The CD I am referring to is
this one.
I compared the songs on the CD to the music found on the actual LBT DVDs. Oddly enough, every song on the CD is pitched about 40 or 50 cents sharp (I know, technical talk. I'll explain this in a second
), with the special edition of "If We Hold On Together" being pitched nearly 1 semitone sharp!
What does this mean? The songs on the CD are played at a Higher pitch than the songs in the original films.
When I first listened to this version of IWHoT (sung by Thomas Dekker and Aria Curzon) compared to the Diana Ross version, I noticed it was faster (78 Beats Per Minute, as opposed to the Diana Ross version, which is approximately 69 BPM. I have special hardware and software to help accurately find the speed of music
:).
After some more analysis, I realized that it is also sung *slightly* higher than the Diana Ross version. If you play along with it on a piano or keyboard, you find the notes from the original song are out of tune. For those of you who know the original song, the first 4 notes of the melody of the Diana Ross version are D, D, E, C on the musical scale. (For Future reference, '#' is a "sharp" (sounding slightly higher) symbol in standard music notation) In this CD version, this same melody conforms more closely with D#, D#, F, C#, transposing each note up one half-tone (from C to C#, for example).
At first I thought nothing of this, figuring this version of the song was simply sung in a different key (pitch transposition) from the original Diana Ross version. My questions started when I began working on the Peaceful Valley MIDI.
At first, I was working off the version of Peaceful Valley from my CD. I was tinkering with it, trying to figure out the notes. After a bit, I decided to switch from the Opening version of the song, to the Complete "End Credits" version of the song, which is Not on my CD. I ripped the music from the DVD and started working from this. What happened? All my work I had done was out of tune! The original track is slightly lower-pitched than the CD version, just like IWHoT. I had to transpose my entire midi progress down a half-tone to get it in tune with the original End Credits version!
After this discovery, I started experimenting with the other songs on the CD. Sure enough, Every other song I tested (When You're Big, You're One of Us Now, Peaceful Valley, IWHoT, Eggs) were off-key in the same matter.
I can't understand why the producers of the CD would do such a thing. Could it have been a simple recording / mastering error?
It seems to me that it was an error on whoever mastered the recordings to the CD. I think this because the version of "peaceful Valley" on the CD is EXACTLY the same as the version in the opening of LBT 2 (including Grandpa's voice over, "Littlefoot! Littlefoot! It's time to come home!" and the ambient sound effects, like it was torn right out of the original soundtrack of the film). I compared the CD version to the opening version of the DVD, and sure enough, the CD is pitched slightly higher.
This means that if you ever considered buying this CD for the purpose of learning to play the songs, Don't do that
It'll be almost impossible, as the songs are all out of tune. The error is very subtle, but if you try to play an instrument to the music, you willl find some of the songs to be out of tune. The rest of the songs may *sound* in-tune, but compared to the original music on the DVDs / films, they are pitched higher.
I, for one, am disappointed in the lack of care taken to create this CD.
