Lots of comments saying “You’re only realizing this now?” Remember that when I was playing along to Metallica songs back in the day it was on cassette. Warbly-ass cassettes on boom boxes. We did know what tuning anything really was and just went along with it. 🤣
I am 50. I was playing this song when I was 16. I am completely self taught by ear. And my ear knew that the song was off when I was 16. Not gonna beat you down for it, but all I had was 3rd gen recorded cassettes and VERY cheap boom boxes to practice with. When I wanted to jam cover songs, my first step was to find their E. I tuned my guitar to it and played on. Its how I knew Slayer was also a half or full-step down. I dont remember at the moment which tho.
Majority of the Ride The Lightning album is actually a little bit sharp, there's a pitch shifted version of the entire album to practice to in perfect standard tuning. If you just search up Ride The Lightning Pitch Shifted you'll find it, that's what I've been using when practicing that album.
Here's a fun fact as well. Ride the lightning is slightly sharp but Megadeth's Peace Sells is the opposite being slightly flat, in between standard and Eb. You'll find a similar pitch problem from playing along with that album.
Almost every song on the album is slightly sharp by ~29 cents. They wouldn't have sped up the whole album just to match the pitch of an anvil hit. It would be much easier to lower the pitch of the anvil hit which has already been lowered anyway. I think they probably just sped the album up to give it that little bit more energy and make the transients a little tighter. Definitely sounds better to play along with the album in tune!
I’m so glad you made this video. This is one of the earliest songs I learned as a kid and since then I’ve never thought the E chord was the correct chord. It always sounded slightly off but I could never figure out why and just assumed it was a more complex chord than just E. I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one.
The same thing for “Dance The Night Away” by Van Halen. Eddie has a half step out of tune B string. He didn’t use tuners, but instead went by what sound he liked and wanted. I always got frustrated that I never could match this song until recently and I’ve played for 18 years lol
Hey Josh , please elaborate...couldn't understand your statement 🤔? 'B string out of tune? Are you referring to most of Van Halen early work being tuned to E flat ? or is the B string tune some how out of harmonic balance? Also , if it is..what other Van Halen songs that you might know of have this peculiarity . Thank you !!!
Andy Timmons talks about this. He says something like "your guitar tuner lies to you..tune your guitar using the tuner, then tune your guitar to your ear while playing until it sounds right..somewhere in between is the truth" Paraphrased, but you get the idea.
You can look up the guitar hero track. That's the one i use and sounds right. They corrected several songs. It's also common knowledge guitar hero pretty much corrected death magnetic issue with the volume.
Yeah that makes sense -- but why would only certain notes sound out of whack them? Isn't he only complaining about the E sounding weird, or am I misunderstanding that? Anyway, I might have to try using 444 when I play along next time. 😊🤘🏻🎸 Which tuning do they use live, btw?
@@MashaT22 In live situations they use a standard tuning every time I heard them, whether it be A=440Hz (standard guitar tuning) or A#=440Hz (Eb guitar tuning)
@@MashaT22 Its not that they tuned to 444hz, they changed in the tape machine during mastering. The recording was done in 440hz, using the same instruments that were made to play in 440hz. If they played in 444hz they would need specific instruments otherwise the metric of the scales would be wrong. They recorded and mixed in 440hz and during mastering the tape speed put it sharper. Thats why since the beginning of the 80s they always played live in 440hz and the albums sounded out of tune. You can find some specific strikes, chords, that sound out of tune with the album, but the was the way they were striking the strings (too strong) while playing. One example is Dyers Eve that James play a specific note in the main riff thats only an open string, but people keep hearing a 0-1-0-1-0-1 riff. The illusion comes because of how strong the string was vibrating, but the album as a whole would sound in tune with itself, just not in tune with 440hz A.
I know that Accept's "Balls To The Wall" is tuned higher as well, and it always used to give me headaches until I figured that out, LOL. Thankfully, I found a version here on YT that's detuned back down to E. Love your videos. \m/
I blows my mind that all these youngsters have these problems. Ive used a tuner like a dozen times in my life. You *always* tune to your environment. Hit the #6 string(its not always the E and that's the point) and tune it until it sounds right with whomever you're playing with, in the space your playing. Then relative tune from there. What sounds good in one space, may and often does sound really bad in a different space with different acoustics. As well, even if everyone is technically in tune, different scale lengths, resonance and equipment can make instruments sound out of tune with each other. I cant recall a time I ever researched to find out what tuning a band uses, I just tune by ear until it sounds good. This, BTW was a necessity in the days of cassettes, because every player was a little different, tape gets stretched and batteries get progressively weaker from the moment you hit play; the irony being all the times you rewind to do a section, stretches the tape and kills the batteries more and more, leading to the illusion that your guitar doesnt hold tune.
In the 80’s no one researched “what the band tuned to.” That wasn’t a thing. The band tuned to each other (far more important) and possibly the piano (most difficult to adjust tuning, so it was the standard) Recording equipment back then almost always had a speed strobe, and a pitch control. Some recording studio hacks played games. Others calibrated their speed each session. Still others would drag their finger on the tape reel to “fix” a passage that raced along and didn’t sound right. Todays sterile digital recording environment takes all that fun away.
I figured that out in 1988! Kids today don’t know the struggle. When I started playing guitar and playing along to my favorite songs, I discovered there were TONS of pitch differences because of how music was recorded with analog tape. When I got my first 4-track, I was really able to zero in on pitch issues. I just matched up my guitar tuning to the guitar on the record because it was the easiest way to match up the tuning.
Absolutely. The premise of this video is so strange to me. 'Out of tune bell sounds out of tune'. I can't imagine a world where every song is dead on pitch.
Not to mention that cassette tape stretches, leaving them in a hot/cold car, etc. You're absolutely right, these computer kids have it easy! Making/editing mix tapes, or hell, editing vcr vids - it was work! But we learned and now understand more because of it!?
@@NBTKDA I always sound out of tune while playing along to the studio version of fade. I know that the guitar hero versions of RtL are tuned normally and when I made some backing tracks for Bellz I bumped the tuning so it would sound like the album
I always play to the live versions too because they're faster and usually in d# tuning which means I can also play along to stuff off load/reload without getting a different guitar
:) They definitely use some unique tunings throughout their career. They tuned to the bell most definitely. We knew back in the day because we used tuning forks to tune, and you could easily differentiate between true and changed pitches.
