Thread: Perfect pitch, A440 and A432... eh? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I have wondered off and on about perfect pitch.

I don't have perfect pitch, but I think I can do more than relative pitch as defined in that link - if I think about it, I'm usually accurate to within less than a semitone.

Perfect (or absolute) pitch is defined on the Wikipedia page above as the ability to
quote:
identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone
I had sort of assumed that meant that if you told one of these rare people "sing an A" they would produce a note at 440Hz. But then I found out about the history of pitch standards via some rather weird YouTube sites lauding the merits of the A432 (the pitch not the road).

So if A has not always been 440Hz, what does having perfect pitch mean?

[ 13. December 2013, 17:37: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I've been looking for online tests of whether you have perfect pitch. I found this one but I can't take it right now since I'm at w*rk. There must be more of them.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I've been looking for online tests of whether you have perfect pitch. I found this one but I can't take it right now since I'm at w*rk. There must be more of them.
That one tells me I have perfect pitch, 10/10.

However, it involves identifying a given note played on a piano, with a choice between 'white keys' only.

I'm sure there are some harmonics in the background which make the note easier than, say, a sine wave (similarly, I can usually identify a guitar chord pretty well straight off simply because of how the chord sounds on a guitar).

That's not the same as asking me to sing an A and then compare it to a piano A.

And that's not the same, apparently, as asking me to sing A440, or whether the guitar I hear the chord on is tuned less than a semitone flat.

Is perfect pitch, after all, relative?
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
Eutychus: That's not the same as asking me to sing an A and then compare it to a piano A.
Exactly. That's what I was looking for, but I couldn't find it quickly.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Here (or so it is claimed) is an A440 sine wave. If I try to hit an A before playing it (and having taken a break from listening to anything since I last posted), I'm about a semitone out (so much for that 10/10).

Or am I hitting A432 and thus proving that I'm one with the universe, or something?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I have read that people who have perfect pitch have basically internalized the pitch of the piano they had in the home when they were children.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
In my case it was a bit flat, so that would make perfect (!) sense. But it means that absolute pitch in fact isn't.
 
Posted by FooloftheShip (# 15579) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I have read that people who have perfect pitch have basically internalized the pitch of the piano they had in the home when they were children.
This is exactly why my otherwise perfect pitch has two "gears". My great-aunt's piano, which we inherited, was 5/8 of a tone flat, which is a bit lower even than A = 432, so my pitch works at either, er, pitch.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Ah, a specimen!

So if you hear a car horn, can you tell if it's a Bb or whatever? And whether it's a "grandmother" Bb or not? And can you do so straight off, or do you have to think about it? Could you sing A440 to order, or just a "grandmother" A?

[ETA for "grandmother" read "great-aunt". My reading is a bit like my ear : [Hot and Hormonal] ]

[ 13. December 2013, 19:30: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :
 
Oh, that makes more sense. I never really understood the concept myself.

My son can sing a song in the right pitch, having internalized the sound, whereas most people need the starting note. ie, me.
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
Eutychus: I don't have perfect pitch, but I think I can do more than relative pitch as defined in that link - if I think about it, I'm usually accurate to within less than a semitone.
That's more or less where I am too.
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
I have sufficient relative pitch that I find most people's whistling excruciating to hear. It's not close enough to absolute pitch to be useful.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
But don't get too hung up on whether or not your own pitch, as it were, it A440 because that is a relatively new pitch.

Fixed pitch only became much of an issue because of organs - and well into the 18th century the pitch these were tuned to varied widely country by country.

Organs in Germany and the Low Countries tended to be tuned to A480 or thereabouts. In England pitch was as low as A380 although by the time of Handel it had climbed a bit to 408.

When organs moved to the New World they developed their own pitch - and then you had the development of orchestra or "philharmonic pitch" which could be higher again.

The French decided to set pitch in the 19th century and settled on A 435 - which pleased singers because it was lower than La Scala pitch, which was high partly because Verdi like the brighter tone. Meanwhile, the New York Philharmonic settled on 459 for a while before sliding down to 442.

Currently modern concert pitch is somewhere between 440 and 443. Baroque pitch is A 415.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
People who have perfect pitch can indeed dislike it if A is set to a different frequency than they are used to.

After all, 'A' is just a label. If you have perfect pitch and have learnt that a sound you can recognise is called 'A', then someone else coming along and playing a different sound and claiming it's 'A' is going to be a problem.

