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I wonder if people are confusing "out of tune" with "autotune." I was in a band 20 years ago and "out of tune" always meant what Rick says: one of the notes th

I wonder if people are confusing "out of tune" with "autotune." I was in a band 20 years ago and "out of tune" always meant what Rick says: one of the notes the instrument is generating is off relative to the other notes the instrument is generating. It had nothing to do with how close the notes are to the original piece. That was known as being "off key."[0] [0]: I'm a drummer, so my understanding of "off key" might not be entirely accurate, but that's how I remember the phrase being used.

drexlspivey 3y ago
You can transpose any song to any key of course but there is a ground reality that is middle C is at 260 Hz. The whole band can be out-of-tune, but in tune between themselves.
- tremon 3y ago
  This isn't universally true. Different tunings have been used in different time periods and locations. The modern standard pitch A440 (A4 at 440Hz) was only defined in 1926. Before that, the "standard" pitch has been as low as 415Hz (baroque pitch) or as high as 465Hz (Chorton pitch). From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch : > For example, a 1740 tuning fork associated with Handel is pitched at A = 422.5 Hz, while a specimen from 1780 is pitched at A = 409 Hz, about a quarter-tone lower. A tuning fork that belonged to Ludwig van Beethoven around 1800, now in the British Library, is pitched at A = 455.4 Hz, well over a half-tone higher. Besides the chosen pitch, only in an equal-temperament tuning can a piece of music be transposed to a different key and sound identical. Under different tunings, the ratio between subsequent notes is not always constant so transposing a piece of music to a different key will produce slightly different harmonic intervals.
  - lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
    And, sometimes, out of tune can sound better. Why John Frusciante is Out Of Tune (Scar Tissue): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daw93bRHe4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daw93bRHe4Y
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MrMember 3y ago
  When I was learning Green Day's "Longview" on bass I thought it was hilarious that if I wanted to play it album accurate I would have to play "out of tune." When they recorded the album they didn't have an electric tuner and just tuned to each other.
beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
Yeah, if you play an A chord on the guitar and it sounds "off", then one or multiple strings are out of tune (sharp or flat relative to each other). The same is true if you have 2 guitars playing together and one guitar is out of tune to the other (or any number of instruments). Beato seems to think that people should just "feel" or know that, but I think he might be blind to how little people play instruments or how little the average person has "trained" to pick up when something is out of tune. People that play instruments can usually pick it out pretty quickly, especially in a band setting. People that pick up a guitar can't just immediately tune it. Over time, however, you get a very intuitive sense for what "in tune" means (which is really just like a set amount of harmonic 'steps' between the strings) and can tune by ear very quickly - whether that in tune guitar has actually been tuned to E standard, however, is more about a common reference point for that note. Beato seems to be thinking that common reference point is a kind of general knowledge, but it's definitely not.
- vundercind 3y ago
  I thought that’s all it was, but as the video went on it seemed people thought he meant something different by the term, and they did perceive what he meant when he explained it. That’s way more surprising to me than folks not being good at noticing it in the first place (they seemed to do that just fine!)
- lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
  > People that pick up a guitar can't just immediately tune it. No, but they can recognize when a guitar sounds "good" vs when it sounds "bad." He mentions that in the video. Humans have a certain amount of innate musical recognition that doesn't require education to understand. This video demonstrates this with the pentatonic scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjvR9UMQCrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjvR9UMQCrg

drexlspivey 3y ago

You can transpose any song to any key of course but there is a ground reality that is middle C is at 260 Hz. The whole band can be out-of-tune, but in tune between themselves.

tremon 3y ago
This isn't universally true. Different tunings have been used in different time periods and locations. The modern standard pitch A440 (A4 at 440Hz) was only defined in 1926. Before that, the "standard" pitch has been as low as 415Hz (baroque pitch) or as high as 465Hz (Chorton pitch). From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch : > For example, a 1740 tuning fork associated with Handel is pitched at A = 422.5 Hz, while a specimen from 1780 is pitched at A = 409 Hz, about a quarter-tone lower. A tuning fork that belonged to Ludwig van Beethoven around 1800, now in the British Library, is pitched at A = 455.4 Hz, well over a half-tone higher. Besides the chosen pitch, only in an equal-temperament tuning can a piece of music be transposed to a different key and sound identical. Under different tunings, the ratio between subsequent notes is not always constant so transposing a piece of music to a different key will produce slightly different harmonic intervals.
- lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
  And, sometimes, out of tune can sound better. Why John Frusciante is Out Of Tune (Scar Tissue): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daw93bRHe4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daw93bRHe4Y
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MrMember 3y ago
When I was learning Green Day's "Longview" on bass I thought it was hilarious that if I wanted to play it album accurate I would have to play "out of tune." When they recorded the album they didn't have an electric tuner and just tuned to each other.

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago

Yeah, if you play an A chord on the guitar and it sounds "off", then one or multiple strings are out of tune (sharp or flat relative to each other). The same is true if you have 2 guitars playing together and one guitar is out of tune to the other (or any number of instruments). Beato seems to think that people should just "feel" or know that, but I think he might be blind to how little people play instruments or how little the average person has "trained" to pick up when something is out of tune. People that play instruments can usually pick it out pretty quickly, especially in a band setting. People that pick up a guitar can't just immediately tune it. Over time, however, you get a very intuitive sense for what "in tune" means (which is really just like a set amount of harmonic 'steps' between the strings) and can tune by ear very quickly - whether that in tune guitar has actually been tuned to E standard, however, is more about a common reference point for that note. Beato seems to be thinking that common reference point is a kind of general knowledge, but it's definitely not.

vundercind 3y ago
I thought that’s all it was, but as the video went on it seemed people thought he meant something different by the term, and they did perceive what he meant when he explained it. That’s way more surprising to me than folks not being good at noticing it in the first place (they seemed to do that just fine!)
lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
> People that pick up a guitar can't just immediately tune it. No, but they can recognize when a guitar sounds "good" vs when it sounds "bad." He mentions that in the video. Humans have a certain amount of innate musical recognition that doesn't require education to understand. This video demonstrates this with the pentatonic scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjvR9UMQCrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjvR9UMQCrg