Overwhelmingly likely they didn’t record to a click. The natural minor variations in tempo being a pain in the ass for producing is why recording without a click is getting more and more rare.
Yes exactly - I 100% believe the recordings do this due to various reasons - imperfections in people’s timing, imperfections in the recording gear, etc. I have never disputed this - it is measurable, in fact.
What I am saying is that no one does this on purpose. It is an error that should not be reproduced in the sheet music.
The goal of music notation is to provide a language to convey how a piece should be played. Covering backing tracks precisely is a niche and is not something you want to optimize for in general for making music.
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You are lucky if you try to get a tab for popular songs, and nothing too complicated. I looked and looked no one is doing this iconic song, 
I ended up doing the tab myself. It’s still in progress but it was fun and quite rewarding. I’d probably stop at 3:00 after that it’s beyond my ability, 
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Right on, we’re 100% on the same page on that. My apologies for misinterpreting your take on it. I was seriously wondering how a smart, reasonable guy like yourself could have such a crazy view. The answer if course is that you did not in fact have that view. My bad!
That said, I really was hoping for a silver bullet on the DAW tempo. It didn’t occur to me that you might be doing it all from scratch, in which case trying to match a DAW tempo setting to a previously recorded track wouldn’t be an issue you’d have to contend with.
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Yeah, I don’t use backing tracks at all so matching them is not an issue for me. My only use for the original recording is to chart out and analyze the original song structure.
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Man, I like how your mind works!
As I had my fair share of discussion with @howard and @gio about this, maybe @fennario 's analysis explains it all.
For my List of play-along songs with synchronised tabs on Youtube I never intended to create sheet music, but synchronised tracks.
If @fennarios analysis is right (which it is), this explains the variations in tempo.
I will take the most discussed songs and run those through RipX to see if it finds tempo changes.
And than let’s rediscuss it, as it is big fun 
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My comments about sheet music extend to tab too
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Hahahahaha - yeah!
So, we had discussion about my videos, that boiled down to two issue types:
- Tempo changes not correct
- General issues with the score
@fennario’s analysis tackles the first issue, which we heavily discussed. I took the time to run RipX on various tracks and I have yet to find a track with no tempo changes. Even the holy Joy Division has a +/- 4 BPM variance on many songs ^^
So, that gets me to my original argument: for synched tab/songs, those tempo changes in tabs are necessary to be … synched! And - at least for RipX - those tempo changes happen in many songs.
I cannot argue against the 2nd issue though, as I am a noob in musical notation and transcribing!
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Now that’s very interesting @fennario . I’ve often had this issue of a slightly floating tempo, that makes tempo synchronization impossible really in Reaper. I was not aware of the tempo mapping technique. Seems very nice but also a pain in the a** to map a full song …
I usually just don’t sync the tempo in Reaper with the actual song, and I just play with the original track as if I were playing live with the musicians. What is not satisfying is that I can’t really use the metronome when needed. In this case I record a small loop with https://drumbit.app/ at the “local” tempo and use it where I need it in the song. Luckily I don’t need to do this very often.
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no but I don’t use much tabs, I usually prefer finding the notes by ear
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Not surprised. Stephen Morris is a beast of a drummer but he’s still human. And it was all recorded on to tape (the worst recording medium in history) and pressed on to vinyl (the second worst recording medium in history). Lots of dubious ways that timing fluctuations could be introduced.
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Agree with tape and especially vinyl.
Vinyl s#cks big time.
I use hires sources, where possible. Substance, for example, I have as a 96k flac, all other JD albums as 2019/2020 remastered versions.
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don’t say that to audiophile guys
(but I agree with you, obviously ; what I like in vinyl’s is just the beauty of the object and the collection aspect, nothing more)
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I have nostalgia big time, but also lots of remembrance of how easily it is destroyed, warped, or loses fidelity too.
I do miss liner notes though
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Yep!
But I had quite some discussions with vinyl freaks that told me that vinyl is better than (hires) digital - and they had some flat earth level arguments to convince me.
So, a diamond, virtually raping vinyl for the xth time, while it grinds mercilessly through the grooves of that black polyvinyl chloride, sounds better than a 24bit/192Khz sampled file?
WTF?
It makes especially no sense when that vinyl record was taken from a digital master, as it is the case with the 12"s of my techno DJ friends that swear that vinyl is better than digital (except for production, of course).
I have ended friendships because of this discussion!
Diamond needle, destroying a record and failing to recreate sound:
Sandworm from Dune:
I prefer hires FLAC or DSD
Yeah sure !
yeah, probably the most funny part
or even MP3 320 kbps to be honest
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Ah, that’s a big nono for me! MP3 is bad as it is, but even for 320Kbs I hear(ed) a difference to the original.
I recently reripped over 4000 CDs to FLAC and OGG (highest quality setting) as I could not stand the artifacts in MP3.
Converted FLAC again to M4A (highest quality setting) to replace my OGGs again. Honestly don’t remember why though.
Got 3 CD-ROM players, activated some old PCs … and had "fun"for weeks ^^
The FLACs I use for home listening, the M4As are for my Smartphone. I need access to all my music at all time, otherwise I go mad!
I love the argument made by audiophiles (that will otherwise track down and spend thousands on eradicating impurities in their audio reproduction) that vinyl adds warmth missing in digital. And that compressed digital destroys fidelity.
Yes, that warmth is called “noise” and “compression” and is the same effect you would get with something like tubes or an overdrive; it’s just analog compression and noise, not digital.
Digital, on the other hand, is an exact reproduction in the range we can hear.
Also, just wait until they learn how Class D amps work 
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PS Listen to the Black album of Metallica.
First 320KB/s MP3, then CD … and then SACD or the hires FLAC version.
I was no fan of Metallica until I almost weeped when listening to the SACD version of “Nothing else matters”!
Maybe the weeping was not “almost”, but don’t tell anybody!