Why can't anyone but critics hear out-of-tune instruments?

[ShineyMcShineShine]

Every once in a while I see a review, either of the professional or Amazon variety, claiming that some aspect of a recording is out of tune. As a non-musician, I find it hard to understand how such a basic error could have escaped the notice of the musicians -- not to mention everyone else involved in the process of recording and producing a record. Is this possible and if so how does it happen?

[Gurn Blanston]

I'm pretty sure it is a way to demonstrate what finely tuned ears they have, thus justifying passing a judgment affecting someone's whole career!  Of course, there are times when there really ARE little defects here and there, but whether that justifies condemning an entire performance is up to you as the reader to decide. Personally, I really don't care about minor 'imperfections' if the entire work is solidly performed from a musical perspective. If the piece is clearly above the capability of the performer(s), then being a bit out of tune here and there is the least of their problems, IMO.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'm pretty sure it is a way to demonstrate what finely tuned ears they have, thus justifying passing a judgment affecting someone's whole career!

I don't see why that should be the case at all. If a performer is out of tune, then a performer is out of tune. It is a matter of degree, and some ears are more sensitive to intonation problems than others. But there are egregiously out of tune performances that I'm sure many of us can hear or learn to hear. Personally, I don't have a sensitive enough ear that I could embark on a career as a piano tuner, but I sat through a concert performance of Tristan und Isolde once where the tenor barely approximated the notes most of the time.

[mc ukrneal]

Every once in a while I see a review, either of the professional or Amazon variety, claiming that some aspect of a recording is out of tune. As a non-musician, I find it hard to understand how such a basic error could have escaped the notice of the musicians -- not to mention everyone else involved in the process of recording and producing a record. Is this possible and if so how does it happen?

It's a pretty basic question and yet it happens all the time. I have pretty sensitive ears when it comes to pitch (there was a website you could test it out on at one point) and it drives me crazy when people or instruments are out of tune. I think some people just don't hear it, while others are willing to sacrifice that if some other aspect of the performance was attained. Personally, I find it distracting. it's horrible for my singing too -   can hear when I am out of tune! But it doesn't seem to bother others at all...

[prémont]

I suppose you are referring to equal tuning (temperature).
By its nature it is a bit out-of-tune all the time, and this is how I hear it.
So "out-of-tune" is a very relative term.
All tuning systems other than pure pythagorean temperature have out-of-tune components.

[Elgarian]

it happens all the time.

I used to be much troubled when I started playing guitar at the age of about 17, because it seemed impossible for me to tune the instrument perfectly, and I thought there must be something wrong with my ears. I was very grateful to a more experienced guitartist than I, some years later, who explained to me that actually there was something right with my ears, because I was responding to the impossibility of tuning a guitar perfectly, and the fact that all that one can ever achieve is compromise. In hindsight it seems obvious, given the nature of fretting, the varying tension in the strings under pressure from the fingers, and the attempts of luthiers to solve intonation issues by shaping saddles, and experimenting with a zero fret instead of the nut. But for years I didn't realise it.

Anyway the point is that, at least as far as fretted instruments are concerned, there will always be some out-of-tuneness, and our sensitivity to it is surely a relative thing, and we all have different tolerances - including critics!

[Cato]

Consider that many successful rock 'n' roll singers are often out of tune, e.g. the Beatles.

It didn't seem to matter to the girls screaming passionately in the audience!

[Brian]

Can someone please post the anecdote about the young upstart conductor trying to impress the NY Philharmonic, or some similarly august orchestra, by "hearing" an instrument playing out of tune??

Consider that many successful rock 'n' roll singers are often out of tune, e.g. the Beatles.

The Rolling Stones were famously sloppy live, but doesn't stop me from loving their live material!

[Sergeant Rock]

Can someone please post the anecdote about the young upstart conductor trying to impress the NY Philharmonic, or some similarly august orchestra, by "hearing" an instrument playing out of tune??

Not quite what you are looking for but there's the anecdote concerning Previn rehearsing the LSO for the first time.  The oboe played A flat instead of A, and the whole orchestra, in on the joke, tuned to that note.  Previn raised his baton, and just before giving the downbeat said, "Everybody transpose a half-step up" cracking up the players and earning their respect.

Sarge

[relm1]

Not quite what you are looking for but there's the anecdote concerning Previn rehearsing the LSO for the first time.  The oboe played A flat instead of A, and the whole orchestra, in on the joke, tuned to that note.  Previn raised his baton, and just before giving the downbeat said, "Everybody transpose a half-step up" cracking up the players and earning their respect.

