[oceanbear11]

A friend of mine (really didn't say it that way on purpose) recently tried playing along with FOTD on my Dead Set record. We play it in G, like American Beauty, even when doing it slow, but when he tried G with the record it was off-key.
We were pressed for time and as such unable to sit around and figure it out. Anybody know what key it's in on Dead Set?

[Searing75]

Put it on, and get your guitar out. Play along, and you will find it. This is a quality you need as a musician. I am sure you will hear it. Good luck!

[Lephty]

If memory serves, that whole album is out of tune, a bit flat as though it got slowed down at some point. FOTD is definitely in G.

[aiq]

I don't know for sure but a common technique was to speed up recordings ever so slightly to even out little flaws in tuning.

The old fogies will remember that first Teac cassette deck had a speed knob, I usually sped up my recordings a bit during mastering when I used that machine.

If I am playing along to recordings and a piece is not in exact concert pitch I reach for the slide.

[Charlie]

I always thought the Dead Set version of FOTD was pretty dirgey. If it has been slowed down that may explain why.

[HeadSpace]

Europe 72 is definitely off speed. Someone once posted the tuning (i.e. not standard A440, but something close-ish). For Dead Set, if it is truly off speed, you might pick a nice solid note somewhere you know should be an A, say, and tune by ear. Then you can use your tuner (assuming it's adjustable) to figure out the precise tuning (A452 or whatever it works out to) for anytime in the future you want to jam with the album.

[FretfulDave]

Hey all,

I don't post too much any more but this issue has been discussed and commented on before. Likely by me.

It was very common in the earlier days of LPs (read vinyl) for the tunes on the master recordings to be sped up or slowed down so as to be able to fit on a vinyl album. Nothing more,. nothing less. Dead Set, Reckoning and of course, Europe '72 were all produced on vinyl first and likely the master that the records (remember that term?) were cut from had all those speed adjustments. If you have played along with LPs a lot as I and I am sure a bunch of other older folks on this forum have done in the past, you would discover not only differences in the pitch of an album but actually differences in pitch for individual songs on a given album. Remember it was all to make the tunes fit on a vinyl disc without having to cut the grooves closer together which would make the audio reproduction result have considerably less fidelity. In some ways that technique is similar to the distorted, crammed and compressed stuff we listen to today via 16-bit, 44khz digitally recorded CDs or the even the much worse digitally processed MP3s at 128k compression ratios beyond the 16-bit, 44khz digital reproduction standard.

Anyway... so much for nostalgia. No wonder high end hi-fi is still produced on vinyl and is making a strong comeback with audiophiles.

Hope this all makes sense.

Peace.

Dave

[oceanbear11]

Thanks all. Big help.
For the record( ), my Dead Set is actually on vinyl, and I seldom listen to anything that isn't. I also never listen to MP3s (hideous sound quality relative to analog).
Anyway, thanks a billion.