ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) (04/10/91)
In <1991Apr7.100059.1489@urz.unibas.ch> Iaci writes: >>In article <1991Apr6.004426.24266@dgbt.doc.ca>, ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) >>writes: >> One comment on this general thread on perfect pitch. Some people seem >> to think that way that we normally deal with visual color is analogous >> to perfect pitch. I don't think this is so. If I show you a "red", and >> then a slightly different shade of "red" at some time later, then you >> are not likely to be able to detect the difference between these two >> different "reds" without having both to compare. >Maybe not me, but maybe Monet could have done it... I doubt if Monet, or anyone could do it. If you present a given colour, rigidly specified by wavelength, in one colour context (e.g. surrounded by a light shade of gray), and the identical wavelength in a different colour context (e.g. surrounded by a dark shade of gray), the two "identical" colours look quite different, even if the colours surrounded by these contexts are presented for simultaneous viewing, side-by-side. This kind of demonstration is often presented graphically in introductory psychology texts. By contrast, a person with perfect pitch will identify the pitch of a given note no matter what very different chords that pitched note is presented in. >>With perfect pitch, a person can detect a slight difference in pitch >>between two notes presented at different times without needing to have both >>present for comparison. Pigeons, and other birds, however, do have a "perfect >> color" sense that IS like perfect pitch, but that's another story. >I think it's very hard to compare perfect pitch to perfect colour sense, since >the ear and the eye have very different capabilities. >As someone already has pointed out the ear is capable to hear a range of up to >10 octaves, the eye about one! >This makes it possible to us to hear all the overtones that enable us to >distinguish vowels (understand language). >When you play a chord to a person with a trained ear he/she will be able to >tell you all the notes you played. If you mix yellow with blue colour then >the eye can only see a green and is not able to see the two previous colours. >On the other hand the eye is much better in geometrical resolution. >And then a question I always was wondering about: if I see a red and you >see the same red, who tells me if we see it the same way? I certainly agree that colour and pitch are very different in many ways. But it is sensible to compare them in this one respect, namely absolute versus relative identification of frequency (i.e. pitch frequency and colour wavelength). It seems to me that the analytic analogy you draw is not quite accurate. You can analyze a chord into constituent notes but you can't analyze a given note into constituent fundamentals + overtones, any more than you can analyze green into yellow and blue, visually. As for understanding language, this is based mostly on a very narrow band of frequencies (centering around about 6K hertz). So people with hearing losses that restrict their perception to below 10K hertz and above, say 4K Hertz have no problems understanding language. That one and one-half octaves is all you need for accurate speech perception, and you don't need the 10 octaves for that task. As for your last point, it's an old philosophical chestnut as to how the subjective perception of any two people may be compared. All we really know is that we can agree on the names we use, we can compare discriminabilities, and we can compare other relevant bits of behaviour. If two people are identical in these and other behavioural characteristics and measures, we have no reason for suspecting that they differ in their perception. Where behavioural differences between people ARE found, we can say they must differ systematically in their perceptions. However, even if behaviourally identical, there is no way we can really say that they perceive identically in the fully subjectively sense. The physiological psychologists might be able to shed further light on this, someday.
barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr10.031342.27656@dgbt.doc.ca> ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) writes: >I doubt if Monet, or anyone could do it. [That is, have "perfect color" the way some people have "perfect pitch".] I know of one person who does indeed (it is claimed) have "perfect color". But this is hearsay; I have not seen it demonstrated itself. But I have no reason to disbelieve it exists. >If you present a given colour, rigidly specified by wavelength, in one >colour context (e.g. surrounded by a light shade of gray), and the identical >wavelength in a different colour context (e.g. surrounded by a dark shade of >gray), the two "identical" colours look quite different, even if the colours >surrounded by these contexts are presented for simultaneous viewing, >'side-by-side. Similar tricks can be played with sound. Read on. >By contrast, a person with perfect pitch will identify the pitch of >a given note no matter what very different chords that pitched note is >presented in. No, the ear can EASILY be fooled. When several pitches are played at exactly the same time, the ear perceives them as a single sound. It might sound like a single pitch, or even be pitchless. I refer you to the work of Stephen McAdams in this area. Or just listen to a pipe organ. BTW, I have perfect pitch. Dan //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ | Dan Barrett, Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University | | INTERNET: barrett@cs.jhu.edu | | | COMPUSERVE: >internet:barrett@cs.jhu.edu | UUCP: barrett@jhunix.UUCP | \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
rkl@cbnewsh.att.com (kevin.laux) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr10.031342.27656@dgbt.doc.ca>, ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) writes: > > As for understanding language, this is based mostly on a very narrow band > of frequencies (centering around about 6K hertz). So people with hearing > losses that restrict their perception to below 10K hertz and above, say 4K > Hertz have no problems understanding language. That one and one-half octaves > is all you need for accurate speech perception, and you don't need the 10 > octaves for that task. Am I missing something here? Speech in the range you mention is going to be harmonics, not fundamental frequencies. Telephone bandwidth cuts off at 3.5 KHz. Where do you get that understanding spoken language centers around 6 KHz? -- ________________________________________________________________________________ R. Kevin Laux Email: rkl1@hound.att.com AT&T Bell Labs Voice: (908) 949-1160 Holmdel, NJ 07733 Fax: (908) 949-0959
ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) (04/12/91)
I was pulling figures out of imperfect memory and got them slightly wrong. Maximum sensitivity is at about 4K hertz, and real-life speech is from about 200 herz to about 6K hertz. You're probably right about the telephone. However, the telephone is not a hi-fi instrument. The main point I was making, however, is that you don't need 10 octaves for speech, as the person I was replying to claimed. It's more like 5 octaves in the full fidelity situation, and much less than that over the telephone. Even within the restrictions of the telephone, intelligibility is good, and, more than that, speaker identifiability is also good.
ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) (04/12/91)
Dan Barrett <7952@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> writes: >In article <1991Apr10.031342.27656@dgbt.doc.ca> ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) >writes: >>I doubt if Monet, or anyone could do it. >[That is, have "perfect color" the way some people have "perfect pitch".] > > I know of one person who does indeed (it is claimed) have "perfect >color". But this is hearsay; I have not seen it demonstrated itself. But >I have no reason to disbelieve it exists. > >>If you present a given colour, rigidly specified by wavelength, in one >>colour context (e.g. surrounded by a light shade of gray), and the identical >>wavelength in a different colour context (e.g. surrounded by a dark shade of >>gray), the two "identical" colours look quite different, even if the colours >>surrounded by these contexts are presented for simultaneous viewing, >>'side-by-side. > > Similar tricks can be played with sound. Read on. > >>By contrast, a person with perfect pitch will identify the pitch of >>a given note no matter what very different chords that pitched note is >>presented in. > > No, the ear can EASILY be fooled. When several pitches are played >at exactly the same time, the ear perceives them as a single sound. It >might sound like a single pitch, or even be pitchless. I refer you to the >work of Stephen McAdams in this area. Or just listen to a pipe organ. > > BTW, I have perfect pitch. > Dan I don't have perfect pitch. But "several pitches played at exactly the same time" is, of course, a chord. I can analyze the constituent notes of a chord quite easily and presume that most musically literate listeners can do this without much trouble too. People with perfect pitch can, in addition, also hang precise identifying names on these constituent notes. I presume you are not talking about a fundamental and its overtones which is, of course, what produces differential timbre or tone color and that is beyond what most listeners can analytically decompose. I'm not denying that someone can be fooled by playing around with, for example, relative intensities, and so on. I'm referring to the "normal" musical situation, not to the kind of intensity manipulation that McAdams and Bregman played with. "Perfect color" would mean that a person can hang an arbitrary label on a precisely defined color, (say, 480 millimicrons) and tell you if another color, seen later, is or is not the absolutely identical color as seen previously (within, of course, his or her discrimination capacity). That would be analogous to someone saying "A", or 440 herz. I doubt if anyone can do this based on the psychophysiological evidence as I understand it. Having perfect