Althouse: "We played that song in a different key every night. It was never in the same key."

January 27, 2014

"We played that song in a different key every night. It was never in the same key."

"The tour manager would say, ‘It’s in A flat tonight.’ Or we’d already be out onstage, and we’d talk to Tony Garnier, the bass player, and somehow ask him which key and he’d say, ‘A flat.’ And that’s in front of a lot of people. But Dylan never told us. I think he likes putting himself and his band into a corner, to see if they can play their way out."

29 comments:

Bob Ellison said...: That song is one of the greatest ever. I have been to Nazareth, and it's a nice place. You want a really good guitar, you can get one there.

I'm a keyboard player. We keys folks pride ourselves in saying "any key, you pick it." That's easy for a trumpet player to say. Not so easy for piano or guitar or organ.

"The Weight" is a pleasure in all keys, at all times.; 1/27/14, 8:00 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Enh, that's what capos are for. It's much easier for fretted-instrument players than for anyone else. Though, yes, keyboardists who accompany singers pride themselves on being able to accommodate any key whatsoever at the drop of a hat. You're pretty much useless in that line of work if you can't.; 1/27/14, 8:24 PM
Mark O said...: Odd. It is the voice that has to accommodate the key, although a growl might be in every key.

Professional backup musicians can do this with ease. Dylan likely just moved his capo.; 1/27/14, 8:44 PM
Mark O said...: In 1969, at Woodstock, The Band played it in A.; 1/27/14, 8:50 PM
Bob Ellison said...: I'm looking for the capo on my upright piano, Mark O.; 1/27/14, 8:51 PM
glenn said...: That is almost exactly what I tell piano players in bars when I get up to sing.

"If you can change keys as fast as I can you are a real musician"

Never Mind.; 1/27/14, 8:54 PM
Carol said...: Gawd how I loathed that song. It was supposed to be soooo hip. But it was just draggy, and the Band singer sounded affected. Like he was trying to sound like someone else, anyone but who he was.

Typical 60s.; 1/27/14, 9:01 PM
Valentine Smith said...: "…and the Band singer sounded…." This displays ignorance.

Carol, what are you 12?; 1/27/14, 9:13 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Bob Ellison,

I'm looking for the capo on my upright piano, Mark O.

Yes, but this is why your previous comment

Not so easy for piano or guitar or organ

was off. Guitarists have capos. Keyboard players generally don't, though I think that you can move the pitch center wherever you like on some electronic keyboards.; 1/27/14, 9:18 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Michelle Dulak Thomson, no keyboard player does that. It just doesn't work.; 1/27/14, 9:22 PM
Bob Ellison said...: MWell, hang on a minute; it might work. I have a strong sense of absolute pitch, and I have played instruments in concert pitch, B-flat, and E-flat. These different pitches matter to my ear.

I don't hear how a guitar player can just switch from one key to another without noticing the change in pitch.

But anyway, put a capo on my piano, and maybe it'll work. It'll drive me crazy for a while.; 1/27/14, 9:30 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Bob Ellison, it would certainly drive me bats to play at a pitch that didn't correspond to what I was reading and hearing.

The first time I tried to play at A415 (= "baroque pitch," half a step below "modern" A440), my ears rebelled. I was reading a trio sonata in D minor. I couldn't make it work except by sight-transposing it into C# minor and scrunching my hand up accordingly. All fine until I tried to use an open string, which was not where it should have been.

That was close on 20 years ago, and I can play at A415 easily now. (A392, a.k.a. "French Baroque pitch," I just can't. My ears can only go so far.); 1/27/14, 9:48 PM
Mark O said...: Here are the chords. Classic. Like about 600 other songs. Even I can change these keys without a capo.

I'm not much of a piano player, but transposing this is no great feat.

A C#m D A
I pulled in to Nazareth, I was feeling about half past dead.
A C#m D A
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
A C#m D A
"Hey, Mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
A C#m D A
He just grinned, shook my hand, "No" was all he said.

A A/G# D
Take a load off, Fanny.
A A/G# D
Take a load for free.
A A/G# D
Take a load off, Fanny.
D A
And... you put the load right on me.; 1/27/14, 9:49 PM
Mark O said...: "I don't hear how a guitar player can just switch from one key to another without noticing the change in pitch."

I notice it. Try "Rebel Rouser" for an early version of the same problem.

I think I envy perfect pitch. I can recall some chorales in which someone was singled out for a pitch because they had it.

I tried to get some memory of A=440 and then relative pitch from there. I had a friend who carried a tuning fork in an attempt to memorize it.; 1/27/14, 9:52 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Mark O, "perfect pitch" is more liability than asset if you have to play at more than one pitch standard. If you play at multiple pitch standards, though, your sense of where A is does loosen a bit. If I am playing and listening a lot at A415, it becomes hard to hear A440 music as in "the right key." Which is seriously annoying if you've been accustomed to knowing the key of anything instantly.; 1/27/14, 10:32 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: To which I ought to have added that A430 seriously messes with your head.