They dont use those tunings. they are in normal tuning and the tape is sped up or slowed down. When you hear a song that is a quarter step down like megadeth killing is my business for example, the tape was slowed down. Nobody is tuning to those tunings. The whole album is tuned the same so they didn't tune a whole album to match one bell. the bell has been pitch shifted too
@@irishRocker1 why would they change the speed instead of just using a different tuning? Wouldn't they have to use a different tuning live anyways to match the recording? Not trying to argue, just curious.
@@sam8404 why does live have to match the recording? it's much easier to adjust the speed of the tape than retuning and rerecording parts. You can easily sit in the booth and adjust the tape speed and listen to it and compare it to the original.
I can’t tell you how many songs I’ve learned that I had to tune slightly down or up to match the recording. Elliott Smiths Kiwi Mad Dog 20/20 is one of them.
I was just commenting on the tabs for that song being wrong. Back in the 80s and 90s it never sounded good when I would try to play along with it. Now I know why.
Unreal! it amazes me when a tune, from way back, that many of us here set out to conquer in our childhood rooms with guitar & amplification (usually on a school night) can still be unlocked, some 30+ years later, by some Dude (Mike) who we’ve never met, has continued to sit alone & for real conquer it. amazing. thanks for making me feel better about things some 30+ years later, Mike. you’re one hell of a disciple.
whenever i play pantera stuff i listen the tuning of the open e to whatever it is in that song and then tune by ear from that string. always matches perfectly
I used to play along with all of Metallica's cassettes in the 80s and definitely noticed this when the end of "'Ride the Lightning" gave way to the beginning of "For Whom the Bell Tolls". I always wondered why it sounded sharp compared to the rest of the album. Now I know thanks to you. Ancient mystery solved.
I learned this many years ago and I used to tune my guitar up so I could play along with the CD. I never knew why but now I understand why they tuned up for this song.
Flemming Rasmussen: "we actually tracked the recordings with the tape slowed down, and the instruments tuned down, so that WHEN WE SPED THE TAPE BACK UP, everything sounded tighter and faster". This is why all the tunings are off, so no, Hetfield isn't actually down picking that fast on any of their albums, and the sharp tuning on the records has NOTHING to do with tuning their instruments up to match a sample.
Wait, you just noticed this now? Back in the 80s, it used to drive me crazy trying to learn songs from different bands/albums with a floating floyd rose. Maybe I just have very good relative pitch (def dont have perfect pitch). One of the reasons I always have a pitch shifter block in all of my QC presets, quick dial in for whatever I'm playing along with or learning.
Always funny thinking “man this metallica stuff sounds really good I wonder why it’s almost as if every single line/song/riff has a funny/intricate backstory behind it, a solid thought process. Good video as always man
I agree with your second theory. They tuned to the bell. But this is far from the only song that's not in concert tuning. "Strawberry Fields Forever" is in A half sharp because it's a splice of two different takes played in different keys and tempos. Several Oasis songs are about 10 cents sharp due to them speeding up the tape after recording.
metallica always tunes sharp in studio so they don't beat their strings flat durring recording the song. knew this years ago. i also grew up playing along to casettes and even on casette unless you play the casette so many times the tape is worn out on it , it'll still always be sharp on the recording.
Yeah. I heard somewhere that they experimented with different tuning frequencies. The MOP album is apparently at 435hz, which is interesting, because to my ears, it sounds slightly flat.
When I learned this song, oh so many bells ago, I would tune my guitar up to match. This was always a tough one to know why. And you just answered it. Thanks. On a side not, tabbing it out for band mates and then they go 'but it doesn't sound right when I play along with it.' I told ya, tune up. ugh!
There's an interview somewhere with Flemming Rasmussen where he confirmed that the track was sped up and that's why the pitch is off. I can't find the original interview. But it's out there somewhere if anyone can find it.
First time I encountered this was playing alongside Mayhem 10 years ago. The entirety of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is tuned to 430hz making everything darker.
Since they openly mentioned the clean stuff is pitched shifted up on everything to make it brighter and stand out, and i always strobe tuned myself before playing along i realized early on it was out. Im 46 i had cds and tapes i feel u.
This is very common in records from back in the day. I don't think it's only this track. Other albums I can think of are Megadeth's Peace Sells, Dokken's Back for the Attack, Celtic Frost's Dethroned Emperor, and even Falco's Einzelhaft. The original vinyl edition of the last mentioned is notably sped up relative to later CD editions. I assume this is an occasional glitch of the manufacturing process.
Might be sped up a bit to fit in on the album. Very limited recording time on vinyl, and if you try reducing the width of the grooves, it degrades the sound quality.
Funny, when I was a kid in the 80's I got my first guitar - a Peavy Mystic. I didn't have a tuner of any sort, so I always tuned my guitar to the E in Eye of the Beholder, or any Metallica song really. They were my tuner when I was 15 lol
34 years... that's how long I've wondered why tf it sounded off when I played along with the tape. Thanks for clearing this up! Ruberets ain't got $#!t on you.
Only been playing for 30 years and just worked this out this week!!!!!! Same as master of puppets , I get it all queued up ready and then bang , not in e standard either me thinks , cheers Mike for bringing this up!!!!
It’s funny because I play with a younger guitarist that’s phenomenal but he learned a lot of what he knows from tab and other sources and he’s sometimes amazed that when I pick out something that’s not working and go to the record and listen I can fix it. That’s because I learned to play completely by ear by listening to records. It’s a needed skill.
I always assumed it was because they felt like the song sounded a bit slow after they recorded it, so they sped the recording up a tiny bit to match the tempo they wanted. The same thing happened with Jump In The Fire. Great vid. I never knew about the tone of the bell.
Oh yeah, I thought this was about the funky pitch on that album. I've ran into this problem with a bunch of older recordings and also with Pantera and Machine Head before I knew better. I've learnt to recognize this better over the years.
we had a KORG analog tuner back in the day and if the battery was low it would be a little out, but as long as we all used the same tuner, we were all good...
Dude 😂 You won’t believe it but I was at my guitar shop Wednesday and was talking to the guy there, and I was telling him the exact same thing. That is so weird. Thanks very much for this. Love your content.
