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Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

moderndescartes.com

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Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#111

Post by dhruvrajvanshi »

mdwhatcott wrote: post #14
linux_is_nice wrote: post #6

> By the end of freshman year, I had significantly expanded my musical tastes and unambiguously had perfect pitch… for piano only. I find it highly unlikely that this was due to identifying microtuning differences; I think the more convincing theory for instrument-specific perfect pitch is that one learns to recognize the timbres of the individual notes, not any minute variations in pitch. > Don’t learn a non-C instr…

Yeah, this advice doesn't hold up--even the OP mentions learning the clarinet, which is a B-flat instrument. I also play the clarinet and developed the same ability to detect each note by its timbre. I also think there is a kinesthetic element to each note--the way the instrument vibrates, the back-pressure or resistance you feel while playing, that becomes associated with the timbre the longer you play.

> I also think there is a kinesthetic element to each note--the way the instrument vibrates

Interesting point. I had a similar thought about singing.

In theory, a good enough singer would be able to use their vocal chords as a reference. Unless their vocal range is changing on a regular basis, if they remember the highest piched note they can sing, they could refer to that as an anchor.

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#112

Post by Rochus »

vunderba wrote: post #40

It should be noted that a lot of people mistake relative pitch for perfect pitch. Perfect pitch means that I can sit down at a piano (or other instrument), play one random note, and you can instantly tell me what note that is. No preamble, no tuning yourself up, you can just do it. Relative pitch is much more about recognizing intervals - a tritone versus a perfect fifth for example. You'll find as was the case when…

That's correct. Relative pitch gives you 99.9% of the benefits, with 0.1% remaining for perfect pitch.

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#113

Post by swyx »

> Your ears contain millions of tiny fine hairs of varying lengths which each vibrate in response to some set of frequencies, making them essentially analog Fourier Transform devices. And then, your brain then does something stupidly complicated to this set of clean inputs, so that you can instantly tell whose voice is whose in a multi-speaker environment, and so that you can detect the slightest tremor in somebody’s voice that might clue you in on their mental state as they say those words. We undergo decades of musical training so that we can train our brains to unwind all of this complicated processing and extract pure tones from this jumble of sound.

i always wondered why we dont seem to have developed ML models that can do this yet. its not like the synthetic data is hard to generate, if data limitations are the excuse.

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#114

Post by mcnichol »

I feel like this article is more of a "Here's all the things I think about perfect pitch and my journey with music"

Maybe I took the title too literally.

As someone who wants to gain perfect pitch (and still feels mildly distant from this ability) one thing I can say has been the most helpful:

* Get a string instrument

* Strum the strings

* Try to tune the first string by ear

* Once you think you have it, check it against a chromatic tuner.

This way will you see how progressively your feeling of "in tune" can be measured in hertz.

I can get pretty pretty close (within about 5hz).

I used to have competitions with my children on who could get the note closest without a tuner. One of my kids got pretty good where they could almost nail it within 1 hz. It made things fun and a little less "maintenance".

The best way I can describe the process is you have a sensitivity to a threshold of being in tune. I hear the note but there is something inside myself, it almost feels like anxiousness that kinda peaks right before I hit the note and then stops when I "feel" I've hit that note I'm aiming for. As I've said, I can get within about 5hz which to a musician they can probably notice it is off but for the average ear, it feels muddy but close.

Long story short, practice with a tuner and within a year you'll surprise yourself.

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#115

Post by losvedir »

lyricaljoke wrote: post #52
rybosome wrote: post #19

I suppose I have perfect pitch, in that I can more often than not: * aurally identify key signatures * aurally identify chords * sing a given note on command It wasn't until I was into my early twenties that I could do this. For me, the single biggest stepping stone was building the connection between what I could hear in my head from a song that I remember clearly with the underlying music theory. Specifically, buil…

Many of the responses to this comment imply that this is something fundamentally different than perfect pitch and give it some different name ("pseudo absolute pitch", "perfect relative pitch", etc.). While I concede that most people think of perfect pitch as something that is instilled in some way in early childhood rather than achievable through practice, I guess I would ask those commenters... why do you think the…

I personally do believe that there is something fundamentally different about perfect pitch perception, and think of it more like discussions around aphantasia or maybe synesthesia. I followed along with this guy's research years ago on his quest to understand and obtain perfect pitch [0] and was pretty obsessed myself. I had a number of friends with perfect pitch and would do random experiments and quiz them ("ooh, you're drunk, can you tell what note this is?" etc).

