Norah Jones SACD

You're quite right, Alex. It's very strange. Don't they want to sell these records?

Norah Jones is a sadly underestimated artist and her work / cd has not had way enough attention.

I believe she can almost reach a whole octave. That's something.

Herman

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Originally posted by herm:
Norah Jones is a sadly underestimated artist and her work / cd has not had way enough attention.

I believe she can almost reach a whole octave. That's something.

Herman

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I can tell by your emoticon that you are being facetious (otherwise I just wouldn't be able to tell), but I honestly do think Norah Jones is sadly underestimated. She and her colleagues are blending musical elements that have never been blended before in quite this way, and doing so with great subtlety, intelligence, soulfulness and artistry.

Yes, she's sold lots of albums, but surely, Herm, you aren't automatically suspicious of music simply because it happens to sell well? That would be egregiously uncritical; I know your brain is bigger than that.

To be sure, many of the copies sold have not necessarily been for the technical musical reasons I, and others, hear, but there is an honest, soulful, down to earth, anti-diva quality to Norah that rings true to lots of folks.

Finally, although a cursory listening to the album will tell you that her range well exceeds an octave, I can't imagine why you would ever think that vocal range has anything whatsoever to do with musical quality. If it did, Yma Sumac would be queen of them all. Or do you prefer Mariah Carey?

My sarcasm was directed at the 'low profile release' remark. Sure, the SACD release hasn't been bruited about explicitly, but how could there possibly be any more publicity than there has been? I honestly doubt whether there's as much oxygen on the planet as pictures of the lovely Ms Jones. I expect they'll be opening special Norah Jones Only cd stores, to save people time; after all, if you want music why look for anything else? There is a steady bombardment of tv commercials for the album, just to make sure everybody gets a second copy etc etc.

And no I don't prefer Mariah Carey. I prefer neither. I'd prefer to live a little longer in a world where you don't get your 'preferences' rammed down your brainstem by the media - including this forum. By all means tell me she's underestimated, but don't expect me to believe you. There's just no way she could be. Sorry if I sound cranky.

Herman

Horses for courses I guess. Norma (my pet name for her) leaves this horse feeling breathless, agitated and slightly queasy. Nothing at all to do with her looks <insert testosterone soaked comment> or popularity (some of my best friends are popular) and very much to do with her inability to sing in tune.

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Mind you - when a song is "original" we don't really know if it's in tune or not as we can't judge it against the "standard" or "written score" (unless we have the written musical score of course - unlikely).

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As I say, horses for courses. No way am I going to tell anyone that they are wrong for liking Norma, but :

A whole track on an album can be out of tune. I would be interested to hear from anyone who knows why they do that ? Anyway, once the first note has been struck, the rest are OK as long as they are all out of tune too because they are correct relative to each other. At this point, within each octave you only have 12 options (in western music) so it doesn't matter if it's an original - a note is either in tune (relative to the other notes) or not.

What I hear when I listen to Norma is a series of rising glissandos from flat. This is called crooning. Good crooners eventually hit the note. Norma generally doesn't.

What really pisses me off is that there are so many incredibly talented women on this planet that most people have never heard of.

Actually, Norah Jones' intonation is quite good.

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when a song is "original" we don't really know if it's in tune or not

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Richie, I think you got the wrong idea. As Minky's already explained in different words: "Out of tune" does not refer to choosing the wrong note (say, a C instead of a C#), but to not hitting either (staying somewhere in-between the two).

I have the album and I don't recall her singing out of tune. Sometimes people can't deal with certain melodical structures on a receptive level and put it down to "wrong playing" (I really dig half-note steps, for instance, which some people find excruciating). Or maybe Minky is using Mmmmmm ...[sound of mouth being gagged].

Thomas

Not to brag, but I have very good relative pitch, and I haven't heard her sing out of tune on record or in performance. For what it's worth, a musician friend with perfect pitch considers her to have excellent intonation.

Of course she does some sliding up to and down from, that's part of the lexicon of almost all singing. but she always gets there and nails it.

I suspect that those who feel otherwise either don't care for her music in general, or don't have good relative pitch, or both.

