Beatles were ‘out of tune’? Say it ain’t so Cliff!
February 2, 2008
Cliff Richard has been quoted as saying the Beatles were “out of tune“. Not sure what’s got up his nose these days or why it’s being reported now, but he particularly singles out the guitar work, and one can assume he’s talking mostly about George Harrison’s playing. Hunter Davies comes to George’s defense, but it’s not really needed.
It’s hard to know what Cliff is bitching about because he doesn’t name songs, but certainly some of the early work *was* out of tune. Not, in my mind, horribly, but you can certainly hear issues when you listen closely, especially on the CDs. Additionally, the American reissue box set of the early US album remixes are even worse. Not necessarily out of tune much, but with lots of gratuitous reverb, any problems seem amplified to my ear.
The only real ‘excuses’ one might have for things being out of tune now and then are 1) I’m not sure anyone back in 1963 or 1964 had any idea that 45 years later people still would be scrutinizing and analyzing their recordings and 2) they often would record early tracks with just a few takes, given their touring and movie schedules. I’m sure some people will claim there is no out of tuneness, but George Martin himself was on record as having said he was appalled at how bad some of the early stuff was out of tune - singling out “I’ll Be Back” from the Hard Day’s Night CD as being one reason why he decided to keep that whole CD mono instead of stereo - the stereo mix made the tuning problems much more apparent.
But I also have to agree with Hunter Davies’ view that Cliff’s “nose was put out of joint when the Beatles came along”. Hearing Cliff tout his own record - “sold more records than anyone else ever” and such almost as embarrassing as McCartney trying to defend his own solo career against the Beatles’. McCartney shouldn’t have to, and neither should Sir Cliff, but I guess everyone living in the Beatles’ shadow - even the Beatles themselves - has to try to highlight their accomplishments.
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February 9th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Wow. Just read about ’semitone’ tuning over here ->
http://www.whatgoeson.com/blog/the-beatles/200802040726/musicians-know-the-beatles-were-not-out-of-tune.html
The claim there is that the early Beatles records were done on guitars tuned to ‘435 semitones’, not the traditional ‘440 semitones’. Sounds plausible, but a bit odd because they had piano on the early records, and I’m not sure that the piano would have been tuned to 435 as well, unless *all* of EMI’s tuners were set to 435 at the time.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
“440 semitone tuning” doesn’t make any sense. A “semitone” is a relative unit defined by a tuning system that uses a reference pitch. You have to set the reference pitch before you can even know what a “semitone” is. The reference pitch is specified by a physical unit, Hertz; Hertz is the unit used to tune instruments in Western music, whether in an orchestra or on pop records.
A4 at 440 *Hertz* is the standard tuning. I guess that the Beatles could have tuned A4 to 435Hz, but I wouldn’t trust that blogger on the subject if doesn’t know the difference between Hertz and semitones.