eddie out of tune

nick_D01

Hey guys

came across this footage of a van halen concert and it sounds...awful believe it or not. something must have gone wrong with the backing track or the guitar that ed's playing but the two are clearly not in tune. how the heck this happens on a multi-million dollar arena tour is actually quite crazy ? .

guess none of us should start feelin bad when we miss our cue at the bands next gig at the local tavern 'n swizzle ?

deefstes

Gosh, that was painful. ?

MIKA-the-better-one

Sadly he was out of tune there, but no guitarist shoud ever feel its ok to sound like that, and I bet when he got down from that show he fired his tech on the spot.....
It happens to a few famous people..... But I dont understand perhaps Eddie is just stupid because he carrys on playing like he is in perfect tune...... I have never rated eddie very good anyway....
here is Flea doing what Eddie should have done in the first 10 seconds of the song

Or perhaps he could have just stopped the show and been straight with the crowd who payed so much money to see them

Or he could have been Rock n roll about it like Flea again.... It seems Flea's tech is RUBBISH

Norman86

sjoe... thats some tone deaf stuff! ???

Eddie must be going deaf...
and flea just REALLY loses it with his tech!! lol!
He probably has a new one every time he loses it!

IceCreamMan

Eddie is never out of tune , its the rest of the universe that is out of tune with Eddie ..

Now that is said lets not foget this is filmed with what i suspect is a very crappy phone camera an quiote frankly its a dog show and not representative of the actual performance

deefstes

IceCreamMan wrote: Eddie is never out of tune , its the rest of the universe that is out of tune with Eddie ..

Now that is said lets not foget this is filmed with what i suspect is a very crappy phone camera an quiote frankly its a dog show and not representative of the actual performance

It must be a pretty awesome "crappy phone camera" if it manages to shift the pitch of only the guitar but not the synths.

IceCreamMan

deefstes wrote:
IceCreamMan wrote: Eddie is never out of tune , its the rest of the universe that is out of tune with Eddie ..

Now that is said lets not foget this is filmed with what i suspect is a very crappy phone camera an quiote frankly its a dog show and not representative of the actual performance
It must be a pretty awesome "crappy phone camera" if it manages to shift the pitch of only the guitar but not the synths.

I think its imperative that you go to the actual youtube footage, one punters comments that he was at the GReensboro show and did not pick this up.

It seems that a number of ppl seem to think it was the loop synth out of whack ... or possibly a string break

but hey ,if its on the internet it must be true tht eddie was out of tune ....now lets think about that for a moment , how many times eddie played jump...a thousand times .... must be the guitar eh ....

Come on , think about it for a moment

btw , i am a huge eddie fan so cannot be eddie's fault ...simple really

Bob-Dubery

Well I can't believe that this was just a screw up. The guitar tech would be tuning to some kind of reliable reference device and Eddie's a good enough player to figure out what key he should be playing the guitar in.

So take your pick from

1) Eddie is totally out of it
2) Eddie is mad at something or somebody and playing out of tune to make a point
3) Somebody got clever with some piece of software that shifted the pitch of the guitar in the video soundtrack.
4) String broke and the floyd rose went out of tune (but plenty of time in that number to have your roadie bring you another guitar)

But back to the overarching point - even the best guys play bad notes occasionally and whilst we should all aim for an accurate rendition of whatever it is we're playing, it's not the end of the world if we fluff a note in a live performance.

Riaan-Combrink

Guys, I've just finished reading 'Red' - Sammy Hagar's autobiography. I'm not sure when this Greensboro show was, but reading first-hand accounts of the state EVH was in before, during and after shows on the last tour that line-up did is - simply, painful for someone who also asks 'WWEvHD'? Always will be one of my heroes, and a true icon - but he reportedly was in a very dark place with his disease at that stage. More likely than not he was just oblivious, irrespective of how many times he has played Jump.

