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Re: Avoid this CD



    Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 08:57 CST
    From: Jim Henning <ujhennin@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>

RE:  CD of Woodstock set

    While it is entirely possible that the tape was speeded up a half tone,
    keep in mind that this was 1969.  Bands didn't have the nice guitar
    tuners that we have today.  It is quite possible that they tuned their
    guitars up a half step that night.  It is quite a common practice for
    bands to tune their guitars down a half step to get a grittier sound.
    When you try to play along to old live recordings, sometimes you just
    have to retune to them.  We old geezers sometimes had to do this when
    our friends made us tapes of LP's to listen to and their turntables were
    playing a little fast.  
      I don't know what the overall sound quality of this CD is, but the
    guitar tuning may not be a fair criticism of it.

Savnte reported that his CD was a half-tone higher (and thus, faster)
than the Woodstock cuts on "Kids Are Alright".  A local TV station
played "Kids ARe Alright" over the weekend and I hauled out my guitar
and found that it was already in tune with the TV soundtrack.  Without
specifically twesting the KAAR soundtrack against the studio release, I
think it's quite likely that the intruments were tuned normally at
Woodstock.  Although I agree with Jim that I frequently have to adjust
tuning when playing with records, I've rarely or never found it to be as
much as a half tone adjustment.

As another point of interest, I exchanged the unacceptable "Who:
Starring The Who" Woodstock CD for "Lifehouse Live".  This CD has the
instruments in tune until the last cut, WGFA, where it is played a
half-tone lower/slower!  I wonder whether they had guitars pre-tuned a
half-tone lower, and had the taped synthesizer track slwoed down to
match.  (I seem to remember Pete talking about technology that allows a
pre-recorded tape to be lowered in pitch a limited amount without
slowing it down, but I don't think that interview is as old as the '71
Lifehouse concert).  So what's going on?  Is the CD just internally
inconsistent, or is it a faithful reproduction of what was acutally
played onstage??

Who knows?

Alan