I think young Norah's first CD is wonderful, but her best work is yet to come. Let's not forget that the music business is by definition a "hype machine", so her rise to fame is part of that. I don't claim to know her, but she strikes me a very shy and humble lass (as well as drop-dead gorgeous, but I digress) who is handling it well. She is probably overwhelmed with her own success and all of the positive and negative side effects. I have no doubt that her famous father, while perhaps not directly involved, has allowed her to be treated with a great deal of respect by her handlers and record company exec's Let's see where she goes. Imagine if old Willy Shake-a-spear was judged on his first work. She is 22 years old. If the quality of her first CD is any indication, I cannot wait to hear her next 10.

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Originally posted by fred simon:
Not to brag, but I have very good relative pitch, and I haven't heard her sing out of tune on record or in performance. For what it's worth, a musician friend with perfect pitch considers her to have excellent intonation.

Of course she does some sliding up to and down from, that's part of the lexicon of almost all singing. but she always gets there and nails it.

I suspect that those who feel otherwise either don't care for her music in general, or don't have good relative pitch, or both.

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Cool, but I have perfect pitch. I can hear if one track on an album is out of tune (grrr .. why do they do this ?) and I always get the note I am listening to first time on my guitar, and I say she is flat. I guess we could get the boys out with their equipment but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter because even if it turned out that she wasn't flat I would still "not care for her music in general".

Sorry for mucking up this thread. I hate it when other people do this and I also hate other people railing against music that I love. If Nora brings you pleasure, that is all that matters.

All I meant was the hybrid SACD was a low key release, it being a newish format.

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Originally posted by undertone:
Let's not forget that the music business is by definition a "hype machine", so her rise to fame is part of that.

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You mean music, or business? There are plenty of good musicians who are not fit to be hyped. Maybe you just haven't heard of them.

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I don't claim to know her, but she strikes me a very shy and humble lass (as well as drop-dead gorgeous, but I digress) who is handling it well. She is probably overwhelmed with her own success and all of the positive and negative side effects. I have no doubt that her famous father, while perhaps not directly involved, has allowed her to be treated with a great deal of respect by her handlers and record company exec's

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Sorry Undertone, but this is the hype. You're just regurgitating the promo material. Here is a young singer who looks extremely good on camera; she has an interesting parentage (i.e. even though she is very young and has very little work to her name, the journalists have copy), and she's completely unthreatening to her audience - just like Britney Spears is to the early teen crowd.

And yes, I think it matters what kind of range you have as a musician. There are geniuses with a small range, but really, this is not what the lovely Ms Jones is about. Why can't we just agree she's pleasant, and very succesful at being pleasant - but no more than that?

Herman

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Originally posted by Minky:
Cool, but I have perfect pitch. I can hear if one track on an album is out of tune (grrr .. why do they do this ?) and I always get the note I am listening to first time on my guitar, and I say she is flat. I guess we could get the boys out with their equipment but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter because even if it turned out that she wasn't flat I would still "not care for her music in general".

Sorry for mucking up this thread. I hate it when other people do this and I also hate other people railing against music that I love. If Nora brings you pleasure, that is all that matters.

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Absolutely, if the music brings pleasure that's what matters, agreed.

But I'm confused by something you've written twice now, about being able to hear if "one track on an album is out of tune." Do you mean every instrument/sound on a particular song is equally out of tune with the other songs on the album? Or do you mean hearing one track/instrument/sound of the multi-track mix of one particular song as out of tune in relation to the other instruments/sounds in that one song?

If the former, it could have a variety of causes: out-of-calibration tape recorders, out-of-calibration analog playback mechanisms, or perhaps everyone on a recording played/sang to a piano not brought up to A440 pitch, in which case as long as everyone played/sang with good relative intonation, the music would be in tune with itself, if not with the other songs on the album if they were recorded under different circumstances.

For instance, Joni Mitchell recorded her song Paprika Plains on her album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter on two different occasions, and the piano was not at the same pitch on each session. The orchestra playing with her had to accommodate the difference as best they could, but it's not perfect. The great bassist/composer Charles Mingus, with whom Joni later collaborated, told her that the unapologetic ballsiness of that --"The two halves are out of tune with each other? Screw it ... use 'em anyway!"-- is one thing that attracted him to her music and led to him asking her to work with him.

