Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

biorxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 148 posts

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#101

Post by SwellJoe »

retsibsi wrote: post #97
SwellJoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For me the pitch assessment accuracy differs depending on the harmonic content of the sound: guitars and harmonicas are awful, but pianos and flutes etc. seem to do better." It is common for musicians with relative pitch skills to be better at it with their own instrument(s) than others. For example, I hear guitar parts better than most other instruments, and I've played guitar for three decades. I can do pitch reco…

> I think absolute pitch is fascinating and confusing...because pitch is arbitrary. > So, absolute pitch is clearly a learned skill. Being able to name a note as an A or a B or whatever must be learned, because those labels are arbitrary -- but isn't that just a matter of translation? It seems that the fundamental ability (perceiving and identifying absolute frequencies) could still be innate.

That may be so. But, it seems to be more common among the children of musicians and children who have heavy exposure to music early in life. But, then again, that could also be indicative of genetics...maybe people who love music enough to expose their kids to a lot of it at a young age have more of whatever this ability is, just not enough to be absolute pitch.

I guess it could be that there are people who have the fundamental ability, without ever learning the labels to apply to them. Like the fact that humans took a while to name a bunch of the colors, and even now there are cultures where blue and green are not distinct colors. Maybe there are people with absolute pitch who just never learned the names of the notes they're hearing. Heck, maybe those folks are some of the ones who are "learning" absolute pitch as adults in these trials.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#102

Post by SwellJoe »

"In three experiments, we trained adults to name pitches for 12 to 40 hours. Within the training period, 14% of the participants were able to name twelve pitches at 90% accuracy or above, a performance level comparable with typical AP possessors."

This sounds like good relative pitch, with a memorized reference tone. Absolute pitch doesn't fade in 12 to 40 hours. Many musicians have relative pitch abilities that look, to observers, like absolute pitch, because they've memorized a reference tone sometime in the recent past and can find any other note relative to that reference (some folks also use their own voice as a reference tone, because they know the top and/or bottom of their range, or how a specific note feels when they sing it).

I only have the summary to go by, but this sounds quite different from absolute pitch and quite similar to relative pitch. We've always known people can acquire very good relative pitch recognition skills as an adult. That isn't new or groundbreaking (though if they have a training regimen that works fast enough for a study like this, that would be great news, since ear training for very good relative pitch recognition is a months or years long process for most people).

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#103

Post by flyinghamster »

SeanLuke wrote: post #4

More interesting to me is the fact that many people with absolute pitch start to lose it in their 40s and 50s. This has happened to me too. What happens is that your pitch assessment often starts going sharp, so what you thought was a C was actually a B, say. For me the pitch assessment accuracy differs depending on the harmonic content of the sound: guitars and harmonicas are awful, but pianos and flutes etc. seem t…

I've noticed another odd thing. I'm blessed/cursed with absolute pitch, and once in a while I have enough trouble with wax buildup that I have to break out the ear drops and squeeze bulb. When I flush out the ear with trouble, that ear's pitch sense goes awry; dial tone sounds a half-step flat, for instance. Once that ear dries out, it's back to normal.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#104

Post by flyinghamster »

Bud wrote: post #77

Professional classical singer here. I'm personally glad that I don't have absolute pitch, or at least not any version that is mostly focused on A=440 Hz, because as an early-music performer, I regularly have to sing at A=415 (for Bach and other Baroque composers), A=430 (for Mozart on classical-period instruments), A=440, and even A=465 (for Monteverdi) at times. And occasionally at other pitches. And with varying te…

I'm an amateur classical singer, and I definitely have trouble dealing with A=415 when sight reading.

Another problem with absolute pitch, in a cappella singing: hearing another section of the choir go flat and either having to follow along or vainly try to prop the pitch up.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#105

Post by flyinghamster »

anthonyserious wrote: post #6

In my first class in college for a music theory course, the first assignment was "memorize A" (440Hz). Surprisingly, after several weeks of playing the tone and matching it verbally, I did learn A. Everything else from there is knowing intervals relative to A (like, C is a minor 3rd above A, or 3 half steps). Edit: there are tricks you can use for memorizing the intervals, too, like "Here Comes the Bride" is a perfec…

"Precise" dial tone (in North America) is a linear mix of 350 and 440 Hz, so that can be used as a reference.

France usually uses pure 440 Hz, and many countries use 425 Hz.

