Out-of-tune & Sloppy Recordings?

[allenhopkins]

...wet tuning? that went over my head too. (doesn't take much)...

"Wet" tuning is usually applied to free reed instruments such as the accordion or harmonica. When selecting a note (by pushing a key, blowing in a hole, etc.) activates two or more reeds, which are technically the same note and therefore the same pitch, one of the reeds can be tuned slightly flat or sharp from "concert pitch." This means that the two reeds vibrate slightly "out of phase," producing a vibrato effect as the sound waves alternately coincide and differ.

If you listen to a Hohner Echo Harp harmonica, or another brand of "echo harmonica," you will hear "wet" tuning:



Not so great musically, but you get the idea.

Tuning a mandolin "wet" would mean not tuning the two strings of a course in exact unison pitch, but tuning one slightly sharp or flat. Few find this enjoyable, but hey! you're welcome to try it.

[Marcelyn]

Hi, just saw the thread, and because I directed you to the classic recordings, I thought I'd jump in and give you my take on it, since like you, I sure didn't grow up with this music.
It may help to look at it a different way and take listening out of it all together. Everyone here has offered the explanation of why the older recordings sound different from modern day CDs, but unless you immerse yourself in the genre, you're still hearing "sloppy."
So, think of it from a visual perspective. When we lived in Nashville, my husband, a teacher, was helping deliver kids to parents in the car rider line. He came back after one car and another teacher said, "Hey, do you know who that mom was?" Jeff didn't. I won't drop the name for her sake, but it was a superstar country singer. Now, Jeff knew what that star looked like, but the lady in the car rider line looked nothing like that. He was so used to seeing the completely made up version of the singer, that when the real person with regular clothes and no makeup crossed his path, she was unrecognizable--which by comparison looked frumpy.
Today's music is pretty much all we know, and it's so done up that when we hear the real stuff--real people playing their tunes--our minds hear sloppy or lack of talent. But when you look at it in the right way, you hear it as more of the "real thing" And just like I'd much rather hang out with a real person than a done up super star, the old recordings of people like Doc Watson, the Carters, and the Stanley Brothers give me the feel of people who I could sit down with and get to know. To put it another way, a crazy fast, and technically brilliant bluegrass track impresses me a ton, but it's those old and authentic recordings that inspire me to pick up my mandolin and try out a tune. They let me hear the music as a living tradition and the players as real people.
For example, check out the Stanley Brothers recording "Long Ago and Far Away." It's a totally authentic, one-take recording at a little radio station at midnight after an entire day of shows. Instead of playing their standards, they sat down and picked a set of tunes they'd grown up with. Rather than giving the feel that listeners should sit back in awe, the Stanley Brothers give me the impression of inviting listeners to learn the tunes and jam along. They were tired, and not completely polished, but it's a treasure and I'm so glad it was captured on tape.

[Mandolin Mick]

Marcelyn,

I like your take on it.

[Willie Poole]

About four months ago I recorded a live performance of my band and burned it onto CD`s and was planning on selling them but after listening to it for a few times and trying to "tweak" it to sound sort of professional I gave up on the idea, I know some people that listened to it said it was a pure honest sound and they liked it that way so I gave away about 10 CD`s but never sold any because I didn`t like the way it sounded to me....I understand where you are coming from Marcelyn as far as hearing recordings the way they are played but when trying to make some ready cash from them I feel that they should be made as best they can be....

I do hear a lot of recordings that say "Recorded live" and then I guess we have to expect them to be a little less than perfect....I plan on giving this another try during this month at a nice show that we have coming up....

Willie

[mandolirius]

But when you look at it in the right way, you hear it as more of the "real thing" And just like I'd much rather hang out with a real person than a done up super star, the old recordings of people like Doc Watson, the Carters, and the Stanley Brothers give me the feel of people who I could sit down with and get to know. To put it another way, a crazy fast, and technically brilliant bluegrass track impresses me a ton, but it's those old and authentic recordings that inspire me to pick up my mandolin and try out a tune. They let me hear the music as a living tradition and the players as real people.