Another famous example is The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever. They recorded one version, then later recorded another with horns and strings. John Lennon wanted to combine the two, but George Martin pointed out that the two versions were in different keys and different tempi. Using the vari-speed control on the tape recorder, they slowed one down and sped one up until they matched.

If the latter, one instrument/sound is out of tune with the other instruments/sounds on a particular song, then yes, that player/singer is out of tune. Minky, perhaps you could clarify which of these two scenarios you intended.

The bottom line, though, is that Norah Jones, in general, does not sing flat, or sharp, in relation to her surroundings. Of course, there may be a slightly pitchy note here or there, but otherwise her intonation is excellent.

One more thing, Minky, you wrote: "I have perfect pitch ... I always get the note I am listening to first time on my guitar." This is not, in and of itself, perfect pitch. It's relative pitch, and it's based in part on pitch memory, that is, over time one learns to recognize the sound of a particular pitch when heard. I can do this; nine times out of ten when I go to the piano to check the pitch of something I've heard, I get it right.

Perfect pitch, though, is something else, and must meet two tests: the ability to produce a specific exact pitch out of context. That is, I'd say to you, "Minky, give us a C# then, lad" and you'd be able to sing it to the very cent out of thin air. The other test is the opposite: hearing a pitch completely out of any context and correctly identifying it to the very cent without checking against your guitar, piano, or whatever. If you can do both of these for any potential frequency, you have perfect pitch.

I don't have it, and frankly, am glad I don't; it can be a real curse when one hears something off pitch, which, for a variety of reasons, happens quite frequently in this world.

[This message was edited by fred simon on THURSDAY 19 June 2003 at 00:20.]

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Originally posted by herm:
And yes, I think it matters what kind of range you have as a musician. There are geniuses with a small range, but really, this is not what the lovely Ms Jones is about.

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Specifically, what does vocal range, in and of itself, have to do with musical communication? And isn't there anything worthwhile between a genius and the merely pleasant? Norah may or may not be a genius -- I think time will tell -- but even if she's not I feel she's much more than merely pleasant.

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Why can't we just agree she's pleasant, and very succesful at being pleasant - but no more than that?

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Why can't we just agree with your opinion? Because I don't, and you can't make me.

Fred,

I understand the distinction between perfect pitch and relative pitch. If I sat down with a guitar with no reference and you played a note on your piano I would be able to find the exact note in the correct octave on my guitar on the first attempt. Wouldn't relative pitch require me to hear the first note and find it and then allow me to find the next note relative to the first ?

The thing about whole tracks being out of tune : Once in a while you find that a whole track has been transposed a fraction sharp or flat. Everything is perfect in relative terms but in absolute terms the whole thing is out of whack. I will find one tonight that you may have in your collection and let you know.

All the best,

Mark.

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Originally posted by Minky:
Fred,

I understand the distinction between perfect pitch and relative pitch.

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With all due respect, Mark, I don't think you quite do.

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If I sat down with a guitar with no reference and you played a note on your piano I would be able to find the exact note in the correct octave on my guitar on the first attempt. Wouldn't relative pitch require me to hear the first note and find it and then allow me to find the next note relative to the first?

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No, in your illustration, the relativity refers to having heard the pitch I played on piano and being able to reproduce it. The scenario you describe is pitch memory.

On the other hand, if we were in an anechoic chamber (theoretical absence of sound) and hadn't heard any music in years and thus didn't have any internal reference point in memory, and I asked you to sing or whistle an A 437, you would be able to do it on command. Or, if we heard a given pitch under those same circumstances and you were able to identify the frequency. That's perfect pitch.

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The thing about whole tracks being out of tune : Once in a while you find that a whole track has been transposed a fraction sharp or flat. Everything is perfect in relative terms but in absolute terms the whole thing is out of whack. I will find one tonight that you may have in your collection and let you know.

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Sure, that happens all the time, for some of the reasons I outlined above.

Another example is the first release of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue on CD. It turns out that one of the tape machines used in some step of the transfer process was off-speed, so the half of the album that happened to be on the tape used on that machine was transferred off-speed, which translates to off-pitch. It has subsequently been corrected.

By the way, when you detect that a track is out of tune, do you just hear it in the air, or do you have to check it against your guitar (which, I assume, is tuned to a tuner or pitch fork)?

