Why does live music sound out-of-tune?

[pantsaregood]

Every time I see a band live, the music sounds out of tune. Leads sound completely dissonant, and harmonies sound awful.

However, I usually make a few videos of bands while I'm seeing them. In these videos, everything sounds like it is properly tuned and intonated.

I'm just curious what's going on here - obviously there's some physical reason for it, just don't know what.

 

[erdiablo666]

Are you using earplugs? Your ears can do weird things to you when exposed to high volume music.

 

[filipe]

It can be that you are used to the studio version of the songs or the bands don't know how to setup their sound or tune the guitars.

 

[blckrnblckt]

It can be that you are used to the studio version of the songs or the bands don't know how to setup their sound or tune the guitars.

Why does it sound better in the video then?

 

[JustMac]

I was wondering this today, Iggy was playing some of the live Glastonbury stuff on BBC Radio. The quality of performance from most of the musicians was sub par at best. I guess a lot of it is down to laziness, and a music writer's psyche- ie, "I wrote this for god's sake, why would I ever have to practice at playing it?". What they end up with is a sloppy mess alot of the time.


What you seem to be describing though is really odd - it sounds fine live but out of tune on video? The only thing I can think of is the sheer volume of a live gig f*cking with recorded audio.

 

[ferret]

it sounds fine live but out of tune on video?.

Think he's saying the opposite. Sounds out of tune live to him, but then he watches the video later and its in tune.

 

[JPhoenix19]

That's fascinating.

I'd guess it's caused by acoustic anomalies, even though I can't think of any that directly effect pitch. Are you seeing these bands at the same venue, or do you notice this at different places. Where do you normally stand in relation to the stage/band?

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is if somehow the acoustics of the venue caused a kind of chorus effect that your ears detect, but isn't picked up whenever you record a video.

 

[Bodes]

Are you running forwards and backwards fast enough to cause a Doppler effect?

 

[Deadnightshade]

On the subject of weirdness, sometimes when I'm aboard a train, listening to music with earbuds, and the train starts, if the volume of the acceleration sound (that can last some seconds) marginally surpasses the volume of the music, I feel like the tuning of the whole song goes up or down something like a semitone. When the external noise starts to subside, I hear the original pitch again. I think I'm going mad.

 

[asilayamazing]

Yes, frequencies are affected by other sounds, but not only that, they seem to be affected by resonant or ambient sounds, and I am not a doctor on ears or what not. I do know some bands sound like **** live, and I either chalk it up to bad playability or bad acoustics, ie. (other sounds, ambient noise...) again I'm not a DR. Or PhD I just like music.

But we may be limited by the "recordability" of our devices that sounds better after recorded, as it's proven that as we grow older we lose frequency range in our ears...... Again I'm not A. DOCTrRRRRrrrr.... Idk