In the thread a few weeks back - http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/5379318.htm - several us wondered why Charlie sounded... well, weird on this performance. I got to spend some time with him yesterday and asked him about it. At first he was surprised - he didn't remember anything unusual. Then he listened to the recording on YouTube (the way it aired live) and agreed something was really wrong. The harp seems to have been pitch shifted in parts of the solo, and not others. Most of Charlie's resolutions, for example, were in tune and appropriate -(he WAS using an Ab in 3rd pos. to the Bb tune.) But some of his approaches sound very out of tune indeed.
It turns out there was a lot of post-performance editing that night. Among other things, Ms. Lauper evidently stumbled on a few lyrics and was asked if she wanted to overdub. She did - and very possibly to a tape at a slightly different pitch, or they used a pitch shifter on her - and somehow that affected the harp as well. He said it wasn't that way in performance. ---------- ---------- /Greg
If a pitch shifter was used, wouldn't that affect the OTHER instruments as well (and relatively speaking all other instruments would be pitched accordingly and In-tune with Charlie's harp???!???
Then he listened to the recording on YouTube (the way it aired live) and agreed something was really wrong
if he listened to a live recording then, that would be before the overdub that he noticed something was amiss the song has a minor chord, but the overall tonality is major, an Eb harmonica would have been a better choice ---------- tipjar
Charlie is confident whatever happened happen after the performance. Charlie has a pretty good ear - I have no reason to doubt him. ---------- ---------- /Greg
As 1847 says: an Eb harmonica would have changed the picture. Or a Bb. Or a low F in 12. To me it still sounds like CM is simply making mistakes, and as Kudzurunner says in the OP, "not navigating the changes" -- which would have been considerably easier with a harp in another key.
No big deal -- but in all honesty: I´ve heard several examples of Charlie M playing blatantly out of key. I´ve always assumed that either that´s how he likes it; or he doesn´t hear it the way I do (and some others I´ve exposed to it).
Will never cease to stun me the opinions people choose to hold against any sort of common sense. The idea that either Charlie Musslewhite or Greg Heumann would not hear or know that something was being played in the wrong key defies rational thought. But then I remember during a conversation amongst guitar players about guitar players when the one non-musician in the group pronounced, "BB King is crap." At which point the rest of us just walked away without word. Further conversation was pointless.
I feel confident that statement will illicit some contrary response from some quarter. I will refer to the last sentence above. ---------- LSC
Charlie seems pretty non plussed about the whole thing.
Gotta say, if I were in Charlie's boots on a command performance and my singer overdubbed and pitch shifted her vocals to the detriment of my playing, I'd slap the sh1t out of her.
Goes to show the sheer professionalism of the man. Kudos
Certainly even hinting that one of our Heroes occasionally could make a mistake is a grave case of lèse-majesté and should be punished by a session of mandatory self-criticism no less than 12 hours long; all the while listening to harmonicas that SOUND out of tune, but of course, aren´t.
Pitch shifters, or Auto Tune, for that matter, especially in a recording or mastering studio can be placed to affect just one instrument because, unlike most home recordings, most pro recording studios are using 48 track recorders and so this is easy to separate from the other instruments because each instrument, including vocals, are on separate tracks, unlike home recorders, which tend to have far fewer tracks or options for the home user, and so the risk of shifting pitches on other instruments at the same time is 100% greater.
Pitch shifting is nothing new (tho its use began somewhere in the early to mid 80's) and one example of that is Chacka Khan's "I Feel For You," which features Stevie Wonder on chromatic and pitch shifting was done on Stevie's solo and the main reason was that the key of the song that the vocalist sang in made some of the transitions in the harmonica solo difficult because of rather awkward breath shifts necessary by playing it in the same key as the recording, and so Stevie's solo is played in a different key on a key of C chromatic and then the pitch was shifted to the correct key.
This happens with other instruments as well so harmonica is clearly not alone in this. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
You're correct Bob. But who knows how they had the live performance mic'd. All bets are off. Neither Charlie nor I know for a fact this is HOW it happened. All we know is it doesn't sound right in some parts of his playing and does sound OK in others - and whatever went wrong happened after the fact. The video was definitely edited because in actual performance, Charlie was on stage for 3 tunes in a row, one with Booker T, one with Lauper and one with Harper. His solo with Harper was longer than the way they aired it too. ---------- ---------- /Greg
One does have to remember that even a recording of a live situaion, even with a video involved, there's tons of different mikes for everything and they DO get edited and mastered in the studio and so it's not a surprise to me that what Charlie remembers hearing at the time it was played and what came out in a recording of that performance later were two entirely different things.
One also needs to remember that sometimes some recordings actually do put things in to purposely be dissodent for a purpose, who goes against what one would normally think, and I do know of these things actually happening. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
When I was in high school I was in the school choir. One year we got to perform for the local PBS stations 'Sounds of Christmas' show. We trudged off to a local church, put on our wool choir robes, got all 120 or so of us up on risers under the lights and started recording. They made us do three takes of every song so they could splice the video together to get 'good' shots and the best audio. About half way through, people started to really feel the heat.
