Today I was trying to play a sequence of notes from one of Ladytron''s songs, but I couldn''t find a beginning note that sounded right. There are three reasons for this that I could think of: my ears aren''t trained well enough to distuingish right notes, my piano isn''t tuned properly, or the song is using sounds that have a different pitch than what the piano can get. I suppose that latter actually has to do with tuning the piano as well, just not to the traditional pitches. Which do you guys think is most likely?

ahh Ladytron.

awesome music, too bad I missed their concert by mere days of finding out about it

There are no ''traditional'' pitches but a couple of standards (often middle C=261.63hz or A=440hz). There are 12 notes in an octave and no hidden secret ones between Some tunes are just hard to make out. It''s probably that.

Mark

hmm.. well you can''t be sure there are always twelve notes in an octave, but if a tune is eluding you, you may find you are falling for the fourth below.

Not sure why - possibly because the first harmonic resonates in your head and makes a clean 5th with the note you are trying to pitch, but I have seen it happen time and again with very good musicians.

Tom

i''ve seen them play live

They play around alot with detuning oscillators to make the sound a little "wider".. that may give a little strange tone

the tuning may very well be different on the recording.. as many have mentioned, typically A=440 and there are 12 notes to the octave, using well-tempered tuning (where the relationships between notes are based on mathmatic intervals)... but some more modern composers and eastern music divides the octave different ways, usually adding more than 12 tones to it...

also, some instruments are not well-tempered, but just-tuned (if that's the correct term)... meaning that instead of mathematical intervals, tones are based on the overtone series of a given key/note... so while an A may still be 440, an E would be tuned more to match an exact P5 to the A... this would make the instrument sound perfectly in tune in the key of A, but out of tune in other keys (especially Eb)...

probably none of that helps anything, but if you can find an instrument where you can bend pitches around (synth, guitar), perhaps that may help.. especially if you have your pitch choices limited down to 2 or 3 "close" ones...

[edit: in this case, volantiz is probably right... that is common in that type of music]

[edited by - death adder on September 26, 2003 8:52:30 PM]

quote: Original post by Mark Sheeky
There are no ''traditional'' pitches but a couple of standards (often middle C=261.63hz or A=440hz). There are 12 notes in an octave and no hidden secret ones between Some tunes are just hard to make out. It''s probably that.

Mark

That''s not entirely true. "Seven Nation Armies" by the White Stripes has a whack tuning. They have it tuned between F and E, perfectly in the middle. A friend of mine and I debated over whether it was in E, or F for about 30 minutes, so I went to get my tuner, and played the song and the tuner kept showing the pitch to be directly in between.

Still, I''ll assume that TWS has a moron of a guitar player that thought it would be funny to raise the pitch of the song half of a semi-tone. -_-