Nord User Forum

Spider wrote:

analogika wrote: The guitar thing sounds like a welcome side-effect rather than a reason. I rather suspect we'll look back at this as a fashion in twenty years' time. Though of course, the case is to be made that it's "safer" for a vocalist not to have to take quite the risks he had to on the studio album.

This hardly applies to cover bands, though.

I think it applies even more to cover bands, as the average cover band singer simply can't safely sing Steven Tyler, Bon Jovi, Axel Rose, McCartney or Freddie Mercury for 3+ hours...

In most of the cover bands I played, all the songs were routinely tuned 1/2 step down, always for the explicit reason of making it easier on the voices: even when the singer could safely hit the high notes, it was a matter of preserving his/her throat for the remainder of the show.

Yeah yeah, I know the solution: find a better singer!

See, that argument makes zero sense to me. The originals are often pitched to suit a particular singer, so if you're going to cover them, you might as well transpose them to make them work. A semitone is just pointless.

Although now that I think about it, there are enough songs which are tied to specific pitches by instrument voicings (open strings on a guitar, or the aforementioned Stevie Wonder Eb-minor preference), so I guess dropping those a semitone does help.

analogika wrote:See, that argument makes zero sense to me. The originals are often pitched to suit a particular singer, so if you're going to cover them, you might as well transpose them to make them work. A semitone is just pointless.

As a singer I can tell you that a semitone is far from pointless, for the reasons already given above. The originals are often pitched for a recording, and a rested and focused singer in a booth can deliver better (and if needed in many takes) than a physically active singer on a stage, with 20 songs done and 20 more to go. It's irrelevant if that's a professional or coverband singer. More than a semitone can sometimes already change the character of a song, so personally in my band I rather drop a song than lower it more than a whole note.

analogika wrote:Although now that I think about it, there are enough songs which are tied to specific pitches by instrument voicings (open strings on a guitar, or the aforementioned Stevie Wonder Eb-minor preference), so I guess dropping those a semitone does help.

This, particularly for rock music, which is usually - almost always, actually - based around the all-important guitar riff. and the majority of guitar riffs just cannot be transposed on the guitar, they simply don't work any more.

In rock music, when writing, the singer is usually pitching to the guitar riff key, not the other way around. Glad I'm not a rock singer. Except the bit about getting all the girls.

Arjan P wrote:

analogika wrote:See, that argument makes zero sense to me. The originals are often pitched to suit a particular singer, so if you're going to cover them, you might as well transpose them to make them work. A semitone is just pointless.

As a singer I can tell you that a semitone is far from pointless, for the reasons already given above. The originals are often pitched for a recording, and a rested and focused singer in a booth can deliver better (and if needed in many takes) than a physically active singer on a stage, with 20 songs done and 20 more to go. It's irrelevant if that's a professional or coverband singer.

Considering that very, very few cover bands actually feature the ORIGINAL singer, it is absolutely not irrelevant.

If you're covering a song that isn't fundamentally based around a specific riff or lick that needs to be played in a special key, then you better damn well be transposing the number into a key the vocalist can actually sing.

You obviously didn't get what I was saying: A rested singer in a studio performs better than one running around on stage. Whether that singer is professional or not is totally irrelevant to that statement.

And sure, transpose all you want but IMO many songs just lose their appeal when transposed too much - even to the point of becoming ridiculous.

I understood that perfectly.

I understand very well that a semi-tone at the upper limit can make or break a live performance.

But if you're performing a song written in a key that is at the absolute upper limit for a singer like Alex Ligertwood or Stevie Wonder, then transposing it down by a semi-tone isn't going to magically make it work for your cover-band's singer: you're going to have to transpose anyway.

If you're going to be performing with the original singer, then dropping it a half-note will certainly make it safer and more relaxed for stage performance.

But since you're probably not, dropping it a half-note doesn't do much except put it slightly less out-of-range.

I give up. You are 100% right. Have a nice day.