You might agree with them that the first sound is '440' and the second sound is '415', but we don't usually learn THOSE labels for the sounds, we normally learn labels like 'A'.
 
Posted by Polly Plummer (# 13354) on :
 
In my youth I used to play the oboe - not all that well. Once I was the only oboist present in an orchestra and had to give them an A. I blew my best and was very disconcerted when some more musical people turned round and said "that's flat" - I thought the idea was that they took the tuning from me!
 
Posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus (# 2515) on :
 
People with perfect pitch can find it quite unpleasant listening to music on an instrument not tuned to the standard in their head. It can be even worse playing such an instrument as they have the feeling they are playing the wrong notes all the time.

This can be particularly difficult if the standard in their head drifts with age, as it has with a friend of mine.

I never considered I had perfect pitch, but I am surprised how often, when I play a piece "in my head" it turns out to be in the correct key.
 
Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :
 
I don't have perfect anything (even though my first piano teacher thought I did.) I do have pretty darn close pitch memory, however. It has caused distress on those one or two occasions I used the organ transposer, then forgot to orient it back to normal. The shock was almost electric.

One of my piano students has perfect pitch. Always has. Can sing a pitch at request and name it when heard. He sang the national anthem for a spring training game early this year. His dad (a marvelous musician) asked what key he sang it in. David said "A-Flat". His dad asked him how he knew. The question honestly puzzled David. Like asking how he knew the sky was blue.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
One reason (not necessarily the only reason) some people have perfect pitch is because they are synaesthetic. That is, they see colours when they hear sounds (and each sound has its own specific frequency).

I had a choir director who was synaesthetic. She knew when we were going flat because the colour of the music changed.
 
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
But don't get too hung up on whether or not your own pitch, as it were, it A440 because that is a relatively new pitch.

Fixed pitch only became much of an issue because of organs - and well into the 18th century the pitch these were tuned to varied widely country by country.

Organs in Germany and the Low Countries tended to be tuned to A480 or thereabouts. In England pitch was as low as A380 although by the time of Handel it had climbed a bit to 408.

When organs moved to the New World they developed their own pitch - and then you had the development of orchestra or "philharmonic pitch" which could be higher again.

The French decided to set pitch in the 19th century and settled on A 435 - which pleased singers because it was lower than La Scala pitch, which was high partly because Verdi like the brighter tone. Meanwhile, the New York Philharmonic settled on 459 for a while before sliding down to 442.

Currently modern concert pitch is somewhere between 440 and 443. Baroque pitch is A 415.
But these old time organs were not for the most tuned to the equally tempered scale. They were tuned to harmonics, which gives them a different feel, even relative pitch is different for these instruments.

I read this yesterday and tried singing the colour yellow, it was F#. This morning I tried it again, it was still F#. Strangely I can't sing any another colour, though minor keys are closer than major keys. C minor is so close it is almost giving a hug.
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
Many years ago when I was as student at MIT I was told that the main Auditorium pipe organ had been ordered from a German organ builder who assumed they would want it tuned to the Boston Symphony Orchestra A 444.

After a few years a quite expensive retuning to a440 was done because the student orchestras playing with it were quite unhappy with the pitch.

/tangent to reminisce
Even after the organ was retuned it was rarely used because of the stunningly bad acoustics of the auditorium (a roof that is a section of a sphere is not the best acoustic shape for a performance space). I irritated the university organist by running a yearly silent movie with organ accompaniment which usually filled the 1200 seat auditorium completely where he would rarely get more than a 100 people for his concerts.

[ 14. December 2013, 07:36: Message edited by: Palimpsest ]
 
Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
AIUI, actual innate perfect pitch is very rare, i.e. people who can find pitches without working at it. My cello teacher (a very gifted artist, international soloist and national conservatoire teacher - yes, one of those people) is one such person.

He has one 10 year-old student who I think reminds him a lot of his younger self, which is to say gifted and lazy. He can tell that the child has perfect pitch but hasn't told him because he doesn't do any work as it is and he doesn't want to encourage him to get any lazier [Big Grin]

Acquired pitch is much more common - learning to recognise the notes. My boyfriend's Dad (retired concert pianist) likes to tell you what pitch the mosquitoes are whining at in the garden.

Personally I have neither [Biased] (although I do have a good ear for playing in tune).
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Okayyyy....