A440 = normal "modern pitch." A430 = "classical pitch," standard in period-instrument performances of Haydn Mozart, Beethoven. A415 = generic "Baroque pitch," used for most early 18th-c. music on period instruments.

But there are exceptions. Very early Bach involves some really high tunings, for example; there's some A465 for Muehlhausen and Weimar. That's about a half-step over modern A440, just as as A415 is about a half step below. A392 is the consensus "French Baroque" tuning, and that's about a whole step below A440.

I cannot wrap my ears around A392. But A430 is more insidious, because you don't know in which direction you're erring until someone is kind enough to use an open string.; 1/27/14, 10:47 PM
Jason said...: My violin sounds best around 415 and does ok down to about 392, though I haven't checked it with a tuner. It really warms up the sound, and makes the fingering easier. At 440 it chokes up slightly. A half step up from there, though, the action changes and it's like a different violin. Very bright and bouncy, with a live bow. Fun to play Donegal style tunes on.

Any pro guitar player should reasonably be expected to be able to transpose The Weight, or anything like it, at the drop of a hat.

I routinely play fiddle in gigs in a band setting where I have to transpose on the fly, but on fiddle it's no problem because I'm thinking melodically, not harmonically. Some keys you can't do idiomatic fiddle-y sounding things in though, because many of them rely on open strings. That's where I try to get the singer to move a half step up or down. Sometimes they say no and off you go.

I think it's wrong to transpose vocal tunes just to keep the band on their toes in a pro setting. That's schoolhouse shit. I believe in putting the most important part of the song in the register where that particular singer's voice sounds best.; 1/28/14, 12:45 AM
Jason said...: Michelle: one of my very favorite things to do on fiddle is to play tunes with a good uilleann piper playing a set of flat pipes. So instead of a D chanter and drones everything is moved down to C, B or even Bb (if the piper can handle the stretch.) check out some youtubes of fiddler Caomhin O Raighallaigh playing with piper Mick O'Brien. Sometimes Caomhin uses a hardanger fiddle to great effect.; 1/28/14, 12:49 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Wow. There are some big-time musical folks around here!; 1/28/14, 7:41 AM
Bob Ellison said...: A question for all of you: do you suppose that perfect pitch might be connected to tinnitus?

I have a bit of tinnitus, I think, and always have. When all is quiet around me, I hear a very small, very high whine.

My sense of absolute pitch is imperfect. I've been testing it lately, walking up to other people's pianos and humming A440 and playing the note to see whether I've got it. Lately it has been mostly spot-on, but I know I can play a flat piano and be pulled down. I don't think I'd ever have the problem you describe, Michelle Dulak Thomson, of suffering from playing as little off as A430, for example.

Well, anyway, if anyone is still reading down here, I'd like to hear your thoughts.; 1/28/14, 8:20 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Bob Ellison,

I doubt that perfect pitch has anything to do with tinnitus. My guess is that it has more to do with early, frequent exposure to a fixed pitch standard, and little else. When you start playing the violin at 4, as I did, and the first thing you do when you practice is tune to A440, naturally you are likely to have some idea, after time, of where A440 is.

My own pitch sense loosened, perforce, once I started playing Baroque violin, and it's annoying to have to think about what key what you're hearing is in, rather than knowing it automatically.

Then again, "perfect pitch" is a perfect nuisance sometimes. I've explained how hard it was for me to adjust to A415 as a violinist, but if anything it was worse in choir in high school. A cappella choirs always go flat, and ours was no exception, so I would be trying to sing something nominally in F minor, say, but having to sight-transpose the line mentally to E minor so that what I was singing matched what I was hearing. Unbelievably convoluted.; 1/28/14, 8:56 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Re: testing pitch memory: My husband once wrote a tiny program that would play a note anywhere from 431 to 449 Hz, and you could toggle it up or down in 1Hz increments until you thought you were at 440, then finalize it and see whether you were correct. Neither of us was often wrong.

I do not get the way some people fetishize absolute pitch recognition. There's a musicologist named Rita Steblin, for example, who positively dotes on the subject. She is fond of pointing out that any number of great composers had "perfect pitch." Of course they did; they were all exposed very early in life to a fixed pitch standard via (mostly) keyboard instruments. No fixed pitch standard early on, much less likelihood of pitch memory.

Steblin ties "perfect pitch" to key characteristics, which seems to me not quite the same subject. Different keys connote different things, but that's because different keys involve physical differences when you're playing in them on instruments. With strings, it's where the open strings are (if any) in the key, and how often you use which. With keyboards, it's how things fall under your fingers. Pianists notoriously prefer flat keys to sharps. I don't understand quite why, but a passage in flats is easier for a pianist than an identical one spelt differently in sharps.

