elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) (11/30/89)
In article <365@bbxsda.UUCP> scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) writes: >I remember music theory class back in college. We would have to do musical >dictation. The professor would play something on the piano and we would >write it down. The professor would start by playing a note and saying >something like, "this is G#". It was never the note he was actually playing. >This was to annoy the "perfect pitch" students so they would be forced to >hear the intervals rather than the absolute pitches. So what's to stop them from writing down the notes they hear and then transposing them after the fact? Perhaps the only solution is to segregate ear-training classes by perfect pitch---but that's usually impractical. --Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu) Department of Mathematics, Harvard Univ.
harlan@bbn.com (Harlan Feinstein) (11/30/89)
In article <3289@husc6.harvard.edu> elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: >So what's to stop them from writing down the notes they hear and then >transposing them after the fact? Nothing stops them from doing that, but the point of the exercise (or one of them) is to develop your relative pitch, to be able to hear intervals, and eventually chords. To do the exercise your way gets around this, but you'd never learn the concept that's being taught. It's like touch typing in that sometimes the person learning can go quicker using hunt-and-peck typing, but eventually by using the "correct" methods of typing (which are slower for the time being) you can achieve more benefits (higher speed). > >Perhaps the only solution is to segregate ear-training classes by perfect >pitch---but that's usually impractical. > At Eastman School of Music they tested people for it in the preliminary test that places you in the proper music theory class. I don't know if there was a special class for those with perfect pitch, but there was one person in our class with perfect pitch. I don't think it necessarily would be impractical to separate people like you suggest, as more music students than you would expect have it... >--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu) > Department of Mathematics, Harvard Univ. Harlan Feinstein hfeinstein@wash-vax.bbn.com h_feinstein@guvax.georgetown.edu
scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) (12/01/89)
In article <3289@husc6.harvard.edu> elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: >In article <365@bbxsda.UUCP> scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) writes: >>I remember music theory class back in college. We would have to do musical >>dictation. The professor would play something on the piano and we would >>write it down. The professor would start by playing a note and saying >>something like, "this is G#". It was never the note he was actually playing. >>This was to annoy the "perfect pitch" students so they would be forced to >>hear the intervals rather than the absolute pitches. > >So what's to stop them from writing down the notes they hear and then >transposing them after the fact? Actually, nothing. This was a course where students spent hours in the music lab listening to lesson tapes training their ears to recognize intervals. Presumably, by the time the dictation sessions came around it would be easier just to hear the intervals rather than mentally transpose. -- Scott Amspoker Basis International, Albuquerque, NM (505) 345-5232 unmvax.cs.unm.edu!bbx!bbxsda!scott
alves@aludra.usc.edu (William Alves) (12/02/89)
About the drawbacks of perfect pitch: I definitely consider perfect pitch to be a liability if it sets up such strong expectations that changes of key or tuning systems are "painful." And like other posters, I could offer such sto- ries, like the musician who was couldn't enjoy an original instrument perfor- mance of the Eroica because they had tuned down to A 415 (making it sound like D major). I have already written of the professor who winced at my 7/4 ratios. I tried learning perfect pitch, and had it to within a semitone for a long time. But I listen to the intervals, the ratios in harmony and did not see the value in learning perfect pitch, apart from having a way of checking my answers on ear training exams and having a keen party trick. In article <365@bbxsda.UUCP> scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) writes: >I remember music theory class back in college. We would have to do musical >dictation. The professor would play something on the piano and we would >write it down. The professor would start by playing a note and saying >something like, "this is G#". It was never the note he was actually playing. >This was to annoy the "perfect pitch" students so they would be forced to >hear the intervals rather than the absolute pitches. This is standard practice in our ear training classes. I had a friend who taught ear training, and for a preliminary exam he gave an interval identification in which the student was to write down the name of the played interval and, optionally, the absolute pitches on an adjacent staff. One student got every one of the absolute notated pitches correct, and every one of the named intervals wrong. (i.e. the student would write C and G on the staff, but call it a minor third or something). Bill Alves USC School of Music / Center for Scholarly Technology
elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) (12/04/89)
In article <48907@bbn.COM: harlan@labs-n.bbn.com (Harlan Feinstein) writes:
:In article <3289@husc6.harvard.edu> [I wrote:]
:>So what's to stop them from writing down the notes they hear and then
:>transposing them after the fact?
:
:Nothing stops them from doing that, but the point of the exercise (or one of
:them) is to develop your relative pitch, to be able to hear intervals, and
:eventually chords. To do the exercise your way gets around this, but you'd
:never learn the concept that's being taught.
I realize that what I was suggesting amounts to "cheating" in this sense, but
I submit that confusing the perfect-pitch students in this way won't teach
them much about intervals anyway (though some may learn something about
transposing). One of the other points of such exercises is to develop not
only a local sense of interval recognition, but a global sense of where notes
are relative to the initial pitch; this is accomplished better by perfect pitch
than any amount of relative training, so it's counterproductive to frustrate
the former (where it exists) in order to stimulate the latter. Yes, musicians
with perfect pitch need to know about intervals and chords, but they best learn
this via a different process than other students---why force their square peg
into a round hole?
:>Perhaps the only solution is to segregate ear-training classes by perfect
:>pitch---but that's usually impractical.
:>
:At Eastman School of Music they tested people for it in the preliminary test
:that places you in the proper music theory class. I don't know if there was
:a special class for those with perfect pitch, but there was one person in our
:class with perfect pitch. I don't think it necessarily would be impractical
:to separate people like you suggest, as more music students than you would
:expect have it...
At a school with a large music program I'd expect this to be possible.
Smaller programs might have a harder time fitting into the same class the
handful of perfect-pitch students if (as one would generally expect) their
ears are at very different stages of development.
--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
Department of Mathematics, Harvard Univ.dts@quad.uucp (David T. Sandberg) (12/04/89)
In article <3327@husc6.harvard.edu> elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: >Smaller programs might have a harder time fitting into the same class the >handful of perfect-pitch students if (as one would generally expect) their >ears are at very different stages of development. Question - by "different stages of development", do you mean they'd be more advanced in some areas and less in others? Some of the comments made here about individuals possessing perfect pitch being unable to identify a C and a G as a perfect fifth, for example, have led me to suspect that at least some perfect pitch students may be sorely lacking in other areas (chord and interval recognition, for example). I wonder if having perfect pitch can prove a liability if one realizes too early that one has it, as one could come to rely on it rather than train the ear to hear all facets of music. Rather like a fictional child with magical ability who never learns the things they would need to survive without their magic... -- David Sandberg dts@quad.uucp or ..uunet!rosevax!sialis!quad!dts
camilleg@microsoft.UUCP (Camille Goudeseune) (12/05/89)
Here's my two bits' worth. From age 6 to about 16 I had quite accurate perfect pitch, then lost it (as in I'd be right in guessing a random note played by someone on the piano 1 time in 3) until about a year ago, and now still have it (age 23). My main instrument is piano, if that makes a difference. But my "resolution" is only a bit tighter than a quarter tone. On the other hand, a cellist friend of mine at U of Waterloo (Canada) can tune his pride and joy darn near perfectly without aid of an external pitch reference; but his sight-singing ability is almost nonexistent! My theory is that either ten years of tuning a 220 Hz A string has ingrained that pitch permanently in his head, or that he can hear the slightly different harmonics produced by its body (same cello for quite a few years) at slightly different frequencies. Any similar experiences out there? Camille Goudeseune uunet!microsoft!camilleg
cbdougla@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Collin Broadrick Douglas) (12/05/89)
In article <9320@microsoft.UUCP> camilleg@microsoft.UUCP (Camille Goudeseune) writes: >Here's my two bits' worth. From age 6 to about 16 I had quite accurate >perfect pitch, then lost it (as in I'd be right in guessing a random note >played by someone on the piano 1 time in 3) until about a year ago, and >now still have it (age 23). My main instrument is piano, if that makes >a difference. > >But my "resolution" is only a bit tighter than a quarter tone. On the >other hand, a cellist friend of mine at U of Waterloo (Canada) can tune >his pride and joy darn near perfectly without aid of an external pitch >reference; but his sight-singing ability is almost nonexistent! >My theory is that either ten years of tuning a 220 Hz A string has ingrained >that pitch permanently in his head, or that he can hear the slightly >different harmonics produced by its body (same cello for quite a few >years) at slightly different frequencies. > >Any similar experiences out there? > > Camille Goudeseune > uunet!microsoft!camilleg I think it is the ten years of tuning at 220 hz string. I know that I can come pretty close to accurate tuning on my viola (which, although tuned higher than a cello, is close to the cello in that both have the strings: C, G, D, and A). Once you tune the A string it is easy to get the other strings tuned with exceptional accuracy. It would be nice to have perfect pitch. I say that I can accurately tune a viola but I can only occasionally tune it COMPLETELY accurately. Usually it's a few half steps off. Collin Douglas cbdougla@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu Q
sho@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu (Sho Kuwamoto) (12/07/89)
In article <9320@microsoft.UUCP> camilleg@microsoft.UUCP (Camille Goudeseune) writes: >Here's my two bits' worth. From age 6 to about 16 I had quite accurate >perfect pitch, then lost it (as in I'd be right in guessing a random note >played by someone on the piano 1 time in 3) until about a year ago, and >now still have it (age 23). My main instrument is piano, if that makes >a difference. >But my "resolution" is only a bit tighter than a quarter tone. On the >other hand, a cellist friend of mine at U of Waterloo (Canada) can tune >his pride and joy darn near perfectly without aid of an external pitch >reference; but his sight-singing ability is almost nonexistent! >My theory is that either ten years of tuning a 220 Hz A string has ingrained >that pitch permanently in his head, or that he can hear the slightly >different harmonics produced by its body (same cello for quite a few >years) at slightly different frequencies. >Any similar experiences out there? I wasn't that bad, but I think it gets a little confusing during puberty. Maybe more so for males, when their voices change. Me, I don't consider myself to have perfect pitch. I can tune a guitar almost exactly without a pitch pipe, I always remember songs in the key they were in. It annoys me when I play a tape I know well in my parent's car, becuase it is a little slow and lowers the pitch by about an eighth tone (is there such a word?). But if I've never heard it before, it doesn't bother me the way it would some people with perfect pitch. Get this. Imagining an E is easier for me than other notes because the first note of "Greensleeves" is usually an E, and we used to sing that song in music class when I was five. Usually, the only way I can name a note which is played to me (even an E) is to imagine a C or an E on a piano, and use relative pitch. Does this count as perfect pitch? Does this not count? Who cares. Oh, another good one. What is an A? The first sound an orchestra pit makes during tuning. -Sho -- sho@physics.purdue.edu
hawks@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Harvey H. Hawks Jr.) (12/08/89)
In article <372@quad.uucp> dts@quad.uucp (David T. Sandberg) writes: > >I wonder if having perfect pitch can prove a liability if one >realizes too early that one has it, as one could come to rely on >it rather than train the ear to hear all facets of music. Rather >like a fictional child with magical ability who never learns the >things they would need to survive without their magic... My 2 cents: I have perfect pitch, and have had it for as long as I can remember, but up until age 13 or so, I didn't identify this ability as anything special. I thought everyone, or at least all musicians (I had 5 years of piano including theory and a couple years of trumpet), could identify pitches if they heard them. Since I didn't realize I had a gift, I didn't use it to avoid learning about harmony, identifying intervals, etc. Eventually, I gained relative pitch. For me, relative pitch (identifying harmonic relations) and absolute pitch are not separable. What is interesting, and something I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else, is that I have perfect pitch in two keys. Since I play both trumpet (in Bb) and guitar (in C), I have two ideas of, say, what an F is. This makes transposition into other keys a bit easier, although if I know a song in one key, I can't immediately transpose it while playing (if that makes sense). As you were. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harvey H. Hawks Jr. hawks@cory.berkeley.edu University o' Cal "Coyotes and time as Berkeley an abstract."