pitch, by the way, can be quite independent of discriminability, so that a person can have perfect pitch yet not be able to make pitch discriminations as finely as another person who may not have perfect pitch. I know one person who has perfect pitch AND very fine pitch discrimination but who is markedly unmusical. His sense of time and rhythm, and his musical memory are all well below average. He can tell you what notes are in a melody while listening to it, but he can't repeat the melody immediately after hearing it without gross errors. And, not surprising, he's not much fond of music. Not only is perfect pitch generally rare, it is rare too among musicians. The best take on the "musical mind" seems to be that it's one where relatively independent capacities (pitch, time, timbre, memory, duration, rhythm etc.) happen to come together to a high degree within a single person. Since "musicality" does not seem to be related to survival in any obvious way, nor to normal social interactions, the "musical profiles" of individuals are not usually apparent unless the person is explicitly tested. Quite unlike reading deficiencies, or some visual ones, the world rarely finds out and it doesn't disable a person to have music related deficiencies. Ted -- Ted Grusec = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Commcns.Res.Centre, 3701 Carling Ave., Ottawa, Ont. K2H 8S2, CANADA Internet: ted@dgbt.doc.ca Compuserve: 73607,1576 (613) 998 2762 (613) 729 9152 FAX (613) 993 8657
barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (04/15/91)
>>In article <1991Apr10.031342.27656@dgbt.doc.ca> ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) >>writes: >>>[Two identical colors, in different contexts, look different.] >>>By contrast, a person with perfect pitch will identify the pitch of >>>a given note no matter what very different chords that pitched note is >>>presented in. I responded: >> No, the ear can EASILY be fooled. When several pitches are played >>at exactly the same time, the ear perceives them as a single sound. He responded to me: >I don't have perfect pitch. But "several pitches played at exactly the same >time" is, of course, a chord. I can analyze the constituent notes of a >chord quite easily.... Your premise is wrong: "several pitches played at exactly the same time" is a CLUSTER, not a chord. I did not say that the pitches were equal-tempered scale degrees, or harmonically related in any way. When you listen to someone hit a snare drum, you hear the sound of a snare drum. You don't hear fifty different harmonics as independent instruments. When you press a note on a pipe organ, you often hear a single pitch, even though twelve different pipes might be playing harmonically related pitches. Dan //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ | Dan Barrett, Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University | | INTERNET: barrett@cs.jhu.edu | | | COMPUSERVE: >internet:barrett@cs.jhu.edu | UUCP: barrett@jhunix.UUCP | \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
david@david.UUCP (David A. Roth) (04/16/91)
My 2 cents on this. :-) If you got perfect pitch already, wonderful. If you don't I suggest to ignore ads for courses that claim you can get perfect pitch. Save your money. Although the concept of perfect pitch is interesting it is not important in the field of music. Many top musicians, composers, producers, recording engineers, etc don't have perfect pitch. If you are not interested in the field of music and simply want to impress your friends at parties since your SO has removed all the lampshades from the livinging room...go buy the course. From the looks of the ads he reminds me of a starving Phd student working on a degree in music theory and could certainly use the money! David
barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (04/17/91)
In article <841@david.UUCP> david@david.UUCP (David A. Roth) writes: >If you got perfect pitch already, wonderful. If you don't I suggest to >ignore ads for courses that claim you can get perfect pitch. Save your >money. I agree that the ads (in KEYBOARD MAGAZINE, for example) are pretty hyped up and perhaps misleading in their enthusiasm and blanket statements. >Although the concept of perfect pitch is interesting it is not >important in the field of music. Many top musicians, composers, >producers, recording engineers, etc don't have perfect pitch. I hope you mean that it isn't "necessary", rather than "important". It is indeed important in the field of music, depending on what you do. (For example, have you ever had to be musical director at a theater and teach 4-part harmony to the singers with no rehearsal piano? I have, and more than once.) To some people, it is important to be able to analyze music precisely while you are listening to it. Perfect pitch makes this easier. Relative pitch can suffice in many cases, but the Real Thing makes a difference. >If you are not interested in the field of music and simply want to >impress your friends at parties.... I'm sorry that you think perfect pitch serves no purpose other than party entertainment. But I respect your opinion, even though I totally disagree with it. Speaking from experience, I can say that perfect pitch really does open up a new way to hear music, both good and bad. It's good because, combined with some musical knowledge, one can pick out individual musical parts and understand what's going on a lot better. It's also good because each key signature has its own distinct sound, and one can make compositional decisions based on this. But it's bad when you go to a concert and an instrument is JUUUUST slightly out of tune, or when the radio plays a song a 1/4-tone too low because their record player is JUUUST slightly too slow. Agony at worst, or weird unfamiliarity at best. Dan //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ | Dan Barrett, Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University | | INTERNET: barrett@cs.jhu.edu | | | COMPUSERVE: >internet:barrett@cs.jhu.edu | UUCP: barrett@jhunix.UUCP | \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////