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Permalink Reply by Wes "I'm Baaaaack" Yates on December 15, 2010 at 6:38am

Guitar Player had a great article on the "10 things you must do to play like Robert Johnson". Mentions riffs and tunings. You might want to go there and see if you can find.

 

http://archive.guitarplayer.com/article/10-things-you/February-2010...

 

You're gonna have to click on the riff pics and print them separately.

-WY

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Permalink Reply by Ben on December 15, 2010 at 7:07am

I've got to disagree with you on this one (If I was reading correctly). From what I understand, sound waves don't "pile up." I'm thinking you're either referring to the Doppler Effect or Phase Cancelling. The Doppler Effect would cause him to sound "higher" than he actually was if he were moving toward the microphone or the microphone was moving towards him. This couldn't be accomplished consistently for an entire song though. An example of this is when the ice cream truck (always playing a horrible version of "Pop Goes The Weasle" or something) drives past you. The sound of it is higher pitched as it is approaching than when it has passed you. This is not an example of waves piling up, but rather being produced closer together because of the moving source (or further apart if the source is moving away from you). The other thing that it sounded like you were talking about with the 90 degree angles is Phase cancelling. this happens when two frequencies cancel eachother out. The most obvious example of this is produced on purpose...noise cancelling headphones. They have a microphone on them that analyzes a pitch and then produces one that is the opposite. These waves hit your ear drum in a pattern that holds your eardrum in place rather than letting it vibrate. The result is "silence." I don't know if anyone else has noticed it, but my ears get fatigued with noise cancelling headphones because my ear drums are constantly assaulted by sound waves...even during "silence." I wouldn't be surprised if they are shown to have some long term effects on hearing. Anyway...neither of these two instances would be capable of changing the pitch to a consistently higher standard. It would either be inconsistant with the Doppler Effect or would result reduced volume or silence with the phase cancelling. Did I make sense?

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Permalink Reply by Wes "I'm Baaaaack" Yates on December 15, 2010 at 7:27am

I would add to Ben's comments by saying that I hear old bluesmen such as Blind Boy Fuller and tho I'm not inclined to think a CD would reproduce a pitch higher being its a digital sampling, but rather the way the original recording was produced. So for a higher pitch played at 78 RPMs, my guess [read: guess] would be that the recording was done at say, 74-76 rpms. Kinda like watching the old silent films where the actors are busting across the screen and everything looks in fast motion.

 

One thing you can do if you have his recordings. Open the MP3 in Audacity and change the pitch. Doesn't change the speed. Digitally postprocesses the sound.

 

Can you reference how a pitch change from Analog to Digital might occur? I've never heard of that.

 

-WY

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Permalink Reply by Bluesdog on December 15, 2010 at 12:11pm

@Ben,

 

To be honest, the sound piling up came from Richard Hammond in a Brainiacs episode but he was talking about the same thing you where onley he made the same example with a Formula 1 car comming towards you but the coffecup thing also came from the same episode and that's stationary. Maybe the cup's shape makes the sound move towards you?

 

Sorry if my point didn't come across too good, it's not that easy thinking in Dutch and changing evrything to English with these kind of toppics but i'll do my best.

I was talking about when sound hits the corner wall's it deflects sideway's because the corner wall's both are at a 45 degree angle from the players point of view making the sound spread out widely, if 50% of the sound hits the left wall and 50 hits the right there should be a point in the middle the two soundwaves cross, i don't know if that's called phase canceling but i thought it might have had the pitchraising effect on the mic if the soundwaves where piling up like with the coffee cup. But from what i understand from waht you are saying that can't happen with a stationary soundsource and recipiant ....well that's a bit of a bummer on my theory..... oh well that's why i started this discussion, another lesson learned.

 

I was right on the sound deflecting sideways from the corner wall's making it sound wider spread right? Or are my Flintstonesc acoustic's understanding failing me again?

