If there's a pill that allows me to learn stuff as readily as a child, perfect pitch is kinda low on my list of to-do's.
I'm guessing you're not a musician.
Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#22The comments really confused me . I thought the article was about delivering a pitch for your startup. I have a habit of reading the comments on HN before reading the article. Helps me confer some context to it usually, and also see if it's worth spending my time. (Yes I know I should be making my own decision.)
I have the same habit and I've been trying to break it. Seeing the discourse ahead of time really tends to poison your initial impressions when you finally get around to reading it.
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#23There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously. I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are peopl…
I'm interested in it from a purely philosophical / phenomenological point of view. It is as if most people are colorblind, and some people can see colors. You certainly don't say that yellow is "higher" than red but "lower" than blue. If you listen to how people with absolute pitch describe their experience, you will realize that they are experiencing perceptions that you cannot. That is interesting.
Sure, I just wanted to point out the phenomenon of conflating it with musical talent. I'm not suggesting it's an uninteresting concept or isn't worthy of thought/discussion
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#24This has been covered on HN a few times, and I should point out that the sample size on this is in the low tens, so don't get too excited. But every time I see it, I remember a really odd side effect that I had while on a mood stabilizer (not sure which -- could well have been valproic acid, the same drug referenced in the article). A few days into taking the drug, I found that music that I knew well sounded differen…
I've had a similar experience after a minor head injury, and thought I was losing my relative pitch (and since I sing, this was somewhat worrying). After some experimentation, I realized that I was hearing a slightly different pitch in each ear [1], and this had the effect of producing on oddly atonal perception of music (almost like a record playing at the wrong/inconsistent speed).
It cleared up in a few days, but was very disconcerting while it was happening (especially as I was in the middle of composing a piece of music).
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#25I think perfect pitch can be acquired as an adult, I just think it becomes exponentially harder. I started to learn guitar around 12 years old, and became interested in perfect pitch after reading Steve Vai internalised A=440Hz by having a tape start to play the tone as he slept. I definitely don't have full perfect pitch, but after a while I could:
- Tune a guitar, no matter how out of tune to concert pitch without a reference pitch.
- Recall the pitch of any song I heard once, not by name, but by singing it in the key I heard it in, this includes different versions, e.g. covers, transposed into different keys. I'm not sure how common that is, but a singer I was dating could also do this too.
Most excitingly I was recently listening to Spotify while out walking when "Mr. Crowley" began to play. As Ozzy began to sing it instantly came into my head that the root of the song is D. Obviously, I was hugely excited by this!. I checked it against an instrument when I got home and sure enough I was correct. I was delighted!
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#26There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously. I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are peopl…
Do you have perfect pitch? How can you assess the utility if you don't possess it? Perfect pitch would be very useful IMO, can you imagine what it would do to one's compositional abilities for example?
Relative pitch is just recognition of intervals between notes and the qualities of different chords, but you're right in that perfect pitch and relative pitch are quite unrelated.
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#27There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously. I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are peopl…
You refer to perfect pitch and absolute pitch like they're different things -- do you realize that they're the same thing?
My brother and I are both musicians with perfect pitch, and we've found it useful in a variety of circumstances. To name a couple, it really helps if you're jamming and want to pick up a progression quickly, or if you're DJing and want to key match. I will concede that Traktor recently got key detection, which is nice, but especially when playing live I find that key segues will pop into my head without having to search for the next song in the right key.
Even the best relative pitch cannot help you exactly memorize a melody -- if you are unable to remember what note it actually starts on, you haven't remembered it fully.
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#28There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously. I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are peopl…
You refer to perfect pitch and absolute pitch like they're different things -- do you realize that they're the same thing? My brother and I are both musicians with perfect pitch, and we've found it useful in a variety of circumstances. To name a couple, it really helps if you're jamming and want to pick up a progression quickly, or if you're DJing and want to key match. I will concede that Traktor recently got key de…
I think they are different things. Knowing the sound of a perfect fifth is not perfect pitch, but relative pitch. One could transcribe a piece of music from memory with just very good relative pitch, with the caveat they probably will transcribe it in the incorrect key.
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#29I think perfect pitch can be acquired as an adult, I just think it becomes exponentially harder. I started to learn guitar around 12 years old, and became interested in perfect pitch after reading Steve Vai internalised A=440Hz by having a tape start to play the tone as he slept. I definitely don't have full perfect pitch, but after a while I could: - Tune a guitar, no matter how out of tune to concert pitch without…
After studying guitar in high school for several intense years (was a Steve Vai fan as well) I was able to tune a guitar without a reference -- even playing all of the stings simultaneously and tuning each "through the noise".
For me it didn't extend beyond that however.
Re: Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That
#30There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously. I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are peopl…
There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously.
Classically trained musician without absolute pitch here. I would say yes and no to your comment. My undergrad degree was in flute, and I can assure you that absolute pitch can be quite helpful for wind players especially. My teacher had it, and would be able to tell you if you were out of tune even if you hadn't played with a piano or other reference point.
On the other hand, I once sat between two flutists who both claimed to have absolute pitch but were playing out of tune relative to each other (and each refusing to adjust to the other since... they had absolute pitch). So, it doesn't actually mean you're going to be perfect.
By "inexpensive electronic tools," perhaps you mean these tuners that you can attach to guitars and whatnot? These are certainly helpful for stringed instruments, but are basically irrelevant if you play a wind instrument. Most musicians with relative pitch only need a single reference note and then they're ok. Where relative pitch tends to fail you, however, is over longer periods of time when the pitch tends to drift. You hear this in lots of school orchestras. The pitch will tend to drift upwards (at least in the strings) over a long work. Here, no mechanical/electronic device is going to help you.