Out-of-tune & Sloppy Recordings?

[Bernie Daniel]

Bb#? B maybe?

I think Ivan could be right. Afterall Frank Wakefield plays his tune Catnip with "....with all those G's and F's and Kb#'s in it...."

[Charlieshafer]

I get to be the contrarian again, and disagree with a few comments. If today's players that you're listening to aren't delivering excitement then it's the fault of those players specifically. I think the technical prowess of today's players (especially noticeable on violin) are far higher just due to the degree and quality of music education. After training, it's back to the individual's ability to play musically and with soul and excitement. Now the problem becomes a number's game: the surviving recordings we have of the old guys represent the best of the best, and the sound is a result of tuning to each other as well as technical limitations. (Don't forget the consistency of the level of current being generated as critical, voltages were all over the place years ago). New recordings? There are so many of them and it's so easy to do that we as a listening group haven't had time to distill them down yet. It'll take a few years to let the dust settle.

But, technically, there's no doubt that today's players are better trained, and from a technical standpoint, aside from a very few rare exceptions, play better than their predecessors, which is really the heart of the O.P.'s point, I think. As for soul, as always through the years, some got it, some don't. To revere the old recordings and pan all the newer ones is just nostalgia.

[ralph johansson]

Let's take a trip back in time before there were electronic tuners. Ever listen to the "modern" group Poco? Ever tried to play along with any of their records? People used to tune to each other.

In my Bluegrass days, in the late 60's, there were no electronic tuners. But there were tuning forks and we used them. Also, in the studios there were pianos and they were kept in tune.

How could a singer possibly sing in tune if the rest of the band tuned sharp or flat?

[mandolinlee]

I agree with Mike Edgerton, electronic tuners have improved music playing and listening. Also, about tuning to each other, how many remember those bluegrass festivals from the early 1970's? Every jam group was tuned a little differently from the last or the next one you tried to play with. Some in tune pretty well, some not quite so good. But they sure were a fun learning experience. Plus it's fun to reminisce with friends who were there.
Lee

[Gary Hedrick]

For me most of the "clean" bluegrass goes too far all the way to sterile. The players have honed technique so much that often I don't hear any real life or excitement in the tune/song. Add to this the fact that most or all modern recordings are multi track. So if the mandolin player misses a note he goes back and fixes it. And every instrument in the ensemble is sort of compelled to do the same, so by the end there really aren't any irregularities or mistakes in the cut.

The old recordings were live, so mistakes are captured but so is the energy that comes from live band playing. Like where the fiddle kick-off is so hot that the singer comes in with all the emotion they have, and then later the banjo player aims to show the fiddler how it's done! You see what I'm saying.

Now it's true that there are many cleaner players than Monroe, but if you sit down and listen to his Bluegrass Breakdown you might convince yourself that "sloppy" can be perfect!

Z

Amen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Gary Hedrick]

As said in a number of the posts....."in tune" was where the guitar player was ......sometimes some smarta** would have a pitch pipe but rarely would it be used. So there was a sort of "floating" standard tuning. A lot of the really top players had perfect pitch and would tell the guitar player to tune up or down. But we still used the guitar's tuning as the base .....

[doc holiday]

There was music before the electronic tuner. Take several e. tuners & they won't be perfectly in agreement. A guitar tuned to standard e. tuner won't be in tune in every key...the nature of the beast. Stringed instruments require some degree of 'sweetened tuning.'

[journeybear]

Some of the old field recordings of blues musicians were made playing into a Victrola, which recorded directly onto a 78 rpm record. Easy to transport and operate, inexpensive and effective, this was a way to bring the recording capability to the musician. There was a limit to how long a song could be or the end would get cut off. Sometimes the musician would be told to speed it up mid-song in order to get it all in. I remember hearing some with three tempos - the second tempo wasn't fast enough! Sometimes the recording engineer (er, Victrola owner) would put a little pressure on the turntable with his hand or finger to slow it down and make more time, so then when played back at regular speed the tempo would increase, but this time the pitch as well. Recordings made this way surely included bluegrass, jug band, country, any form of music being played in rural areas.

[Willie Poole]

Some of the recodrs from the 60`s were recorded at different times and days so if you even tried to play along with them you almost had to re tune for every song...The bands would take a lunch break and when they came back the guitar player would tune by ear and the rest would tune to him, since time was money they very seldom checked the intonation when capoing up to a higher key such as B so then the banjo and guitar would hardly ever be on the same pitch...I used to ask the guitar player to put his capo on and the rest would tune to his A and then if we had to drop down or go up it usually sounded close enough to each other to get by.....