I noticed this a year ago when teaching this song to a bass student. I kept thinking one of us is out of tune and checking the tuning before I realized the recording is sharp.
Yup, I had this exact problem when I did my cover of this song. Tuning up solved the issue although it was real tricky to find where my guitar needed to sit for it.
According to Andriy Vasylenko, Flemming Rasmussen (Metallica's mixer) sped up a lot of the tracks on RTL to make it sound more thrash, making it slightly higher pitched. A quick way to fix this (that I do) is by palm muting further into the string to make the palm mutes slightly higher pitched and also fretted/bent the notes a bit further Didn't finish the video yet, so he might've brought this up, but here you go anyway.
@@ReZhorw I usually do it on Ride The Lightning, I don't really play For Whom The Bell Tolls tbh. Seriously though, when you dig in those palm mutes, it really gets you that sound I love.
The other thing to note, back in the analog days, most players would tune to a piano on site, then tune to eachother. All of these things led to less than tuner perfect tunings. Several AC/DC tracks from the Bon Scott era have minor tuning issues….
When I was learning this song and others, I always just tuned to the album it self. I was so frustrated of being out of tune while playing along. So I said screw it and tuned to the song itself. I've done this for many years now.
oh yeah, classic varispeed shenanigans, this was a thing that was way too common when analog recording was the standard, it happens on the entirety of ride the lightning, some songs from kill em all (way more subtly) and a more modern example in metal that i can think of is slipknot's self titled, in rtl and slipknot's debut, they did it because both the mixing engineers and the producers thought it made the music sound more "energetic" and "tighter", hell i think there even was a janet jackson record that suffered from being sped up, thats how common it was, it makes the recordings sound more unique though, thats for sure, because honestly its kind of a weird feeling to listen to the guitar hero stems for ride the lightning or the rough mixes for slipknot's self titled because i'm so used to hearing the studio versions of these songs tuned sharp from 440 and hearing them at regular pitch just feels odd, i much prefer playing these songs on guitar in standard pitch though lol
If a song Im trying to learn is slightly off pitch from standard tuning (or 440) I load the song into Audacity and fix the pitch. Works for me. A lot of AC/DC stuff is just under standard pitch.
I always tuned by ear and rarely used any guitar tuners so I guess I was always slightly sharp too because I never noticed. You should try playing along with a live performance and see if it's any different.
Never mind the Bell, the part that's always bugged me with FWTBT is Kirks riff from 1:17. I SWEAR it is NOT in time throughout and I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it. For years this has annoyed me!
When I was 15 (40 now 😞) I just tuned my low E string to the sustained E chord in the song paused the tape used harmonic tuning for the rest and bam sounded just like it
kirk hammett said something about metallica tuning to C or C# in an interview I read in a random magazine quite a few years back. this would be consistent with tape speed trickery, which i hear all over justice for all. basically, you can speed the music up 2 to 3 twelve-tone pitches, and re-pitch vocals 1 to 2 twelve tone pitches, and sound mostly formant normal. so C# tuning would become E standard by shifting up 3 pitches.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is probably the most noticeable, but there are a few more songs on Ride the Lighting that are a bit sharp. It had bothered me forever, and there wasn't anything I could do about it from a practicing standpoint (easily anyway) until I found the "AnyTune" program, where you can easily adjust pitch, speed, etc.
i figured that out years ago when i was a newbie at metal a friend recommended metallica learning this by ear (the only option back then) I noticed its sharp a bit so whenever I jam to this I'll tune my guitar sharp to match the pitch
I saw a video on here claiming that Master of Puppets was recorded down tuned and at a slower pitch and then they sped the tape up to bring it up, and I understand it was to get the definition and clarity. Most older recordings are never perfectly tuned the bands that made it to the studio back then were usually tuning to whatever their guitar player felt most comfortable, Pantera supposedly came up with their quarterish flat tuning because everyone else was in standard or Eb but I think it’s just where the amps Dime was using had the most bite ?
I had some skeptical person the other day question me about Lars hitting the anvil with a hammer... I thought it was relatively common knowledge amongst fans of the music but maybe not. What interests me more is what that anvil strike sounded like in real time, because it surely was manipulated a lot to sound like a bell on in the mastering and mixing.
There was a reason we used to say when learning songs in the 80's, hell even 90's "It's in E or around that, tune to the first song and you'll be good"..if I recall Pantera had some of this shit as well. ha!
Yeah, the track is sped up a bit. I don't remember by how much, but it's enough to bring that E up to _about_ an F. It's not just For Whom The Bell Tolls, Creeping Death is tuned way sharp too.
LOL, there's a lot of albums where this happens. You just re-tune your guitar to the track, although indeed these days with modern recording software it's usually easier to tune the track to your guitar! I had this very same issue with For Whom the Bell Tolls a year or so ago, when I made some special embellished versions of the track for a radio show - jamming along with Cliff was rather fun! :) From what I remember, I found the deviation to be at 53 cents sharp with the version I had, which was from CD. In the days of analogue tape recording there could be differences in the speed of the tape machine recording the session and that of what was used for the mix down. Sometimes even if it was *the same machine* - different days could yield slightly different results with analogue stuff. Although 50 off cents out does seem beyond the scope of accidental errors - this gear was made very well. However, the speed error could accumulate throughout the processing chain, such as when the mixes were transferred to the master tape. Sometimes, the mix engineer even deliberately altered the speed of playback to give a more preferred "feel". This happened a lot in RNB, probably not as much in metal, though undoubtedly it did happen. However, your theory about them tuning their instruments to the bell is an interesting one. Although one would think they would have probably dubbed the bell on afterwards, and at that point they could have vari-speeded the multitrack when laying down the bell onto it.
The first three albums are slightly sharp by varying degrees (~444), but Black album is definitely 440 and I believe Justice too but it has been awhile since I played along on that one.
And I thought my ears were off. I noticed the same thing when trying to play along with the song. My guitar was in tune. I am like,”What the heck??” Thanks for the explanation!!
In the days of tape recording, “vari-speed” was often employed (especially for radio singles) to make a song sound more exciting when it was sped up, plus it shortened the duration of the song.
