robins@keyboard.esd.sgi.com (Robin Schaufler) (04/13/91)
Ted Grusec writes that "several pitches played at exactly the same time" is a chord. The definitions I learned of chords are in terms of intervals of major and minor thirds. Some combinations of notes, in absense of other notes, cannot rightly be said to be chords. Ted goes on to say that he can analyse the constituent notes of a chord quite easily and presumes that most musically literate listeners can do this without much trouble, too. Well, it depends. If it's a clump of notes that aren't really a chord, or if it's a very complicated chord containing lots of unusual tensions, it's harder to pick out the constituent notes than if it's a simple triad. Also, it depends on the mix. Sometimes an instrument is mixed so far back that it's very hard to pick out its notes, yet if you could omit it, it would change the entire character of the chord. On absolute pitch... I played piano as a child and teen, but dropped it in college due to lack of access to pianos, and didn't pick it up again til about a year and a half ago. So I had dropped it for about 12 years. I don't know how good or bad my absolute pitch was as a child - I never tested it. But since I took it up again, I've been focussing on ear training, and my sense of absolute pitch has improved considerably from a year and a half ago, even though I've only consciously been focussing on relative pitch. Clearly two notes an octave apart sound quite different to anyone but the most profoundly tone-deaf (or deaf) on any instrument. That same tonal quality appears in the notes in between, just to a lesser degree. So for instance, I can hear a G below middle C and quickly say it's between low and middle C, and as I think about it, get closer and closer. Since I get closer faster and more reliably than I did a year and a half ago, maybe in another year or two I'll have absolute pitch. On color... A couple of years ago, I had my colors "done" at a place that does very personalized work. They hire artists, and don't just hand you some prepackaged season palette - the artist picks out individual swatches of fabric from a huge selection. Since then, I've spent a fair amount of time staring at my colors, and have found that my color sense has improved a lot. In a store, without my colors, I can identify some colors as being "in" with no hesitation. Others, I have to look at for a while. Still others I have trouble with even with my colors right there to compare to. The discussion so far has compared identifying a pitch with identifying a color, using colors like "red", "green", or "blue". Which red, which green, which blue? Those sorts of gross color identifications are about equivalent to identifying an octave range that a note is in. Furthermore, I can show you colors that some people will call blue, and others green. I've considered my eyes to be blue all my life, but when I wear some of the colors in my eyes, some people call the color green. BTW, I prefer the term "absolute" pitch or color to "perfect" pitch or color. Absolute doesn't have to be perfect, and relative can be perfect. Absolute pitch refers to determining the pitch of a note independently of other notes. Perfect, to me, denotes the accuracy with which this is accomplished. -- Robin Robin Schaufler Standard: the personal flag of the ruler of a state; loosely, a banner. - Webster's New Practical Dictionary