Many of the older bluegrass bands all tuned to one note above standard, they claim it sounded better for bluegrass....At festivals I have walked around and got into jams and had to tune to fit each one, about 20 times a day, usually by the time I got in tune they were ready to quit, or maybe it was my playing, I never did figure that out....

Just listen to the music and then try to play the song your way....

Willie

[Beanzy]

The fiddler may want to pull the tuning off and may prefer that tension it creates. It's something you have to judge. Once they get their ear in for that tuning tension they'll be continually looking to pull against the other instruments so there's a 'strain' as they pull their tuning away from the others. I ve heard a lot of irish fiddlers playing slightly against the fretted instruments. It gives a different sound, as you've heard, but it's an aquired taste to say the least. We can't do it on the mando without doing string bending which sounds different as the tuning is heard to move rather than being just slightly # / b .

[Marty Henrickson]

I still think it's ironic that we're talking about all this old stuff, when the OP actually referenced a current band, the Ball Sisters Band.

[journeybear]

Not ironic, really, just a lot more fun.

[sunburst]

I still think it's ironic that we're talking about all this old stuff, when the OP actually referenced a current band, the Ball Sisters Band.

Could be because of the first line of the OP; "WHy does so much bluegrass - especially the old classic stuff sound out of tune?". (Emphasis added.)

[journeybear]

Exactly. She also said, in the OP:

And it occurred to me that a lot of the older stuff sounds sloppy and out of tune.

Now, she did adjust her question later:

if I had to rephrase my entire question it would be this ....

Why is this group of musicians playing sloppy and out of tune? Is it because A.) IS it stylistic (to sound like the old timers kinda do) or B.) Lack of ability to play better

While I am not familiar with this particular band, I have heard something similar on recordings from a long time ago. That is an interesting subject, touching on music history and the development of recording technology and I suppose a bit of anthropology and geography and other tangential factors. But if this is only about slamming one band for playing and/or recording in a sub-standard manner, there isn't too much to be gained from discussing that. Pop another CD into the player, click on the next file on your iPod, or better yet, pick up your mandolin and pick a few the way you want to hear 'em. Just be sure and tune up first.

[Marty Henrickson]

Yes, I have read the entire thread, and I wasn't really trying to slam the OP (or the Ball Sisters for that matter - I think 'family bands' are a great thing). Just making an observation that I was surprised noone else had made. Probably too obvious.

Oh, and irony can be fun!

[Don Grieser]

You guys have it all wrong. It's Bb natural.

And I'll take raw emotion over NashVegas slick any day.

[JeffD]

The "smooth/clean" groups I used to love don't hold up now that my ear is MUCH better. The more you listen, the better musician you become.

Yes!

Is the goal is to play expressive music espressively with exhuberance, or is the goal to get it exactly right. Its easy to take either side to the extreme, but on balance I error onthe side of exhuberance.

[journeybear]

Marty - Didn't mean that for you, but the OP. She seems to keep coming back to The Ball Sisters Band, with whose music I am unfamiliar, so I don't know exactly what set her off. And I don't really want to buy and listen through their catalogue to find out. Perhaps an example or two would help clarify that part of this thread. Usually does.

[Marty Henrickson]

Steve, if you're really curious about the Ball Sisters, click the link in my post above, and you can listen on their soundclick page. Not horrible, but I didn't rush right out and buy their entire catalog, either.

I hold to my point that if you want to learn the melody to a song or tune (going back to the OP), then you listen to versions of that song or tune performed by the masters, not the first version you find on the internet. YMMV :D

[mandolirius]

I still think it's ironic that we're talking about all this old stuff, when the OP actually referenced a current band, the Ball Sisters Band.

I listened to a few cuts on their website and think I may have found what the OP was referring to. I didn't hear "out of tune" playing but there is a pretty hard-core rendition of Dusty Miller that has some aspects of oldtime fiddle playing one may think of as out of tune.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From Mike Bunting - "Bb#? - B maybe ?" . Errr - not quite Mike !,
Ivan

[M.Marmot]

I'm a chiming in to add my tuppence...