The Peterson Stroboclip HD is an awesome clip on tuner that allows you to change the hz to anywhere between 390-490hz. Makes it a lot easier to get tuned up
Don’t remember where when or why I heard this but I’ve known for a little while that it is sharp, and swear I heard the story was they recorded most of it and had some sort of power surge in a storm which messed the tape up a little… not sure that’s how that works but it would be funny if ride the lightning rode the lightning
Same. It was a recent article too if i believe. (At least the one that I read). It said something along the lines of the studio having shitty electrical wiring that messed with the tapes. It was like this on kill em all and RTL if im not mistaken.
I have to give accolades to my brother here. I've played with, way too many guitarists...including my brother, and he always sounded, strangely more "in tune" than other guitarists. I also noticed he was one, if not the only, guitarist who didn't use a tuner. Now, I usually wouldn't notice unless there was a back to back rehearsal, or playing with him and another guitarist at the same time. And usually what he'd do is have the other guitarist not use the tuner, and instead tune to him. He would use a reference note, but after that he'd tune by ear. He mentioned something about imperfect tuning one time, but I really forget his logic. But I do remember him saying 'why do you think piano tuners get paid so much'...
I think at least For whom the bell tolls, possibly the entire album is a little sharp. Which can be really confusing, because these are the first songs you'd learn as a kid. And you'd wonder why my guitar sounds like crap along to Ride the Lightning but Black Album works just fine.
From what I have heard, the higher pitch is a result of the faulty power grid of the studio they were recording. The frequency of the powergrid wasn't always at 60 Hz, but fluctuating a little higher. This caused the master tapes to fluctuate at different speeds. That's why not only all songs on the album are slightly pitched up, but also by different amounts. Can't say if this is true though, just something I've heard.
Adman Neely just did a video about this. He was talking about the practice in general. The practice of recording a song and then speeding it up slightly to give it more energy. But he mentioned master of puppets. I thought metallica were being cheap by speeding up their songs, but it turns out, it's an industry standard, even in pop songs where the instruments are electronic
Sorry to bust the bubble here, Mike, but I’ve known about this for years. They tuned up that little bit to match the pitch of the bell sample. You should’ve just asked me…🤣 Keep on rockin’, dude! Another great video 🤘🏻😁
There's variances in motor speeds in analog equipment. I use to take my cassette deck apart and adjust the motor (if it was adjustable) and tune my cassette deck with an cassette that I knew was bang on 440hz/A. Using different equipment between record and mixdown is possible. Other bands would tune down around a quarter step to be in tune with "the frequency the universe resonates at" LOL. Maybe some bands tuned to each other on the fly in the studio. Maybe the studio's tuner was out of calibration on some albums. Lots of possibilities.... it is kind of funny you didn't realize "Bells Toll" was sharp compared to other stuff LOL. It used to piss me off, so I detuned one cassette deck so "Bells" was in 440hz tuning and dubbed it recording on my other other deck...then I had a recording to jam to without retuning my guitar. It slowed it down though but whatever.
Imho, I used to hate it, but then I thought well maybe the up tuning gives RTL album its flair? Literally few people do it and sounds old school where pitches werent' always perfect. I also have a Whammy DT pedal and I use the software version in bias fx to play along to the song.
![Metallica - For Whom the Bell Tolls (Live) [Cliff 'Em All]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qdlQyNe_9tE/mqdefault.jpg)
Lots of comments saying “You’re only realizing this now?” Remember that when I was playing along to Metallica songs back in the day it was on cassette. Warbly-ass cassettes on boom boxes. We did know what tuning anything really was and just went along with it. 🤣
I'm more appalled by the fact that you took the sample out live without rehearsing with it at least once 🤣
Lol the good ol days Records and Cassettes
Take this as a compliment, but you’re to young for cassettes.😊
@@mallninja9805 You are appalled that one of the best musicians on youtube made a mistake? You?
I am 50. I was playing this song when I was 16. I am completely self taught by ear. And my ear knew that the song was off when I was 16. Not gonna beat you down for it, but all I had was 3rd gen recorded cassettes and VERY cheap boom boxes to practice with. When I wanted to jam cover songs, my first step was to find their E. I tuned my guitar to it and played on. Its how I knew Slayer was also a half or full-step down. I dont remember at the moment which tho.
Majority of the Ride The Lightning album is actually a little bit sharp, there's a pitch shifted version of the entire album to practice to in perfect standard tuning. If you just search up Ride The Lightning Pitch Shifted you'll find it, that's what I've been using when practicing that album.
Yep, whole album sounds so much warmer and James' vocals more like puppets.
I noticed that with ''Creeping Death''. It's pitched sharp enough that playing along with it is a bit annoying.
The Pitch is 432 Hz....?
@@ExpTube1969 There's a pitch shifted version of the album here on the tube that's Standard E 440 hz. It makes the whole thing sound more organic.
Look it up where?
Here's a fun fact as well. Ride the lightning is slightly sharp but Megadeth's Peace Sells is the opposite being slightly flat, in between standard and Eb. You'll find a similar pitch problem from playing along with that album.
Both 1st 2 megadeth albums..
This is also true for Killing is my Business and So Far, So Good...So What!
It wasn't until Rust in Peace that they went to proper E standard
Pantera tunes halfway flat too, E Standard is actually in between E and Eb
Some musicians prefer 432-435Hz. In fact, I prefer 435Hz (not that I consider myself a musician)
Isn't most of Megadeth's old stuff between E and Eb, at least until Dave's voice aged too much and they went to D?
Almost every song on the album is slightly sharp by ~29 cents. They wouldn't have sped up the whole album just to match the pitch of an anvil hit. It would be much easier to lower the pitch of the anvil hit which has already been lowered anyway. I think they probably just sped the album up to give it that little bit more energy and make the transients a little tighter. Definitely sounds better to play along with the album in tune!
That’s exactly what they did.
Speeding up or slowing down the whole album was pretty common back then.
I heard rumours of a slightly out of tune piano in the studio. 😂
We’ll never know.
Wasn't the mastering process responsible for the increase in pitch?
20 cents roughly, 445 Hz
@@Cthulhu_Awaken i heard that it was because if power issues in the studio
I’m so glad you made this video. This is one of the earliest songs I learned as a kid and since then I’ve never thought the E chord was the correct chord. It always sounded slightly off but I could never figure out why and just assumed it was a more complex chord than just E. I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one.
Lol. You must tune your guitar to every song. Some are out. I knew this when I was 14. I'm like 42 now. Lol
@@jakefriesenjake lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol.
