Songs recorded 1/4 step up or down

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anyone have a list of songs recorded with the tuning set a quarter step up or down? Like Van Halens Aint talkin bout love?

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Ehm, no...
What often happens is an album is recorded at straight 440Hz tuning. Then while mastering they discovered it would be better for a song to be a pinch faster or slower. Then with tape (used until 20 yrs ago) the easy fix was to adjust the playback speed. Tempo alters but also the tuning pitch. Nowadays you can alter pitch and tempo separate, then you could not.
I doubt anyone is anal enough to compose a list of such cases.
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BertKoor wrote:I doubt anyone is anal enough to compose a list of such cases.
This is the internet. There are probably Wikipedia edit fights about which songs do or don't belong on the list.

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It used to be common for Rock Bands to record at concert pitch and tune down a semi-tone for live performance.

I got an LP in the 80s by Pat Metheny (and friends) called Song X. I'm pretty sure Pat was employing quarter-tones. Might be worth looking up.
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Aloysius wrote:It used to be common for Rock Bands to record at concert pitch and tune down a semi-tone for live performance.
I've never heard of this. Why would you do it? This was common?
Aloysius wrote: I got an LP in the 80s by Pat Metheny (and friends) called Song X. I'm pretty sure Pat was employing quarter-tones. Might be worth looking up.
Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman is a long way from a rock band. When you say Metheny was employing quater-tones, what are you referring to? His tuning? Or was he inserting quarter-tones in the composition?

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I asked the wrong question :)


yes.. what I meant to ask was is there a list of songs that end up on the album at 1/4 step below or above standard.

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I was fishing around trying figure out where you were coming from. Short answer then ... I don't know. :)
Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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"Quarter step" = quarter of a semitone = 25 cents detuned?
Just checking your definitions...
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Van Halen (and Jimi Hendrix, and Stevie Ray Vaughan) often tune(d) all their guitars/bass strings down a half step, with E flat as the lowest string.

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Yrs of guitar playing...acoustic guitar, playing along with streaming songs at a camp out reveals that classic rock was frequently pitch altered, for whatever reasons. About half of the songs that night were sharp or flat from my acoustic guitar pitch.
If a half or full step altered, I wouldn`t have been able to tell though.
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I know that U2 tuned down a semitone because Bono couldn't hit the high notes ...

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Led Zeppelin:

No Quarter

(probably not exactly quarter step)
he he, get it, no quarter.....

also:
When The Levee Breaks
The Song Remains the Same

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BERFAB wrote:
Aloysius wrote:It used to be common for Rock Bands to record at concert pitch and tune down a semi-tone for live performance.
I've never heard of this. Why would you do it? This was common?
My band used to do it to help me hit the high notes without straining my voice as much. it was (and still is) extremely common for a variety of reasons. Black Sabbath used to tune down 2-3 semitones to help Tony Iommi play guitar with his homemade artificial fingertips, and this was later copied by other metal bands because the flappy strings sounded really heavy. A lot of Metallica's early stuff was tuned down a whole step. stevie ray vaughan tuned down to make his extremely heavy gauge strings more playable, and many bands did/do it for vocal comfort.

to the OP, guitarist Ronnie LeTikro used to use a "quarter stepper" guitar which had double frets, allowing him to play quarter tones in his solos. so check the band TNT (warning, 80's pop metal!) but I don't think they detuned a quarter step.

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My friend's reggae band tunes to 432 hz (concert pitch), which is roughly about 1/3 down I think. Aside from all the natural spiritual math science mumbo jumbo behind all that, the vocalist says the tuning just falls into his natural register more so he doesn't have to strain himself as much to hit certain notes. I think it's a bunch of bull shit though.

There are rumors that certain rock artists did it purposefully, but as mentioned above, it probably was due to mechanical tape speed fluctuation causing a slight tempo and pitch change to occur.

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I seem to recall that some of Pantera's songs were tuned down little more than half a step, so guitars on Eb standard plus an additional quarter semitone further down. At least that was the case with Cemetery Gates.
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