Such an insightful way to put it. The only thing I would add is the old saw "you can lead a horse to water...". The people that are liable to gravitate to your way of thinking will always be few and far between.

[Paul Kotapish]

Nice perspective, Marcelyn.

I attribute the edgy (what some might call sloppy and out-of-tune) sound of a lot of early recordings to (at least) five things.

1) Traditional mountain music was not based on tempered tuning and incorporated many more microtones on the fiddle, vocal, and fretless banjo traditions than what we more commonly hear today. Fixed-fret instruments were relatively new to mountain music when those early bands first recorded, and there was some interesting juxtapositions between the tempered and traditional ways of hearing--and playing--the scales. Over the years, as the music has edged toward Nashville and away from Round Peak, the sense of pitch and intonation has become much more tempered, homogenized, consistent, and--to modern ears--more in tune. The diminishment of traditional microtonal mountain music has been dissected in the pages of The Old-Time Herold and similar journals, but in those early years, there were many more subtle shades of intonation at work.

2) Those early recording sessions were frequently catch-as-catch-can opportunities in less-than-optimal conditions with time constraints that would be unimaginable today. Funky equipment and funkier environments were the norm. We all know how hard it is to get a band in tune when the temperatures are soaring or dipping, and a lot of those sessions were over before all the instruments had settled into a consistent spot.

3) Many of those early bands comprised players who were not professional musicians in the same sense that many bluegrass and country players are today, and would not have the luxury of refining technique and obsessing over gear in the same way that full-time musicians often do today. Punching out an emotive performance trumped fine detail.

4) In an era before ubiquitous and sophisticated P.A. systems, performance standards were often geared toward delivering the notes acoustically to the back of the tent or community hall without mic, and we all know how hard it is to maintain a consistent sound--and intonation--when you are playing and singing at full throttle and can't hear yourself or your bandmates as well as you'd like. Pitch wanders, tempos drift, and ham-fisted playing designed to reach the back rows necessarily sacrifices some subtlety.

5) The wonders of modern luthiery and fine accessories were not necessarily available as readily as they are today. String choices were limited, and the fine adjustments afforded by strobe-measured compensated bridges, fine tuners on fiddles, Waverly gears on guitars, precise planetaries on banjos, sophisticated capos that don't bend the strings out of tune, and so forth were still a thing of the future, as were the vastly more sophisticated level of luthier skills widely available today. These days, if a guitar doesn't play quite in tune, you can take it any number of shops for a electronic analysis of the intonation and get a precision neck reset, refretted fingerboard, finely adjusted saddle, and so forth. Fifty years ago, you proably just lived with it.

[MikeEdgerton]

I'm sure alot of this also has to do with what we as human beings have become used to hearing. The sound systems in our homes and cars are a heck of a lot better than they were 50 years ago. The recordings are better now than they were 50 years ago. Once your golden ears have become accustomed to things as they are now you expect everything to sound like it would if it was recorded now. I agree with Paul that the golden age of electronically enhanced luthery probably has contributed some as well. I remember spending a small fortune on phonograph cartidges to try and get rid of some unwanted distortion on the last track of a Joni Mitchell record. Amazingly enough it was still there in the first version of the re-released CD that I bought. What I thought was a limitation on the playback had been introduced during the recording.

[jackmalonis]

So much great insight on this thread. It's awesome.

[sarai]

Tuning a mandolin "wet" would mean not tuning the two strings of a course in exact unison pitch, but tuning one slightly sharp or flat. Few find this enjoyable, but hey! you're welcome to try it.

Wow thanks for the explanation. I'm thinking for now this isn't my cup of tea - haha. I agonize when my strings are not in unison. But now I need to go back and read about the wet tuning conversation in the thread.

"Hey, do you know who that mom was?"

Well - I enjoyed the anecdote but I can't stop wondering who she was now! ha

[Mandolin Mick]

This is a great thread! Yeah, I'm one of those guys who likes one of the courses of strings, usually the A, to be slighty off sometimes when using drone techniques on the mandolin. Bagpipes sound good this way too.