Of course, with cell phones, a lot of people don't even have a clue what dial tone is. :)

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#106

Post by mrob »

aczerepinski wrote: post #38
dfan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pitch started to drift in middle age too. Like you, I do better or worse based on timbre; piano is great (it's my instrument, which must help), stringed instruments are pretty good in general, wind instruments are not so great, organs are the worst. Playing for ten years in a Balinese gamelan that was not remotely tuned to a Western scale probably didn't help. Absolute pitch is still a really useful skill to have,…

Same. My instruments piano and trumpet are never-miss (though I hear the trumpet in Bb), and organs are more difficult for me too. I think organ overtones might be off pitch or something? just a wild guess.

Organs don't have inharmonic overtones, but organ tuning changes with air pressure/temperature/humidity, and organs are a big hassle to tune, so in practice organs rarely play at A=440Hz.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#107

Post by organsnyder »

aczerepinski wrote: post #38
dfan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pitch started to drift in middle age too. Like you, I do better or worse based on timbre; piano is great (it's my instrument, which must help), stringed instruments are pretty good in general, wind instruments are not so great, organs are the worst. Playing for ten years in a Balinese gamelan that was not remotely tuned to a Western scale probably didn't help. Absolute pitch is still a really useful skill to have,…

Same. My instruments piano and trumpet are never-miss (though I hear the trumpet in Bb), and organs are more difficult for me too. I think organ overtones might be off pitch or something? just a wild guess.

Depends on which stops are pulled on the organ. If it's just octaves (8', 4', 2', 16'...), then it will be quite pure, depending on what kind of stops are playing (flutes and principals are purer than reeds, for instance). If you add a mutation (2-2/3', 1-3/5', a mixture of multiple mutations...), then you'll have both the impurity of the mutations themselves, as well as their own overtones.

Or, you could have a string stop pulled, which is purposefully slightly out-of-tune to produce a "string" sound when paired with an in-tune stop.

A typical "pipe organ" sound on a digital keyboard will often have mixtures and other mutations. I've found that settings with names like "church organ" tend to be purer, perhaps only some flutes and principals.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#108

Post by organsnyder »

SwellJoe wrote: post #102

"In three experiments, we trained adults to name pitches for 12 to 40 hours. Within the training period, 14% of the participants were able to name twelve pitches at 90% accuracy or above, a performance level comparable with typical AP possessors." This sounds like good relative pitch, with a memorized reference tone. Absolute pitch doesn't fade in 12 to 40 hours. Many musicians have relative pitch abilities that look…

I used to be able to pretend I had absolute pitch, back when I played in a college orchestra that rehearsed four days per week—I had that A (for tuning) memorized very well. Now that I'm over a decade removed from that, it's not quite as reliable as it used to be.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#109

Post by organsnyder »

flyinghamster wrote: post #104
Bud wrote: post #77

Professional classical singer here. I'm personally glad that I don't have absolute pitch, or at least not any version that is mostly focused on A=440 Hz, because as an early-music performer, I regularly have to sing at A=415 (for Bach and other Baroque composers), A=430 (for Mozart on classical-period instruments), A=440, and even A=465 (for Monteverdi) at times. And occasionally at other pitches. And with varying te…

I'm an amateur classical singer, and I definitely have trouble dealing with A=415 when sight reading. Another problem with absolute pitch, in a cappella singing: hearing another section of the choir go flat and either having to follow along or vainly try to prop the pitch up.

That's just as painful with good relative pitch. :-D I dropped out of a choir largely because the director put up with (or didn't notice) some pretty bad flatting. This was an otherwise superb choir, who has been to national ACDA conventions multiple times.

My other choir (a semiprofessional chamber choir) sharps occasionally (especially with songs in the key of F), but never flats.

Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible

#110

Post by mrob »

Eli_P wrote: post #29
SeanLuke wrote: post #4

More interesting to me is the fact that many people with absolute pitch start to lose it in their 40s and 50s. This has happened to me too. What happens is that your pitch assessment often starts going sharp, so what you thought was a C was actually a B, say. For me the pitch assessment accuracy differs depending on the harmonic content of the sound: guitars and harmonicas are awful, but pianos and flutes etc. seem t…

Since birth I've been susceptible to otitis, and one day I was having a bad one, with eardrum penetration in right ear, as I was at the edge of teenage. I always have been listening to some music, and happened to notice that tone in the sore right ear is 1/2 tone up. But when I plugged left headphone into healthy left ear, music somehow had synchronized and I heard no difference then. I was terrified with thought tha…

Interestingly, people taking diisopropyltryptamine consistently report strong audio perception distortion:

https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal04....

"Most psychedelic drugs affect, primarily, the visual sense, but here is one that shows its effects primarily in the auditory system. And it screws it up in a most unlinear manner, in that there in not just a simple decrease in pitch which would be as if someone had his thumb against the LP record and made everything come out at a 3/4 speed text, or a 1/2 speed text. Actual [p]roportionality is lost, so there is complete harmonic distortion."

Post reply on HN