Queen I Box Set Announced - Pre-Release Discussion Only

which brings the whole discussion nicely full circle. Pitch-shifting (rightly or wrongly) almost always sounds unnatural. in some cases that's the whole point - in others it's as ThomasQuinn says "to match a desired key".
Criticizing the use of pitch-shifting on "new versions" of unfinished recordings (Mother Love and Real Love) would only be a valid argument if this was a technique that the artist never deployed in their own lifetime. However, in both Freddie Mercury's and John Lennon's cases, two their respective bands' had huge hits Strawberry Fields Forever and Another One Bites The Dust deploying the effect to great success - and (largely) both vocals sound unnatural.

...and of course "In The Lap Of The Gods", where it is blatantly obvious. Which was the whole point: a stylistic choice, even if it's not one that's to everyone's taste. However, contrary to ITLOTG *we* have a choice here - to play the original version or the new version of Queen's debut album. Just like Bowie-fans now have a choice of two radically different versions of his personal Hot Space album, Never Let Me Down. Another artistic choice the artist never made - but widely seen as a serious improvement. And if you don't enjoy it, play the original, last I've heard they're not sending Greg Brooks house-to-house to confiscate old copies.

Freddie's pitch was better in 1982 than it was in 1973, I don't think Hot Space would "need" much pitch correction at all.

I don’t wanna keep dragging this thread back to Thin Lizzy, but their new 1976 box set arrived with me yesterday and it just goes to show how overpriced this Queen one is.

In the Lizzy box you get two studio albums, both in original and newly remixed forms, two discs of unreleased studio outtakes and the corresponding BBC sessions, a previously unreleased live concert from the era, and a Blu-ray with Atmos, 5.1 and stereo mixes, plus a nice book. All for £70.

That’s less than half the price of Queen I.

This thread  dragging by autotune

I get that, and I'm not saying I disagree that it's a way better deal and package than what we're getting from Queen I

BUT

It's Queen. Queen is so fucking beloved all over the world that this shit is pretty much guaranteed to ATLEAST break even, let alone profit (which it totally will.) They know they can put out a premium price, because they're big enough for these things to not be a risk. Thin Lizzy doesn't have the almost religious-like following that Queen does, so they wouldn't be ABLE to half ass something like this.

Like let's be real. Most average people MAYBE know The Boys Are Back In Town and probably don't even know the name of the band behind it. Whereas with Queen, I could probably pick some random person off the street and they'd be able to list atleast like 3-5 songs they know Queen by. 

The demand is higher, so naturally, they'd price it higher. High demand also means less risk, means no need to go above and beyond. The inclusion of another CD or a whole live show wouldn't really affect the decision to purchase for that many people.

just all of the other corrections possible: song-writing, arrangements, playing, fake instruments and the general (long-gone use-by date for rock bands doing dance/soul/funkdisco music)

Yeah, I’m willing to bet Joe Public would struggle to name even one song off Queen’s debut album.

Also “Queen are more famous so it’s understandable that they might fleece us” really isn’t an argument that holds water with me.

People seem to conflate two different types of processing. None of the other recordings mentioned (ITLOTG, Mother Love, Real Love, AOBTD, Strawberry Fields Forever) uses selective digital pitch correction in the same sense as that used in the new mix of TNCD or in FIA. In all the other cases this was either analog or (in the ML case possibly, digital, pitch shifting, which inevitably occurs along with speed shifting and it was applied to the entire recording (or a portion of one of the takes in the case of SFF, see this video). The result of faster/slower playback is that you have the exact same sound that is heard at a higher/lower pitch or if you move it to the digital world, you have the exact same waveform that is read off faster/more slowly, which leads to the raising/lowering of perceived pitch. No information is lost, no information is altered.



Let's talk in digital terms now, since nowadays everything is digital. If you want to change speed and pitch permanently, you essentially need to compress (for the speed-up/higher pitch effect) or expand (for slower pace/lower pitch) the waveform along the time-scale. A new digital file is created. Assuming it's the same sampling rate, the samples are taken at the exact same points in time, but since the waveform is now either compressed or expanded, the amplitude levels stored at each sample are now slightly different. This means information is altered, but everything changes together and at high sampling rates that are used in professional audio engineering the resulting waveform is still a very close approximation to the original. However, if you were to repeat the process by going back and forth between two different speeds, you would of course degrade the recording and with each pass the digital representation would depart farther away from the original source. This is the same in analog recordings. You need to re-record the audio while playing it back at a different speed. If you do that repeatedly, you'll degrade the recording. The crucial point is that both digital degradation and pitch-shifting/speed-readjustments happen in a mathematically predictable way accross the board. As a result, if you slow down a digital copy of AOBTD you'll not only be able to hear it at the "right" speed and pitch, but your digital file will be a very close approximation of the original analog recording before the speed-up.



