Red Mosquito

dprival78 wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:

Ms Harmless wrote:this performance would be pretty wonderful if it wasn't tuned down, I hate it when they do that; puts me off right away

I've been listening to some recent-ish shows (say 2022-present) lately, and I feel like an overwhelming majority of the songs are downtuned at this point. So many of them just sound awkward and clunky now, even when there aren't any technical mistakes.

they tuned down *a lot* in 2022, but not as much since. i want to stay even songs like wishlist and black were tuned down at times

Birds in Hell wrote:All this talk of tuning down made me curious what the original studio versions of some of the band's frequently tuned-down songs would sound like if played in their new, lower key.

Breath, tuned down from E to E♭:

https://voca.ro/13NnwBUDAVIN

Habit, tuned down from D to C (a whole step, more than any other song):

https://voca.ro/14dIQAKpgZRH

World Wide Suicide, tuned down from A to A♭:

https://voca.ro/1o0AbB2jnCqP

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Just for fun, here's a 2023 live version of Habit:

https://vocaroo.com/1jQNn5RJ2vSz

Here it is, tuned way back up to its original key (it makes Ed sound weird):

https://vocaroo.com/15o0sxDxzceh

interesting. definitely hear the difference on the vocals. on a casual listen i may not have consciously picked up on the music

It's interesting because I think it demonstrates how the songs suffer from being played in a lower key more than they benefit from retaining the same (relative) vocal melody.

As the live versions of Habit demonstrate (at least to these ears), I think the songs sound more 'right' when played at the original key, regardless of whatever Ed is doing.

I'd prefer he just chose a new melody to work around the notes he can't reliably hit anymore.

i'm jumping in simply to say DTE was mad tuned down in Dublin (and beyond) and it sounded fuckin fantastic.. it was the real savage and intent of the song.
but listening to the boot, it wasnt tuned down at all it seems.

I'd be an advocate for Pj tuning down a lot of the big heavy ones.
they sound better when they do. And nothing to do with Ev

DTE from Dublin (which yes, was played in its original key):

https://voca.ro/16O3XFnFHtTL

And here's what it would've sounded like had it been tuned down:

https://voca.ro/1xPBWguiOQt9

very cool to hear the songs tuned back up again to compare

Birds in Hell wrote: I'd prefer he just chose a new melody to work around the notes he can't reliably hit anymore.

i agree, hopefully the down tuning translates better live at the venues.. cause the bootlegs sound a bit flat

coptheriotact wrote:very cool to hear the songs tuned back up again to compare

Here's one more.

The Fixer, tuned down on Live on Ten Legs:

https://voca.ro/1gwQujm0iyPj

Here it is, tuned back up to the original recorded key (which they never played it in live):

https://voca.ro/1gs8lY7VGjLr

(I'm finding this exercise surprisingly fun.)

Thanks for all these explanations and examples of songs tuned down / tuned up. Interesting and fun, indeed !

Birds in Hell wrote:It's interesting because I think it demonstrates how the songs suffer from being played in a lower key more than they benefit from retaining the same (relative) vocal melody.

As the live versions of Habit demonstrate (at least to these ears), I think the songs sound more 'right' when played at the original key, regardless of whatever Ed is doing.

I'd prefer he just chose a new melody to work around the notes he can't reliably hit anymore.

In theory I agree with you, but whenver he's done this on a small scale, I've always liked it less.

Hearing the studio versions pitched down is an interesting experiment. To me it highlights that the real selling quality of a lot of those vocal performances is the reach in them -- those moments of strain, where Eddie is pushing himself to or slightly beyond the limit of where his voice can go. Since a lot of these songs were recorded when Ed's voice was simply in better physical shape than it has been in the past, say, 10-15 years, hitting that threshold caused the voice to take on certain physical traits -- a quality that could be described as shredding, gravely, gritty, etc., but an altogether different sonic property than when he is singing "smooth" -- where, nowadays, when he pushes that same threshold, it causes his voice to go into that weird shreiky cracking thing it does.

Even in the downtuned versions of the studio tracks, you can still hear that grit, because it's a characteristic of the original recording, even if it's pitched down a half step. When he sings these same songs live, the downtuning is done with the goal of keeping him from having to push that threshold, because it makes his voice do something ugly (and probably uncomfortable), so he's singing not only in a lower key, but also trying to sing everything without crossing into that danger zone. So you end up losing not only an emotional push, but also a variation in vocal color, and it makes everything sound duller and generally less alive. Add to that the additional (and increasingly imprecise) reverberation you get in the guitar and bass sounds by tuning down a half or whole step (or just by playing lower in general), and all of a sudden you have an increasingly leaden vocal performance laying on top of this increasingly muddy bed of sound -- by degrees, of course, so it's not like it goes from great to terrible in every case, but there is a sense of the song kind of having come unwound. It's like when your kid takes a new roll of toilet paper and rolls it down the hallway, and then you try to roll it back up -- it's never as tightly spooled as it was at the beginning, it's all there in the same shape but it's loose and saggy and you can pinch parts of it that you couldn't before.

That's what modern PJ feels like sometimes to me -- a roll of toilet paper that has been rolled out and then rolled back up.

Kevin Davis wrote:

Birds in Hell wrote:It's interesting because I think it demonstrates how the songs suffer from being played in a lower key more than they benefit from retaining the same (relative) vocal melody.

As the live versions of Habit demonstrate (at least to these ears), I think the songs sound more 'right' when played at the original key, regardless of whatever Ed is doing.

I'd prefer he just chose a new melody to work around the notes he can't reliably hit anymore.

In theory I agree with you, but whenver he's done this on a small scale, I've always liked it less.

I can't easily bring to mind examples of when Ed's done this, so I'd be interested if you can.

I think it's probably one of those things that suffers from Ed's preference of just winging it on the night, instead of exercising careful thought and deliberation about how best to manage his current vocal powers.

I liked how Cornell adjusted the melody of Birth Ritual to accomodate his older voice when I saw Soundgarden in 2015:

Kevin Davis wrote:... you have an increasingly leaden vocal performance laying on top of this increasingly muddy bed of sound

That's definitely my experience of the detuned songs too.

Moreover, it often sounds like Ed's straining just as hard in the lower keys, as though it's not simply the pitch that's causing him grief, it's the 'shape' of the melody itself: how it might jump from lower notes to higher, or requires him to sustain several high notes in sequence.

I'm sure the smoking doesn't help either.

That Birth Ritual is the perfect example of what Ed should be doing.

Birds in Hell wrote:

coptheriotact wrote:very cool to hear the songs tuned back up again to compare

Here's one more.

The Fixer, tuned down on Live on Ten Legs:

https://voca.ro/1gwQujm0iyPj

Here it is, tuned back up to the original recorded key (which they never played it in live):

https://voca.ro/1gs8lY7VGjLr

(I'm finding this exercise surprisingly fun.)

But unlike the rest of Backspacer (I think?) they did play Got Some in the original key, 1 time: https://youtu.be/NpbyGC1S6cc?si=gvL3RMrGV3P-1Vbm