Sarge

That was a very funny story.  I could just imagine the LSO thinking they've cornered that poor bloke.  I love fly on the wall stories like this.  I heard late in Leopold Stokowski's life (he was probably in his mid 90s) and a bit crazy, he was conducting the LSO on a premiere from an obscure composer.  The famous and brilliant conductor was off by a bar the whole time.  The orchestra followed the concert master instead of the conductor and they all ended correctly with Stokowski having one more bar to conduct.  He blamed the orchestra for missing the count.  I thought that was funny. 

Back to the original post, sometimes the flawed performance is the most musical.  The editors and conductor make a decision to take the less precise edit if it has more gusto or if all the other takes have some other slight flaw.  It's a bit of a balance.  I'm certain they hear the flaw, it is just very expensive to produce a recording and months (sometimes years) might elapse from when the recording was made and when the editing took place.  If the passage is difficult, each take might fix an issue and introduce a new issue.  So the hope is that somewhere in the mass of recorded material they have everything they need.   Here is a story that happened to me.  I posted a recording in the composing thread of an orchestral piece of mine.  The fourteen minute piece resulted in over 50 separate takes with a professional orchestra.  In one of the big fortissimo climactic moments, the horns absolutely nailed it but the trumpets missed the rhythm.  We did the take again, but one of the horns now cracked a note.  We did the take again, the trumpets sounded great but now horns were having embouchure problems so making more and more mistakes.  The longer I took on that passage, the worse it went.  In the end, I take a slice from here and a slice from there and none of them are just right, all suffer slightly but the general intent was achieved.  If I had twice the budget, we would have moved to other passages and returned if time allowed but there is ever enough time and budget to do this for all issues and as demonstrated, when something is fixed, something else starts to break so it's a judgement and balance of musicality, quality, accuracy, and that magic spark of electricity.

[Monsieur Croche]

Because critics are the only ones writing about it; that does not mean other listeners, whether they are not trained or are fully trained in music and solfege, do not notice badly out of tune bits, or slightly to generally wonky intonation.

Pianos and pedal harps, at their best, are compatibly out-of-tune. All tunings are but a conceit, but of course once the conceit is accepted, we'd all prefer that conceit being in tune as per its own parameters.

Past that, I agree with Burn, i.e. some people have such a massive self-conceit about how well and accurately they hear that they find every opportunity to make that known.

With that type, it seems the facts that:

...many others hear just as well

...the hiccup of one little bit of sloppy intonation in a performance should really not be enough to destroy the enjoyment of a performance of a piece

...the above things mentioned are not major events worthy of an apart big time-out involving a high-profile personal display which revolves around how acute and accurate their hearing is, how sssensitive they are, and how upset they become compared to everyone else...

seems to completely elude them.


Best regards.

[Karl Henning]

Because critics are the only ones writing about it; that does not mean other listeners, whether they are not trained or are fully trained in music and solfege, do not notice badly out of tune bits, or slightly to generally wonky intonation.

Not coincidentally, I had nearly posted:

Why can't anyone but critics hear out-of-tune instruments? Perhaps because, by pointing such a thing out, one becomes de facto a critic?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Not coincidentally, I had nearly posted:

Why can't anyone but critics hear out-of-tune instruments? Perhaps because, by pointing such a thing out, one becomes de facto a critic?

Mon ami, we are all critics here.

[Karl Henning]

Mais, oui, bien sûr.

[Monsieur Croche]

Mon ami, we are all critics here.

Hell, if you've ever had a pet and played music, recorded or live, the pets are critics, too.
Yeah, Everyone is a critic.

When it comes to those 'hypersensitive' who have absolute pitch, well: Absolute pitch is also relative.

With a sort of A-something not being the same from place to place throughout Europe, at least through the classical era, can you imagine the hissy-fits that Bach and Mozart could have thrown when they arrived in some town to find the organ or keyboard they were to perform upon was not quite the same number of VPS that their preciously accurate ears were used to? LOL. Everybody adjusts, even those with "perfect pitch."

Out of tune is a real thing, can upset, even subtly, the amplitude of the resonance of any harmony. It is also relatively rare when it comes to really high-level performance groups.

If you really get that upset about the slight intonation problems that happen from time to time in truly professional level recordings or performances, you might just want to give up on music altogether, or only read scores. You could instead substitute naming whatever frequencies are about you, like name the frequency of the squeaky hinge on that door,
"That's an F-sharp two, but it is about three cents sharp"
and maybe you could then be happily satisfied with your ultra-fine hearing.

Otherwise, this is suuuch a less than first-world problem.

[Monsieur Croche]

Mon ami, we are all critics here.

If you live with a pet and play an instrument at home, you'll very quickly find out that pets are as much critics as are music fora members 

[Pat B]

...the hiccup of one little bit of sloppy intonation in a performance should really not be enough to destroy the enjoyment of a performance of a piece

I think it depends very much on which bit of the piece it is, and how sloppy it is. I also think that some performers have an ability to make mistakes sound okay -- and others don't.