The same thing for “Dance The Night Away” by Van Halen. Eddie has a half step out of tune B string. He didn’t use tuners, but instead went by what sound he liked and wanted. I always got frustrated that I never could match this song until recently and I’ve played for 18 years lol
It’s like that for most of their songs :p
Hey Josh , please elaborate...couldn't understand your statement 🤔? 'B string out of tune? Are you referring to most of Van Halen early work being tuned to E flat ? or is the B string tune some how out of harmonic balance? Also , if it is..what other Van Halen songs that you might know of have this peculiarity . Thank you !!!
Andy Timmons talks about this. He says something like "your guitar tuner lies to you..tune your guitar using the tuner, then tune your guitar to your ear while playing until it sounds right..somewhere in between is the truth"
Paraphrased, but you get the idea.
You can look up the guitar hero track. That's the one i use and sounds right. They corrected several songs. It's also common knowledge guitar hero pretty much corrected death magnetic issue with the volume.
And that's why most fan remixes from those stems sound different and dare I say, better. :-3
Neversoft got the master tracks BEFORE they got brickwalled in final mastering.
@@Exspazament only Ahdy khairat sounds better....... everyone else's are fucken trash.............
Yeah, bc they use the stems, so everything’s before the mastering process. You can master it yourself if you feel like it lol
K.
There's a downloadable version were someone has recorrected the tuning, ie, A=440Hz. But the entire album is tuned to A=444HZ
Yeah that makes sense -- but why would only certain notes sound out of whack them? Isn't he only complaining about the E sounding weird, or am I misunderstanding that? Anyway, I might have to try using 444 when I play along next time. 😊🤘🏻🎸
Which tuning do they use live, btw?
@@MashaT22 In live situations they use a standard tuning every time I heard them, whether it be A=440Hz (standard guitar tuning) or A#=440Hz (Eb guitar tuning)
@@MashaT22 Good info man. Had I read this prior, I wouldnt have left my comment. \m/
Wow.
@@MashaT22 Its not that they tuned to 444hz, they changed in the tape machine during mastering. The recording was done in 440hz, using the same instruments that were made to play in 440hz. If they played in 444hz they would need specific instruments otherwise the metric of the scales would be wrong. They recorded and mixed in 440hz and during mastering the tape speed put it sharper. Thats why since the beginning of the 80s they always played live in 440hz and the albums sounded out of tune. You can find some specific strikes, chords, that sound out of tune with the album, but the was the way they were striking the strings (too strong) while playing. One example is Dyers Eve that James play a specific note in the main riff thats only an open string, but people keep hearing a 0-1-0-1-0-1 riff. The illusion comes because of how strong the string was vibrating, but the album as a whole would sound in tune with itself, just not in tune with 440hz A.
I know that Accept's "Balls To The Wall" is tuned higher as well, and it always used to give me headaches until I figured that out, LOL. Thankfully, I found a version here on YT that's detuned back down to E. Love your videos. \m/
I blows my mind that all these youngsters have these problems. Ive used a tuner like a dozen times in my life. You *always* tune to your environment. Hit the #6 string(its not always the E and that's the point) and tune it until it sounds right with whomever you're playing with, in the space your playing. Then relative tune from there. What sounds good in one space, may and often does sound really bad in a different space with different acoustics. As well, even if everyone is technically in tune, different scale lengths, resonance and equipment can make instruments sound out of tune with each other. I cant recall a time I ever researched to find out what tuning a band uses, I just tune by ear until it sounds good.
This, BTW was a necessity in the days of cassettes, because every player was a little different, tape gets stretched and batteries get progressively weaker from the moment you hit play; the irony being all the times you rewind to do a section, stretches the tape and kills the batteries more and more, leading to the illusion that your guitar doesnt hold tune.
In the 80’s no one researched “what the band tuned to.” That wasn’t a thing. The band tuned to each other (far more important) and possibly the piano (most difficult to adjust tuning, so it was the standard)
Recording equipment back then almost always had a speed strobe, and a pitch control. Some recording studio hacks played games. Others calibrated their speed each session. Still others would drag their finger on the tape reel to “fix” a passage that raced along and didn’t sound right.
Todays sterile digital recording environment takes all that fun away.
I'd like to quote both of these comments in FB threads on this subject. You've clearly expressed something I've always thought to be the case.
YESS!!! I remember my friends convincing me I was crazy for doing this but I knew I could not have been the only one to hear it. Thanks Mike
I figured that out in 1988! Kids today don’t know the struggle. When I started playing guitar and playing along to my favorite songs, I discovered there were TONS of pitch differences because of how music was recorded with analog tape. When I got my first 4-track, I was really able to zero in on pitch issues. I just matched up my guitar tuning to the guitar on the record because it was the easiest way to match up the tuning.
Tascam army
Absolutely. The premise of this video is so strange to me. 'Out of tune bell sounds out of tune'. I can't imagine a world where every song is dead on pitch.
Not to mention that cassette tape stretches, leaving them in a hot/cold car, etc.
You're absolutely right, these computer kids have it easy!
Making/editing mix tapes, or hell, editing vcr vids - it was work! But we learned and now understand more because of it!?
I feel so old, yelling at the screen that we all knew it was tuned up way back 35+ years ago
"Kids today" -👴
I always play along with live versions because of this
Also aren’t fade and creep higher by like a quarter tone too?
@@NBTKDA I always sound out of tune while playing along to the studio version of fade. I know that the guitar hero versions of RtL are tuned normally and when I made some backing tracks for Bellz I bumped the tuning so it would sound like the album
@@NBTKDA The whole album "Ride" is tuned A=444Hz
I always play to the live versions too because they're faster and usually in d# tuning which means I can also play along to stuff off load/reload without getting a different guitar
@@Tom-oz7wk Eb not D. 👍🏼
:) They definitely use some unique tunings throughout their career. They tuned to the bell most definitely. We knew back in the day because we used tuning forks to tune, and you could easily differentiate between true and changed pitches.
Yeah most definitely, who th has time to find another bell that perfectly resonates to an E😅
They dont use those tunings. they are in normal tuning and the tape is sped up or slowed down. When you hear a song that is a quarter step down like megadeth killing is my business for example, the tape was slowed down. Nobody is tuning to those tunings. The whole album is tuned the same so they didn't tune a whole album to match one bell. the bell has been pitch shifted too
That didnt even the bell actually, but anvil
@@irishRocker1 why would they change the speed instead of just using a different tuning? Wouldn't they have to use a different tuning live anyways to match the recording? Not trying to argue, just curious.