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (07/12/90)
In article <1990Jun22.171537.1596@ultra.com> jimh@ultra.com (Jim Hurley) writes: >In <137559@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> morning@mountains.Eng.Sun.COM (Cristina Ungstad) writes: > > >>A couple days ago there was a big discussion on perfect or absolute >>pitch. Can someone explain to me the benefit of having perfect pitch? > >>Cristina > >Not to answer, but to ask another - > >If someone has perfect pitch, just how perfect is it? That is, if I >have an instrument tuned, say, in pythagorean scales, does this present >a problem for that person? I would imagine that anything within about >20 cents of equal temperament would be unnoticeably different. Most estimations of noticability are within 2 cents, not 20, even with people who don't have 'perfect' pitch. Example from experience: when I was in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, we would occasionally do an excercise where over 16 *very* slow beats (about 40/min.) we would do a smooth, evenly paced glissando over the total interval of 1/2 step; yes that's 1/16 of a half-step per beat or 6.25 cents per beat; oh, yes, this is with half of the chorus starting on the lower note and going up, and the other half starting on the upper note and going down. Needless to say, it is not an easy thing to do (especially with 180 voices) but is quite possible. To answer the first part of the question, about 'perfect pitch' posing problems for different tuning systems, my experience is that it depends on the person, not the skill itself. I met one person with perfect pitch who simply could not enjoy music (like classical music of India) which was not structured harmonically like most 19th century western music. This brings us back to the subject found elsewhere in this newsgroup, the 'intellectual enjoyment' or, more accurately, 'intellectual appreciation' of music. It seems that those instances where perfect pitch becomes a hinderance is not because of the skills of perfect pitch (which is really, I think, primarily a function of memory, not intellect) but because of the intellectual sieve which is imposed on what is heard (rightness/wrongness in relation to a believed 'correct' model of tuning or harmony). More on this, of couse, later. Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================
paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (03/18/91)
> the advertisements would have the reader believe. The good news, however, > is that I have developed at least a modest degree of perfect pitch. By > "modest degree" I mean that, although > I cannot sing 12-tone music reliably at sight, > when I hear unfamiliar tonal music, I usually can identify what key > it is in. If I hear a single tone on the piano, I cannot identify it > instantly (the way Mozart could have), but I almost always can identify it > correctly after thinking about it for ten seconds or so. There is a shortwave station that broadcasts standard time and frequency (both radio and audio) called WWV (and another called WWVH), run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In the late 60's and early 70's there would be 45 seconds of 440 Hz during one minute, and 600 Hz the next minute, alternating through most of the hour. I managed to "burn in" 440 Hz into my neurons. Yes, I have to "think about it" to "recalibrate", but it gives me perfect pitch.
tanith@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Michael D Kretzer) (03/19/91)
> Last year I responded to a >somewhat silly looking advertisement for a cassette tape course based upon >the notion that anyone can learn perfect pitch. This course was created by >a man named David Burge, who claims that his methods have been successfully >used by many musicians. I saw this advertisement too, but due to the $80.00 or so they charge for the cassettes, I didn't try it... Is it worth buying? Or can one learn just as easily in theory classes as school. I've had a semester of theory/ ear training myself, and I must admit that my "ear" is not well-developed yet. Would you please give more info about Burge's system? Or someone else?
gints@prophet.esd.sgi.com (Gints Klimanis) (03/19/91)
Hi !! I too purchased David Burge's Course on the basis that I believed that we could learn to identify frequency bands of sound. The driving force was that I could always sing a D. And yes, the F# below middle C sounds TWANGY on every piano, even samplers that transpose samples all over the place. Some of the characteristic is prevalent on sawtooth string sounds. I believe that there is some other quality to really listen to. After two months of about a half an hour a day with my younger sister, I could reliably recognize the note and octave number of any note on an 88-note keyboard almost as soon as it was played. I could also somewhat reliably pick out the note and octave number of all notes of a four note chord within thirty seconds. My sister did the same in about three months. The learning stopped when I returned from summer college break. In any case, it is not a perfect ability. You can handle pitches with about the same accuracy as distinguishing flavors of vanilla ice cream. Sure, they're vanilla but HOW vanilla. I doubt anyone was able to recognize pitches in units of Hertz. There is too much other evidence that would discredit this type of account. I do believe that my ability was learned, but I may have always had it. Perfect pitch is not a characteristic of genius, because I am far from it. In college, I tried the training with a roomate for about a month. He didn't get past four notes (C, Eflat, F# and A). However, I attribute this to lack of patience (I think he had a personality crisis). Perhaps it was improper to mix recognition levels. Cruel but true. Word of warning: don't fess up to your abilities on demand, especially while drunk. Few people understand what you're talking about, even when you tell the guitarist that he's a full half step off.
ttl@aura.cs.wisc.edu (Tony Laundrie) (03/19/91)
"Ask Cecil," a syndicated trivia newspaper column, recently stated that perfect pitch may be inherited, but who cares? Cecil acknowledged that it is a nifty trick to be able to whistle an arbitrary key, but most musicians don't have it and still play fine. Do you people with "perfect pitch" really find it useful?
jsc@athena.mit.edu (Jin S Choi) (03/19/91)
I've also managed to 'burn in', as someone said, perfect pitch. In my case, it comes from having played the violin for fifteen years and tuning it to a 440 A just about every day. You kind of get to know what an A sounds like, and not only that, playing an instrument, you also start to remember what pitch sounds when you play certain notes. I used to have to think about what note I would play in order to produce a given pitch in order to identify notes. Now, I can identify pitches in a second or so, a litt le longer if a pitch is between semitones and I have to make up my mind which one it's closer to. I've found that a lot of my musician friends have the same ability, and I really do think perfect pitch can be learned. It's more a matter of remembering sounds than any mystic inborn ability. I think the reason a lot of non-musicians and singers don't develop it is that they don't have to deal very often in absolute pitches. If you really want to develop it, try holding a tuning fork to your ear for a few hours a day. After a few months, you're probably going to remember what it sounds like. -- Jin Choi jsc@athena.mit.edu 617-232-3257
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar18.214745.6496@spool.cs.wisc.edu> ttl@aura.cs.wisc.edu (Tony Laundrie) writes: >"Ask Cecil," a syndicated trivia newspaper column, recently stated that >perfect pitch may be inherited, but who cares? Cecil acknowledged that it >is a nifty trick to be able to whistle an arbitrary key, but most musicians >don't have it and still play fine. Do you people with "perfect pitch" really >find it useful? Yes and no. sometimes it gets in the way. It's handy to be able to tune my guitar without a pitchpipe. I have had choir directors who used me as a human pitchpipe, which is not always a pleasant experience. If I'm singing a capella in a choral group, I tend to revert to inner pitch sense if the group is badly out of tune, which only exacerbates the problem. In the church choir, I'm usually expected to be the one who sits next to the completely tone-deaf chorister (there's one in every choir) who couldn't sing the right note if you stood on both sides of him at once and sang it into both of his ears. And if the director decides to transpose the piece, I'm in trouble. -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar18.195507.25639@odin.corp.sgi.com> gints@prophet.esd.sgi.com (Gints Klimanis) writes: > >After two months of about a half an hour a day with my younger sister, I >could reliably recognize the note and octave number of any note on an >88-note keyboard almost as soon as it was played. I could also somewhat >reliably pick out the note and octave number of all notes of a four note >chord within thirty seconds. My sister did the same in about three >months. The learning stopped when I returned from summer college break. > I have had perfect pitch since I was a child. Neither of my parents have it, and I doubt that any of my grandparents did. I do not believe that it is genetically transmitted, any more than "tone deafness". I believe that it can be learned by most people through ear training, or just by "osmosis" through extended exposure to a source of variable-pitch tones. >In any case, it is not a perfect ability. You can handle pitches with >about the same accuracy as distinguishing flavors of vanilla ice cream. >Sure, they're vanilla but HOW vanilla. I doubt anyone was able to >recognize pitches in units of Hertz. There is too much other evidence >that would discredit this type of account. With the aid of my pocket calculator (for taking logarithms to the base 2^(1/12)), I can get within about 3-5 Hz. I'm sure that I could get down to 1 Hz with a little practice. >I do believe that my ability was learned, but I may have always had it. >Perfect pitch is not a characteristic of genius, because I am far from it. I can't comment on the correlation with IQ - my scores qualify me for Mensa. However I had a friend in high school who had perfect pitch with a substantially lower IQ. >Word of warning: don't fess up to your abilities on demand, especially >while drunk. Few people understand what you're talking about, even when >you tell the guitarist that he's a full half step off. Until you show him, that is... -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (03/19/91)
In article <3123@esquire.dpw.com> weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) writes: > > Not long ago the New York Times reported on several studies which were >supposed to have confirmed that perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) cannot be >learned but must be inherited. I am curious as to the reactions of other >musicians to this statement. For the sake of starting a discussion, I will >briefly summarize my own experiences. I would like a reference to this article. As a person with perfect pitch, I believe any such studies to be utter nonsense. > I tried Burge's techniques for a period of several months. (The >process requires about fifteen minutes each day.) The bad news is that I'm >only about half way through the process, and that it is less magical than >the advertisements would have the reader believe. The good news, however, >is that I have developed at least a modest degree of perfect pitch. By >"modest degree" I mean that, although >I cannot sing 12-tone music reliably at sight, >when I hear unfamiliar tonal music, I usually can identify what key >it is in. If I hear a single tone on the piano, I cannot identify it >instantly (the way Mozart could have), but I almost always can identify it >correctly after thinking about it for ten seconds or so. At fifteen minutes a day, it'll probably take you several years to acquire a Mozartian pitch sense, but you are IMHO making good progress. (Mozart and I share the same birthday. Any net.astrologers who want to touch that?) > > Has anyone out there tried these techniques or anything like them? >Does anyone have any scientific evidence as to whether or not perfect pitch >can be learned? Neither of my parents have perfect pitch, though my mother played several instruments. I have had mine since I was old enough to know what it was; nonetheless, I am convinced it is a learned skill. -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com
