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Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

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Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#21

Post by Tade0 »

I wonder what's the physical basis of perfect pitch? Neurons growing in a certain pattern?

When I was in my late teens I went to a concert which was way too loud - for a few years after that incident I could hear something akin to modulation distortion if the sound was loud enough - a sort of low ringing like what you hear if you spin a suitcase wheel using your hand.

It was unpleasant, but surprisingly helpful in identifying pitch, because the distortion would just sound differently depending on pitch - I associated it with a few notes and could roughly identify them - especially the lower ones (E, D and C# specifically).

The effect faded over time and now I can't do it any more.

In any case, non-newtonian fluids exhibit such distortion and the body is full of them(most notably blood). I wonder if they play any role in this?

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#22

Post by wrs »

raincole wrote: post #8

While I think it's pretty cool, is absolute pitch actually "useful" for music-making? I feel relative notations (I-V-vi-IV) capture the essense of a piece of music better than absolute notations (C-G-Amin-F). It's just my layman opinion though.

As an amateur musician and composer who doesn’t have it, seems like it would be handy for transcription and tuning, but I don’t know what else. You must still be able to “switch modes” to relative, right? Otherwise you couldn’t even hear musical structures the same way, because aside from timbre they’re all relative.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#24

Post by anonymouskimmer »

colanderman wrote: post #18
raincole wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much "resolution" do their ears have? Like can someone with absolute pitch tell whether an instrument is in 12-ET or just intonation without a reference?

Intonation is a matter of relative pitch. I have good relative pitch, and can distinguish intonation to a degree. People with absolute pitch can nonetheless distinguish pitch with better than semitone accuracy. This is why it's often a hindrance, because if an ensemble is tuned to a slightly different reference, it is quite noticeable to them.

I've wondered if it's possible to train exact, frequency-based pitch, instead of this relative tuning-based absolute pitch. I wonder if that would be as discordant to the trained ear when switching to another tuning.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#25

Post by 1letterunixname »

Tade0 wrote: post #21

I wonder what's the physical basis of perfect pitch? Neurons growing in a certain pattern? When I was in my late teens I went to a concert which was way too loud - for a few years after that incident I could hear something akin to modulation distortion if the sound was loud enough - a sort of low ringing like what you hear if you spin a suitcase wheel using your hand. It was unpleasant, but surprisingly helpful in id…

I can't sing or carry a tune to save my life and have a speech impediment, but I can tune a guitar or a piano by ear, confirmed by tuning fork.

From ages roughly 10-25, I could tell the type of (US civilian or military) aircraft or helicopter flying above and the number of engines it had without looking.

My hearing now is fairly shot and I have SCDS. I can hear my left eyeball move, eating chips is a noisy affair, and it sounds like water is perpetually in my left ear.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#26

Post by giraffe_lady »

raincole wrote: post #15
canjobear wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression from talking to musicians with absolute pitch is that it’s more an annoyance than anything. They’re always hearing how things in the real world are slightly off pitch.

How much "resolution" do their ears have? Like can someone with absolute pitch tell whether an instrument is in 12-ET or just intonation without a reference?

Perfect pitch is a simplification, it's not really binary like you either have it or don't. People have varying ability, practice, and speed at identifying a note relative to a reference, and "perfect" is how we describe being past some threshold.

When we talk about perfect pitch we're usually assuming 12-tet tuned to A440 but you correctly homed in on the "problem" with perfect pitch. Is that C a little sharp, or did they just tune to A446 for some reason? Just intonation, microtonal scales, there are a lot of notes out there. How do you know they're "wrong" and not just trying to play the note that sounds out of tune to your ear. "Perfect" has to be established against some intention, we just usually assume 12-tet A440.

Anyway the ability is at least somewhat a matter of practice and training, so you can develop it against any consistent reference, regardless of the tuning or intonation system.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#27

Post by wrs »

SeanLuke wrote: post #20
recursive wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very useful for a session musician. You could pick up a song without hunting for the key.

I have perfect pitch and find it to be quite a burden in certain ways: it's very, very hard to transpose in real time.

Ah, this answers my question above about “switching modes” to relative. Sounds like that’s not a thing. But can you hear chord qualities independently of pitch? I hope you’re not just getting a bunch of individual notes and doing interval math all the time!

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#28

Post by psychoslave »

troupe wrote: post #17
canjobear wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression from talking to musicians with absolute pitch is that it’s more an annoyance than anything. They’re always hearing how things in the real world are slightly off pitch.

I sincerely doubt that if you ask a professional musician with perfect pitch if they would "turn it off" they would say yes.

Is it necessarily something like "turned on h24 in every single sound"? I would be rather surprised that it would be the case in general.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#29

Post by dwringer »

recursive wrote: post #19
raincole wrote: post #8

While I think it's pretty cool, is absolute pitch actually "useful" for music-making? I feel relative notations (I-V-vi-IV) capture the essense of a piece of music better than absolute notations (C-G-Amin-F). It's just my layman opinion though.

It's very useful for a session musician. You could pick up a song without hunting for the key.

With good enough sense of relative pitch it's almost a non-issue as one is usually only a half step away from in-key and that can be played off as deliberate.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#30

Post by hgsgm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9

If you're interested, just expose your infant/toddler kids to a lot of music. Especially complex music like classical and jazz, not just what's on the top 40 radio. Kids' brains at that age are in peak sound processing mode. They are learning to understand the aural world. This leads to understanding spoken language. Music is just sound, and pitch can be learned like any other sound. We could speak in musical notes i…

Most kids are exposed to language a lot in their childhood, they don't automatically learn to produce "perfect words".
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