.A.!!!!

Screw this, I'm calling Ronnie James Dio and giving him a piece of my mind!

The best song to sing a long to while shitty-faced is "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" by Elton John, BTW. You can't sing this without sounding like Will Farrell imitating Robert Goulet.

[dolo amber]

12. Heh

I used to torture my oldest by singing "Can you feeeeeeel my buuuuuutt tonight" to her Lion King soundtrack. She'd be all "Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!! Stop that!!" x( :grr:

Yay, annoying children is fun! :D

[RandomKoolzip]

14. That's high-larry us!

My friends and I used to make up different words for songs like "Bus Stop" by the Hollies:

"Bus Stop Sansone
He flexed, she groaned
We shared his flapjacks"

When we were high or tripping.....or we'd deliberatly sing the words from one song to the melody of another. "Ice Ice Baby"'s lyrics to the tune of "Losing My Religion" was favorite of my high school years. Ah, my acid days.....*sigh*

[Ellen Forradalom]

20. I've always wanted to hear

Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider" rapped to the melody of "Rapper's Delight."

[wtmusic]

6. Much lower standard back then

Tempo too. Time sped up, slowed down, whatever. The music was better though.

[tridim]

7. It's beautiful just the way it is

In fact that's what I love the most about early to mid-career Zepplin, their music wasn't overproduced. It's so soothingly analog and imperfect, in a really good way.

[mitchum]

10. It's the smack, Jack

[RandomKoolzip]

11. Page didn't do heroin until 1975.....

God, I'm so embarrasssed that I know that!

[DrZhivago]

15. my favorite page solo

is on Fool in the rain, is so sloppy I love it

[RandomKoolzip]

16. Yeah, great solo.

Page as a soloist wasn't as sloppy as Zappa, and Zappa is my all-time FAVORITE soloist. Better a sloppy Page or Zappa solo than a note-perfect Yngwie Malmsteen or whoever.

[madrchsod]

21. i saw Zappa when they opened for cream

Zappa`s guitar work was fucking amazing really blew me away. Clapton was very good too!

[RandomKoolzip]

27. Sweet!

Zappa and PAge and Verlaine and Garcia and Greg Ginn...my favorite soloists, were GREAT because they took chances, and improvised EVERY solo. Sometimes this meant a few weak licks or slippery fingerings, but I'd take this approach over any Berklee Grad's "intervallic skips" any fuckin' day.

BTW, if anyone wants to hear a FANTASTIC young improv soloist in a rock context, check out Geoff Farina of the band Karate. Nothing show-offy, but adventurous, tasteful, and possessed of his own unique tone.

[mitchum]

18. That's not what my mom says

and she would know. After all of her experience with raccoon stains and all...

I think the out of tune quality comes from tonal "beats" and waverings from the electric 12string against the 6string. That's what it's always sounded like to me

[Dudley_DUright]

13. Clapton's Layla is another famous example

I can't play along with it unless I tune down about a quarter step (50 cents). Very irritating, but understandable considering Clapton's history.

[madrchsod]

17. who cared?

by the time you were drunk and stoned completely out of your mind ,you really didn`t noticed what the hell was out of time. fuck digital mixing,give me "roger the engineer" yardbirds album on vinyl any dam day. the mono vinyl sounds better than the dam cd.

[RandomKoolzip]

23. Eggs Ackley.

I haven't been stoned for months, I stopped drinking four years ago, and tonight I wasn't all hopped up on testosterone or any other hormonal stimulus, and it was the first time I'd noticed this aspect to the song. Add to that the fact that I've been in the studio for the last three days finishing up my band's last demo and doing multiple takes of the background vocals....what you got rght there is a recipe for being hypercritical (I'll cop to that.)

And I definitely take analog anyday of the week, if I can get it.

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. And also, the louder one plays, the less in tune it needs to be

And I imagine Zep - since they recorded back when they actually had to mic the amps for the recording sessions and didn't just plug the guitars straight into the board - played really loud even in the studio.

But, it's a physiological fact that the louder the music, the more it can be out of tune without being noticed.

So could very well be even that back then, the engineers and the musicians might have thought it was in tune, since they likely recorded it at very loud volume, engineered and mixed it at loud volume.

between that, the ludes, the dope,t he booze, and the acid, it's surprising that there's even melody, and that everything doesn't just sound like Barret in his last days strumming one chord for a whole concert...

[mitchum]

29. Actually, Zeppelin didn't record with very big/loud amps at all

almost exclusively used very small low wattage Fender Princetons and Champs (the most recorded amp in the world)
Layla was recorded with this exact same amplifier selections. As was a great deal of the Rolling Stones' best work.

The engineer's secret for GREAT guitar sound: small amp, large room

[Rabrrrrrr]

30. Cool! Thanks for the info!

So it must have just been the drugs. Not loud playing.

:hi:

I hadn't realized they would have used such small amps. The sound sounds so much bigger. Thus the necessity of a large room, eh? :-)

[mitchum]

31. Isn't that cool!

Those records do sound like they were recorded with wall-to-wall-to-wall stacks of Marshalls, but...

Ah, those rock stars with their majick secrets... (and as you said, drugs)

[pfitz59]

28. "Stairway to Gilligan"..... far out!

http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~pennywiz/Funhouse/gilliganE.html

[carpetbagger]

32. And he ripped the riff from Randy California, too.

"Taurus", an instrumental from Spirit's title album, is the same opening, which Jimmy Page heard when Zep opened for Spirit.

STH's a great song, but I think it sucks mightily that California's instrumental never gets air time.