@@sam8404 why does live have to match the recording? it's much easier to adjust the speed of the tape than retuning and rerecording parts. You can easily sit in the booth and adjust the tape speed and listen to it and compare it to the original.
Whoaaa that crazy! Love learning about “strange” things like this is songs. Great vid as usual! 🤘
444hz first 2 albums, also on Justice, except To Live is To Die. Learned this in Jr high learning everything by ear.
I can’t tell you how many songs I’ve learned that I had to tune slightly down or up to match the recording. Elliott Smiths Kiwi Mad Dog 20/20 is one of them.
The whole album was mastered slightly fast in order to make it sound more aggressive, & tighter.
File under: “things the engineer told us decades ago”
The whole thing was also mastered with Puppets while riding the lightning :P
That was puppets.
I was just commenting on the tabs for that song being wrong. Back in the 80s and 90s it never sounded good when I would try to play along with it. Now I know why.
They used to speed up tapes for a tighter sound usually the sharper the song the lighter it feels
Unreal! it amazes me when a tune, from way back, that many of us here set out to conquer in our childhood rooms with guitar & amplification (usually on a school night) can still be unlocked, some 30+ years later, by some Dude (Mike) who we’ve never met, has continued to sit alone & for real conquer it. amazing. thanks for making me feel better about things some 30+ years later, Mike. you’re one hell of a disciple.
This comment hits harder then it should...really does...mid life crisis and all.
I KNEW IT!!! for years I kept telling my friends this song was out of tune and no one believed me
"Every girls crazy about a sharp tuned band" 🎶 🎵
whenever i play pantera stuff i listen the tuning of the open e to whatever it is in that song and then tune by ear from that string. always matches perfectly
I used to play along with all of Metallica's cassettes in the 80s and definitely noticed this when the end of "'Ride the Lightning" gave way to the beginning of "For Whom the Bell Tolls". I always wondered why it sounded sharp compared to the rest of the album. Now I know thanks to you. Ancient mystery solved.
Oh man, after so many years trying to jam along with the album version and always sounding off, FINALLY you shed light to the mystery!
Lol. Tune it to the song. Lol. Never had a problem
I learned this many years ago and I used to tune my guitar up so I could play along with the CD. I never knew why but now I understand why they tuned up for this song.
Flemming Rasmussen: "we actually tracked the recordings with the tape slowed down, and the instruments tuned down, so that WHEN WE SPED THE TAPE BACK UP, everything sounded tighter and faster". This is why all the tunings are off, so no, Hetfield isn't actually down picking that fast on any of their albums, and the sharp tuning on the records has NOTHING to do with tuning their instruments up to match a sample.
He’s not? Hmmm…he actually playes the songs faster live and downpicks them 😂
Wait, you just noticed this now? Back in the 80s, it used to drive me crazy trying to learn songs from different bands/albums with a floating floyd rose. Maybe I just have very good relative pitch (def dont have perfect pitch). One of the reasons I always have a pitch shifter block in all of my QC presets, quick dial in for whatever I'm playing along with or learning.
I just got used to tuning my guitar to the music I was playing. shit was all over the place in the 90's
The Bell Tolls for those who are out of tune. We finally found out for Whom after 40 years.
Always funny thinking “man this metallica stuff sounds really good I wonder why it’s almost as if every single line/song/riff has a funny/intricate backstory behind it, a solid thought process.
Good video as always man
I agree with your second theory. They tuned to the bell. But this is far from the only song that's not in concert tuning. "Strawberry Fields Forever" is in A half sharp because it's a splice of two different takes played in different keys and tempos. Several Oasis songs are about 10 cents sharp due to them speeding up the tape after recording.
metallica always tunes sharp in studio so they don't beat their strings flat durring recording the song. knew this years ago. i also grew up playing along to casettes and even on casette unless you play the casette so many times the tape is worn out on it , it'll still always be sharp on the recording.
When i play Ride the lighting along with the recordings i tune at A 444 instead of A 440. It sounds pretty good that way.
Yeah. I heard somewhere that they experimented with different tuning frequencies. The MOP album is apparently at 435hz, which is interesting, because to my ears, it sounds slightly flat.
When I learned this song, oh so many bells ago, I would tune my guitar up to match. This was always a tough one to know why. And you just answered it. Thanks. On a side not, tabbing it out for band mates and then they go 'but it doesn't sound right when I play along with it.' I told ya, tune up. ugh!
There's an interview somewhere with Flemming Rasmussen where he confirmed that the track was sped up and that's why the pitch is off. I can't find the original interview. But it's out there somewhere if anyone can find it.
First time I encountered this was playing alongside Mayhem 10 years ago. The entirety of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is tuned to 430hz making everything darker.
Since they openly mentioned the clean stuff is pitched shifted up on everything to make it brighter and stand out, and i always strobe tuned myself before playing along i realized early on it was out. Im 46 i had cds and tapes i feel u.
nice frank sticker bro. underrated movie...
Another great video, man. Keep up the great work!
I never knew that lol, its amazing how everyone notices little things in songs that gives them more appreciation
This is very common in records from back in the day. I don't think it's only this track. Other albums I can think of are Megadeth's Peace Sells, Dokken's Back for the Attack, Celtic Frost's Dethroned Emperor, and even Falco's Einzelhaft. The original vinyl edition of the last mentioned is notably sped up relative to later CD editions. I assume this is an occasional glitch of the manufacturing process.
lol peace cells
@@icecreamget piece cells but whose by-ing
Might be sped up a bit to fit in on the album. Very limited recording time on vinyl, and if you try reducing the width of the grooves, it degrades the sound quality.
Hella yea MUH-FUH@IN FALCO AND SH!T!...LOL
@@icecreamget Haha ty mate. Fixed.
Funny, when I was a kid in the 80's I got my first guitar - a Peavy Mystic. I didn't have a tuner of any sort, so I always tuned my guitar to the E in Eye of the Beholder, or any Metallica song really. They were my tuner when I was 15 lol
Dude!! This is why I love your channel!!
34 years... that's how long I've wondered why tf it sounded off when I played along with the tape.