What happens when you modify the vocals selectively in a DAW, as in the case of FIA and TNCD, is a whole different matter. By pitch-shifting individual notes you substantially change the information contained in individual portions of the waveform. The amplitude levels at individual samples change and there are local changes in frequency. Once done you can't easily reverse the process. I mean you can shift the notes back, but the output will not be the same, because the first shift might have altered the extent of vibrato applied to a given note, and the original may not be recoverable by shifing the entire note back to its original pitch. These are obviously minute details, which individually would not probably change the entire experince of the track. However, if you do it this way along the entire track, you essentially lose them. E.g. one of the things that Fil from the Wings of Pegasus rightly points out in his video is that Fred occasionally sang slightly sharp (i.e. at a higher pitch than intended). It's not a mistake as such, it's part of a singer's individual voice quality and what made Fred sound like himself. This is also seen in the original TNCD vocal track - i.e. the overall track is flat (too low) by more or less the same amount, but locally some notes are less flat than others. Assuming Fil's interpretation, which I think is very convincing, Fred heard the track in his headphones at a lower pitch than it was actually recorded and sang accordingly. In those instances where he was slighly above the pitch he intended to sing, his notes are less flat than where he was spot on. As I said before, these are minute details, not noticeable alone without closer examination (and possibly graphic visualisation), but once you level everything by pitch correction, you lose some of the essence of the singer's voice.



Some of you may be familiar with the atrocity that has plagued YouTube for a couple of years now, which amounts to reworking a song from a major to a minor key or the other way around (if not listen e.g. to this, but don't sue me for damages). The technique used to achive this type of pitch shifting as applied in TNCD is essentially the same. Of course the result is more extreme, because here the instrument parts have to be modified to, but at the end of the day the difference is only a matter of scale.



Now, you don't have to accept criticism of QPL's creative decisions. You can say selective pitch correction is fine or like the new recordings despite it. These are esthetic choices on which we can disagree. However, selective pitch correction is objectively a technologically different process than speeding up or slowing down an analog or digital recording and it objectively produces different effects.

We have had around 22 pages about autotune/pitch control , surely we can try and move the conversation on a little bit by now. Saying that you have to expect to pay top price for Queen Box Sets because this is Queen seems a little bit arrogant to me. How about giving something back to the fan's who brought the original Queen album back in 1973 and all the fans that have supported them all these years. I wonder he comes up with the pricing structure for this Box Set ? Do Brian & Roger have a say in that matter ? I doubt it.

What happens when you modify the vocals selectively in a DAW, as in the case of FIA and TNCD, is a whole different matter. By pitch-shifting individual notes you substantially change the information contained in individual portions of the waveform. The amplitude levels at individual samples change and there are local changes in frequency. Once done you can't easily reverse the process. I mean you can shift the notes back, but the output will not be the same, because the first shift might have altered the extent of vibrato applied to a given note, and the original may not be recoverable by shifing the entire note back to its original pitch. These are obviously minute details, which individually would not probably change the entire experince of the track. However, if you do it this way along the entire track, you essentially lose them. E.g. one of the things that Fil from the Wings of Pegasus rightly points out in his video is that Fred occasionally sang slightly sharp (i.e. at a higher pitch than intended). It's not a mistake as such, it's part of a singer's individual voice quality and what made Fred sound like himself. This is also seen in the original TNCD vocal track - i.e. the overall track is flat (too low) by more or less the same amount, but locally some notes are less flat than others. Assuming Fil's interpretation, which I think is very convincing, Fred heard the track in his headphones at a lower pitch than it was actually recorded and sang accordingly. In those instances where he was slighly above the pitch he intended to sing, his notes are less flat than where he was spot on. As I said before, these are minute details, not noticeable alone without closer examination (and possibly graphic visualisation), but once you level everything by pitch correction, you lose some of the essence of the singer's voice.

THIS

For every 1 post about pitch correction, there's about 7 more that say "STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PITCH CORRECTION !!!! BLINDLY SUPPORT THE BAND !!!" and it's just as bad, no, worse.

Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with loving the band, their music, and this boxset. I personally do. I'm excited as fuck for this boxset. But there's also nothing wrong with critiquing a product that you're paying over 200 dollars for.

If my food was served and it had hair and fingernails in it, I wouldn't just chow down on that food because I didn't want to hurt the chef's feelings. 

I wasn't comparing the hair and fingernails directly to pitch correction, I was just using that to say something undesirable that I did not ask for is in this food. I don't want it there, and I have the right to not want it there. 

Freddie not being 100% perfectly on pitch is totally something I'd expect and accept from 1973 material, so the addition of the pitch correction is the undesirable element here.

Actually you make the analogy sound even more compelling, since we don't get to supervise the preparation of the box set either.