TING TINGS “WE STARTED NOTHING”

This year’s hot pop band for the festivals is The Ting Tings — which is just a girl and a bloke on drums (Jules de Martino and Katie White) — a bit like The White Stripes, but in reverse. Sort of.

This post is appropriate because the band has just played my home town (last night) to rave reviews and earlier this week they won The XFM Live Breakthrough Act at the 2008 Vodafone Music Awards at the Carling Academy in Brixton.

Anyway, the track listing for their début album, “We Started Nothing” on Columbia, 2008, is as follows — and I have added the keys.

01 – Great DJ  [D major];
02 – That’s Not My Name [E minor];
03 – Fruit Machine [D major];
04 – Traffic Light [B major];
05 – Shut Up And Let Me Go [E minor];
06 – Keep Your Head [E major];
07 – Be The One [E major];
08 – We Walk [Eb minor];
09 – Impacilla Carpisung [C major];
10 – We Started Nothing [E minor].

Re-arranging for keys, we get the following (which might be interesting as a playlist)…
04 – Traffic Light [B major];
09 – Impacilla Carpisung [C major];
01 – Great DJ [D major];
03 – Fruit Machine [D major];
08 – We Walk [Eb minor];
02 – That’s Not My Name [E minor];
05 – Shut Up And Let Me Go [E minor];
10 – We Started Nothing [E minor];
06 – Keep Your Head [E major];
07 – Be The One [E major].

Generally, The Ting Tings is St Etienne meets Brazilian electro-pop hedonists CSS (or even Brazilian baile-funk supremos Bonde Do Role). It’s indie dance pop. They were hyped big time by NME and feted by the music media for the big summer festivals, but at the end of the day, it’s just pop — it’s fun!  This is just music for the summer of 2008 – pity it was such a wash-out weatherwise).

“That’s Not my Name” got to No1 simply because it is a cross between Toni Basil’s “Micky” and The Knack’s “My Sharona”. Hooks abound, so Jump about, dance along or sing in the car when no-one is looking.

Catch this like the cold.

• More videos here: Ting Ting TV

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PITCH-SHIFTING

In music, keys are tied to pitches.

And although that might sound difficult, it’s not. Really.

Concert pitch is measured in Hertz or cycles per second, and since 1936, the note A above middle C is pegged at a frequency of 440Hz.

• There is even an international standard for this (ISO16:1975) — get it here.

You are not even supposed to care about this, you are not even supposed to know about this.  It is a standard, a benchmark, a LAW, taken as read — this is a given — except…

Sometimes a piece of recorded music is slowed down or speeded up, and A4 is no longer 440Hz, and in fact is between the tone and the next semitone — in no man’s land.

I bloody hate that.

For example, my wife noticed that on the Liberty X CD (Being Somebody, 2003, V2) the third track is out of standard pitch. It turned out to be almost exactly between F#m and Gm. A quarter tone! So should it be higher in pitch, the G minor — or lower and F# minor? Which was the original key when they recorded it? Well, the second track, “Jumpin” is G# minor — and so’s the fifth track, “Watcha Doin Tonight?”, so I figured it might be a good bet that it was G minor.

So what I do is rip my CDs to an MP3s (or download the MP3s; whatever), then change the pitch in Audacity (free software) using skill and judgement and a guitar correctly tuned to concert pitch, and then export to MP3 again.

You needed to get LAME so that Audacity would let you export to MP3 fromat, but the results were superb — an altered pitch, without altering the beats per minute!

Anyways, recently my corrections have been shockingly bad quality… and so I am gutted that I have to save as a huge WAV file and then use the free version of NCH’s “Switch” to make the MP3. It’s an extra step I could do without!

Back at the Liberty X track — the quarter tone up to Gm made the voices sound too high, so I dropped the track to F#m in Audacity, and it was spot on!

What the pluck is the good of doing that to a record — it means you cannot play a piano along with it, and you have to retune your guitar all the time.  This is why it is so difficult for people to learn music by ear! Aaargh!

Having a list of musical frequencies and wavelengths is a must, I canny find anything on the web, so I have nicked the following from an old text book.