My tentative conclusions from all this is that there is no such thing as perfect pitch, there are just varying degrees of relative pitch.

I understand relative pitch as the ability to produce a note and identify intervals once an initial note has been given.

Perfect (or absolute) pitch means, in effect, the ability to do the same thing, except that the initial note was "given" a very long time ago, probably some time in childhood.

Jedijudy's example of her student David is a bit misleading. David "just knew" he was singing in Ab, but as orfeo and others have pointed out we don't know what frequency that actually corresponded to. If he had been back a few centuries, as L'organist points out, due to pitch inflation he would probably have found the note to be designated as a G or even lower. To my mind, he has highly developed relative pitch - relative to a strongly internalised, longtstanding note.

Does anybody disagree with this?

And Balaam, does that mean that you have selective synaesthesia? Or does it just mean you heard the first note of Mellow Yellow (sounds suspiciously like an F# to me) at a formative point in your life?

[ 14. December 2013, 08:41: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
he would probably have found the note to be designated as a G or even lower.
Agh, I knew I would get that wrong. I meant "as an A or even higher".
 
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 
[cross post]
You could be right. I used to listen to that when I was 12.

[ 14. December 2013, 09:11: Message edited by: balaam ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Weird. It was the first song I thought of when you mentioned the colour, and to my surprise the first note turned out to be an F#.
 
Posted by FooloftheShip (# 15579) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
People with perfect pitch can find it quite unpleasant listening to music on an instrument not tuned to the standard in their head. It can be even worse playing such an instrument as they have the feeling they are playing the wrong notes all the time.

Fits exactly with my experience. I had to give up learning the clarinet because it sounds a tone below written pitch (for the b flat instrument), and I find singing in choirs very hard when they go flat: my "choral instincts" kick in to keep me with them, but it always feels wrong and makes me tense.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
One reason (not necessarily the only reason) some people have perfect pitch is because they are synaesthetic. That is, they see colours when they hear sounds (and each sound has its own specific frequency).

I had a choir director who was synaesthetic. She knew when we were going flat because the colour of the music changed.
*sigh* Now you're making me jealous. I have extremely good pitch memory, though I never had musical training and so can't say anything about what else I might have. But I do have synesthesia, only mine is the much less useful kind where it's the -- timbre? Texture? Of the dound that produces the reaction, not the pitch. And the reaction is much more shape and visual texture than color, which would be so useful...
 
Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by jedijudy:
The question honestly puzzled David. Like asking how he knew the sky was blue.
I think perception of color and of pitch are very good analogies. After all, both are ways of perceiving what's actually a frequency. Most people can see color. We can remember what different colors are called and name what we're seeing. Of course, those names are linguistic artifacts, culturally conditioned. Color blind people, however, cannot do this. Most of us are color blind when it comes to pitch. While almost everyone can learn to identify intervals, most people will never be able to identify a pitch they hear. That's the difference between having or not having perfect pitch.

The synesthetes are interesting. I had a friend once who told me my green sweater was concert pitch D major. He said that the difference for him between good and bad atonal music was that bad atonal music had no color, but good atonal music had all the colors.

[ 14. December 2013, 14:51: Message edited by: Hart ]
 
Posted by Morlader (# 16040) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
[QUOTE]But these old time organs were not for the most tuned to the equally tempered scale. They were tuned to harmonics, which gives them a different feel, even relative pitch is different for these instruments.
Not "tuned to harmonics", but certainly not to equal temperament either. Even today, various tunings - as distinct from pitches - are used e.g. some variety of Werckmeister or an individual tuner's interpretation thereof. Modern electronic organs may be able to change temperament as well as pitch.

A factor not mentioned yet: metal for organ pipes was/is expensive and lower pitched instruments need longer pipes. So it's cheaper to make higher pitched instruments. This is also why some stops with metal pipes have wooden pipes for their lowest octave, or just no lowest octave at all - a trap for visiting organists!

Singers who perform with baroque ensembles (Morladres is one such) often ask for music to be transposed up from written pitch to a more resonant range. But if there's a harpsichord or baroque-pitch organ playing there may be temperament problems with a semitone transposition.