jsc@riddler.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar18.214745.6496@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, ttl@aura.cs.wisc.edu (Tony Laundrie) writes: |> "Ask Cecil," a syndicated trivia newspaper column, recently stated that |> perfect pitch may be inherited, but who cares? Cecil acknowledged that it |> is a nifty trick to be able to whistle an arbitrary key, but most musicians |> don't have it and still play fine. Do you people with "perfect pitch" really |> find it useful? I've found it occasionally useful in identifying keys of pieces and tuning instruments. Other than that, it can actually be quite an annoying ability to have. For one thing, it is much easier to transpose while taking dictation if you have relative pitch, it's just like taking dictation without transposing; you can't really tell the difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This is supposed to give the music a 'bright er' tone. I think this is really ridiculous because a) if you don't have perfect pitch, how can you tell? and b) if you do have perfect pitch and you know the piece, it's annoying to listen to something being played a semitone higher than it's supposed to be. -- Jin Choi jsc@athena.mit.edu 617-232-3257
wuketich@bernina.ethz.ch (Johann Wuketich) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar18.215252.21611@athena.mit.edu> jsc@athena.mit.edu (Jin S Choi) writes: >I've also managed to 'burn in', as someone said, perfect pitch. In my case, it >comes from having played the violin for fifteen years and tuning it to a 440 A >just about every day. You kind of get to know what an A sounds like, and not >only that, playing an instrument, you also start to remember what pitch sounds >when you play certain notes. I used to have to think about what note I would >play in order to produce a given pitch in order to identify notes. >Now, I can identify pitches in a second or so, a little longer if a pitch >is between semitones and I have to make up my mind which one it's closer to. > >I've found that a lot of my musician friends have the same ability, >and I really do think perfect pitch can be learned. It's more a matter of >remembering sounds than any mystic inborn ability. I think the reason a lot of >non-musicians and singers don't develop it is that they don't have to deal >very often in absolute pitches. If you really want to develop it, >try holding a tuning fork to your ear for a few hours a day. >After a few months, you're probably going to remember what it sounds like. > >-- >Jin Choi >jsc@athena.mit.edu >617-232-3257 I agree fully with you. I have had similar experiences like you, when I played guitar some time ago (I did it for over 10 years very intensive but now I don`t have the time for practicing every day). I could tune my instrument to an accuracy within one halftone or so without *hearing* any reference tone (but *remembering* one). I could NOT recognize every halftone an an 88 key piano, because i never did play (or tune) pianos at all. But I`m very sure that I (and all of us) *could* do, if training long enough (like Mozart did, for example). But as you can learn something (or `burn in`) you can forget it in a much shorter time if don`t continue practicing. So, my abilities are maybe far away from `perfect pitch`, in the sense other people use this term, but close enough to think about. Maybe we need a better definition or we are talking about different things. I don`t know, if this has been proved by anyone in a scientific experiment, but imagine the following: You pick up the phone and and the frequency you hear is some Hertz apart from the one you heard for so many times before. I can imagine that *everyone* (not only musicians) would at least recognize (maybe not realize) some difference. Simple self-experiment: Try to remember the tone first - then pick up the phone. Got it ? My opinion is, that `perfect pitch` is `inherited` the in the same way like most of us inherit the ability to see, hear, walk etc. The point is that to do it, you have to learn it. Everyone can ride a bike, some can earn money by doing it better. Since our ability to remember or recognize *things* (patterns) is supposed to base on some kind of (frequency) resonance in our neurons (this is only *one* theory I heard), `perfect pitch` seems to be a very natural ability to me and in no way mystic or exclusive to a few of us. Hans. ----------------------------------------------------------- | Hans Wuketich wuketich@bs.id.ethz.ch | | Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zuerich | | "if you can't beat 'em - boot 'em!" | -----------------------------------------------------------
verin@ircam.fr (Nicolas Verin) (03/19/91)
Could you please give the exact reference of the book and method to acquire perfect pitch? Thanks.
weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) (03/19/91)
Someone recently asked whether perfect pitch is really useful to a
musician. I think that it is enormously valuable to a composer, because
the notes take on different "personalities" which can be recalled while
planning a composition in one's head. Mozart apparently had an
extremely refined level of this skill,
and it may help explain how he was able to create entire
compositions in his head before writing anything down.
By the way, I understand that Wagner did not have perfect pitch. I
wonder if he wouldn't have written more authentic cadences in his operas if
he had had a better ear. I don't suggest this as a criticism of Wagner. In
fact, I respect the opinion of him expressed by Mark Twain ("My musician
friends tell me that his music is really much better than it sounds!")mrn@eplunix.UUCP (Mark R. Nilsen) (03/20/91)
> difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are > recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This > is supposed to give the music a 'brighter' tone. I think this is really > ridiculous because a) if you don't have perfect pitch, how can you tell? > and b) if you do have perfect pitch and you know the piece, it's > annoying to listen to something being played a semitone higher than > it's supposed to be. I have been using that technique for several years. Whenever I record a piece of music on my 4 track I use the pitch control on mix-down to take things up about 1/4 step. The first time I used it it was an accident, but I liked the result so much I kept doing it. On another related note, I have found that tunning an accoustic guitar to a resonance is better than tunning to A 440 (IMHO). I get a referance pitch to tune my classical guitar by hitting the top of it. I'm sure I wouldn't be doing that if I had perfect pitch. --Mark. -- "To skilled assembly language | Mark Nilsen. programmers, the 8088 is perhaps the | most wonderful processor ever | mrn%eplunix.UUCP@eddie.mit.edu created, ..."-Dr Dobb's Journal, 3/91 |
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (03/20/91)
In article <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu> jsc@riddler.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) writes: > >I've found it occasionally useful in identifying keys of pieces and tuning >instruments. Other than that, it can actually be quite an annoying ability >to have. For one thing, it is much easier to transpose while taking dictation > if you have relative pitch, >it's just like taking dictation without transposing; you can't really tell Transposing is very difficult. I used to have a miserable time playing B-flat trumpet in high school, and embarrassed myself on a number of occasions by misidentifying the pitch of a tone that sounded "brassy". (Once people find out that you have perfect pitch, you become something of a sideshow, whether you want to or not.) >the difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are >recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This is >supposed to give the music a ' > (I assume he typed 'brighter' here, and his text editor chopped the line.) > >er' tone. I think this is really ridiculous because a) if you don't have >perfect pitch, how can you tell? and b) if you do have perfect pitch and >you know the piece, it's annoying to listen to something being played a >semitone higher than it's supposed to be. I believe that this does serious violence to the composer's music. Though I have no training in psychoacoustics, I do have strong emotional reactions to as little as a half-step shift in key, and I believe that people who haven't developed perfect pitch do as well (in varying degrees). There's a *lot* of difference between, for example, the key of E-flat and the key of E, and to arbitrarily transpose a piece without compelling technical reasons is extremely insensitive. Although I haven't heard this in broadcasts of classical music, I *have* heard it on both classical and popular recordings. I have also heard cases in which popular songs with which I was familiar were played by local radio stations at a *lower* pitch than the recording released to the public - clearly a case of a slow turntable or tape deck. On one occasion I called a station to complain, and the engineer dismissed me as a crackpot. I lead a group of folk musicians with limited instrumental skills. I have not yet succeeded in convincing most of them that there is any value to the use of a guitar capo as opposed to simply transposing the music into a key more accessible to beginning guitarists. This may turn into meaningful research into ear trainability before I'm done... -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com
boy6@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Justin Boyan) (03/20/91)
I've had perfect pitch since I was small. Introspecting, it seems that I do it by somehow having memorized what each letter sounds like. I feel as though my musical ability is very linguistic, as if notes were letters, chords were words, and phrases were, well, phrases in a language which is quite as natural for a child to pick up as a spoken language is. An article I read a couple of years ago in a psychology journal (I forget which, sorry) asserted that this was how all perfect pitchies did it, and that it had to do with having lots of musical exposure at a young age and *not* with genetics. I find that it makes transcribing very easy, that it's a very good party trick, and that it makes it difficult to transpose. When I'm playing a piece in a key other than the key I learned it in, I have to make a conscious effort to "shut out" my perfect pitch; *or* I try to mentally transpose it in my head as I go, as in "let's see, I'm supposed to be playing an A here, but since I'm transpos- ing I'd better play a C..." As a side note, my father used to have perfect pitch but is now consistenly a half-step flat; e.g., when I test him, he'll say, "It sounds like an A to me, so I'll say B-flat." And he's right. Justin - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Justin Boyan boy6@cs.uchicago.edu 5480 S. Ellis Ave. #2 home: (312)-955-5834
mjs@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella) (03/21/91)
On another tangent, I've been thinking about the way some of these courses describe perfect pitch - hearing "colors in a note" - or the comment here that the F# below middle C always sounds TWANGY. This also ties in with the feeling that some keys are "richer" or than others, or the claim that D minor is the saddest of all possible keys. Some speculations: there is probably basis to these type of claims, given one particular instrument other than an equal tempered, purely synthesized one. After all, on, say, a clarinet, C will always sound different than Bb because the leading tone in the former is a full fingered tone, usually slightly flat, will the leading tone in Bb is open and a little sharp (assuming standard fingerings, of course). On a piano, different keys will use different strings, so they could indeed sound different. But note the "color" of a key would vary from instrument to instrument, so as a means of achieving perfect pitch, I wouldn't bet on it. Is there any reason to think that, say, a pure sine wave "A" should sound "different" than a "Bb", other than the obvious fact that the pitch is different? One possible explanation - perhaps some bones in the ear (or elsewhere) have certain frequencies at which they produce sympathetic vibrations. Different pitches might trigger different resonances in the body. If this is the case, then the "colors" would be the same from instrument to instrument, but might vary from person to person.
fredrp@tdw206.ed.ray.com (Fred Ross-Perry) (03/21/91)
Allow me a question. Perfect pitch as I understand it, is the ability
to identify the pitch of a tone by hearing it. Can someone tell me why this
is a desirable skill?
