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Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

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Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#81

What are the next steps after, let's say, a child is able to indentify all "colors"? They can distinguish F/A and F/C, then what? Should this app/method be combined with regular piano/other lessons, so the child knows what's even happening?

Clearly, it makes sense to have perfect pitch only in connection with a particular instrument for practical purposes.

Besides being a neat party trick, it gives more possibilities and makes things easier if a person wants to work with music professionally, especially with academical (aka "classical") music.

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#82
As somebody who enjoys listening to beatmatched DJ mixes, I'm glad I don't have "perfect" pitch. I'd hate to have vast amounts of music sound "wrong" just because the speed and pitch was changed slightly to synchronize it with other tracks.

Relative pitch is very important for musicians, but absolute pitch is mostly useless. The only use I can think of is singing songs with a cappella intros, so you're in tune with the instruments that come in later, but even this is of very limited value. In a casual setting you can just play a note on an instrument before you start, and for a professional performance you're going to have IEMs that can play the reference note for you.

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#83
post #82

As somebody who enjoys listening to beatmatched DJ mixes, I'm glad I don't have "perfect" pitch. I'd hate to have vast amounts of music sound "wrong" just because the speed and pitch was changed slightly to synchronize it with other tracks. Relative pitch is very important for musicians, but absolute pitch is mostly useless. The only use I can think of is singing songs with a cappella intros, so you're in tune with t…

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Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#84
post #3

I've seen articles that say that absolute perfect pitch is a curse, not a gift, because it wanders with age, and then everything is "out of key".

I've heard of musicians with very strong senses of perfect pitch flocking to flute or oboe, because anything not keyed in C (perfect pitch equiv) results in too much cognitive dissonance. Clarinets are keyed in Bb (you play a C, out comes a Bb), horns in F (you play a C, out comes an F), trumpets in Eb (this should be clear), and so on... Like motion sickness with musical tones - you see one thing on the page, you ha…

>Clarinets are keyed in Bb (you play a C, out comes a Bb), horns in F (you play a C, out comes an F), trumpets in Eb (this should be clear), and so on...

In reality, you put your fingers in the position for a C on that specific instrument and you get a C. The name "transposing instrument" is misleading; the instrument itself does not transpose. It's purely a notation convention, intended to give you a consistent mapping between notation and fingering so it's easier to switch between instruments. If you only play one instrument there's no need for it. And even if you do, it's not strictly necessary, e.g. recorders are commonly available in both C and F and are conventionally not notated transposed. Professional players routinely switch between them for different pieces.

I expect it would be possible to train an image-processing LLM to OCR sheet music so it can be automatically transposed and re-engraved for compatibility with absolute pitch.

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have it from early age, and it also shifts now that I'm almost 40. I think the more constantly I use it though, the more it seems to settle back into accuracy.

Thank you! That's really interesting. So it's like a muscle I guess. More you use it = better.

That's not true for everyone. Some extraordinary musicians with perfect pitch also reported that it starts drifting for them as they age (I remember Oscar Peterson and Jacob Collier telling this)

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#86
post #31

Don’t teach you kids perfect pitch. Introduce them to the wide variety of music from punk to jazz to classical and let them play with sounds. If they get into it, ask if they want a teacher in instrument of their liking. Perfect pitch != musicality && perfect pitch != music genious or whatever people think it is. Relative pitch, good understanding pf harmony and good rhythm is much more essential.

Nothing in the OP implies that kids shouldn't learn other things as well. I'm sure you meant your post in a good way, but this probably falls into the category of shallow dismissal ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). It's all too easy for the top comment on a Show HN post to end up being a dismissal of the entire project - this is more the fault of upvoters than commenters, because the meaning gets…

I am not really saying that. Relative pitch and perfect pitch are mutually exclusive, while both taking quite much to learn, depending on individual. There’s also a multitude of people who have a perfect pitch and who are second rate musicians at best, so it is not a magical path to musical talent people often think it is. You could actually hamper your child’s musical progress with trying to teach them perfect pitch specifically. As with any arts, best thing you can do to your child (or to yourself, if you want to learn) is to find them a good teacher. It really is not a job for an app. Music is a socio-cultural phenomenon that we learn through play and social interaction, not just pitch and rhythm. It is not a programming language you just need to learn the syntax and basic algorithms for to become proficient.

If you want your kids to learn music, you should sing to them, dance with them, play music to them and just have instruments around at home they can play with. It same with language, reading, mathematics, anything really. So the imperative form in the title really irked me.

Saying that, I acknowledge this is Show HN and I am not speaking about the project per se (as in how it has been technically implemented), more about the general attitude the title and arguably the projects presents, where we think we can replace things we find challenging in life, arts or culture by shoving some code and a language model into it, but I too much answered as it were and argument someone making in more general post. I try to keep that in mind in the future.

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will probably claim it's not "real" perfect pitch, but many people use their tinnitus to help them. They identified their ring as having, for example, F#, and suddenly their relative pitch became absolute.

I've seen nothing to convince me that " absolute pitch " is anything other than relative pitch with excellent recall or persistent observation of pitch.

I agree. I can tune a guitar to within a half a semitone of accuracy without reference just from knowing how the open strings are supposed to sound after 20 years of playing.

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#88
post #67

Thanks OP, I was going to annoy you with a bunch of request, e.g. "Can I please just get the .apk because I use GrapheneOS without the PlayStore?" then I thought "looks simple enough, maybe I a Web page is enough... no app required" which lead me to https://eguchi.app ... so instead I'll just both you with : what do you think about this alternative? Is it any good?

This could do with a bit more explanation.

It makes a noise and then has buttons labelled red, blue, and yellow. How am I supposed to know what colour that sound was? Do sounds naturally have associated colours? Is this even the question I'm being asked? It doesn't say what to do or how I am meant to choose the colour.

EDIT: From some trial and error, I still don't get it. It seemed to me that blue was the low tone and red was the high tone but then I got a tone that was definitely lower than a previous yellow tone and it was supposedly blue. Potentially a bug?

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#89
post #11

It can be dormant in adults. I discovered it when I was 16 after meeting a pianist who had it and “taught me” how to do it. I kept getting faster and more accurate as I practiced solfeggio in music school in my 20s. Crazy thing is it changes with age. At around 30 I started regressing. These days I identify the tones but shifted by one semitone.

Out of curiosity, did it shift up or down for you? I've had perfect putch from a young age, but now at 30 I hear everything a semiton higher (so e.g. a B sounds like a C to me, and I have to manually subtract the semitone to infer the real pitch and hope that I am not overcorrecting)

Pitch perception shifts with age?

Re: Show HN: Teach your kids perfect pitch

#90
post #2

> Young children can acquire absolute (perfect) pitch — but adults cannot. The window closes around age 6. I found some papers suggesting it is possible for adults, but more difficult. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31550277/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31686378/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388931575_Learning_...

You will probably claim it's not "real" perfect pitch, but many people use their tinnitus to help them. They identified their ring as having, for example, F#, and suddenly their relative pitch became absolute.

Also your teeth don't change too much in adulthood save for cavities and the like, so if you hum, they'll resonate in a rather stable frequency.
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