I don't have perfect pitch, TBTG, nor do I see colours for individual notes. The key of D major does usually seem to be red to me, however. [Confused]

[ 15. December 2013, 09:21: Message edited by: Morlader ]
 
Posted by Panda (# 2951) on :
 
I can just about always identify a pitch when I hear it, and I can nearly always sing a note at the pitch I'm aiming for.

Interestingly I play the French horn, which is an F instrument, and (although it's a little rusty and takes longer to kick in because I don't play much atm) if I hear a horn playing I know what horn-note it is before knowing the actual note.

I can usually tell right away if a piece has been transposed from what I have in front of me, and if the pitch has slipped. I find I can more or less switch this off though, so I can sing at baroque pitch.

I don't see pitches in colours; but whole keys have what I can only describe as 'feelings' or 'senses' to them. B flat and E flat are very rounded, comfortable keys, F sharp major for instance is all sharp-edged and brittle. Very hard to describe - you have to be in my head to know!
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
Panda: B flat and E flat are very rounded, comfortable keys
Be careful, if you go on like this you'll sound like a brass player [Biased]
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
Oops, I just read your post better and you are a brass player [Hot and Hormonal]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
One reason (not necessarily the only reason) some people have perfect pitch is because they are synaesthetic. That is, they see colours when they hear sounds (and each sound has its own specific frequency).

I had a choir director who was synaesthetic. She knew when we were going flat because the colour of the music changed.
*sigh* Now you're making me jealous. I have extremely good pitch memory, though I never had musical training and so can't say anything about what else I might have. But I do have synesthesia, only mine is the much less useful kind where it's the -- timbre? Texture? Of the dound that produces the reaction, not the pitch. And the reaction is much more shape and visual texture than color, which would be so useful...
Less useful in one sense, yes, but it must make orchestral music a lot of fun.
 
Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Panda: B flat and E flat are very rounded, comfortable keys
Be careful, if you go on like this you'll sound like a brass player [Biased]
I have similar feelings about keys, but they solely relate to how they feel in my hands when I'm playing them (on the piano). I can't tell at all from listening to music what key we might be in. I think we had another conversation about this in Heaven recently, but a few sharps feels fun to play in, but too many just feels pushy. Flats feel elegant and refined on the other hand. The more the merrier!
 
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 
Sharps are for string players.
 
Posted by Beethoven (# 114) on :
 
I think of pitch recognition as similar to colour recognition - it's just that we teach children the two very differently. From an early age, we tell them that particular frequencies that they interpret with their eyes are know as 'blue', or 'red', or 'yellow' or whatever - but we don't tell them that this frequency that they interpret with their ears is a 'C' or an 'A' or whatever until much later in life, when that kind of learning and memory development is much harder.

I could be wrong, but that's how it seems to me, anyway. And for the record, I don't like singing things being transposed without being told, cos they feel wrong at a different pitch. And if it's a tricky piece with a difficult entry, I'm likely to come in at the notated pitch unless I've written in a correction...
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I think singing is quite different to hearing simply because with singing you can feel where you are in your vocal range - and if you know your own vocal range well enough you can have a pretty good idea about the name of the note that you're hitting.

I like singing in B major. It suits my vocal range perfectly. There aren't a lot of opportunities to sing in B major...
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Panda:
B flat and E flat are very rounded, comfortable keys, F sharp major for instance is all sharp-edged and brittle. Very hard to describe - you have to be in my head to know!
I'm not in your head but know exactly what you mean, especially about Eb.

I can usually tell when someone's playing a piano in Eb, but not whether it is tuned to concert pitch, and I think this has something to do with harmonics, amplitude or some other words I read on Wikipedia (I'm sorry, I'm a complete musicological ignoramus).

Are all semitone intervals exactly equal? (ie there a scientific basis for hearing a difference between "black note" and "white note" key signatures?).
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Are all semitone intervals exactly equal? (ie there a scientific basis for hearing a difference between "black note" and "white note" key signatures?).
Yes. In equal temperament, which is what everyone uses for the last couple of centuries, all intervals are exactly equal. There is no scientific difference in that sense.

Different keys do tend to have different sorts of musical associations, even for people without perfect pitch or synaesthesia or some other reason for recognising keys. I suspect this is partly a historical legacy from when different keys DID sound different, and partly because not all keys are equally playable on many instruments.

So, for example, you'll get big grand ceremonial symphonies in C major by people like Haydn and Beethoven because at the time they were writing, you needed to stick to a key like C major to have all the instruments participating. Keys with a few flats in them are also fairly good for brass.

