If you want to learn how to recognize tones I highly recommend the method of Alain Benbassat: http://www.miles.be
You'll notice a rapid understanding of tones and keys. There are (even free) apps for Android and iOS as well.
Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
131–140 of 148 posts
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's my understanding that perfect pitch can be tuned, and also trained to deal with microtonal harmonies, etc. I don't think it is a straight jacket. Jacob Collier, I think(?), has perfect pitch, but going outside of western harmony is his schtick. I think it's more like learning new words as an adult rather than a cage. But, maybe I'm wrong? I've heard anecdotally of people with perfect pitch complaining about some…
Jacob Colliers perfect pitch is apparently (if his tricks on stream are to be believed) accurate to a few cents
I'm inclined to believe it. I don't care for his music, but he's really impressive from a technical perspective. He can zero in on incredibly tiny pitch variations, when listening and singing. Hearing him sing microtonal stuff is downright intimidating.
Anyway, since he does have absolute pitch, I think he is very strong evidence that it doesn't limit you to A=440 and 12 tone equal temperament, because he is frequently wildly divergent from that, exploring microtonal music, harmonic series tunings, etc. It seems to be freeing rather than limiting (I understand some of that stuff on a theoretical level, but not on a level where I could improvise or compose in those languages without a lot of work and a whole new approach to ear training...musical concepts he studies and seems to grok in days or weeks would take me months or years).
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlikely true though, you don't analyze pitches using an internal clock, rather you cochlea acts like an analog fourier transform.
> you don't analyze pitches using an internal clock, rather you cochlea acts like an analog fourier transform. I'm out of my depth here, but wouldn't that process still require some kind of 'clock' (albeit not necessarily the one used for conscious time perception) in order to resolve the signal into absolute, rather than relative, frequencies?
Nope - the transform is analog. You have a tube, and the sound propagates down the tube; higher frequencies get absorbed first, while lower frequencies make it further. The tube is lined with little hairs that just sense amplitude; each hair thus measures the amplitude of the signal convolved by the frequency response of that spot in the tube (actually pulling a pure tone out of that is a remarkable feat of signal processing as there is huge overlap). So no clock is required - an absolute frequency turns into an absolute pattern of nerve stimulus.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there some sort of online test to figure out if you’re tone deaf. Every time people talk about B, C, etc. and then reproduce the sound with another instrument, I have no idea what it’s supposed to be...
It's unlikely that you're tone deaf. It's quite rare. Truly tone deaf people can't really hear music, because they can't hear the relative relationships of pitches properly. It's the relative pitches, not the absolute pitches, that create the ebb and flow of music. I've been playing music for thirty-odd years, and I couldn't name pitches by ear most of the time, certainly not without thinking about it. I often hand-t…
There's a lesser form of tone-deafness (perhaps that's not the right word for it) where you can't tell with certainly or consistency the direction or extent of a change in pitch.
You can still hear and appreciate music, but you can't whistle or hum along to a tune.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So you have perfect pitch and does that equate to having a good quality singing voice (others enjoy listening to you)? At the simplest there's 2 components in enjoying somebody sing: - They have a pretty-ish voice that they master. Absolute pitch doesn't help for that, just like it doesn't help for any other instrument. - They sing on tune. Absolute pitch doesn't help either, anybody can tune themselves on a backgr…
Relative is far more important than absolute pitch. As long as the notes are precise distances apart, you'll get the harmonies you need. Some people with absolute pitch are irritated to no end that tons of music isn't tuned to their idea of absolute pitch. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch which describes how orchestras have tuned to different pitches historically.
Yes, that is what I meant :)
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Late 20s woman, started playing violin when I was 4, genetically predisposed. I had that SAME moment of shock and panic when I practiced with my sister before we played for my cousin's wedding a year ago. It was wild, the best way I can describe it is my ear has flattened out to baroque tuning down from modern 440 turning. I don't like it! I'm losing my best party trick to age but oh well, I don't think anybody's rea…
Is this consistent? You could correct your perception using this knowledge then. Just add the half step. As long as the measurement device is still working, you can always re-calibrate (in this case cognitively) the base.
Yeah, but this is sort of like saying "whenever you see red, remember that it's really green instead." It's not like you stop seeing and thinking red.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#137Earlier 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.
Mostly I feel like the timbre of an organ note is very consistent from pitch to pitch, whereas, say, an A on a piano sounds buzzy to me while a Bb sounds more smooth and a B natural is kind of liquid. (Of course the timbre probably isn't really changing much but that's how my brain perceives it.)
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#138More 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…
"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…
Rick Beato has some interesting videos about perfect pitch:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rick+beato+perf...
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#139Earlier 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,…
Piano has very distinct timbre for each note - there are many people that think they have perfect pitch but only really just learned the timbre for each note on piano and wouldn't be able to identify pitches of puretones for instance. However for those of us that drift, I think it's likely that we recognized notes by both timbre and pitch, but although now that our pitch recognition has started drifting, we can still…
I'm interested in this idea that a piano has a distinct timbre per note. Surely the most distinct thing between two notes is their pitch. But you're saying people pick up on the harmonic signature more readily? I can here the difference in timbre across different sections of the piano, but I really cannot imagine distinguishing the timbre of two consecutive notes within the same "section" (by section I mean that the strings are arranged equivalently except for length and tension).
I'd also think that those people would be very sensitive to the make of piano.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Mostly I feel like the timbre of an organ note is very consistent from pitch to pitch, whereas, say, an A on a piano sounds buzzy to me while a Bb sounds more smooth and a B natural is kind of liquid. (Of course the timbre probably isn't really changing much but that's how my brain perceives it.)
I just read a comment above that discussed this timbre sensitivity. In any octave the A sounds buzzy? What about on any piano? Do all 88 keys produce a kind of unique timbre signature for you?