I'm not sure if it was an alto or a soprano that went down first, but, thud, someone fell down. No problem... they helped them up and off to the side to recover. Thud. Another one. Thud. Another one. Finally a bass went down (we didn't let him live that down!) All told, I think there were 6 people who went down.
Then came the edited video... well, they diced and spliced, only if you paid close attention, you'd see them panning one way, and someone was standing there, and they'd pan back, and *poof*, they were gone. Then they'd pan back and *poof* they were back. (Senior year we finally got some new, non-wool choir robes!)
Who knows what they did to our sound. If they pitch shifted on Cyndi and Charlie, maybe they were both on the same recording track? Or maybe the mix was wrong in the monitors. I've had open mics where I thought I killed it, and listened back and everything was off. Funny things can happen on the way to the tape.
(The choir did another Christmas concert. At the time, I had LONG blond hair most of the way down my back. There was one other guy in the choir, a Megadeath fan, who also had long hair. I'm not sure why, but the way the risers set up, we got put in the center, right under the lights. The lighting was fine on most everyone, but there was a weird ring over both of our heads. It looked just like we had halos!)
Many years ago, my band 'maybe august' was recorded live at a club by a guy who just enjoyed recording bands. When we showed up for the second night of a two nighter, he had put discrete mics on all the amps and a splitter snake for recording vocals. Many weeks later I received the CD of the recording, which sounded mostly fantastic. HOWEVER, he had done some post production pitch correction that couldn't quite track some of the harmonies we did, and for some reason put pitch correction on the harp and guitar in places. FAIL! If live recording technology in 2006 could selectively mess with a single instrument, I'm sure that 2013 technology can.
Last Edited by rosco1 on May 25, 2013 12:24 PM
Rosco, it depends a lot on how it is recorded. If it's recorded on separate tracks it's a snap. Isolating instruments is a little more tricky if they aren't on separate tracks though. You can do some tricks with panning to pull some stuff out of the mix, but if two instruments (or an instrument and a vocal) are panned the same way and playing at the same time it can be a real mess to pull it out, especially if you are on a time schedule.
I don't know how many nearly good recordings from band practice I've got lying around where one guy screwed it up. It's actually easier to re-record just a snippet of the song than to try to pull one instrument out. (We've got an otherwise pretty good Nirvana cover where our bass player spontaneously thought he should sing on the chorus. He was closer to the mic than anyone else. We refer to the recording as 'the one where Jon sounds like a cow'- broke my heart. I shredded my voice on that one.)
On live recordings there can be a lot of bleed between mics; one instrument or voice will get in the other's mic. If Charlie was in Lauper's mic (or vice versa)and they pitch shifted her, then realized that his sound was at two different pitches (Her pitch-shifted signal and his mic without shifting), they might have made the decision to shift him as well so that at least the singer would sound in tune. ---------- Winslow
So can we take from this that Cyndi Lauper can't sing in key, the President of the United States is tone deaf and Charlie don't give a damn about either. Ha!
Last Edited by Stevelegh on May 26, 2013 5:46 AM
Lets face it, the song was obviously a poor choice for everybody not sure why it merits all this attention. Just trust your ears. We all heard something off. I doubt the politicos in the audience know Charlie Musslewhite from Charlie Tuna or care.
It is possible Lauper was off, and Musslewhite did what he could to make her sound better, as a backup musician who has played behind a lead singer many times.. that is part of the job.
Then they autocorrected and it sounded worse than it was live. Harp is pretty darn hard to track with autocorrect with numerous bent notes.
Even my non harp playing mates know who Musselwhite is. Back in the 80s, when I was late teens, 20s, seemed like he may have been the only person playing harmonica that anyone had heard of. But I'm living on an island with just 400000 people aboard, so its probably a bit hit and miss. Down south they didn't even get mainland radio back then, TV was local, no syndication...even the brewery was still owned locally. On the NW we used to get TV from Melbourne if the weather was clear over the strait, and at night I'd get radio from all over Australia...but in the south no dice...except one summer night I got the voice of Roturua on my car radio. The Harmonica according to was a pretty popular album amongst those who had records beyond the top forty pop chart scene...it was like 'have you heard this guy?' 'Listen to this bloke with the harmonica' Just my age group and circle I'd bet, but to me Charlie has always been the star turn. Even as recently as Just your Fool with Lauper, I heard him being named by callers on the radio...someone suggested there was too much harp on the record, another caller said 'that's Charlie Musselwhite and he can play as much as he damn' well wants'... Important figure to me, I'll take his word for what happened, and I'm not too fussed either way. He's got nothing to prove. ----------
Last Edited by SuperBee on May 26, 2013 2:29 PM
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