There's a passage in Beethoven's symphony no.8, in F major (1 flat), where it briefly swerves into F sharp minor (3 sharps). The notes to the recording I used to have pointed out that the brass instruments (and I think also percussion as well) drop out at this point because it just wasn't technically possible for them to play... but that Beethoven also uses this to good musical effect, as those instruments help reassert that F major is the 'real' key by emphatically re-joining once the music is in F again.

[ 18. December 2013, 06:19: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In equal temperament, which is what everyone uses for the last couple of centuries,
Well, more mostly, than always. And much more for pianos and other instruments that are true chord instruments. Many stringed and wind instruments use just intonation.*
Equal temperament is a compromise tuning. It has been suggested that one cannot truly play certain music, such as Mozart, as it would have been played in its own time as the tunings used would be different.
Enough, though. Tuning, and its many arguments, could be its own thread.


*Also called pure intonation
 
Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :
 
A fellow Physics teacher told me of a pupil who not only had perfect pitch but could name frequencies to the nearest Hertz - he tested him using a signal generator and he was indeed able to do it.
 
Posted by bib (# 13074) on :
 
I believe that I have perfect pitch and have been told by a singing teacher that she believes I certainly do. It is very disconcerting when an accompanist plays in a different key from what is in front of me on the sheet of music. I also struggle in choir when some members start to drop pitch and go flat. My ear is acutely tuned to what should be sung and their mistakes almost cause physical pain. I sometimes think it would be easier not to have this ability.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I can imagine that as being painful.

With reference to TurquoiseTastic's post, do you know what your perfect pitch is attuned to? Is it to A440, A432, or another frequency? And do you have any idea why?
 
Posted by blackbeard (# 10848) on :
 
The violinist Viktoria Mullova used apparently to have perfect pitch, but lost this when she took to playing violin tuned to Baroque pitch which is quite a bit below modern pitch (A=415, ish).
So I'm told.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
The violinist Viktoria Mullova used apparently to have perfect pitch, but lost this when she took to playing violin tuned to Baroque pitch which is quite a bit below modern pitch (A=415, ish).
So I'm told.
I'm sorry to split hairs but I need to understand this. Do you mean she could previously identify A440 but could no longer do so when she got used to hearing A415? And could she not then identify A415? Surely "perfect pitch" does not mean "the ability to hit A440 and nothing else"? Or so TurquoiseTastic's anecdote would suggest.
 
Posted by Wild Organist (# 12631) on :
 
[/qb][/QUOTE]I'm sorry to split hairs but I need to understand this. Do you mean she could previously identify A440 but could no longer do so when she got used to hearing A415? And could she not then identify A415? Surely "perfect pitch" does not mean "the ability to hit A440 and nothing else"? Or so TurquoiseTastic's anecdote would suggest. [/QB][/QUOTE]
Well, that's what happened to me, except the baroque violin was a record player which played everything a semitone sharp because it was too fast, and now I get confused and can miss the correct pitch by a semitone in either direction unless I really think about it. That was a Christmass present from Mum & Dad, who didn't have pitch and wouldn't have noticed. I didn't until I played a record of something I already knew, but it was too late by then.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Thanks for that. I'm increasingly convinced the flat piano I learned on has a lot to answer for, and that 'perfect pitch' is in fact extremely developed relative pitch, relative to a well-internalised frequency.

How developed seems to relate to how fast one can identify a given note and in what variety of circumstances (in my case, sometimes I just know straight away, other times I'd really have to think for a long while and might well be out by a semitone or so even then) and how sensitive one is to slightly different pitches of standard notes. TurquoiseTastic's example appears to be the closest thing to absolute pitch so far on this thread.
 
Posted by A.Pilgrim (# 15044) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I've been looking for online tests of whether you have perfect pitch. I found this one but I can't take it right now since I'm at w*rk. There must be more of them.
I took that test and scored 4/10. Then I repeated it and scored 3/10. Then I listened to the reference scale, tried to memorise it, and took the test again: 3/10. [Frown] I always knew I didn't have perfect pitch. Instead I have infinitely variable pitch, and can sing a tune starting at any pitch of note at all.

However, I do have a good ear for intervals - I can sing a chromatic octave scale, and if someone plays two adjacent semitones on a piano I can happily sing the note half-way in between them.

