working at A 432 rather than 440

[cuttime]

That's baloney, and you can quote me on it.

Shooshie

Well said sir, though isn't baloney a bit too polite?
Baloney: a tasty deli meat found in sausage casings, not big steaming piles.

Just to point out: The OP stated that he "was asked" to record at 332. He may not necessarily buy the claims made on that site (which are, of course, complete crap), but might figure Hey, if that's what the client wants, that's what I'll do. Can't blame 'im for that, sez I...

That was my initial reaction, too, but you may have missed some of the posts that were deleted from this thread that swerved way off course into sheer delusion. Also, if you follow some of the links on the listed site you will find some of the age-old conspiratorial BS that is sure to offend any reasonable person.

"Hey you Knights Templar! Get off my lawn!"

[tommymandel]

I have a friend who had to do a job in Logic because a client could hear the difference in tempo (BPM) to three decimal places and DP only goes to two decimal points: i.e. 120.246 bpm versus 120.25 bpm.

That's riddonculous! 120.246 is indistinguishable from 120.25.
Variations in listener heartbeat would have far greater influence than .004bpm, IMHO.
Unless of course, you're wearing your Rhythm Crystal!

[dinobass]

I have a friend who had to do a job in Logic because a client could hear the difference in tempo (BPM) to three decimal places and DP only goes to two decimal points: i.e. 120.246 bpm versus 120.25 bpm.

That's riddonculous! 120.246 is indistinguishable from 120.25.
Variations in listener heartbeat would have far greater influence than .004bpm, IMHO.
Unless of course, you're wearing your Rhythm Crystal!

If there were live players on the session (who no matter how good their time is, vary their tempo slightly from bar to bar and beat to beat) that would make the whole "three decimal places" click even more ludicrous.

[James Steele]

I know... I know. But I swear that's the honest truth. The client was adamant and he had the dough so the project was done in Logic.

[tommymandel]

there's an idea for a thread, James: "My Strangest Studio Client" - I'm on it.

[Shooshie]

because a client could hear the difference in tempo (BPM) to three decimal places and DP only goes to two decimal points: i.e. 120.246 bpm versus 120.25 bpm.

That's another one of those statements of belief that people convince themselves is the truth. I've worked with people like that, who believed their sense of time was more perfect than a metronome. (Maybe so in the case of my old wooden Seth Thomas metronome -- a pendulum which clicked cockeyed beats, thanks to too many times knocked off the shelf.) In these cases, I easily demonstrated that changes of tempo as minute as even 2 decimal places were invariably smaller than the change in their playing from one beat to the next. In fact, usually the average variation between beats would be from one to several BPM, not just a fraction of a BPM. But in an effort to please such particular tastes, I would merely SAY that I made the change. Upon playback they would always say something like "ah, perfect!" Or in some cases even "wups, too much. Dial it back a little."

My answer? "done."

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

While hearing that small a change may well be impossible for humans, changes that small can and do matter if you are scoring film or video, especially very long, continuous films as I often do with silent features.

Performing live, no, you won't get to that minute a nuance and realistically implement a .001 or even a .5 beat per minute difference. But I've scored (electronically) many silent films that were just 25 minutes or so (Chaplin shorts mostly) and tempo changes to 3 decimal places can be the difference between hitting a cue right on or having it off by a second or so - more in a longer film.

Sure, I'm all for calling people on their crap and misconceptions like being able to hear that small a difference in tempo, or the emotional impact of tuning at 437 v. 440 v. 442, although there is clearly an impact on some instruments being tuned to even small degrees of pitch and the tone they produce can and does have an emotional impact - so that could require more empirical scrutiny than one usually experiences in public discussions such as we are currently engaged in. I had a client years ago who insisted that the audio sounded better when the waveform was blue with a yellow background instead of red with a grey background! Clearly, some things are ridiculous, but not always completely unfounded.

And that 'microtonal' thing? Unfounded as well? Well, there's a reverse for ya. Some people insist is it just garbage because they can't hear it or just don't like it. The music they create and listen to is based on structures that are not even 1000 years old yet, while microtonal music has been around for thousands of years.

Who's zoomin' who?

[James Steele]

I understand your point, Michael. This guy was just doing pop/rock songs. It was not to end up with a precise TRT or precisely hit a cue point minutes later. He just felt the "feel" was better if he could adjust the tempo by 1/1000th of a bpm.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...as I said, it does sound really dumb, but not completely unfounded technically.

Very nice avatar, btw. I believe it is photo shopped as it has the sun rising (or setting) in the north. But the effect and message are clear and poignant. I lost one of my friends from elementary school to high school (married to a girl from HS). He was a Capt. in the NYC fire dept. - Brian Hickey. They named a street after him in my hometown.