--
**********************************************
Fred Ross-Perry Raytheon Company
fredrp@mar.ed.ray.com Equipment Division
(508) 440-4481 528 Boston Post Road
Sudbury, MA 01776
**********************************************fritz@urz.unibas.ch (03/21/91)
In article <3126@esquire.dpw.com>, weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) writes: > > Someone recently asked whether perfect pitch is really useful to a > musician. I think that it is enormously valuable to a composer, because > the notes take on different "personalities" which can be recalled while > planning a composition in one's head. Mozart apparently had an > extremely refined level of this skill, > and it may help explain how he was able to create entire > compositions in his head before writing anything down. > > By the way, I understand that Wagner did not have perfect pitch. I > wonder if he wouldn't have written more authentic cadences in his operas if > he had had a better ear. I don't suggest this as a criticism of Wagner. In > fact, I respect the opinion of him expressed by Mark Twain ("My musician > friends tell me that his music is really much better than it sounds!") -- I won't say anything about Wagner's "better ear" (although I would like to) because it would cause an endless list of answers, flames etc. Nevertheless I think that perfect pitch is the more useful for a composer the more "modern" his music is. I think that Schoenberg and his friends "used" their perfect pitch much more often while composing. I guess that Bach didn't need one -- his music was much more independent of the sound of a single note. One could say the same about Wagner and Mozart. BTW I'm a pianist and I never had any problems without a perfect pitch. --------------------------------------------- Oliver Fritz University of Basel, Switzerland ---------------------------------------------
graemem@cs.hw.ac.uk (Graeme McLean) (03/21/91)
I discovered about 10 years ago that I have perfect pitch. Since I made no effort to learn it, it must have been inherited in some way. I had been playing piano, recorder and bassoon previous to that so maybe it developed sub-conciously. Although I can tell to the nearest semitone what pitch a note is, I cannot tell whether a note is perfectly in tune. Obviously, playing in orchestra's lets you know whether you are playing in tune but not whether the whole band is in perfect tune (if you see what I mean). Some people seem to have perfect pitch on some notes but not others. eg. I know a flautist who could tell whether an A 440 was in tune but not any other note. I suppose that came from tuning up. So, all I know is that perfect pitch can certainly be inherited and then developed through practice. I don't know whether it can be learned - I'll leave you people to decide that one ;-) Graeme. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Graeme McLean JANET: graemem@uk.ac.hw.cs | | Comp Sci, Heriot-Watt Uni, EDINBURGH | ------------------"You kind of like Chuck, don't you Sir?"-------------------
yj05@mrcu (Steve Collier) (03/22/91)
Being a psychologist by training, I naturally leapt to my nearest reference work on this subject: Sloboda JA (1985) The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-852128-6. If anyone can recommend any books on this subject, that would be nice. I quote from the book: "People with the ability to name individual heard pitches , or accurately sing named pitches, are said to possess `absolute' or `perfect' pitch [refs given]. This ability appears to be learnable by anyone prepared to undergo lengthy and systematic training [refs given]. "However, by no means all musicians have absolute pitch....among a sample of 1156 professional musicians, there was a high inverse correlation between age of commencement of musical training and the possession of AP. Almost all musicians who began training before the age of six had AP, but almost none of those who begun after 11 did. "[AP gives a memory advantage, ref given:]..subjects were presented with two noteseparated by either one-tenth of a tone or three-quarters of a tone. ..AP subjects did much better...on three-quarter tone intervals, but there was no difference on the tenth-tone. The AP subjects were able to assign different verbal labels (note names) to the two [more separated] notes... "Verbal coding aids retention over longer time spans...[with up to a 15 sec gap filled with random notes , both AP and non-AP Ss' performance dropped with time for tenth-tones, but the APs did not worsen at all with a semitone] "These results not only exhibit the superior memory performance exhibited by those subjects with AP. They also demonstrate the categorical nature of AP.. It is not the case that those with AP have finer pitch discrimination than anyone else...what they can do is assign the pitch to a class or range of pitches which are given the same name. "...those musicians particularly singers, who need to work with such [contemporary `atonal'] music, have their task made much easier if they possess AP. There are situations where AP can be a nuisance. Listening to, or performing key-transposed music can be very difficult... Goes on to say that relative pitch is much more important and highly prized. It also improves with training. Please could we have some more details on the training tapes, including where they can be bought from, or what they comprise if that would help to make a home-brew. Presumably some of the references cited in the above text would help. If anyone wants them in full, let me know. Steve Collier | Tel: +44 245 73331 x 3233 GEC-Marconi Research Centre | Fax: +44 245 75244 Telex: 995016 GECRES G GEC-Marconi Ltd, Great Baddow | uucp: <world>!mcvax!ukc!gec-mrc!collier Chelmsford,Essex. UK CM2 8HN | Other: collier@uk.co.gec-mrc -- Steve Collier | Tel: +44 245 73331 x 3233 GEC-Marconi Research Centre | Fax: +44 245 75244 Telex: 995016 GECRES G GEC-Marconi Ltd, Great Baddow | uucp: <world>!mcvax!ukc!gec-mrc!collier Chelmsford,Essex. UK CM2 8HN | Other: collier@uk.co.gec-mrc
weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) (03/24/91)
The previous post asked whether a pure sine wave Bb sounds different from a pure sine wave A. David Burge, the perfect pitch teacher, claims that the tone "colors" are apparent even with pure sine waves, and that perfect pitch is completely independent of timbre. My own ear has not progressed to the stage of being able to express an opinion as to whether this is true or not.
jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) (03/24/91)
In an article carroll@ssc-vax.UUCP (Jeff Carroll) wrote: >In article <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu> jsc@riddler.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) writes: >>the difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are >>recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This is >>supposed to give the music a ' >(I assume he typed 'brighter' here, and his text editor chopped the line.) >> >Although I haven't heard this in broadcasts of classical music, I >*have* heard it on both classical and popular recordings. I have also heard >cases in which popular songs with which I was familiar were played by local >radio stations at a *lower* pitch than the recording released to the public > - clearly a case of a slow turntable or tape deck. On one occasion I called >a station to complain, and the engineer dismissed me as a crackpot. From the technical standpoint, it is VERY difficult to maintain the correct pitch of recordings that are made using tape, and especially cassettes. I doubt that any of these alleged pitch changes were intentional. Now if the music was recorded all-digitally using Digital Audio Tape and CD's, then one could complain, since there is sufficient control. But tape recorders just aren't that precise, unless every machine along the line from the original recording through the radio station has been carefully calibrated. I do believe that pop stations speed thing up for commercial reasons--to get more songs per hour. But I doubt that classical music stations do this. I once worked in a radio station where we had the programming pre-recorded at another studio in 3-hour segments on big reels. At the end of 3 hours the tapes could easily be +/- 5 minutes off. Cassettes are much worse. -- John Dudeck "Communication systems are jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu inherently complex". ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 -- Ron Oliver
sandell@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Greg Sandell) (03/24/91)
weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) writes: > David Burge, the perfect pitch teacher, claims > that the tone "colors" are apparent even with pure sine waves, and that > perfect pitch is completely independent of timbre. My own ear has not > progressed to the stage of being able to express an opinion as to whether > this is true or not. Yes, I heard from someone who bought the Burge kit who said that the method had alot to do with associating specific pitches with certain colors. If you play an A-flat in four octaves on an acoustic piano there is alot of complex information in there that defines its timbre. Now I could tell myself that what I'm hearing is the color "green" or whatever. But if I hear a sine wave at the same frequency I won't be getting that information I used to make the association to green. I won't get on a psychoacoustics high horse on this thing, but I will say that to my intuitive mind, the idea of particular pitches on the piano (let *alone* sine waves) having some sort of universal color is pure hogwash and snake oil. I suspect that when Burge's customer's actually learned perfect pitch, it's because they taught themselves to attach the timbre of each of the 12 piano-produced pitches to SOME other sensory modality possessing an ordering system they were better familiar with. Instead of colors, it could have been smells (lime, orange, lilac, whatever) or textures (sandy, smooth, etc.). Although it was probably important to try to correlate changes in the dimensions of pitch (i.e. height) to some similarly changing value in color (hue or luminosity) in order to foster the best possible comparison between the two modalities, you could accomplish the same thing with odor or texture. And moreover, it would be fairly unimportant what pitch you chose as the starting point for your succession of colors, or odors, just as long as you stuck to the succession. These are just opinions, of course; I neither have perfect pitch myself, nor have I purchased Burge's course. Can you tell me, does Burge's 'color scale' ascend in normal ordering of hues (red, orange, green, etc.) along with ascent in pitch? Greg Sandell -- Greg Sandell sandell@ils.nwu.edu
allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) (03/24/91)
weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) writes: > The previous post asked whether a pure sine wave Bb sounds different >from a pure sine wave A. David Burge, the perfect pitch teacher, claims >that the tone "colors" are apparent even with pure sine waves, and that >perfect pitch is completely independent of timbre. My own ear has not >progressed to the stage of being able to express an opinion as to whether >this is true or not. It might be useful to remember that it's not possible to hear a pure sine wave - you can _produce_ a pure sine wave, but by the time it gets to the nerves that carry it to the brain, non-linearities in the ear have already added overtones and combination tones. Faint, but a trained ear can hear them explicitly if the tone is loud enough. Since the overtone structure of the non-linearities will vary with pitch sensitivity of the ear, it could well be that people either specially trained or born with better than average acuity will hear a different tone color at different pitches. I'd also expect that the accuracy of pitch recognition would depend on volume of the signal - certainly relative pitch perception of a sine wave does [Benade]. Of course, that still doesn't imply that perfect absolute or even relative pitch is actually a useful or even desirable trait... A question: long ago back in high school when I was singing regularly, I could always very precisely sing a D, since so many of our pieces happened to start there. But it wasn't so much the pitch I was remembering, as the kinesthetic memory of the throat muscles knowing what to do. When doing your pitch exercises, do you tend to sing or hum along, even subvocally? And could that be an aid? Is your pitch recognition as good for notes well outside of your singing range as for notes within it? I will once again recommend the best musical acoustics book I've come across so far: Arthur Benade, _Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics_, Dover, ISBN 0-486-26484-X, $16. It uses virtually no math (nothing more complicated that a square root), but in spite of that, does far more than scratch the surface. Included are extensive references to the literature. For those not quite up to a 550 page book no matter how good, Benade has a smaller introduction, _Horns, Strings, and Harmony_ that I think is still in print. Allyn Weaks allyn@milton.u.washington.edu
curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt J. Sampson) (03/24/91)
In article <27ec3160.9d3@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) writes: > From the technical standpoint, it is VERY difficult to maintain the correct > pitch of recordings that are made using tape, and especially cassettes. > I doubt that any of these alleged pitch changes were intentional. Now if > the music was recorded all-digitally using Digital Audio Tape and CD's, > then one could complain, since there is sufficient control. But tape > recorders just aren't that precise, unless every machine along the line > from the original recording through the radio station has been carefully > calibrated. Sorry, but professional tape decks of any recent vintage *are* that precise. It would be completely unacceptable for a multitrack to change speed: it would make overdubs impossible since nothing could be kept in tune. I have yet to see a reel-to-reel tape deck that doesn't use a microcontroller-driven PLL or FM capstan (thus making the speed absolutely constant) in a studio. Digital tape machines, of course, cannot have speed problems. > I once worked in a radio station where we had the programming pre-recorded > at another studio in 3-hour segments on big reels. At the end of 3 hours > the tapes could easily be +/- 5 minutes off. Cassettes are much worse. Cassette decks are a royal pain, and many radio stations have positively antique gear. But how many stations get music on cassette or even reel-to-reel tapes? Virtually everything comes in on LP and CD. CDs don't change speed, and most radio stations use the Technics SL-1200/SL-1500 turntables, which are quartz locked. cjs -- | "It is actually a feature of UUCP that the map of curt@cynic.uucp | all systems in the network is not known anywhere." curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca | --Berkeley Mail Reference Manual (Kurt Schoens)
davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) (03/25/91)
In article <3137@esquire.dpw.com> weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) writes: > > The previous post asked whether a pure sine wave Bb sounds different >from a pure sine wave A. David Burge, the perfect pitch teacher, claims >that the tone "colors" are apparent even with pure sine waves, and that >perfect pitch is completely independent of timbre. My own ear has not >progressed to the stage of being able to express an opinion as to whether >this is true or not. I am afflicted with perfect pitch, and I can say that it is true that one needs no timbral cues to determine frequency (as long as the sound is pitched to begin with). Identifying pitches of sine waves is no problem. I don't know if this entirely applies to David Burge, but anyone who claims that there is a fundamental correlation between colors and pitch classes is full of shit, and that's all there is to it. please direct replies to /dev/null -davisonj@ecn.purdue.edu
ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) (03/25/91)
Generally, everyone seems to assume that perfect pitch and musical ability are highly related - in other words, that someone with perfect pitch is also high in other aspects of musical talent (although, of course, the absence of perfect pitch is not related to low talent). Consider, however, that the question of perfect pitch would rarely come up in a non-musical context, so that most people who are discovered to have perfect pitch are involved in music. I am a psychologist doing music and audio research and one of the tools I have been using are the Seashore tests of musical talent. I use heterogenous groups of people in my research and one of the things that has come up is that there are people who have perfect pitch but who are not at all musically talented or inclined. Such people would not normally be revealed except in the kind of research I am doing. The point is that perfect pitch is not coincident with high musical ability at all. Its presence is, arguably, useful to musicians, but, in my present view, and in the light of individuals that I have studied, it is not at all to be equated with musical ability. The Sloboda reference is a good one. The conclusion of that author, as I recall, is that musical ability can best be considered a matter of a number of different aptitudes coming together in a single mind. Thus, pitch, time, timbre, loudness, rhythm, musical memory etc., when they all come together as perceptual/cognitive strengths, constitute a highly musical mind. But any one or several of these may exist in high strength without the others, and in those cases, musical inclination may be weaker. I will end with an anecdote. As a graduate student I was doing some research in which I was exposing subjects to sine wave tones of the same pitch. Day after day, week after week, I, as experimenter, heard these tones over and over and over. After a week or so of this, I could walk into the lab and see how close I was to humming the tones in question before turning the apparatus on. I became quite perfect at this and was able to impress visitors to the lab with my "perfect pitch". I do not have perfect pitch but had clearly acquired something analogous without conscious effort. How restricted this was to the lab situation I don't know. Nor did I then pursue this in other contexts for its generality. But, clearly, learning effects can be quite striking.
jfjr@mbunix.mitre.org (Freedman) (03/26/91)
In article <1991Mar25.140024.14520@en.ecn.purdue.edu> davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) writes: >In article <3137@esquire.dpw.com> weigel@DPW.COM (William Weigel) writes: >> >> The previous post asked whether a pure sine wave Bb sounds different >>from a pure sine wave A. David Burge, the perfect pitch teacher, claims >>that the tone "colors" are apparent even with pure sine waves, and that > > I don't know if this entirely applies to David Burge, but >anyone who claims that there is a fundamental correlation between >colors and pitch classes is full of shit, and that's all there is to >it. > >please direct replies to /dev/null > >-davisonj@ecn.purdue.edu This is a rather strong statement. There is a "type" of pitch recognition that many instrumentalists develop, particularly those who do a lot of "transcription" on their instruments(jazz improvisors for instance). In this case tone color/timbre is used - although probably not consciously. For examples guitarist can recognize what string perhaps even what fret and deduce from there the pitch being played. I have known players who, upon hearing a pitch, imagine that pitch on their instrument and then deduce that pitch. Jerry Freedman,Jr
davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) (03/26/91)
In article <1991Mar25.171913.2997@linus.mitre.org> jfjr@mbunix.mitre.org (Freedman) writes: >In article <1991Mar25.140024.14520@en.ecn.purdue.edu> davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) writes: > [quoting myself] >> I don't know if this entirely applies to David Burge, but >>anyone who claims that there is a fundamental correlation between >>colors and pitch classes is full of shit, and that's all there is to >>it. > This is a rather strong statement. There is a "type" >of pitch recognition that many instrumentalists develop, >particularly those who do a lot of "transcription" on >their instruments(jazz improvisors for instance). >In this case tone color/timbre is used - although >probably not consciously. For examples guitarist >can recognize what string perhaps even what fret >and deduce from there the pitch being played. I >have known players who, upon hearing a pitch, >imagine that pitch on their instrument and then >deduce that pitch. I am not talking about tone color here; otherwise I would have said timbre. Obviously someone can use timbral cues to determine the note being played on a particular instrument. I was talking about visual color. OK, this is _really_ my last followup. -davisonj@en.purdue.edu
jsc@kingtut.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) (03/26/91)
In article <18972@milton.u.washington.edu>, allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) writes: |> |> A question: long ago back in high school when I was singing regularly, I could |> always very precisely sing a D, since so many of our pieces happened to start |> there. But it wasn't so much the pitch I was remembering, as the kinesthetic |> memory of the throat muscles knowing what to do. When doing your pitch |> exercises, do you tend to sing or hum along, even subvocally? And could that |> be an aid? Is your pitch recognition as good for notes well outside of your |> singing range as for notes within it? I think kinesthetic memory definitely helps a lot with pitch memory. As I've said, for me perfect pitch started with my having to think about where on the fingerboard I would play a note that I heard. The same would be true for singers, except that I imagine they have a much rougher time of it since they don't have such an absolute frame of reference. I find that I have a much harder time recognizing notes much below G below middle C, the lowest note on the violin. I have no such problem with the upper ranges, so experience with notes in a certain range would seem to help pitch recognition. For low notes, I usually mentally transpose up as many octaves as I need to to get into my range. I also can't mentally 'hear' the bass clef on sight as I can the treble, a real handicap for my theory class. -- Jin Choi jsc@athena.mit.edu 617-232-3257
jsc@kingtut.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) (03/26/91)
In article <1991Mar25.171913.2997@linus.mitre.org>, jfjr@mbunix.mitre.org (Freedman) writes: |> > I don't know if this entirely applies to David Burge, but |> >anyone who claims that there is a fundamental correlation between |> >colors and pitch classes is full of shit, and that's all there is to |> >it. |> > |> >please direct replies to /dev/null |> > |> >-davisonj@ecn.purdue.edu |> |> |> This is a rather strong statement. There is a "type" |> of pitch recognition that many instrumentalists develop, |> particularly those who do a lot of "transcription" on |> their instruments(jazz improvisors for instance). |> In this case tone color/timbre is used - although |> probably not consciously. For examples guitarist |> can recognize what string perhaps even what fret |> and deduce from there the pitch being played. I |> have known players who, upon hearing a pitch, |> imagine that pitch on their instrument and then |> deduce that pitch. |> |> |> Jerry Freedman,Jr I don't think that's quite what Davison was talking about. I read 'colors' as in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, that kind of thing, and to that I agree. I certainly don't think of D minor as a brown key or anything like that. You're talking more about color as in timbre, to which I also agree. The string a note's played on makes a real difference. I'm not sure if there's an analogue to this in the world of winds. -- Jin Choi jsc@athena.mit.edu 617-232-3257
wikla@cs.Helsinki.FI (Arto Wikla) (03/26/91)
In <1991Mar25.190633.11351@en.ecn.purdue.edu> davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) writes: > I am not talking about tone color here; otherwise I would >have said timbre. Obviously someone can use timbral cues to >determine the note being played on a particular instrument. I was >talking about visual color. One friend of mine, who has perfect pitch, has very clear connection between a key and visual colour. If I remember right, F-major was green, and E-major blue. But what was most interesting was that when she plyed F-major piece in baroque tuning (so. half tone lower, a'=415), the key was still green, not blue according to the absolute pitch! She was playing violin, so I suppose the intonation of notes would have been different if she would think of playing in (modern) E-major. Arto Wikla, Helsinki, Finland
icking@gmdzi.gmd.de (Werner Icking) (03/27/91)
wikla@cs.Helsinki.FI (Arto Wikla) writes: >One friend of mine, who has perfect pitch, has very clear connection >between a key and visual colour. If I remember right, F-major was green, >and E-major blue. But what was most interesting was that when she >plyed F-major piece in baroque tuning (so. half tone lower, a'=415), the >key was still green, not blue according to the absolute pitch! >She was playing violin, so I suppose the intonation of notes would >have been different if she would think of playing in (modern) E-major. Not depending of the absolute tuning of a violin it is a big difference if you play something in different keys. If you play a piece in E-major open strings like the A-string "add" to the sound. Especially for G-, D-, A- and E-major the open strings are subdominat (sp?) or dominant. This is not true for other keys like e.g. F-major or Es-major. May be that this is a small explanation for the phenomeon. Werner -- Werner Icking icking@gmdzi.gmd.de (+49 2241) 14-2443 Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH (GMD) Schloss Birlinghoven, P.O.Box 1240, D-5205 Sankt Augustin 1, FRGermany "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod."
kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne) (03/27/91)
In article <1991Mar26.111429.27568@athena.mit.edu>, jsc@kingtut.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) writes: |> In article <18972@milton.u.washington.edu>, allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) writes: |> |> |> |> A question: long ago back in high school when I was singing regularly, I could |> |> always very precisely sing a D, since so many of our pieces happened to start |> |> there. But it wasn't so much the pitch I was remembering, as the kinesthetic |> |> memory of the throat muscles knowing what to do. When doing your pitch |> |> exercises, do you tend to sing or hum along, even subvocally? And could that |> |> be an aid? Is your pitch recognition as good for notes well outside of your |> |> singing range as for notes within it? |> |> I think kinesthetic memory definitely helps a lot with pitch memory. As I've said, |> for me perfect pitch started with my having to think about where on the |> fingerboard I would play a note that I heard. The same would be true for singers, |> except that I imagine they have a much rougher time of it since they don't have |> such an absolute frame of reference... I have found that these "references" have little to do with my perfect pitch. I sing regularly, as well as play violin, piano and other instruments, but I have known that I have perfect pitch since I was at least three years old, before I knew how to play these instruments. I know of several people who use these references, and thus claim that they have "learned" perfect pitch. I personally don't consider this perfect pitch, but rather a memory device. But then comes the arguement, what is perfect pitch in the first place? The times I do use "subvocal" humming are generally when I'm trying to single out a note from a cluster of notes or a phrase, to bring it out in front of the rest of the notes. I don't use my voice as a reference, but rather as a pointer in my mind, when the note is obscured by other notes. ==>>Kathy
ogata@leviathan.cs.umd.edu (Jefferson Ogata) (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar24.122605.8262@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca> curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt J. Sampson) writes: |> In article <27ec3160.9d3@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> |> jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) writes: |> |> > From the technical standpoint, it is VERY difficult to maintain the correct |> > pitch of recordings that are made using tape, and especially cassettes. |> > I doubt that any of these alleged pitch changes were intentional. Now if |> > the music was recorded all-digitally using Digital Audio Tape and CD's, |> > then one could complain, since there is sufficient control. But tape |> > recorders just aren't that precise, unless every machine along the line |> > from the original recording through the radio station has been carefully |> > calibrated. |> |> Sorry, but professional tape decks of any recent vintage *are* that |> precise. It would be completely unacceptable for a multitrack to |> change speed: it would make overdubs impossible since nothing could |> be kept in tune. I have yet to see a reel-to-reel tape deck that |> doesn't use a microcontroller-driven PLL or FM capstan (thus making |> the speed absolutely constant) in a studio. Digital tape machines, of |> course, cannot have speed problems. The problem is not always the consistency of each individual tape deck. If the deck always plays at the same speed, it doesn't matter when you record and play back on that deck, since the playback speed is the same as the recording speed. If you move over to another deck, though, the playback speed may now be slightly different. As far as I know, quality reel decks are well calibrated so this should never be a problem. Many (most?) decks also have a pitch control that can be used to adjust for inaccuracies in other decks' recording speeds. I use a Tascam 1/4" 8-track reel deck all the time, and the tape speed is extremely consistent. I've never heard any drift in the pitch on this deck. -- Jefferson Ogata ogata@cs.umd.edu University Of Maryland Department of Computer Science
kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne) (03/28/91)
In article <3744@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>, carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) writes: |> In article <3qaBZ2w164w@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca> quayster@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca (Tony Chung) writes: |> > |> >I would like to know what instruments those with perfect pitch learned |> >on. The people I know who have developed this skill so far have been |> >piano players, violinists, and trumpeters. I have yet to see a drummer |> >with perfect pitch; which indicates that some sense of pitch training |> >early on is important -- one does not emerge from the womb saying, "that |> >doctor's scissors cut at an Eb!" |> > My parents discovered I had perfect pitch when I was three, before I knew anything about music. I had sat down at a piano and plunked out the melody (with a great amount of trial and error...) to "Puff the Magic Dragon" in the key that it had been in on the radio. No, at the time I did not say,"This is in B-flat," as I had no clue about key signatures. My only concern was that what I was playing was the correct melody the way I heard it, which happened to be in B-flat, as opposed to any other key. Any other key, to me, would have been wrong. From this, I conclude that, at least in my case, I did not "develop" perfect pitch. I have had it all along. People who claim that they have "developed" the "skill" of perfect pitch generally have one or two notes that they can reference everything else off of. This happens with instrumentalists in bands and orchestras who constantly are given the tuning note, and they become conditioned to hear that note. I personally do not consider that perfect pitch, but I don't know what it *would* be called, since I don't know what "causes" perfect pitch to begin with, nor how it works. I just know I have it. I have encountered non-musicians whom I suspect have perfect pitch. When discussing popular songs with them and they sing little exerpts from the songs, they actually sing them in the key that they are in on the radio, even when they haven't heard the song for a long time. |> My pitch sense is mental pitch memory. I can remember the F I sang |> this morning, and I can remember the A-flat I sang every morning when I was |> in high school. No humming, or thinking of colors, or any of that garbage. Here, here!! ==>>Kathy
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar26.121135@Think.COM> kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne) writes: >I have found that these "references" have little to do with my perfect >pitch. I sing regularly, as well as play violin, piano and other >instruments, but I have known that I have perfect pitch since I was at >least three years old, before I knew how to play these instruments. >I know of several people who use these references, and thus claim that >they have "learned" perfect pitch. I personally don't consider this >perfect pitch, but rather a memory device. But then comes the >arguement, what is perfect pitch in the first place? Exactly. What's the difference between those of us who acquired the skill back when our brains were still young, and those who acquire pitch memory at a later age? I think it's merely a matter of degree, and that the same phenomenon is operative. Those of us who have had perfect pitch all our lives generally have better-developed pitch sense because we've had a lot more practice at it, and because we learned it before there was a lot of other stuff cluttering up our minds. Kind of like acquiring languages. I have trouble with the concept of using physiological cues in aiding pitch sense, though. It seems that, except maybe for highly trained voices, this would be a very crude indicator, although I have to admit that as I sit here imagining the difference between singing g and singing a flat, there is a perceptible difference in the feeling in my throat. Minor nitpick - now that I've been participating in this thread for a week or so, what does it have to do with *computer* music? -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com "If it sucks, it sucks because *I* wrote it." - Whoopi Goldberg
curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt J. Sampson) (03/28/91)
In article <32083@mimsy.umd.edu> ogata@leviathan.cs.umd.edu (Jefferson Ogata) writes: > The problem is not always the consistency of each individual tape deck. > If the deck always plays at the same speed, it doesn't matter when you > record and play back on that deck, since the playback speed is the > same as the recording speed. If you move over to another deck, though, > the playback speed may now be slightly different. It depends on the vintage of your deck. All modern studio decks use a crystal locked capstan. My Tascam 48, which is a typical low-end studio deck, is within +/-0.2% of 15 ips when in proper working order. That means that an A 440 can vary (worst case) from 439.12 Hz to 440.88 Hz between machines. Not a terribly large difference. Machines that were consistent with themselves but not others would not be acceptable because many people do the drum tracks in a studio with an appropriate room and then do overdubs in a smaller, cheaper studio. cjs -- | "It is actually a feature of UUCP that the map of curt@cynic.uucp | all systems in the network is not known anywhere." curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca | --Berkeley Mail Reference Manual (Kurt Schoens)
galetti@uservx.afwl.af.mil (03/28/91)