I sing in a choir with high musical standards, which has at least one person with perfect pitch. Very occasionally the musical director will ask for a piece to be sung a tone lower than written. This causes considerable grief for many in the choir, especially those with perfect pitch (I guess it causes too much cognitive dissonance [Biased] ) but I find it a doddle. Read the dots, mentally transpose, sing the note - no problemo.
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Many stringed and wind instruments use just intonation.*
A choir singing unaccompanied may also use true/just/pure intonation. But I guess the human voice can be included in the definition of 'a wind instrument'. [Smile]
Angus
 
Posted by blackbeard (# 10848) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
The violinist Viktoria Mullova used apparently to have perfect pitch, but lost this when she took to playing violin tuned to Baroque pitch which is quite a bit below modern pitch (A=415, ish).
So I'm told.
I'm sorry to split hairs but I need to understand this. Do you mean she could previously identify A440 but could no longer do so when she got used to hearing A415? And could she not then identify A415? Surely "perfect pitch" does not mean "the ability to hit A440 and nothing else"? Or so TurquoiseTastic's anecdote would suggest.
You might have to ask her, but I took this to mean that before the change to Baroque pitch she could identify any note without any external reference, and after the change she could not identify any note unless there was an external reference.

In a way it's not a fundamental change - as I understand it, there isn't much (or any) change in the ability to function as a practical musician.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Hmm, following from Lavienrouge's post, maybe there are in fact degrees of acquired pitch, with "innate" just off the 'bottom' end (ie it's never really innate, just acquired so early as to make no difference), as well as degrees of relative pitch, with absolute just off the top end. I know I'm quite a way from the 'absolute' end (even if I did score 10/10 on LeRoc's test) but anything I can do certainly feels a lot more innate than acquired.
 
Posted by blackbeard (# 10848) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
[QUOTE]....I sing in a choir with high musical standards, which has at least one person with perfect pitch. Very occasionally the musical director will ask for a piece to be sung a tone lower than written. This causes considerable grief for many in the choir, especially those with perfect pitch (I guess it causes too much cognitive dissonance [Biased] ) but I find it a doddle. Read the dots, mentally transpose, sing the note - no problemo.
...Angus
As a very amateur singer I would imagine this would cause grief to quite a lot of singers, perfect pitch or not. It might not bother me if a knew the music had been transposed downwards, but if I didn't know and didn't guess it would be perplexing. If it had been transposed up a tone I might well find it impossible to sing, and certainly rather strange and very tiring.

But presumably in the case the request to transpose downwards arose reasonably enough, from the music being uncomfortably high for most of the singers?

And incidentally, the pitch change to A=440 since Baroque and Classical times is enough to be quite hard on the voices of some singers. Which is why Mrs B (soprano) calls Beethoven's 9th symphony Ode to Joy the "Ode to Shriek".

Blackbeard (Second Bass - but of course you guessed that)
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Thanks for that. I'm increasingly convinced the flat piano I learned on has a lot to answer for, and that 'perfect pitch' is in fact extremely developed relative pitch, relative to a well-internalised frequency.
It feels like you're splitting hairs here. Surely the point of perfect pitch is that the standard is internal?

All you seem to be saying is that your internal standard is 'faulty' relative to the external standard you're now trying to compare it to. Well, fine, but that assumes that the external standard you're now using is in fact the 'right' one.

But that standard is only 'right' on the basis of a lot of people using it, not because it's inherently better. It's all just labels. Not only is 'A' an arbitrary label that is now frequently set at 440 Hertz, instead of 415 Hertz or any other option, but "440 Hertz" is itself an arbitrary label. It's based on vibrations per second. There is nothing inherently natural about a second.

It's not a good idea to start treating A=440 Herz as some kind of intrinsic invariant of the universe that a creature with 'true' perfect pitch would recognise. That's setting the bar too high.

Good relative pitch means you have to be given the label for a particular sound before being able to reason out the label for other sounds. Perfect pitch means you don't have to be given the label of the first sound. That's all.
 
Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
As a very amateur singer I would imagine this would cause grief to quite a lot of singers, perfect pitch or not.
Um... aren't singers quite used to transposing pieces to fit with available vocal ranges?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I scored 10/10 on that test just now, but it's not because I've got perfect pitch. It's because the test restricts the options to a C major scale and I can pick a semitone from a tone very easily. As soon as you find a semitone, it has to be either E-F or B-C, and my relative pitch is sufficiently strong that I can reason out all the other notes.

