Re: Let's Talk Tuning!!!! Electronic, Acoustic, Challenges.

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:21 PM, margaret
noble<margaretnoble2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Questions (Clearly Subjective!)
>
> - Is there a tolerable amount of cents you can be off when trying to be 
>in
> key?
>
> - When mixing in non-traditional sounds together, how disturbing is it to
> listeners if tunings are loose?


The "answer" I have found to those questions is that mistuning
tolerance has a lot to do with if the out-of-tune audio is part of a
musical gesture. If it is, listeners can take quite a poor tonality
and it may even come out good to their ears. For sounding example,
listen to some vocals by David Bowie. He is a true master of using the
"correct false notes"! If a phrase is delivered with duende and a
clear direction towards an undeniable target (the correct pitch) it
just works. Sometimes when listening to popular music it amazes me how
out of tune it actually is.

When producing recorded music and working with out of tune material it
is essential to develop the ability to "listen with fresh ears". The
easiest way to hear your work-under-progress with a first listening
experience is to become as close to a first-time listener as possible
i.e. taking a really long brake from hearing the stuff and then get
back to it.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com