Song Track is off key flat

[Ron Vermillion]

When I first got the Hoster demo I hot footed down to Wal-Mart to get a CD+G so I could run the demo. The CD I bought included a track of the old country standard "If you've got the money, I've got the time".

As far as I can tell, all the other tracks that I chose to import to the hard disk work fine.

This track is about a third of a half step (how many cents is that) flat of standard pitch. If you set it to play one half step sharp it is too sharp. There is no way to use it other than re-tuning the guitar to the track, which I have done just for giggles to see if I could find the tuning. Using it that way is unacceptable.

So from the perspective of a new Hoster user, is it common to find tracks that are recorded off key relative to standard pitch or did I discover the only one.

I've deleted the track and am going to try to re import it; but, digital is digital and I don't see why it would work the second time around, but I'm going to try anyway.

The world is probably better off not hearing me sing that old song anyway. Any ideas?

Ron

[ddouglass]

Ron,
Don't you think you are expecting a little too much out of a $9.95 CD from Wal-Mart? The old adage "You get what you pay for" comes to mind here.
Beside, if you sang that old country song on key no one would recognize it.
Reloading isn't going to change it and I don't know of any pitch control program that could fix it with that fine of an adjustment.

[Ron Vermillion]

Ah The $ 9.95 story. My bumfuzzlement comes from trying to understand HOW a song that was recorded on key originally, or maybe it wasn't,could possibly be pressed onto a CD flat by just a bit.

There might have been a tired gerbil in the record player drive cage that day ! Who knows !

Ron

[ddouglass]

First thing you have to understand is all of the karaoke music is recreated by the producers of the CDs using their own musicians. This is not the original music from the artists with the vocals stripped.

[jahern]

There is the possibility that the recording was done at the pitch desired by the performers. Not all tuning is done to the standard 440 A. What would bug me is if the performance itself has intonation problems. I have a track that has some "bad notes" in it. Now that is weird. Didn't they pay somebody to listen to the recording?

[ddouglass]

What! You want Quality Control?

[George]

Kick it out the door is the philosophy.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't see so many tracks with the sweeping not even close to being in sync with the music. Made more than one over in KHP for that reason.

The one that amazes me is the notice on the screen that due to copy write the lyrics are not included, and all you get is the music, even though you paid for a CDG...pray tell why bother to include it on the disc?

[MikeP]

Originally Posted by Ron Vermillion

When I first got the Hoster demo I hot footed down to Wal-Mart to get a CD+G so I could run the demo. The CD I bought included a track of the old country standard "If you've got the money, I've got the time".

As far as I can tell, all the other tracks that I chose to import to the hard disk work fine.

This track is about a third of a half step (how many cents is that) flat of standard pitch. If you set it to play one half step sharp it is too sharp. There is no way to use it other than re-tuning the guitar to the track, which I have done just for giggles to see if I could find the tuning. Using it that way is unacceptable.

So from the perspective of a new Hoster user, is it common to find tracks that are recorded off key relative to standard pitch or did I discover the only one.

I've deleted the track and am going to try to re import it; but, digital is digital and I don't see why it would work the second time around, but I'm going to try anyway.

The world is probably better off not hearing me sing that old song anyway. Any ideas?

Ron

There are plenty of audio editing software programs that will vary pitch and time without one effecting the other. They are too numerous to mention, however I have recently become aware of one that is freeware (watch where you download from for spyware) called Audacity. I have never used this prog as I already have other progs/options that will fix this. It is apparently very popular - probably due to price as much as anything else.

Once you have adjusted the pitch &/or tempo you can use MTU's suite of fantastic karaoke programs to "recreate" it to your liking. Assuming you have created a new wav file at the correct pitch, you would then use KHPro to import the lyrics (if you need them), add your wav file and synchronise it to the lyrics prior to exporting to Hoster or Microstudio as a kma file.

There are also soundcard options like Creative Audigy Platinum that could fix it - I could go on

MikeP

[mindonstrike]

Play it in your cd player. If it's off, it's the CD. If it's not off then it's something else.

Sam

[Ron Vermillion]

Actually I'm quite OK with it being deleted forever. I just wondered how it would happen. I wouldn't burn a lot of time on correcting it. I was just curious and wondered if this happens a lot.

I know the background music isn't from the original recording; but, now I'm beginning to think that lots of it (at least the cheap stuff) is being recorded in pretty sub standard ways, forms, locations, etc.

From now on I'll buy the good brands of CD+Gs and not sweat it.

mindonstrike, just for giggles I'll try playing it in my CD player - good idea.

Ron

[Ron Vermillion]

It's off on the CD player too. All Star Karaoke tech support says they are investigating it. We'll see. Not really that big a deal unless I purchase an album some time just to get one or two special (to me) tracks and find them to be in the key of B# or Cb. LOL

Ron

[gotrich]

would a really good sound card have a tempo change? did I misunderstand that. I get singers that say this song is to fast..for ex. walking after midnight(patsy cline) some say every version I buy is to fast.

[George]

Originally Posted by gotrich

would a really good sound card have a tempo change? did I misunderstand that. I get singers that say this song is to fast..for ex. walking after midnight(patsy cline) some say every version I buy is to fast.

You could check that out easy enough. Play it on a Karaoke player, and compare it to the pc.

[mindonstrike]

Originally Posted by gotrich

would a really good sound card have a tempo change? did I misunderstand that. I get singers that say this song is to fast..for ex. walking after midnight(patsy cline) some say every version I buy is to fast.

CB's version should have been titled "Running after Midnight".
I've never had a complaint about the Sound Choice version.

Sam

[Ron Vermillion]

I can understand how a group of musicians playing a song for recording on a CD+G could pick the tempo up and play it at a tempo they are feeling at the time. It shouldn't happen, someone in this business should have a copy of the original song, and before ever getting to a recording session have the key, correct chord changes, any specific solo's etc and the tempo notated for the "band".

Maybe some guy is sitting in a little room with all his synth equipment and voice modifiers and doing this stuff all by himself, and on that day every piece of equipment he had was about a quarter of a semitone flat. Not likely. I'm just baffeled about how you could even do this. OK eveyone tune down to here ! TwanGGGGGGgggggg. Now that we are flat by about a quarter of a semitone, Ah One and a Two and a Three.

Ron

[bryant]

What's really weird is that I hace had several regular singers come up to me in the past several months and say, "Since you went to that program, some of your songs are a little different on the pitch." Is this even at all possible?

[George]

Originally Posted by George

You could check that out easy enough. Play it on a Karaoke player, and compare it to the pc.

Well???

[Eric Whitehouse]

I have often found tracks slightly flat or slightly sharp when using a guitar. My only way around this has been to slap it through my Yamaha SPX1000 or SPX900 and adjust the track using the fine 100 cent tuner to the correct pitch. I then burn it to a wav file and re write it using KHP. It's a pity Keywrite couldn't have a fine pitch it would come in very useful.control

[George]

Originally Posted by bryant

What's really weird is that I hace had several regular singers come up to me in the past several months and say, "Since you went to that program, some of your songs are a little different on the pitch." Is this even at all possible?

I got curious about this one and imported a cd audio file into Hoster.

Hoster will import and convert an audio file to KMA and id it as a CDCDG.

I was then able to play it as a CDCDG file and compare it playing from the disc using Windows Media Player, switching back and forth easily.

No difference in the pitch after importing into Hoster.

[mindonstrike]

I have not found any pitch changes but I did notice after switching to Hoster the music was a little flat. Making some adjustments to the EQ in the soundcard software fixed that.

Sam