In article <32083@mimsy.umd.edu>, ogata@leviathan.cs.umd.edu (Jefferson Ogata) writes: > In article <1991Mar24.122605.8262@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca> curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt J. Sampson) writes: > |> In article <27ec3160.9d3@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> > |> jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) writes: > |> > |> > From the technical standpoint, it is VERY difficult to maintain the correct > |> > pitch of recordings that are made using tape, and especially cassettes. > |> > I doubt that any of these alleged pitch changes were intentional. Now if > |> > the music was recorded all-digitally using Digital Audio Tape and CD's, > |> > then one could complain, since there is sufficient control. But tape > |> > recorders just aren't that precise, unless every machine along the line > |> > from the original recording through the radio station has been carefully > |> > calibrated. > |> > |> Sorry, but professional tape decks of any recent vintage *are* that > |> precise. It would be completely unacceptable for a multitrack to > |> change speed: it would make overdubs impossible since nothing could > |> be kept in tune. I have yet to see a reel-to-reel tape deck that > |> doesn't use a microcontroller-driven PLL or FM capstan (thus making > |> the speed absolutely constant) in a studio. Digital tape machines, of > |> course, cannot have speed problems. > > The problem is not always the consistency of each individual tape deck. > If the deck always plays at the same speed, it doesn't matter when you > record and play back on that deck, since the playback speed is the > same as the recording speed. If you move over to another deck, though, > the playback speed may now be slightly different. As far as I know, > quality reel decks are well calibrated so this should never be a > problem. Many (most?) decks also have a pitch control that can be used > to adjust for inaccuracies in other decks' recording speeds. I use a > Tascam 1/4" 8-track reel deck all the time, and the tape speed is > extremely consistent. I've never heard any drift in the pitch on this > deck. I think we're missing the point here. For the most part, tape players are pretty good as far as speed goes. It's the TAPE that gets stretched and consequently plays slower. > -- > Jefferson Ogata ogata@cs.umd.edu > University Of Maryland Department of Computer Science ___________________________________________________________________________ / Ralph Galetti Internet: galetti@uservx.afwl.af.mil \ | PL/LITT Interests: computers, music, computers | | Kirtland AFB, NM 87117-6008 and music, golf, sleep. | \______________"I hate cliches--I avoid them like the plague"_______________/
galetti@uservx.afwl.af.mil (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar27.122408@Think.COM>, kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne) writes: > > |> My pitch sense is mental pitch memory. I can remember the F I sang > |> this morning, and I can remember the A-flat I sang every morning when > I was > |> in high school. No humming, or thinking of colors, or any of that > garbage. > > Here, here!! > Are you just trying to avoid a pun here, Kathy, or do you really mean "Hear hear!!" :-) ___________________________________________________________________________ / Ralph Galetti Internet: galetti@uservx.afwl.af.mil \ | PL/LITT Interests: computers, music, computers | | Kirtland AFB, NM 87117-6008 and music, golf, sleep. | \______________"I hate cliches--I avoid them like the plague"_______________/
galetti@uservx.afwl.af.mil (03/28/91)
In article <3756@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>, carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) writes: > > Minor nitpick - now that I've been participating in this thread for > a week or so, what does it have to do with *computer* music? Minor augmented nitpick - A lot of us on the net don't have access to any other music-related newsgroup. For example, here where I work we have access to almost anything associated with computers, but "rec.music" or whatever it's called isn't available. > -- > Jeff Carroll > carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com > > "If it sucks, it sucks because *I* wrote it." - Whoopi Goldberg ___________________________________________________________________________ / Ralph Galetti Internet: galetti@uservx.afwl.af.mil \ | PL/LITT Interests: computers, music, computers | | Kirtland AFB, NM 87117-6008 and music, golf, sleep. | \______________"I hate cliches--I avoid them like the plague"_______________/
Gord_Wait@mindlink.UUCP (Gord Wait) (04/01/91)
I don't beleive humans have absolute color sense. try this at home: Put on some heavily colored orange sunglasses, and notice how the world is more orange. Keep them on for an hour, and now notice how the world looks normal. Now take off the sunglasses, and notice how the world looks too blue. In a short while, everything looks normal again. It seems to me that the color sense is relational, just like intervals between different notes. Hmmm..... gord wait -- Gord Wait Member of Technical Staff ASIC Engineering SMOS Systems Vancouver Design Center Gord_Wait@mindlink.UUCP
rapo@cs.cornell.edu (Andy Rapo) (04/02/91)
Alright, I agree that plenty has been said on this subject so far, and that it has little to do with Computer Music, but its a pretty interesting subject. I've enjoyed thinking about this in the past especially in the context of trying to understand how the brain works. It seems clear - from our experience with visual color - that recognizing frequencies according to an absolute scale is something the brain can do. When we see green, we see it regardless of the "relative green" of surrounding colors. It is interesting, therefore, that many (if not most) people don't have an appreciation for the absolute frequency of sound waves. There are a lot of reasons that could be suggested to explain this. I like these two: (1) We humans have a built-in musical instrument - our voices - which serves as the basis for our understanding of sound. Unlike our eyes, our voices are greatly affected by physical changes that occur throughout our development. I could sing very high notes when I was a boy, and now I'm limited to the very low-end. Consequently my basis for understanding sound has not been 'absolute' itself. Naturally I wasn't going to stop singing Puff the Magic Dragon just because I couldn't hit the high notes anymore - I just transposed the song. In my experience, musical notes don't have the same kind of constancy as visual colors because it has been more advantageous to deal with them in a realtive manner - relative to my changing voice. (2) My piano teacher once related to me a story about a particular concert to which she was invited to play the piano. She was well rehearsed, but when she sat down to try out the concert grand intended for the performace she discovered that it was tuned down a half step. Unbelievably, she was unable to play her concerto because it just didn't 'sound' like it was supposed to. The notes were mapped incorrectly to the keyboard. I guess this would be like trying to type on a DVORAK keyboard when you're u sed to using a QWERTY. Fortunately she was a skilled enough musician to transpose the piece in time for the concert (I assume she did this in her head). The point here would be that perfect pitch may be useful in a lot of cases, but it certainly imposes some restrictions on one's ability to work within an inherently variant spectrum of sound. Light is not affected much by things like the doplar effect and teperature changes. Sound is. I would suggest that the advantages of being oblivious to absolute sound frequencies (assuming one has good relative pitch) are at least as rewarding as having the ability to pull a C# out of a hat. Though I'd love to be wearing that hat sometimes. Andy Rapo Cornell University Computer Science
ogata@leviathan.cs.umd.edu (Jefferson Ogata) (04/02/91)
I'd include the previous article, but it is horribly formatted. As to why humans should have absolute color sense but not absolute pitch sense, first of all, the methods of detection are wildly different, so there's really no reason to expect them to be comparable. But also the range of the senses is very different. Color is detected over a frequency range of less than an octave, and people only identify a small number of colors. Pitch extends over 8-10 octaves, and there are twelve pitches per octave to identify, for people who are tuned to 12-tone scales. If we could only hear one octave, perhaps we'd be able to identify notes very accurately. -- Jefferson Ogata ogata@cs.umd.edu University Of Maryland Department of Computer Science
jerry@synopsys.com (Jerry Huth) (04/02/91)
> It seems clear - from our experience with visual color - that >recognizing frequencies according to an absolute scale is something >the brain can do. When we see green, we see it regardless of the >"relative green" of surrounding colors. It is interesting, therefore, Unfortunately, you're wrong on this point. Try this experiment: Get a really good pair of Blue Blocking sunglasses. Put them on. At first, everything appears reddish. After a minute, things look normal again. Then take the glasses off, and at first everything appears blue. After a minute, things look normal again. This shows that our brains do not detect light waves on an absolute basis.
rapo@cs.cornell.edu (Andy Rapo) (04/02/91)
The sunglasses arguments - for relative visual color detection are pretty good. They make it clear that the eyes are susceptible to relative color levels. But they also reveal something important about how we 'understand' color. It is pretty amazing that our eyes can 'normalize' after having a certain band of light frequencies cut out. It makes sense that screwing up th input would also srew up the interpretation. However, in order for things to look 'normal' again, we have to have an unchanging idea of what normal is. Our understanding of what 'green' is doesn't change when we put on sunglasses. Our eyes depend on color relationships but our understanding of color doesn't change. This does not seem to be true of sound - for most people. My understanding of what a C# is is completely dependent on what I'm given to be a C. Andy Rapo P.S. - Hopefully this reply isn't formatted as 'horribly' as my first one.