[James Steele]

...as I said, it does sound really dumb, but not completely unfounded technically.

Very nice avatar, btw. I believe it is photo shopped as it has the sun rising (or setting) in the north. But the effect and message are clear and poignant. I lost one of my friends from elementary school to high school (married to a girl from HS). He was a Capt. in the NYC fire dept. - Brian Hickey. They named a street after him in my hometown.

I don't believe someone could tell the difference to thousandths of bpm. This was apparently up tempo stuff too. Of someone could listen to two recordings of the same piece if music and accurately pic out which was .005 bpm faster, I would believe them.

The larger picture of my avatar is in a thread on those board and you can look at it. It doesn't look photoshopped from what I could see-- I didn't really scrutinize it. If it is Photoshopped its a masterful job.

[James Steele]

I just looked at it again in the thread "9/11 remembered" and now that you mention it, it might have been photoshopped. I never stopped to consider that.

[tommymandel]

my old wooden Seth Thomas metronome -- a pendulum which clicked cockeyed beats, thanks to too many times knocked off the shelf.)

our Seth Thomas had a built in pre-Roger Linn swing feature if it wasn't exactly flat on the piano surface. a bug or a feature?

But in an effort to please such particular tastes, I would merely SAY that I made the change. Upon playback they would always say something like "ah, perfect!"...

Ah - the fabled Producer's Switch: a console knob connected to absolutely nothing, that the engineer could turn to achieve a desired effect. see: Emperor's Clothes, see: Wanton Exercise of Authority

[Shooshie]

...as I said, it does sound really dumb, but not completely unfounded technically.

Nor is it founded technically. Just like clients who want to tweak things to the 1000ths of a degree, people who criticize DP for its inability to do that are in my honest opinion wasting our time, except unlike those clients, these folks are lobbing a criticism (unfounded, technically) at DP, and for free at that.

I've experienced multiple people who claimed to hear such accuracy, but when I put them to the test -- unknowingly to them -- they only proved that they did not hear it at all. I think I've heard tempo changes as small as a few hundredths of a beat per minute (I knew where it was, too, so I may have "heard" what I was expecting to hear), but 1000th of a bpm is, in my opinion, beyond the reach of humans.

At a tempo of 120 bpm, 1/1000 bpm is 1 beat every 8.33 minutes. (8' 19.8") Draw your own conclusions. BTW, DP can easily calculate the tempo for a precise hit on a film cue. If there's any problem with adjusting a 25 minute cue to hit at exactly a certain point (that's one LONG cue, btw), then I'm sure you can change a couple of tempos for a few beats to make it come out right. But as James said, this isn't about a film cue. It's about the "feel" of the tempo. 1 beat in 8' 20"?

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

Good news for the original poster: DP 7.21 now has pitch preferences. As for tempos to the 1000th decimal, no such luck! Darn!

Shooshie

[richardein]

I have had the great honor of working on numerous occasions with baroque orchestras and instruments, including baroque strings, oboes, flutes, and - most exciting of all - violas da gamba. Baroque pitch was often much lower than modern pitch. Common modern practice with baroque instruments is to tune to A 415 but according to this post, baroque pitch ranged from 392 (!) to 465 (!!!). http://pbosf.blogspot.com/2010/01/story ... pitch.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But... I have worked with gamba consort and asked them what pitch they used and they said 440. I never noticed. So I don't think it matters very much, really, but hey, why not 432? It may relax you but it'll drive everyone with perfect pitch at 440 completely crazy!

That said, the standard impression that string players give me is that the lower pitch reference is more grateful sounding - richer, warmer - than the modern standard. I have sometimes convinced myself that is true but in reality I have not noticed much difference. Certainly A432 would not make much difference at all, certainly not emotionally. There is a tendency for tighter (higher) strings to sound brighter; I have been told that is why modern orchestras have adjusted the tuning up from 440, in order to project better in large modern halls. Possibly another reason is that a tighter string enables more precise execution of certain effects, like jete (rapid bow bouncing).

There is a book which I have to get when I have a spare 80 bucks called The Story of A which is all about the history of performing pitch. http://www.amazon.com/History-Performin ... 0810841851" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The real issue is not pitch level but intonation. This has barely been addressed in modern synthesis/sampling, at least not in a prominent way. In fact, aside from auto-tune (of all products!), does anyone know of any reasonably common piece of gear that lets you quickly change the tuning from equal tempered (ugh!!) to mean tone (mmmm...), just intonation, or some of the other groovy intonations that have been invented over the years, like Partch's 43 tones to the octave? I can't think of any, but then maybe I don't know some of my instruments that well. I do know that Ivory has a stretch tuning feature (good), but does Kontakt, EW, Vienna?