Anyway, the connotations you've built up around a key because of things like these persist even in contexts where you'd think they wouldn't matter at all, like a cappella choral music. A choral work in B major is simply a different sort of thing than a choral work in C major to me. There's no reason for it, apart from my personal key associations, which are bound up with visual colors among other things.; 1/28/14, 9:15 AM
Bob Ellison said...: MDT, thanks for your comments.

Like you, I started playing music (piano) at 4. I didn't notice any sense of perfect pitch, though, until I started playing trumpet at about age 11. For years, I associated all notes in B-flat, and I had to transpose.

Now I play mostly piano, and I'm very focused on the F above middle C.

A music theory teacher once led my class through an exercise: sing the note an octave and a fifth above this one, then a minor third below, then a fourth below, then a sixth above, etc. We went at it as a group for probably ten minutes, and then he asked us to sing the tonic, and we did. And we were off by maybe three half-steps. We were all astonished.

I agree with you about the fetish. It's silly. What's required is relative pitch, not absolute pitch.

"Pianists notoriously prefer flat keys to sharps. I don't understand quite why, but a passage in flats is easier for a pianist than an identical one spelt differently in sharps."

I think it's mostly muscle memory, because piano players often play in B-flat and E-flat, and F. Those are very familiar keys under the fingers. B major is a horror, because we never do it. Nobody wants it. Ditto for F#. We don't have it under our fingers.

My favorite key is B-flat, because it's just so familiar. Feels like a comfy place.

Lady Gaga, by the way, made an impressive performance of her song "On the Edge" on Howard Stern's show. It's a standard 1-5-6-4, four-chord song, and those are pretty easy chords. But she plays it in A, a horrible piano key for this song, because that makes it A-E-F#-D.

Why did she do that? Just to show that she's a really talented musician (she is)?

Jason said something I've heard other musicians say: the most important thing is the vocal register, if there's a singer. Put it there at all costs.; 1/28/14, 9:36 AM
Bob Ellison said...: RE: your husband's program-- I have experimented with similar things, and the problem I see is that most sounds are so loaded with overtones and complex waves that our perception of the actual primary tone is probably pretty subjective, especially if it's coming out of a crappy computer speaker. Tuning forks are designed that way because they produce extremely simple waves.; 1/28/14, 9:38 AM
Bob Ellison said...: By the way (still down here?!), this fantastic performance of Līgo! is the best example I've ever heard of the tendency of live singers to flatten over time. It's a beautiful song and a beautiful performance, but to anyone listening, try starting it again right after it's over. What happened?; 1/28/14, 10:10 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Bob Ellison,

Thanks for the example of Līgo! Yep, that's classic. To my ear, they start in E-flat minor, and by the end they're in C# minor, which is to say a whole step down. And you mostly can't tell exactly where it's happening, can you? There's some noticeable flatting from the soloist, but most of it is just ... settling ve . . r . . y slowly.; 1/28/14, 10:50 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Jason said something I've heard other musicians say: the most important thing is the vocal register, if there's a singer. Put it there at all costs.

I once played a Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra set in which Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sang Berlioz' Les Nuits d'été. It's a strange song-cycle, in that the six songs were originally meant for a bunch of singers, some male, some female, high and low voices. These days, it's normally sung all of a piece by (mostly) mezzo-sopranos, which entails changing some keys.

Well, LHL's preferred keys gave the librarian fits. I think there were four separate sources for the parts among the six songs. But, damn, it was worth it. The recording from that set was issued posthumously: here.. I've never before or since been part of anything so great as that.; 1/28/14, 11:00 AM
Jason said...: The librarian?

Heck, we just wrote an arrow up or down and the number of steps and went for it!

Either you did it on the fly or you had it for the next day, if it took some rewriting.

Must be nice to have a "librarian" to do it for you!

Of course, I was a bassist or guitarist/banjo/mando utility player in my pit orchestra days, and so it wasn't a big deal. I just transposed in or out of the Nashville Numbering System in my head. Nobody cared if I played something as written, 98 percent of the time.

Orchestral player in a classical setting don't have the same leeway.

I buy my lattes from them at Starbucks on my way to gigs.; 1/28/14, 7:43 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Jason,

Orchestras have librarians. A lot of music we do isn't in the public domain, and even for stuff that is, it's often more expeditious to rent than to buy it. If there are rental parts, you really do need to get them back to the publisher, or things get very expensive very rapidly. Even if all the music is on hand, someone needs to send it to the players beforehand, and collect and collate it afterwards.

One of the tasks of an orchestra librarian is, yes, making sure that there are parts in the key a vocal soloist prefers.

I don't think you understand how intricate orchestral string parts can get. Take a look at Les Nuits d'été sometime, and try to imagine reading the first violin part with a couple of arrows per song, "down a whole step" or "up a minor third" or whatever. In "Le Spectre de la rose," you're starting from B major, so you have to wrap your head around that first. Then transpose.

(Actually, LHL sang that song in the original B major, so it didn't need to be moved at all. But you get the idea.); 1/28/14, 9:12 PM