 

@Wes Thank you very much, first time i've seen this site but i do own one of the book's they used for the tabs (Hal Leaonard, Robert Johnson. The complete transcribings) from what i could see, gonna read it in a minute. I'm alway's looking for new stuff to read about him and i try to play his music quite often so these tricks are very welcome, thanks!

 

That too was something i read on the internet but i think we are both right, i ment it was a result of the resampling process from 78's to Cd like you are discribing. There is a half step difference in pitch between the 78's (g# capo 2) and the Cd's (A capo 2) so it did raise in the transformation from digital to analog but it probibly happened the way you said with the transfer of the 78's timing to the cd's. It sounds logical.

 

Hehe i didn't mean that way, sorry if it might have seemed that way but that's my fault by translating what i was thinking to English writing pretty bad. We basicly ment the same thing, i just said it wrong.

 

 

Thanks for the info guy's!

Cheers, BluesDog.

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Permalink Reply by Keni Lee Burgess on December 15, 2010 at 6:53pm

Over on Stefan Grossman's page they have talked for years about all this. Personally, I think application of Occam's razor is the best solution.

As for tuning, he was highly influenced by Son House and Willie Johnson. They in turn followed Charlie Patton's approach. Mostl likely standard Open G (DGDgbd)

As for pitch, they did not have modern tuners. They used their ears and tuned to match their voices. It is very likely they tuned in fractional parts of standard. G flat to G sharp.

Definitely the 1930 equipment and method could affect pitch due to mechanical speed.

I find your research into the "facing the corner" recording method interesting and worth further inverstigation, but I really don't know.

Thanks for sharing. Happy Holidays. Enjoy.  

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Permalink Reply by Wes "I'm Baaaaack" Yates on December 16, 2010 at 3:02am

Bluesdog, you mean this one:

Robert Johnson: The New Transcriptions

http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Johnson-New-Transcriptions/dp/07935891...

Yea, thats the one mentioned in the GP article. Not that this article is the absolute authority, but one thing I did get from it was:

Johnson has been documented using seven different tunings—standard, plus six alternates—and he had numerous signature moves in each one, but exploring these in tandem with his recordings isn’t quite as simple as it might seem. Apparently, when the original 78 rpm discs were referenced from Steve LaVere’s collection for The New Transcriptions, considerable pitch and key discrepancies were discovered between these and many of the remastered CD tracks on 1990’s The Complete Sessions. It was also determined that R.J. often tuned down a half-step, which (along with capoing) made song keys difficult to decipher, and to further complicate matters, the 1998 Sony/Columbia reissue of King Of The Delta Blues Singers features a selection of songs that reflect their original 78 rpm pitch. Yikes! This clusterf**k makes playing along with Johnson’s recordings confusing and transcribing them a nightmare! So how do you deal?

Sounds like it remains a mystery. Good work tho. I'm with Keni: Keep on researching! Sounds like a cool thesis.

 

-WY

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Permalink Reply by Wes "I'm Baaaaack" Yates on December 16, 2010 at 3:08am

Oooo oooo oooo. Here's something interesting:

 

http://www.turnmeondeadman.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&task...

http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html

 

Mentioned in the article, apparently there was an engineer that analyzed the electronic hums as reference and remastered accordingly. Listen to the clip here (under the album cover) http://www.pristineclassical.com/LargeWorks/Jazz/PABL002.php

 

WOW, sounds really natural.

 

-WY

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Permalink Reply by 3 String Blues on December 16, 2010 at 8:55pm

yeah, that sounded real nice at that link...i never heard that before and it was much better than any of the sony versions!

Wes "Moanin' Mule" Yates said:

Oooo oooo oooo. Here's something interesting:

 

http://www.turnmeondeadman.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&task...

http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html

 

Mentioned in the article, apparently there was an engineer that analyzed the electronic hums as reference and remastered accordingly. Listen to the clip here (under the album cover) http://www.pristineclassical.com/LargeWorks/Jazz/PABL002.php

 

WOW, sounds really natural.

 

-WY

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