So it's not actually a good test of perfect pitch. If the test hadn't started off by telling me I could only have white notes, I would have been sunk.

There's also need to commit to an answer for a given note until you've heard and played all 10 notes. And you can go back between the 10 notes to confirm the interval relationships. Again, that gives someone like me, with excellent relative pitch, a perfect opportunity to test my 'theory' out as to where I am within the limited range of options the test presents. A person with perfect pitch doesn't need that opportunity.

[ 19. December 2013, 20:53: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It feels like you're splitting hairs here.
It's my legal bent [Two face]
quote:
Surely the point of perfect pitch is that the standard is internal?
But some people seem to be saying their internal standard can be lost or disrupted by regularly hearing a slightly different pitch. That suggests more interplay between internal and external than I had assumed was the case.
quote:
All you seem to be saying is that your internal standard is 'faulty' relative to the external standard you're now trying to compare it to.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I have some sort of internal standard, but it wobbles and I can't use it to tell straight off what note the mosquitoes in the garden are singing or whether a recording is less than a semitone out from concert pitch.

(If you really want to know, if I can't identify a note straight out - as I did with the opening F# in Mellow Yellow, see above) I start in my head with the distinctive opening A in I know what I like by Genesis and compare (still in my head) from there. But I can be out by about a semitone).
quote:
It's not a good idea to start treating A=440 Herz as some kind of intrinsic invariant of the universe that a creature with 'true' perfect pitch would recognise. That's setting the bar too high.
I agree, but the YouTube video I linked to in the OP features quite a few, um, enthusiasts who seem to think that A=432 Hz is just what you describe. That was an interesting diversion in my investigations into all this.

quote:
Good relative pitch means you have to be given the label for a particular sound before being able to reason out the label for other sounds. Perfect pitch means you don't have to be given the label of the first sound. That's all.
Except that for me and it seems LeRoc at least, that's not all. Both of us say we can do a lot more than relative pitch, but claim a lot less than what a lot of people are relating about perfect pitch here. That's why I tend to think the whole thing is on more of a spectrum rather than two distinct concepts (relative and absolute).
 
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :
 
There's an essay on perfect pitch by Oliver Sacks IIRC. But I think one of the points I took away from it was that we are all born with perfect pitch, but rapidly lose it if not used.

Another point was that native Chinese speakers number many more people with perfect pitch amongst them. The reason is surmised to be that most dialects are actually chanted, and hearing their parents' voices keeps the capability.

Eutychus - you seem to be struggling with definitions and I'm struggling to see why! There is no such thing as an "A" (or any other note) - it's just a label we put on a vibration of particular frequency and its double/half etc. harmonics. Having perfect pitch simply means the ability to map that native tone recognition ability onto the label that the note carries in any given tuning. A=440Hz in international concert pitch, but A in baroque pitch (=415Hz) is more or less A flat in IC pitch. Nothing changes except the labels.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
(If you really want to know, if I can't identify a note straight out - as I did with the opening F# in Mellow Yellow, see above) I start in my head with the distinctive opening A in I know what I like by Genesis and compare (still in my head) from there. But I can be out by about a semitone).
The fact that you can start in your head with 'the distinctive opening A' is instructive. You just inspired an experiment. I imagined the opening bar of Beethoven's 5th symphony in my head. I know the first note is a G. I should know the piece well enough to know what it sounds like. I heard the strings attack the notes in my head.

Unfortunately, when I put my CD recording of Beethoven's 5th on, what my mind had come up with for the opening G wasn't a G at all. It appears to have been an F.

If you can imagine the distinctive opening A in your head, and your head in fact generates an A in your imagination, or is consistently close to it, then I'd say you've got perfect pitch.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Wobbly, inconsistent "perfect" pitch. Don't set me up with an oscilloscope or you'll be disappointed!
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Given that we've established 'A' can be out by a semitone either way depending on whose 'A' we're talking about, I'd say being a bit wobbly yourself isn't exactly a disgrace.
 
Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :
 
I also got 3/10, which struck me as surprisingly high actually, given that I know I don't have perfect pitch. I can clearly do better than randomly guess at a note. 3/10 when the options spanned two 8ves, suggests my absolute ear is accurate roughly plus or minus a tritone.
 


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