Ok, i know it's not Cigar box guitar related but i wanted to share something i thought off and maybe get some feedback about the subject from you guy's.
I'm a BIG Robert Johnson fan and i like to read a lot about him, one toppic was talked about a lot wich was the actual vocal pitch and the pitch his guitar was tuned to during his recording sessions. Some say it was sped up causing a higher pitch (g# + 1 18th raise) to our ears and to know what Robert realy sounded like the original records (not the cd's wich are rased slightly in pitch due to digitalising) need to be slowed down to 80% of the trackspeed.
Now this got me thinking, because i heard some songs slowed down and it didn't sound good to me at all and i couldn't image Terraplane Blues would have been the (onley real) big hit he made in his time played that slow in a live situation, that and the fact of numerous accounts by people who knew him like Robert Lockwood and Johnny Shines stating that he was just as great in real life as on the records.
My take on the subject has more to do with the way he recorded (facing a corner with the mic in it) and the way sound travels trough the air.
By playing in a corner you hear what people would normally hear being in a audience because the sound bounces off the walls of the corner and because of their meeting at a 90 degree angle it spreads creating a fuller and wider soundplatform (great for practising), but there is a crossing of soundwaves somewhere in the corner where the sound bouncing of the left wall goes to the right side and visa versa.
When you look at a ossiloscope, low pitched soundwaves are a few long and low waves on the screen, high pitched waves are many short and high waves on the screen and that's basicly how sound works the more waves and the closer together they are the higher the pitch will be.
So soundwaves piling up from one source to the receptor should get higher the more they pile up, nice way to check this out is by taking an empty coffee cup and stir a spoon in it whilst facing the cup and the sound you hear wil go up in pitch even though the actual sound from the cup is not changing.
Back to Roberts recording, his mocrophone was more back in the corner than he was himself obviously and my theory was this, if the mic was in the crossing of soundwaves bouncing of the 90 degree angled walls i mentioned earlier the sound would be concentrated (piling up soundwaves) towards the mic instead of spread out like it would be at RJ's ears sitting further away from the corner.
This could i.m.h.o explain the insanely high vocal range his howls could hit on his records and the strange tunning pitch of the guitar. What do you guy's think? Am i just crazy or does it make sence?
Bluesdog
Replies
yeah, that sounded real nice at that link...i never heard that before and it was much better than any of the sony versions!
Wes "Moanin' Mule" Yates said:
Oooo oooo oooo. Here's something interesting:
http://www.turnmeondeadman.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&task...
http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html
Mentioned in the article, apparently there was an engineer that analyzed the electronic hums as reference and remastered accordingly. Listen to the clip here (under the album cover) http://www.pristineclassical.com/LargeWorks/Jazz/PABL002.php
WOW, sounds really natural.
-WY
Bluesdog, you mean this one:
Robert Johnson: The New Transcriptions
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Johnson-New-Transcriptions/dp/07935891...
Yea, thats the one mentioned in the GP article. Not that this article is the absolute authority, but one thing I did get from it was:
Sounds like it remains a mystery. Good work tho. I'm with Keni: Keep on researching! Sounds like a cool thesis.
-WY
Over on Stefan Grossman's page they have talked for years about all this. Personally, I think application of Occam's razor is the best solution.
As for tuning, he was highly influenced by Son House and Willie Johnson. They in turn followed Charlie Patton's approach. Mostl likely standard Open G (DGDgbd)
As for pitch, they did not have modern tuners. They used their ears and tuned to match their voices. It is very likely they tuned in fractional parts of standard. G flat to G sharp.
Definitely the 1930 equipment and method could affect pitch due to mechanical speed.
I find your research into the "facing the corner" recording method interesting and worth further inverstigation, but I really don't know.
Thanks for sharing. Happy Holidays. Enjoy.
@Ben,
To be honest, the sound piling up came from Richard Hammond in a Brainiacs episode but he was talking about the same thing you where onley he made the same example with a Formula 1 car comming towards you but the coffecup thing also came from the same episode and that's stationary. Maybe the cup's shape makes the sound move towards you?