Fred,

This is really interesting. I can tune a (completely out of tune) guitar without a tuner. If I then use a tuner to check my handiwork I get green lights on all the strings.

When a track is out of tune it just sounds wrong to me. If I then sit down with an in-tune guitar and reach for the chords I am hearing, they don't work because they are either slightly sharp or flat relative to the music.

Your examples of out-of-tune tracks are facinating. I would love to know why this also occurs on some of the more modern CD's in my collection (no disprespect to Miles and Joni - I have most of their albums and play them often).

I don't want to harp on about Nora because I doubt that we will ever see eye to eye on this subject (beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all) but I just went down to my CD store to get a copy of the new Gillian Welsh and mentioned this debate and repeated my description of her as "a crooner who often didn't arrive at the note" and he said that a lot of his musician mates who had been to her concert in Wellington had said very similar things.

[This message was edited by Minky on THURSDAY 19 June 2003 at 04:00.]

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Originally posted by Minky:
Fred,

This is really interesting. I can tune a (completely out of tune) guitar without a tuner. If I then use a tuner to check my handiwork I get green lights on all the strings.

When a track is out of tune it just sounds wrong to me. If I then sit down with an in-tune guitar and reach for the chords I am hearing, they don't work because they are either slightly sharp or flat relative to the music.

Your examples of out-of-tune tracks are facinating. I would love to know why this also occurs on some of the more modern CD's in my collection (no disprespect to Miles and Joni - I have most of their albums and play them often).

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Without putting you to the two true tests, it's impossible to tell from this whether you have perfect pitch or not. As Richie correctly says above, it's very rare. What you describe above could be the result of perfect pitch, but it could also be very good pitch memory. that is, you've heard what an in-tune guitar sounds like so many times you've memorized it.

In the case of your in-tune guitar being slightly off from a recorded track, as I said, it happens all the time. But again, you're hearing the relative disparity between the two.

As to why this happens on "modern" CDs, it's usually for the same reasons (of which I have already described a few) as on "old" CDs.

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I don't want to harp on about Nora because I doubt that we will ever see eye to eye on this subject (beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all) but I just went down to my CD store to get a copy of the new Gillian Welsh and mentioned this debate and repeated my description of her as "a crooner who often didn't arrive at the note" and he said that a lot of his musician mates who had been to her concert in Wellington had said very similar things.

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Not having been to the concert in Wellington, it's always possible for anyone to have an off night as far as their intonation ... monitor problems, ears and sinuses clogged from flying, the multitude of vagaries of life on the road. Also, and strictly no offense to you, your music dealer, or his musician mates, but I have no way of gauging their hearing and interpretive abilities. Assuming they're excellent, though, perhaps Norah had a bad night. I will definitely say that on just about everything I've heard, she generally nails her pitches, whether right at first or after sliding to it as a musical choice.

But, really, having true perfect pitch is not all it's cracked up to be; it's not useful for much more than being a human pitch pipe. It's much more important to develop good relative pitch, and just good ears in general.

In an earlier post I referred to tuning by "pitch fork." This obviously won't work very well, and may actually be very painful. I of course meant either a tuning fork or a pitch pipe.

Richie T, everything you wrote was pretty right on. I would simply add that relative pitch is just one component of having a good ear. Intervalic recognition, melodic memory, and keen musical comprehension are some other factors.

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From what you are saying (and I remain a little confused), your objection to Nora is that her CDs are somehow produced out of tune on certain tracks?? If so then of course that is not her fault and does not (of itself) mean she is out of tune - just as it was not Miles Davis' fault that A Kind of Blue has only recently been re-released at the correct "speed".

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Richie,

The problem with a track on a CD being slightly off is a sidebar. My real issue to do with Nora is that (my perception) is that she seems to stop just short of the (relative) target. Why don't we drop Nora now. This is much more interesting.

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As to why this happens on "modern" CDs, it's usually for the same reasons (of which I have already described a few) as on "old" CDs.

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Fred, sorry, sometimes I type these too fast and don't take the time to make myself clear. I made the distinction between old and new CD's because I would have thought that with todays technology it would be harder to get things wrong. Surely when a bunch of musicians record their respective parts they are in tune so when you stick them together they are in tune, so why the need to speed up/slow down the finished product ?