The Definitive Frequencies List:

Note	Frequency (Hz)	Wavelength (mm)	voice
C0	16.35	21 000
C#0/ Db0	17.32	19 900
D0	18.35	18 700
D#0/ Eb0	19.45	17 700
E0	20.60	16 700
F0	21.83	15 800
F#0/ Gb0	23.12	14 900
G0	24.50	14 000
G#0/ Ab0	25.96	13 200
A1	27.50	12 500
A#1/ Bb1	29.14	11 800
B1	30.87	11 100
C1	32.70	10 500
C#1/ Db1	34.65	9 960
D1	36.71	9 400
D#1/ Eb1	38.89	8 870
E1	41.20	8 370
F1	43.65	7 900
F#1/ Gb1	46.25	7 460
G1	49.00	7 040	sub-bass, contrabass, or  basso profundo: lower than G1
G#1/ Ab1	51.91	6 650
A2	55.00	6 270
A#2/ Bb2	58.27	5 920
B2	61.74	5 590	Tenor: B2 – G4 Operatic Tenor: B2 – C5
C2	65.41	5 270	Bass: C2 – C4
C#2/ Db2	69.30	4 980
D2	73.42	4 700
D#2/ Eb2	77.78	4 440
E2	82.41	4 190	Operatic Bass – Basso: E2 – F4
F2	87.31	3 950	Operatic Baritone: F2 – G4 Baritone: F2 – F4
F#2/ Gb2	92.50	3 730
G2	98.00	3 520
G#2/ Ab2	103.83	3 320
A3	110.00	3 140	Mezzo- Soprano: A3 – F5
A#3/ Bb3	116.54	2 960
B3	123.47	2 790
C3	130.81	2 640
C#3/ Db3	138.59	2 490
D3	146.83	2 350
D#3/ Eb3	155.56	2 220
E3	164.81	2 090	Alto: E3 – E5
F3	174.61	1 980	Operatic Contralto: F3 – A5
F#3/ Gb3	185.00	1 860
G3	196.00	1 760	Operatic Mezzo- Soprano: G3 – B5
G#3/ Ab3	207.65	1 660
A4	220.00	1 570
A#4/ Bb4	233.08	1 480
B4	246.94	1 400
“Middle” C4	261.63	1 320	Bass: C2 – C4 Soprano C4- A5 Operatic Soprano: C4 – C6
C#4/ Db4	277.18	1 240
D4	293.66	1 170
D#4/ Eb4	311.13	1 110
E4	329.63	1 050
F4	349.23	988	Operatic Bass – Basso: E2 – F4 Baritone: F2 – F4
F#4/ Gb4	369.99	932
G4	392.00	880	Operatic Baritone: F2 – G4 Tenor: B2 – G4
G#4/ Ab4	415.30	831
A5	440.00	784	Operatic Contralto: F3 – A5 Soprano C4- A5
A#5/ Bb5	466.16	740
B5	493.88	699	Operatic Mezzo- Soprano: G3 – B5
C5	523.25	659	Operatic Tenor: B2 – C5
C#5/ Db5	554.37	622
D5	587.33	587
D#5/ Eb5	622.25	554
E5	659.26	523	Alto: E3 – E5
F5	698.46	494	Mezzo- Soprano: A3 – F5
F#5/ Gb5	739.99	466
G5	783.99	440
G#5/ Ab5	830.61	415
A6	880.00	392
A#6/ Bb6	932.33	370
B6	987.77	349
C6	1046.50	330	Operatic Soprano: C4 – C6
C#6/ Db6	1108.73	311	sopranino: higher than C#6
D6	1174.66	294
D#6/ Eb6	1244.51	277
E6	1318.51	262
F6	1396.91	247
F#6/ Gb6	1479.98	233
G6	1567.98	220
G#6/ Ab6	1661.22	208
A7	1760.00	196
A#7/ Bb7	1864.66	185
B7	1975.53	175
C7	2093.00	165
C#7/ Db7	2217.46	156
D7	2349.32	147
D#7/ Eb7	2489.02	139
E7	2637.02	131
F7	2793.83	123
F#7/ Gb7	2959.96	117
G7	3135.96	110
G#7/ Ab7	3322.44	104
A8	3520.00	98
A#8/ Bb8	3729.31	93
B8	3951.07	87
C8	4186.01	82
C#8/ Db8	4434.92	78
D8	4698.64	73
D#8/ Eb8	4978.03	69

Based on A₄ being 440Hz and The Speed of sound = 345 m/s (which, in the USA is 1130 ft/s or 770 mph)

It is my pet hate when producers depart from the standard pitch system.  They do it on TV when things are over-running, but there really is no need to mess it up when making a pop record — but they do, and it is sloppy work in my opinion.

ears Years ago I used to have a pitch control (speed adjustment knob) on my turntable, and I would make cassette tapes of the corrected music to keep my ears cleansed!

It took me AGES to buy a CD player because I would be unable to pitch correct recordings — until I got a CD player from Richer Sounds complete with a pitch slider control. Result!

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