From that link:

> For the same reason, absolute listeners do not perceive pitch "height". They do not perceive pitches as "higher" or "lower" or physically "next to" each other. As musicians, of course, absolute listeners learn that, metaphorically, pitches are "higher" and "lower" than each other, because they can see these relationships on a page of sheet music. They also learn that, theoretically, "distance" between notes exists, because you can count the semitones that separate them, and you can see the "distance" between keys on an instrument. But, to an absolute listener, neither "height" nor "distance" has any direct perceptual reality.

> For example, when a non-absolute listener hears a guitar slide, we literally hear something moving down. But an absolute listener's experience is nearer to the color-changing rectangle above. They hear a series of discrete pitches, changing—not moving—from one to another. Although they know the sound has "descended" from their knowledge of the musical scale, the sound does not give them a literal experience of downward movement as it does to non-absolute listeners.

The link has a gif of a box moving through the color spectrum which helps understand the point.

[0] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#117

Post by golly_ned »

mcnichol wrote: post #114

I feel like this article is more of a "Here's all the things I think about perfect pitch and my journey with music" Maybe I took the title too literally. As someone who wants to gain perfect pitch (and still feels mildly distant from this ability) one thing I can say has been the most helpful: * Get a string instrument * Strum the strings * Try to tune the first string by ear * Once you think you have it, check it ag…

I appreciated the detail of the article and its structure as a narrative rather than as a simple step-by-step presentation of a how-to.

The article also presents different senses of perfect pitch, and categorizes your sense as being at the lowest threshold (or lower).

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#118

Post by mcnichol »

golly_ned wrote: post #117
mcnichol wrote: post #114

I feel like this article is more of a "Here's all the things I think about perfect pitch and my journey with music" Maybe I took the title too literally. As someone who wants to gain perfect pitch (and still feels mildly distant from this ability) one thing I can say has been the most helpful: * Get a string instrument * Strum the strings * Try to tune the first string by ear * Once you think you have it, check it ag…

I appreciated the detail of the article and its structure as a narrative rather than as a simple step-by-step presentation of a how-to. The article also presents different senses of perfect pitch, and categorizes your sense as being at the lowest threshold (or lower).

I'm not saying I didn't appreciate it. It just read like a story of their journey and reflection.

I think "My journey of learning perfect pitch over 15 years" is more apt

Learn perfect pitch in 15 years sounds more like a step by step article.

I would have clicked both, just expect something closer to the latter.

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#119

Post by bunderbunder »

Tangentially, I have heard a couple times that learning absolute pitch is not necessarily considered worth the effort. Good relative pitch is just about as good in practice, and absolute pitch has the downside that, unlike relative pitch, people tend to lose their absolute pitch as they get older. Which then means they end up having to learn relative pitch skills, anyway. That could be a challenging thing to have to do late in your musical career.

Re: Learn perfect pitch in 15 years

#120

Post by kqr »

bunderbunder wrote: post #119

Tangentially, I have heard a couple times that learning absolute pitch is not necessarily considered worth the effort. Good relative pitch is just about as good in practice, and absolute pitch has the downside that, unlike relative pitch, people tend to lose their absolute pitch as they get older. Which then means they end up having to learn relative pitch skills, anyway. That could be a challenging thing to have to…

Also with perfect pitch you hear when things are even a tiny bit out of tune (and this will annoy you!) even if everything is just fine relatively speaking and you're the only one of 500 musically trained people who is even capable of noticing.
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