Thanks for clearing this up!
Ruberets ain't got $#!t on you.
Only been playing for 30 years and just worked this out this week!!!!!! Same as master of puppets , I get it all queued up ready and then bang , not in e standard either me thinks , cheers Mike for bringing this up!!!!
It’s funny because I play with a younger guitarist that’s phenomenal but he learned a lot of what he knows from tab and other sources and he’s sometimes amazed that when I pick out something that’s not working and go to the record and listen I can fix it. That’s because I learned to play completely by ear by listening to records. It’s a needed skill.
I always assumed it was because they felt like the song sounded a bit slow after they recorded it, so they sped the recording up a tiny bit to match the tempo they wanted. The same thing happened with Jump In The Fire. Great vid. I never knew about the tone of the bell.
Oh yeah, I thought this was about the funky pitch on that album.
I've ran into this problem with a bunch of older recordings and also with Pantera and Machine Head before I knew better.
I've learnt to recognize this better over the years.
we had a KORG analog tuner back in the day
and if the battery was low it would be a little out,
but as long as we all used the same tuner, we were all good...
Dude 😂 You won’t believe it but I was at my guitar shop Wednesday and was talking to the guy there, and I was telling him the exact same thing. That is so weird. Thanks very much for this. Love your content.
I noticed this a year ago when teaching this song to a bass student. I kept thinking one of us is out of tune and checking the tuning before I realized the recording is sharp.
I didn't have a tuner for years so I always tuned by ear to match whatever I was playing with.
Yup, I had this exact problem when I did my cover of this song. Tuning up solved the issue although it was real tricky to find where my guitar needed to sit for it.
According to Andriy Vasylenko, Flemming Rasmussen (Metallica's mixer) sped up a lot of the tracks on RTL to make it sound more thrash, making it slightly higher pitched.
A quick way to fix this (that I do) is by palm muting further into the string to make the palm mutes slightly higher pitched and also fretted/bent the notes a bit further
Didn't finish the video yet, so he might've brought this up, but here you go anyway.
Yeah I've seen that video too! But how are u gonna get that E5 sharper though? Just seems way easier to try to match the tuning
@@ReZhorw I usually do it on Ride The Lightning, I don't really play For Whom The Bell Tolls tbh. Seriously though, when you dig in those palm mutes, it really gets you that sound I love.
Even fight fire with fire?
The other thing to note, back in the analog days, most players would tune to a piano on site, then tune to eachother. All of these things led to less than tuner perfect tunings. Several AC/DC tracks from the Bon Scott era have minor tuning issues….
When I was learning this song and others, I always just tuned to the album it self. I was so frustrated of being out of tune while playing along. So I said screw it and tuned to the song itself. I've done this for many years now.
oh yeah, classic varispeed shenanigans, this was a thing that was way too common when analog recording was the standard, it happens on the entirety of ride the lightning, some songs from kill em all (way more subtly) and a more modern example in metal that i can think of is slipknot's self titled, in rtl and slipknot's debut, they did it because both the mixing engineers and the producers thought it made the music sound more "energetic" and "tighter", hell i think there even was a janet jackson record that suffered from being sped up, thats how common it was, it makes the recordings sound more unique though, thats for sure, because honestly its kind of a weird feeling to listen to the guitar hero stems for ride the lightning or the rough mixes for slipknot's self titled because i'm so used to hearing the studio versions of these songs tuned sharp from 440 and hearing them at regular pitch just feels odd, i much prefer playing these songs on guitar in standard pitch though lol
If a song Im trying to learn is slightly off pitch from standard tuning (or 440) I load the song into Audacity and fix the pitch. Works for me. A lot of AC/DC stuff is just under standard pitch.
I always tuned by ear and rarely used any guitar tuners so I guess I was always slightly sharp too because I never noticed. You should try playing along with a live performance and see if it's any different.
Never mind the Bell, the part that's always bugged me with FWTBT is Kirks riff from 1:17. I SWEAR it is NOT in time throughout and I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it. For years this has annoyed me!
Kirks riff. Are you referring to the lead in the intro.. Which is played by Cliff Burton on Bass?
All of your playing sounds the same to me, and it sounds great. But I’m glad you figured this out for yourself.
Mike, it’s just amazing the time and effort you put into this and shared it us. Highly admirable! 👍
When I was 15 (40 now 😞) I just tuned my low E string to the sustained E chord in the song paused the tape used harmonic tuning for the rest and bam sounded just like it
I already guessed this before I clicked ha
I have a copy pitch shifted to a standard version to play along with
I used to always look up “For Whom the Bell Tolls in E standard” to play along. Every now and then I would actually tune up a bit lol.
I always jam to old live stuff cuz most of that is in standard
@@daveelson213 oh yea! Smart thinking!
Set tuner to 455 hz sound perfect
A lot of orchestras where Flemming was from tuned to A445, that's why the albums done with him are mostly sharp unless downtuned.
kirk hammett said something about metallica tuning to C or C# in an interview I read in a random magazine quite a few years back. this would be consistent with tape speed trickery, which i hear all over justice for all. basically, you can speed the music up 2 to 3 twelve-tone pitches, and re-pitch vocals 1 to 2 twelve tone pitches, and sound mostly formant normal. so C# tuning would become E standard by shifting up 3 pitches.
I knew it was sharp but didn't know about the anvil part of the story. Cool!
For Whom the Bell Tolls is probably the most noticeable, but there are a few more songs on Ride the Lighting that are a bit sharp. It had bothered me forever, and there wasn't anything I could do about it from a practicing standpoint (easily anyway) until I found the "AnyTune" program, where you can easily adjust pitch, speed, etc.
i figured that out years ago when i was a newbie at metal a friend recommended metallica learning this by ear (the only option back then) I noticed its sharp a bit so whenever I jam to this I'll tune my guitar sharp to match the pitch
3:44
Will you record the gig? I'm curious to know how the bell sound turns out too.
I saw a video on here claiming that Master of Puppets was recorded down tuned and at a slower pitch and then they sped the tape up to bring it up, and I understand it was to get the definition and clarity. Most older recordings are never perfectly tuned the bands that made it to the studio back then were usually tuning to whatever their guitar player felt most comfortable, Pantera supposedly came up with their quarterish flat tuning because everyone else was in standard or Eb but I think it’s just where the amps Dime was using had the most bite ?