EDIT: just googled a bit, and I see it was the 2007 tour (with Roth). The show appears to have been in Oct 07 and EVH went back into rehab in Mar 07, so maybe that was not the case here. I considered to delete the first part of my post, but kept it as I think we should guard against thinking our heroes don't stuff up. I initially only listened to the first excruciating minute, and didn't spot Roth (thus thinking it was the last Van Hagar tour). I still recommend 'Red' as compulsory reading as a cautionary tale about how the lifestyle can destroy the music - even more so in the case of Alex VH than EVH. To Alex's credit, he's pulled it back together and maintained that status for some years now.

More on point perhaps, I found this interesting article where some techs air their views:
So was it the sampling rate of the keyboard track? Eddie Van Halen’s guitar out of tune? Were their monitors or in-ears to blame? We let the pros duke it out, enlisting Chris Vrenna, keyboardist for Marilyn Manson and Gnarls Barkley’s drummer, Clayton Janes, a tech for Playback who’s handling backing tracks for Ozzy’s tour, and Lonnie Totman, Eddie Van Halen’s former guitar tech, currently on the road with Matchbox Twenty, to pick apart the train-wreck (Warning: the following discussion involves some seriously geeky gear talk). Read on and jump to your own conclusions.
Full article:
http://popwatch.ew.com/2007/10/29/van-halens-jump/

And a final PS: I found Roth's ridiculuous antics with the blow-up mic more painful than the guitar glitch!

singemonkey

As my own (seriously incompetent) guitar tech, my feeling for this follows two issues. The first is the necessity that "the show must go on," and the second is that half the time you can't the f&^* hear yourself.

The show must go on means that you don't just stop. Because most of the time the audience hasn't noticed. This isn't about you. It's about the fact that the audience will only feel bad about it if they see the error. Better for them that they don't know, in other words.

The second part is that you hear something off - this happened to me the other night as Jack so nicely shared with y'all - and you can't be quite sure whether it's happening or not (in this case of mine, I hit the right key and it sounded totally wrong from the tiny amount I could hear, and I lost confidence in the key, although it was right to start with) - so you have to go with it not knowing whether it sounds terrible or not. Just hoping.

Even at EVH's level, monitor earpieces can conk out. You can be uncertain but just keep going and hoping for the best.

IceCreamMan

Riaan C wrote: Guys, I've just finished reading 'Red' - Sammy Hagar's autobiography. I'm not sure when this Greensboro show was, but reading first-hand accounts of the state EVH was in before, during and after shows on the last tour that line-up did is - simply, painful for someone who also asks 'WWEvHD'? Always will be one of my heroes, and a true icon - but he reportedly was in a very dark place with his disease at that stage. More likely than not he was just oblivious, irrespective of how many times he has played Jump.

EDIT: just googled a bit, and I see it was the 2007 tour (with Roth). The show appears to have been in Oct 07 and EVH went back into rehab in Mar 07, so maybe that was not the case here. I considered to delete the first part of my post, but kept it as I think we should guard against thinking our heroes don't stuff up. I initially only listened to the first excruciating minute, and didn't spot Roth (thus thinking it was the last Van Hagar tour). I still recommend 'Red' as compulsory reading as a cautionary tale about how the lifestyle can destroy the music - even more so in the case of Alex VH than EVH. To Alex's credit, he's pulled it back together and maintained that status for some years now.

More on point perhaps, I found this interesting article where some techs air their views:
So was it the sampling rate of the keyboard track? Eddie Van Halen’s guitar out of tune? Were their monitors or in-ears to blame? We let the pros duke it out, enlisting Chris Vrenna, keyboardist for Marilyn Manson and Gnarls Barkley’s drummer, Clayton Janes, a tech for Playback who’s handling backing tracks for Ozzy’s tour, and Lonnie Totman, Eddie Van Halen’s former guitar tech, currently on the road with Matchbox Twenty, to pick apart the train-wreck (Warning: the following discussion involves some seriously geeky gear talk). Read on and jump to your own conclusions.
Full article:
http://popwatch.ew.com/2007/10/29/van-halens-jump/

And a final PS: I found Roth's ridiculuous antics with the blow-up mic more painful than the guitar glitch!

Eddie was clean during this tour it was a condition laid down by valerie in allowing wolfgang to tour