Jump to content

Van Halen Train Wreck Video


Anderton

Recommended Posts

  • Members

Esteemed EQ editor Matt Harper turned me on to this. It shows what happens when a 44.1kHz backing track gets played back at 48kHz, and the guitarist...well, you'll hear what happens.

 

Wonder who got fired after this one...or maybe it's the launch of the new, Arnold Shoenberg edition of Van Halen!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Wow! That really hurts.

 

 

Karma. A good band doesn't need backing tracks. And if you're going to be all Justin Timberlake about it, make sure you hire people who know how to work the gear.

 

But the funniest thing about the video is that the intonation problem does not affect David Lee Roth. I don't think he was ever that concerned about pitch anyway...

 

Zip

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

Wow. I am just a little impressed with dave's baton twirling.

 

 

He's been doing that for years. I think sombody told him he needed additional job skills to "fall back on".

 

Think we'll get to see a UTube video of an onstage fistfight between Eddie and Diamond Dave before the end of the tour?

 

Zip

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Ah... FF didn't like it for some reason but it played fine in IE.

First, top props to DLR on the mic stand twirling. As someone who twirled various canes for five years after my motorcycle wreck way back when -- I have to say that's really impressive.

 

And I have to say that DLR riding the giant inflatable mic took me right back to my feelings the one and only time I saw them way back at the start of their career (c. '76 or so, when they were kings of the south side -- the dude/metal side -- of the Sunset Strip)... I couldn't believe they were wearing skin tight, brightly colored spandex bell bottoms when all the cool kids were in regular jeans and t-shirts. I was pretty much horrified. They didn't really scare me this time, though.

 

 

On the glitch front... yep. I don't think I can add anything. It's a full on trainwreck all right. But, as noted, DLR goes straight up to the pitch of the canned audio and only gets really confused when the guitars get louder.

 

Hey, at least they're actually playing and singing along with the canned music. Or at least making a heroic -- if horrorific -- attempt at it.

 

Troopers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

I guess what I don't understand large tours like this why they use backing tracks at all... why not the live keyboard player stage left or at the soundboard.

 

 

 

Yeah, with tickets going for $74 to $900 plus, you'd think they could afford to hire a keyboardist. I can't believe an act this big would stoop to using backing tracks in the first place!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Yeah, with tickets going for $74 to $900 plus, you'd think they could afford to hire a keyboardist. I can't believe an act this big would stoop to using backing tracks in the first place!

Well... we're a long way from the era when Chuck Berry used to play with a pick-up band wherever he went. (I was once at a show in OC that was, for reasons that escape me, obviously long on musician audience members. Someone on stage said: Show your hands if you've never been in Chuck Berry's back up band!

 

Anyhow... back to VH and their (partial) pre-recorded backup tracks:

 

Clearly this is a quality-assurance strategy.

 

:D;):D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Man that sort of happened to me when I did a track on piano live.

I used an old keyboard that when you shut it off it stayed the way you had it when shut off. Well I was coarse tuning a part to see if a singer could sing it. But left it that way, did a sound check and didn't really think about it. When the song started, I played it, away I went, when everyone joined in...

Crash bang boom. But with us we stopped and I reset and away we went.

So for the 15 seconds of silence (the singer just told a joke) away we went!

I said give me an E, I was out 3 semitones, give me an E, fixed!

I always figured those keyboard tracks were pre-recorded.

Can't believe they didn't hear that (sound guys). I would of picked that up in 5 seconds, shut it off and started playing boom.

But I guess that's a few more $$ to cough up!

That was sad...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That hurts!!

 

Two points... as a musician, I WOULD have stopped and re-started. For ME that would have been the right thing to do.

 

BUT... David Lee Roth demonstrated how a great front man / entertainer he is. Once the band decided to keep "playing", he just did his thing. And did it GREAT.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I was there..... it didn't sound nearly as bad in person... I didn't even notice, I didn't hear a single person comment about it on the way out (it was one of the last songs)... I'm tempted to think this was doctored in some way, because it was definitely not this far off in person.

 

Either that or else it was SO LOUD we couldn't tell the difference (loudest concert i've ever been to by far)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

They could have made a joke out of it and it would have been fine, but so often the need to be a serious rock band probably makes it hard to do that in the heat of the moment. If they'd have stopped it and said something like, well we fired our keyboardist because he couldn't play in key and hired a machine. But now it looks like he can't play in key either. That would have gone over just fine.

 

It reminds me of a situation that occured the first time I played in a band in front of people. Our little group played at the Jr. High talent show. We were doing I think, Hot Legs, and during the bass solo thing, someone running behind the stage tripped over a power cord and unplugged the bass. I ran back and plugged it back in, and ran back out and said to the bass player, start up the solo again, so that we'd have some way of everyone getting back into sync again. He had this deer in headlights look and just looked at me blankly and said "No". So we all kind of came back in at a different place and it was horrible. I could hear people in the audience laughing.

 

And, of course, it hurts a lot more when it's your Jr. High talent show than when you are a huge mega-act. This is your one chance to prove to everyone that you aren't a loser, not to make it even more obvious that you are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Roth impresses the hell out of me on this one. Not that I ever thought he was a great singer, but how many singers can take one of their song and sing it over a full step higher than they are used to on the spot? Phil Collins and many other have to intentionally transpose their tunes down in order to hit the notes on their reunion tours.

 

Way to go Dave!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

No, David Lee has just got the beginning of that old man, range creeping up voice; "Weeeeellll, I remember back in nineteen, fifty two..."

 

Eddie is who got to me, maybe he's cranked up so loud he didn't really get it for awhile, but man, when it came solo time, looks like he could have sorted out going up a few frets to get kinda close. At the very end he sorta found a key, but...

 

All I'm saying is here we all sit around and debate MP3's verses wave files and there are thousands of people completely oblivious to horrific key/pitch problems and clapping like goons at the end of the song.

 

Maybe we should just all get SM-58's, Mackie mixers and black faced ADATS and forget about the snob mics, Neve and converter sh*T?????????????

 

All I'm saying is that the unwashed masses don't seem to notice details or even glaring awfulness sometimes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Esteemed EQ editor Matt Harper turned me on to
this.
It shows what happens when a 44.1kHz backing track gets played back at 48kHz, and the guitarist...well, you'll hear what happens.


Wonder who got fired after this one...or maybe it's the launch of the new, Arnold Shoenberg edition of Van Halen!

 

Welcome to last month......:rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...