Sorry if my point didn't come across too good, it's not that easy thinking in Dutch and changing evrything to English with these kind of toppics but i'll do my best.
I was talking about when sound hits the corner wall's it deflects sideway's because the corner wall's both are at a 45 degree angle from the players point of view making the sound spread out widely, if 50% of the sound hits the left wall and 50 hits the right there should be a point in the middle the two soundwaves cross, i don't know if that's called phase canceling but i thought it might have had the pitchraising effect on the mic if the soundwaves where piling up like with the coffee cup. But from what i understand from waht you are saying that can't happen with a stationary soundsource and recipiant ....well that's a bit of a bummer on my theory..... oh well that's why i started this discussion, another lesson learned.
I was right on the sound deflecting sideways from the corner wall's making it sound wider spread right? Or are my Flintstonesc acoustic's understanding failing me again?
@Wes Thank you very much, first time i've seen this site but i do own one of the book's they used for the tabs (Hal Leaonard, Robert Johnson. The complete transcribings) from what i could see, gonna read it in a minute. I'm alway's looking for new stuff to read about him and i try to play his music quite often so these tricks are very welcome, thanks!
That too was something i read on the internet but i think we are both right, i ment it was a result of the resampling process from 78's to Cd like you are discribing. There is a half step difference in pitch between the 78's (g# capo 2) and the Cd's (A capo 2) so it did raise in the transformation from digital to analog but it probibly happened the way you said with the transfer of the 78's timing to the cd's. It sounds logical.
Hehe i didn't mean that way, sorry if it might have seemed that way but that's my fault by translating what i was thinking to English writing pretty bad. We basicly ment the same thing, i just said it wrong.
Thanks for the info guy's!
Cheers, BluesDog.
I would add to Ben's comments by saying that I hear old bluesmen such as Blind Boy Fuller and tho I'm not inclined to think a CD would reproduce a pitch higher being its a digital sampling, but rather the way the original recording was produced. So for a higher pitch played at 78 RPMs, my guess [read: guess] would be that the recording was done at say, 74-76 rpms. Kinda like watching the old silent films where the actors are busting across the screen and everything looks in fast motion.
One thing you can do if you have his recordings. Open the MP3 in Audacity and change the pitch. Doesn't change the speed. Digitally postprocesses the sound.
Can you reference how a pitch change from Analog to Digital might occur? I've never heard of that.
-WY
I've got to disagree with you on this one (If I was reading correctly). From what I understand, sound waves don't "pile up." I'm thinking you're either referring to the Doppler Effect or Phase Cancelling. The Doppler Effect would cause him to sound "higher" than he actually was if he were moving toward the microphone or the microphone was moving towards him. This couldn't be accomplished consistently for an entire song though. An example of this is when the ice cream truck (always playing a horrible version of "Pop Goes The Weasle" or something) drives past you. The sound of it is higher pitched as it is approaching than when it has passed you. This is not an example of waves piling up, but rather being produced closer together because of the moving source (or further apart if the source is moving away from you). The other thing that it sounded like you were talking about with the 90 degree angles is Phase cancelling. this happens when two frequencies cancel eachother out. The most obvious example of this is produced on purpose...noise cancelling headphones. They have a microphone on them that analyzes a pitch and then produces one that is the opposite. These waves hit your ear drum in a pattern that holds your eardrum in place rather than letting it vibrate. The result is "silence." I don't know if anyone else has noticed it, but my ears get fatigued with noise cancelling headphones because my ear drums are constantly assaulted by sound waves...even during "silence." I wouldn't be surprised if they are shown to have some long term effects on hearing. Anyway...neither of these two instances would be capable of changing the pitch to a consistently higher standard. It would either be inconsistant with the Doppler Effect or would result reduced volume or silence with the phase cancelling. Did I make sense?
Guitar Player had a great article on the "10 things you must do to play like Robert Johnson". Mentions riffs and tunings. You might want to go there and see if you can find.
http://archive.guitarplayer.com/article/10-things-you/February-2010...
You're gonna have to click on the riff pics and print them separately.
-WY