Can't You Hear The Wind Howl?

This is the 'The Complete Recordings' set of Robert Johnson's music, which ought to be pretty broadly commercially available (I used to have it on cassette- those were the days...). Only, pitch-shifted down, by me.

I opened each file (working with mp3s, which is audiophile-loserdom, but whatever) in Sound Forge and pitch-shifted to 90%.

I've always thought RJ sounded too shrill and frenzied to be real, and had often wondered over the years if the recordings weren't pitch-shifted. But only recently with a bunch of press about the theory that it actually WAS, did I take that theory seriously. Slowed a little, he no longer sounds quite as bizarre and otherworldly, sure-- but he DOES sound excellent. And human. He sounds like the other blues singers of his time and place. And his guitar sounds like a guitar, not a ukelele.

85%, which is the number I've seen online, seemed too slow to my ears- it made RJ sound froggy and his guitar thumpy. Having played and sung (poorly) myself for several decades, I'm pretty familiar with the sound of the instrument. And I've listened to a lot of country and delta blues-- so 90% might not be exactly right, but it sounds ok to my ears. Hopefully it'll sound good to yours.

My suspicion, actually, is that each song is probably slightly different. Some songs still sound a little fast, and others a little slow. But this is probably a truer picture of the actual sound of the musician, than the regular version. So, hey. Whatever.

There are lots of odd arguments going around about authenticity and ownership-- was it intended to be sped up? (Apparently Johnson himself may have never heard his own recordings, and they were not much of a commercial success at the time, so many of his peers may not have either, for what that's worth). Did all the early listeners, his contemporaries, think it sounded normal? If Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, et al, thought fast was normal, does that make it right? Ultimately I'm not too interested in any of this. All I know is that the slower version sounds more musical. 

If you haven't heard these songs slowed down before, it's a bit unnerving. It's a bit like seeing an old movie that you'd only watched on a worn-out VHS, in a restored print via Blu-Ray. Suddenly the details jump out and the nuances and dimensions are audible.

Hope you enjoy  this as much as me.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/s37fs1ysbynobx5/The%20Complete%20Recordings%20%28Pitch-Corrected%29%201%20of%202.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/prybm9qo8a885cq/The%20Complete%20Recordings%20%28Pitch-Corrected%29%202%20of%202.zip