Re: [Harp-L] Re: top 40 harp

[Slim Heilpern <slim@xxxxxxxxxx>]

And there is so much more possible these days. In the old days, they 
would often speed up a single to give it a brighter and more energetic 
sound. Today, you can speed it up without raising the pitch, or raise 
the pitch without speeding it up. In this case, the producer could have, 
for instance, decided the song needed a bit of excitement and done the 
modulation from Bb to B digitally -- after the artists had already 
recorded it. Easy to do with today's software.

Or, perhaps if B was causing trouble for the harmonica player (seems 
unlikely in this case) the backing tracks could have been lowered in 
pitch while he recorded the harmonica tracks, then all the tracks 
brought back up to pitch.

Anyway, once you have the tools to play around with pitch without 
loosing much in the way of quality, there's very little the end listener 
can assume ;-).

- Slim.

Joe and Cass Leone wrote:
> I was thinking the same thing too. On both counts. I remember in the 
> old days there were hardly any recordings that were right on pitch. I 
> wrote this off to the times and the premise that all record players 
> weren't exactly the same speed. Also, the recording studios could be 
> off, BUT, I had this conspiracy friend who insisted that artists did 
> this to PREVENT people from playing along and picking up their tricks. 
> What a tool.