Songs too slow or fast and we didn’t know

I should add allegedly to that title. Anyway, two things came together in my ever active mind just this morning. The first being an ABC RN show/podcast on how music activates a number of our brains centres all at once. One of them being memory (event-recall) related. It seems that music buries itself deep inside our brains.

The other being that some recordings were recorded or mastered too fast or slow. But, tying back to the first point, we’ve heard the ‘original’ recording so often, the ‘corrected’ one just doesn’t sound right. The original is burnt into the grey matter.

The first example is 1930’s early-Blues legend Robert Johnson. It seems his 78rpm recordings were sped up a fair bit. I always thought this was the case, to be honest. Maybe  photos of him playing “Crossroads” – or other archival sources – showed him playing the chords of A, D and E; that is in the key of A.  Yet the 78rpm is something like in the key of B or Bb; a fair bit faster. People have slowed it down to “A” again and it does – to me at least – sound more realistic. Original first:

And now the slowed down to "A"

The other one was news to me. It seems the first few Doors albums were slowed down during their original recording/mastering whatever. For 40 years we have, apparently, been listening to slowed down Light My Fire!  This comes from those who saw them in concert, examined the sheet music and may have heard master recordings.

This one is more subtle – and the Sped Up one has a different vocal mixing which adds another layer of newness.  It does sound a bit more like Jim M in their other songs. Firstly the one we are used to:

Now the slightly sped up one:

This is something worth having a look at.  I'm sure there are other examples and I'll have a look later.