I had some skeptical person the other day question me about Lars hitting the anvil with a hammer... I thought it was relatively common knowledge amongst fans of the music but maybe not. What interests me more is what that anvil strike sounded like in real time, because it surely was manipulated a lot to sound like a bell on in the mastering and mixing.
There was a reason we used to say when learning songs in the 80's, hell even 90's "It's in E or around that, tune to the first song and you'll be good"..if I recall Pantera had some of this shit as well. ha!
Yeah, the track is sped up a bit. I don't remember by how much, but it's enough to bring that E up to _about_ an F. It's not just For Whom The Bell Tolls, Creeping Death is tuned way sharp too.
LOL, there's a lot of albums where this happens. You just re-tune your guitar to the track, although indeed these days with modern recording software it's usually easier to tune the track to your guitar! I had this very same issue with For Whom the Bell Tolls a year or so ago, when I made some special embellished versions of the track for a radio show - jamming along with Cliff was rather fun! :)
From what I remember, I found the deviation to be at 53 cents sharp with the version I had, which was from CD.
In the days of analogue tape recording there could be differences in the speed of the tape machine recording the session and that of what was used for the mix down. Sometimes even if it was *the same machine* - different days could yield slightly different results with analogue stuff. Although 50 off cents out does seem beyond the scope of accidental errors - this gear was made very well. However, the speed error could accumulate throughout the processing chain, such as when the mixes were transferred to the master tape.
Sometimes, the mix engineer even deliberately altered the speed of playback to give a more preferred "feel". This happened a lot in RNB, probably not as much in metal, though undoubtedly it did happen.
However, your theory about them tuning their instruments to the bell is an interesting one. Although one would think they would have probably dubbed the bell on afterwards, and at that point they could have vari-speeded the multitrack when laying down the bell onto it.
The first three albums are slightly sharp by varying degrees (~444), but Black album is definitely 440 and I believe Justice too but it has been awhile since I played along on that one.
And I thought my ears were off. I noticed the same thing when trying to play along with the song. My guitar was in tune. I am like,”What the heck??” Thanks for the explanation!!
In the days of tape recording, “vari-speed” was often employed (especially for radio singles) to make a song sound more exciting when it was sped up, plus it shortened the duration of the song.
I ran into this problem in high school when I was learning all their songs. I put a capo on the first fret.
funny how I decided to learn the song yesterday and today this pops up in my recommendation.
The Peterson Stroboclip HD is an awesome clip on tuner that allows you to change the hz to anywhere between 390-490hz. Makes it a lot easier to get tuned up
Liam G is correct all the songs on ride the lighting in tuned down 1/2 step to flat.
Don’t remember where when or why I heard this but I’ve known for a little while that it is sharp, and swear I heard the story was they recorded most of it and had some sort of power surge in a storm which messed the tape up a little… not sure that’s how that works but it would be funny if ride the lightning rode the lightning
Same. It was a recent article too if i believe. (At least the one that I read). It said something along the lines of the studio having shitty electrical wiring that messed with the tapes. It was like this on kill em all and RTL if im not mistaken.
They probably didn't like the tempo and speed the tape up. Not because of the bell.
I have to give accolades to my brother here.
I've played with, way too many guitarists...including my brother, and he always sounded, strangely more "in tune" than other guitarists. I also noticed he was one, if not the only, guitarist who didn't use a tuner.
Now, I usually wouldn't notice unless there was a back to back rehearsal, or playing with him and another guitarist at the same time. And usually what he'd do is have the other guitarist not use the tuner, and instead tune to him. He would use a reference note, but after that he'd tune by ear. He mentioned something about imperfect tuning one time, but I really forget his logic. But I do remember him saying 'why do you think piano tuners get paid so much'...
hoooly shit dudes, the kirk hammet interview on the gibson icons series is so good. just 80 minutes of kirk with no interruptions.
I think at least For whom the bell tolls, possibly the entire album is a little sharp. Which can be really confusing, because these are the first songs you'd learn as a kid. And you'd wonder why my guitar sounds like crap along to Ride the Lightning but Black Album works just fine.
The entire ride the lightning and master of puppets is like this I think. I've always gotta look up pitch corrected versions when jamming them haha
I just started learning this song today and then you make this
From what I have heard, the higher pitch is a result of the faulty power grid of the studio they were recording. The frequency of the powergrid wasn't always at 60 Hz, but fluctuating a little higher. This caused the master tapes to fluctuate at different speeds. That's why not only all songs on the album are slightly pitched up, but also by different amounts.
Can't say if this is true though, just something I've heard.
15 years of questions. Finally come to an end
Adman Neely just did a video about this. He was talking about the practice in general. The practice of recording a song and then speeding it up slightly to give it more energy. But he mentioned master of puppets. I thought metallica were being cheap by speeding up their songs, but it turns out, it's an industry standard, even in pop songs where the instruments are electronic
No he mentioned this song
Sorry to bust the bubble here, Mike, but I’ve known about this for years. They tuned up that little bit to match the pitch of the bell sample. You should’ve just asked me…🤣
Keep on rockin’, dude! Another great video 🤘🏻😁
Nope. It's a thing that happened in mastering back in the analog days. Sped up slightly in mastering
I’ve heard/read that they set their tuners to a different hertz for lightning and I think puppets as well. That’s what makes the album slightly sharp.
There's variances in motor speeds in analog equipment. I use to take my cassette deck apart and adjust the motor (if it was adjustable) and tune my cassette deck with an cassette that I knew was bang on 440hz/A. Using different equipment between record and mixdown is possible. Other bands would tune down around a quarter step to be in tune with "the frequency the universe resonates at" LOL. Maybe some bands tuned to each other on the fly in the studio. Maybe the studio's tuner was out of calibration on some albums. Lots of possibilities.... it is kind of funny you didn't realize "Bells Toll" was sharp compared to other stuff LOL. It used to piss me off, so I detuned one cassette deck so "Bells" was in 440hz tuning and dubbed it recording on my other other deck...then I had a recording to jam to without retuning my guitar. It slowed it down though but whatever.
Imho, I used to hate it, but then I thought well maybe the up tuning gives RTL album its flair? Literally few people do it and sounds old school where pitches werent' always perfect. I also have a Whammy DT pedal and I use the software version in bias fx to play along to the song.