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (04/03/91)
In article <1991Apr2.145836.16301@cs.cornell.edu> rapo@cs.cornell.edu (Andy Rapo) writes: >Our understanding of what 'green' is doesn't change when we put on >sunglasses. Our eyes depend on color relationships but our >understanding of color doesn't change. This does not seem to be >true of sound - for most people. My understanding of what a C# is is >completely dependent on what I'm given to be a C. This color/pitch analogy thing has been reduced to absurdity. The reason why your "understanding of what a c# is is completely dependent on what I'm given to be a C" is that your ear has not been sufficiently trained to give you reliable pitch memory. IMHO there is no physiological difference here; the difference is purely in social convention and environment. If we had installed horns of different pitches rather than lights of different colors at traffic intersections, everybody in our society would develop absolute pitch. And, BTW, your editor mucked up the format of that posting too. -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com "If it sucks, it sucks because *I wrote it*." - Whoopi Goldberg
yj05@mrcu (Steve Collier) (04/03/91)
kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne) writes (and others have recently talked in a similar vein): > People who claim that they >have "developed" the "skill" of perfect pitch generally have one or two >notes that they can reference everything else off of. This happens with >instrumentalists in bands and orchestras who constantly are given the >tuning note, and they become conditioned to hear that note. I >personally do not consider that perfect pitch, but I don't know what it >*would* be called, since I don't know what "causes" perfect pitch to >begin with, nor how it works. I just know I have it. A recent textbook (Boff, Kaufman, Thomas (1986) Handbook of Perception and Human Performance) refers to a number of old studies. I quote: "Some of the more comprehensive among the older studies were done by Bachem (1937, 1940, 1954). He examined a large number of people who claimed to have absolute pitch. ..he established three categories of people: (1) those with genuine absolute pitch, [presumably intends to mean hereditary] (2) those with acquired absolute pitch, and (3) those with imagined absolute pitch. People in the first category can make absolute pitch judgements quickly (within two seconds) and accurately..Those in the second category are slower.. and seem to use some learned reference such as a concert 'A'..or vocal chord position. Those in the third category show average errors of five to nine semitones, which is close to random performance... "Prolonged training to recognize a certain tone proved not only to help subsequent recognition of that tone when presented in a larger context, but improved pitch identification across the board (Cuddy, 1968)... "Absolute pitch may not be exceptional, but rather may represent an extreme on a scale of musical ability. *It is not known whether all these phenomenological differences represent differences in physiology** [my emphasis], although there is some indication (Bachem, 1937) that absolute pitch requires an innate ability combined with proper exposure and training during a critical development period at an early age." This last is hardly an up-to-date reference. Can anyone help? This is beginning to sound like the interminable wrangle over nature vs. nurture in intelligence. -- Steve Collier | Tel: +44 245 73331 x 3233 GEC-Marconi Research Centre | Fax: +44 245 75244 Telex: 995016 GECRES G GEC-Marconi Ltd, Great Baddow | uucp: <world>!mcvax!ukc!gec-mrc!collier Chelmsford,Essex. UK CM2 8HN | Other: collier@uk.co.gec-mrc
mark@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Mark R. Rubin 4-7794) (04/04/91)
Another $.02 Increment About Absolute vs. Relative Color Sense o Back in the early '80s I attended a public talk at Caltech given by Dr. Edwin Land (sp?), inventor of the Polaroid camera. All of what follows is filtered through 10 years of a memory clouded by too many late night debugging sessions, but ... o Most of the lecture was about color theory. A lot of it was work in progress, and he didn't have a tidy, all-encompassing conclusion to summarize with. o The most striking demonstration he gave, however, concerned relative vs. absolute color sense. He had some slides that he had dubbed "Mondrians", after the painter. More like the early abstract Mondrain paintings (before the thin stripes with little color squares in them), they were overlapping rectangles of solid colors. Anybody who's written the following code to test out a graphic system: LOOP: x = random() ; y = random() ; width = random() ; height = random() ; color = random() ; rectangle(x, y, width, height, color) ; goto LOOP ; knows what they looked like, but Land emphasized that the colors had _not_ been chosen randomly. o To demonstrate, he pointed to a particular color rectangle in one of the slides, and asked the audience what color it was. Everyone said the obvious: "Green" (or some color -- the point is there was no uncertainty). Land then took a piece of cardboard with a small round hole, held it in the beam from the slide projector, and manipulated it until all that shone through was a small portion of the "green" rectangle. o A gasp arose from the audience. The round spot of light on the screen was bright orange. (Again, the particular colors, green->orange, aren't clear in my memory, but they were that radically different. Not red->orange or the like.) It was as astonishing as any of the classical optical illusions (necker cubes, equal length line segments overlaid on perspective converging railroad tracks, etc.) Land removed and re-inserted the cardboard, and each time the color changed. o He then aimed a sensor at the spot which displayed the red, green, and blue components of the light. (Three photocells with different colored filters on them.) Once again, he put the cardboard in and out, and the color changed back and forth. The red, green, blue readings didn't move. o I don't know what all this proves, but I've been convinced ever since that color perception is based on visual environment. Note that this is different from the "take off your orange sunglasses and the world looks blue" phenomenon -- there was no adjustment period. o BTW, all of these comments come from an amateur musician who's still trying to develop reliable _relative_ pitch, much less absolute. Any tips welcome. Mark R. Rubin mark@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov
roger@grenada.island.COM (Roger Corman) (04/06/91)
>As to why humans should have absolute color sense but not absolute ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >pitch sense, first of all, the methods of detection are wildly >different, so there's really no reason to expect them to be >comparable. > Absolute color sense would, in fact, be much less common to have-- because it doesn't exist! Color perception varies from individual to individual and two people often will not even agree that two colors are the same. Our perception of color is very dependent on surrounding colors and viewing conditions (there are easy demonstrations of this if you check the literature on color science). The root of the problem is that many different frequency spectrums appear as a single color to our limited visual system. By contrast, pitch is *very* straight forward and it is pretty easy to get two musicians to agree that two pitches are the same (independent of background noise, room acoustics, etc.) I know that this isn't exactly the subject of this newsgroup, but I wanted to set the record straight.... ------------------------------ Roger Corman Island Graphics 149 Stony Circle, Suite 200 Santa Rosa, CA 95401 (707)523-4465 {uunet,sun,ucbcad!island!roger} class Disclaimer { private: ObscureStuff employerOpinions; public: UsefulAdvice myOpinions[MAXINT]; };
ads@aber-cs.UUCP (Adrian Shaw) (04/08/91)
In article <886@mrcu> yj05@uk.co.gec-mrc (Steve Collier) writes: >A recent textbook (Boff, Kaufman, Thomas (1986) Handbook of Perception and >Human Performance) refers to a number of old studies. I quote: > > "Some of the more comprehensive among the older studies were done by Bachem > (1937, 1940, 1954). He examined a large number of people who claimed to have > absolute pitch. ..he established three categories of people: (1) those with > genuine absolute pitch, [presumably intends to mean hereditary] (2) those with > acquired absolute pitch, and (3) those with imagined absolute pitch. People > in the first category can make absolute pitch judgements quickly (within two > seconds) and accurately..Those in the second category are slower.. and seem to > use some learned reference such as a concert 'A'..or vocal chord position. > Those in the third category show average errors of five to nine semitones, > which is close to random performance... This is interesting. I definitely come under category (1) (I instantly know what the note is) _provided the instrument it is played on is a piano_. Sometimes I will immediately know the note on other instruments, but if I don't recognise it immediately, I can only guess and will not be confident about being right. When I recognise a note immediately, I have no doubt about it. Needless to say, my main instrument is the piano, which I started playing at the age of six. I think I have always had this ability. I can remember thinking in my early days of playing the piano what a strange sound the note G was! In recent years I have done a lot of singing, and can now pitch some notes with my voice. On a good day I can do it with confidence, but more often I find myself trying to hear the note on the piano in my head and humming that - which usually works! I too have difficulty in playing a piece on a piano which is tuned down a semitone. It is very offputting. What kind of perfect pitch does this count as? How common is this instrument-specific kind of perfect pitch? Adrian-- Adrian Shaw | Grwp Ymchwil DA a Roboteg | AI & Robotics Research Group ads@cs.aber.ac.uk | Adran Cyfrifiadureg | Computer Science Department UK:ads@uk.ac.aber.cs | Coleg Prifysgol Cymru | University College of Wales Ffon: +44 970 622450 | Aberystwyth, Dyfed, Cymru | Aberystwyth, Dyfed, Wales
bgw@genrad.com (Bruce G. Wilhelm) (04/10/91)
I used "rn" for the first time in my life today and I can't believe all of the talk about Perfect Pitch. I don't feel so alone anymore. I am mostly a keyboardist and have had very acute PP since I can remember. My father has PP as well, but my musically-inclined sister does not. I was surprised to hear the story about one guy whose father's PP has slipped flat because my dad's has too! When I was a boy chorister, I had severe problems transposing a hymn in real time, more extremely when I was singing Alto than Soprano. I hate seeing one note and having to sing another. I could never play a tranposing instrument (clarinet, trumpet, F-horn, sax, ...) that had to play one note and sound another. That would drive me crazy! One of my old dorm-mates used to have a tape deck that would play a half-tone high. It was so painful for me to listen to familiar songs, I often requested he turn it off. It is often better for me to listen to something a half-tone off rather than a quarter-tone, though, because I get confused as where to round each note to. I translate every note in every piece of music I hear to its absolute pitch, so when things are a half-tone off, at least they translate to a pitch with a familiar name (Ex: C#) even though it's the wrong one. My walkman at work also plays slightly fast. I have to listen to the radio a lot so the batteries can wear down enough that I can listen to a tape at "correct" speed. I found this out because I didn't believe that Deep Purple really played all of their songs in F and Bb minors. Even so, as I listen, I have developed fingerings in my head to all bass lines and keyboards a half-step up for every note on the album. Heaven help me when I buy the CD. I had a lot of problems reading Alto clef when I took up viola. I'm not sure if that is related to PP. One way I can test my PP sometimes is with my DX7. I have somebody adjust the tuning on the instrument while I'm not looking. Then I use the arrow keys with my eyes closed to see how close I can come to 0. My ex-aunt claimed she developed PP by memorizing the lowest note in her vocal range and translating from there. She passed my test. My old violin teacher could not name a piano-struck key if his life depended on it, but he could tune the orchestra day in and day out by singing a perfect A out of the clear blue. It's nice to be able to get some of these things off my chest. Nobody ever understands what it's like. However, I wouldn't trade my PP in for anything.
fredg@marob.uucp (Fred Goldrich) (04/10/91)
In article <2398@aber-cs.UUCP> ads@cs.aber.ac.uk (Adrian Shaw) writes: > >This is interesting. I definitely come under category (1) (I instantly >know what the note is) _provided the instrument it is played on is a piano_. >Sometimes I will immediately know the note on other instruments, but if >I don't recognise it immediately, I can only guess and will not be confident >about being right. When I recognise a note immediately, I have no doubt about >it. Interesting indeed. I do _not_ have absolute pitch; but, very occa- sionally, I will hear an unfamiliar piece of music and will feel confident that I know what key it's in; fewerwhen I check, I am always right. However, I would say this has happened less than a dozen times in my life. You know, Maurice Abravanel is fond of talking about how one of the obstacles to musical interpretation is overintellectualization, and how this fault is practically unavoidable because the evolutionary development of the brain has favored rational thought over the preservation of instinct. I bring this up because my experience with perfect pitch leaves me wondering whether it is an ability that lies buried "in there" (pointing inward), to which I only occasionally have access. Any thoughts? -- Fred Goldrich {att,philabs,rutgers,cmcl2}!phri!marob!maestro!fred
em@dce.ie (Eamonn McManus) (04/12/91)
In "Am I Too Loud?", the accompanist Gerald Moore describes how he had perfect pitch, then lost it more or less as an act of will, because it got in the way when he had to play in a different key and the like. bgw@genrad.com (Bruce G. Wilhelm) writes: > My ex-aunt claimed she developed PP by memorizing the lowest note in >her vocal range and translating from there. She passed my test. I don't have PP (though I can sometimes come up with a reference note), so I tend to use external standards when I need to be able to identify pitches. For years I carried a bicycle clip in my coat pocket that could be used both for keeping my trousers out of the bicycle chain and for giving me a reliable B-natural. Nowadays I use my digital watch which produces a little beep when you push one of its buttons. Coincidentally that is B-natural too. I wouldn't like to try using the vocal range method, because my lowest note varies by about a fourth depending on all sorts of factors, including how long I have been singing and how much I had to drink the night before. , Eamonn
arra@inmet.inmet.com (04/13/91)
> My ex-aunt claimed she developed PP by memorizing the lowest note in > her vocal range and translating from there. She passed my test. Several decades (!) ago, when I was a kid, I tried this to see if I could get a "cheap" PP. (What can I say, I was lazy!) I wouldn't have passed some of the strict tests. My "lowest pitch" varied daily by at least 1/2 note. I never tried any "drill" method to learn PP, since I couldn't see any real benefit, other than to impress myself or others. I still think its a facinating subject which evokes alot of interesting theories and experiences!