It seems that this is another instance of one of those perennial debates that occasionally open up here on the cafe boards and (i may be wrong on this) one that seems to plague the Bluegrass section more than others.

There seems to be a real tension in bluegrass between technical proficiency and the emotional immediacy, and for my money (all tuppence worth) this tension has always been there and is integral to the music's identity. For instance, in my mind this tension between technique and emotion is what lend the excitement to a lot of Mr. Monroe's music.

Today's musicians do have greater technical means than the older generations but they also have a greater awareness of different musical styles, including those older styles, which means that today's musicians also have a greater choice of what they can play, some choose toward technical clarity, others toward emotive impression. Again, I think this tension will always be implicit in Bluegrass and it is those musicians who can play this tension that produce the most interesting material.

However, when it comes to the marketing of Bluegrass albums these days i do think that the bias, among established labels, does tend more toward pushing a technically slick, sophisticated, and most importantly, accessible product over those recordings that may still retain the raw burr of rough immediacy.

For my tastes sometimes this type production values seems almost like an over-compensation, anxious to shake off the stain of the soil and still trade on the roots, they place too much of the burden on the technical and lose the tension and excitement. Unfortunately these are also the type of album which provide a lot of the contemporary audience their introduction to Bluegrass, which may give a taste for the product but not a real taste for the flavor of the music.

Moving from modern recordings to older recordings can be like moving into a whole different sonic-environment for new listeners, the shock of vocals stripped of reverb, instruments tuned by ear, recordings worn by time, can prove too much for some, but for those who persevere they are often led to re-appraise a lot of their own musical tastes and values for the better.

Older recordings are not always better than today's offerings, and of older recordings its not only the best that has endured, i'm convinced that things are a little bit more random than that, but a lot of older recordings are still remarkably relevant to a modern listener and can prove a rich resource for a modern musician.

Of today's musicians - why do some play out of tune or produce sloppy recordings?

Some are doing so on purpose because they find that it suits them and its what they want to do.
Others are doing so because they are not technically proficient as musicians or in recording technology.

The relative ease in recording which we have today allows musicians of all levels to publish their efforts for relatively low expense and it also allows for a greater variety of musical flavors to be aired by-passing the tastes of major labels - but this also means that not every recording will be smooth and polished... rough diamonds and all that.

Just keep a keen ear open and try not to judge too harshly or too quickly because you might just cut yourself off from something wonderful.

[Charlieshafer]

I'm a chiming in to add my tuppence...

Just keep a keen ear open and try not to judge too harshly or too quickly because you might just cut yourself off from something wonderful.

And that about wraps it up for me. Great statement, M. I do feel a lot of this is also cyclical. There was that great period where a lot of younger musicians were far more into capturing the spirit of the old music and worried less about the technical aspects, most notably Old and IN The Way, the Correctones (Bruce Molsky's birthplace, musically) or the Highwoods Stringband. That was overtaken by the first new wave of technical virtuosity, like the Newgrass Revival, or the Tony Rice Unit. And from there, it flips back and forth between really-hard-stuff-to-play and great soulfulness. But it's not a generational thing, no way no how. It's just a choice of how the musicians want to play. Dirk Powell is one younger guy who plays with incredible emotion, and that's just a start. The simple fact is you can play with virtuosity and soul at the same time, it's been done before and being done now.

One sort of neat evolution going on (let's see how it turns out after a few years) is some of the newer young bands intentionally tuning slightly off each other to really go for that "old time" sound. So now, is that "old time" sound they're going after the result of poor recording equipment or poor playing? I don't know, I wasn't there.

[SincereCorgi]

I listened to a few cuts on their website and think I may have found what the OP was referring to. I didn't hear "out of tune" playing but there is a pretty hard-core rendition of Dusty Miller that has some aspects of oldtime fiddle playing one may think of as out of tune.

Yeah, after listening to these people, I don't really get what the OP's point was. It sounds like pretty typical modern family-band bluegrass, and a lot cleaner than a lot of 'golden age' stuff.

[SincereCorgi]

One sort of neat evolution going on (let's see how it turns out after a few years) is some of the newer young bands intentionally tuning slightly off each other to really go for that "old time" sound. So now, is that "old time" sound they're going after the result of poor recording equipment or poor playing? I don't know, I wasn't there.

Oh man, seriously? Historical informed performance for bluegrass? That's awesome. You have any links for that?