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Richie T, everything you wrote was pretty right on. I would simply add that relative pitch is just one component of having a good ear. Intervalic recognition, melodic memory, and keen musical comprehension are some other factors

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Absolutely. The thing I get most pleasure from when I am playing is being able to "feel" intervals and chord voicings as I hear them.

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Originally posted by Richie T:
Fred

A question for you (or anyone else).

Do you think having a "good ear" in the musical sense is in any way related to having a so called, good ear, in a Hi Fi sense?

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Sometimes, but not ipso facto.

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It also seems to me that many of the forums genuine "musicians" often have lower end systems.

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Yes, like me.

Of course, this is likely because the average musician can't afford the high end stuff, and not necessarily because they wouldn't appreciate the difference. I can appreciate the difference, but I can also be quite satisfied with a basic good-sounding low-cost system ... as Duke Ellington said, "if it sounds good, it is good." If the music sounds musical, pleasing, warm, not harsh, fairly flat or at least not markedly colored, and has no noticeable anomalies such as distortion, etc. I'm happy. I'm half listening to Susanne Abbuehl's wonderful album April on my Mac's little round orange-sized speakers as I type and it sounds good to me. Could it sound much better? Of course, but it doesn't need to in order for me to derive musical pleasure; music has brought me to tears in my car.

But this is a big can of worms, and I have conflicting thoughts. I think that obviously, better equipment sounds better. But I also think that the farther one goes on the search for the Holy Grail of hi-fi, one encounters diminishing returns. I mean, just how much better is a $12,000 CD player than a $6000 player? Surely not twice as good ... how could one even measure that? And I also think that when one spends $12,000 on a CD player, it should damn well sound better, and one will be convinced that it does even if it doesn't, at least in any truly discernible way.

I'm getting into very tricky territory here, though; I certainly don't want to appear to be biting the hand that feeds me. Of course, none of what I'm pontificating about here is brand-related in any way, my opinion applies across the board.

However, all that said, I will say also this: my own album on the Naim label, Dreamhouse, has never sounded better than on the Naim system at Ken Christianson's (he recorded the album) store, Pro Musica, and the Naim system at his home. Absolutely incredible.

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As to why this happens on "modern" CDs, it's usually for the same reasons (of which I have already described a few) as on "old" CDs.

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Fred, sorry, sometimes I type these too fast and don't take the time to make myself clear. I made the distinction between old and new CD's because I would have thought that with todays technology it would be harder to get things wrong. Surely when a bunch of musicians record their respective parts they are in tune so when you stick them together they are in tune, so why the need to speed up/slow down the finished product ?

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I think I understood you, and what I meant was that in spite of advances in technology, the frailty of human ears is always the bottom line. Any number of things can still go wrong and need to be fixed to make them more in tune.

These days, albums can be recorded in such a fragmented fashion and assembled later, that one could say that it's easier than ever for intonation anomalies to be introduced along the chain. Different songs, or parts of songs, recorded at different times, in different studios, in different countries, with different musicians, different pianos, etc.

Of course, we now have the technology to change the pitch of something without changing its speed (and vice versa) and often to nauseating effect ... some music has been digitally tuned so drastically all the beats (the pulsing between two slightly different frequencies) have been removed, rendering the music virtually sterile.

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Originally posted by fred simon:
Not having been to the concert in Wellington, it's always possible for anyone to have an off night as far as their intonation ... monitor problems, ears and sinuses clogged from flying, the multitude of vagaries of life on the road. Also, and strictly no offense to you, your music dealer, or his musician mates, but I have no way of gauging their hearing and interpretive abilities. Assuming they're excellent, though, perhaps Norah had a bad night.

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The lovely Ms Jones did a couple of shows in Europe last year, and the reviews were generally bad, in that she was a mediocre singer.

Herman

Fred,

Thanks for an interesting conversation. No hard feelings about Norah ?

I'll send you a message when I have my anechoic chamber sorted and you can let me know what note you want me to whistle

In the meantime I am going to get a copy of your album. Of course if I don't like it we can blame my cloth ears, but what if I do like it ?

All the best,

Mark.