OT? Perfect pitch: Sorry, it ain't perfect

[jazzpiano88]

2 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

I read the whole post instead of stopping at the first sentence.  

 

The rest of the post made no sense so I just went with the part that was clear.  I think he was trying to explain why but missed the mark as sharps and flats are multi-use.

[funkyhammond]

Just now, jazzpiano88 said:

 

The rest of the post made no sense so I just went with what was clear.

 

He was talking about going through the cycle of fifths and the addition of sharps sounding different than the addition of flats. So you are going to have this question about enharmonic notes. I am also confused by the concept.

[jazzpiano88]

34 minutes ago, funkyhammond said:

 

He was talking about going through the cycle of fifths and the addition of sharps sounding different than the addition of flats. So you are going to have this question about enharmonic notes. I am also confused by the concept.

 

I would think it has something to do with the overtone series of different notes and how we perceive the mix (unless he's talking about a sine wave).  Especially noticeable when you bring in chords.

[Floyd Tatum]

54 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

The rest of the post made no sense so I just went with the part that was clear.  I think he was trying to explain why but missed the mark as sharps and flats are multi-use.

 

I think he's talking about the David Burge pitch memory course.   The "sharps sound different than flats" thing, is, or so I've heard, one of the ways David Burge tries to teach PM.    Does it work?   I doubt it, but maybe for rare individuals it does.   I'd be more likely to agree with Rick Beato that adults, in his experience, can't learn it.   Has to be learned while your brain is still malleable enough. 

[funkyhammond]

14 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

I would think it has something to do with the overtone series of different notes and how we perceive the mix (unless he's talking about a sine wave).  Especially noticeable when you bring in chords.

 

I was wondering something similar. I wonder if what is actually going on here is that he is hearing different things in different contexts. That would make more sense. But if we're talking about "perfect pitch" exercises, and the goal is to be able to hear some quality of F# in total isolation (beyond just the memorization of the pitch) so that you can eventually achieve perfect pitch, then I don't really follow.

[MathOfInsects]

17 minutes ago, funkyhammond said:

 

I was wondering something similar. I wonder if what is actually going on here is that he is hearing different things in different contexts. That would make more sense. But if we're talking about "perfect pitch" exercises, and the goal is to be able to hear some quality of F# in total isolation (beyond just the memorization of the pitch) so that you can eventually achieve perfect pitch, then I don't really follow.

Beethoven reportedly thought Cm/Eb was the most beautiful key. For whatever that's worth.

The whole thing just raises so many questions. Root position chords? All played in the same octave with middle C as the middle of the range? How do we reconcile the fact that the "middle" chord in each direction is Gb/F#. It sounds one way when it's Gb and another when it's F#? Is it true with individual notes or just in chords?

 

What if I record myself playing an E chord and then transpose that recording down a half-step. Will you hear the "brightness" of the sharp-key E, or the "mellowness" of the flat-key E-flat?

 

What I think is actually happening is that someone is mentally defaulting to C without realizing it, and the reason F# sounds jittery is because it's the tritone--the least related interval. Eb sounds nice and settled because it's a closely related key, the minor 7 to C. The reason the "sharp keys" sound brighter and the "flat keys" sound mellower is that someone used to practice by "rising" from C through the sharps, and "descending" from C through the flats, and over time he or she subconsciously internalized the natural brightness and mellowness of those places on the piano. I think those who hear it too, are probably falling prey to some confirmation bias.

 

But I'd still like to understand more about the concept first.

[AnotherScott]

14 hours ago, Floyd Tatum said:

Nothing about these points, taken together, I believe, disproves the point I made in my original post.   Remember, the "notes" (i.e., pitches) these babies are learning (remembering) are not objective things in nature, they are societal constructs.

 

I'm not saying tonal music is not a product of nature, I believe it is (coming from pitch and overtone relationships - fifths, fourths, etc).   What I am saying is that the "starting point", i.e., the frequency assigned to a starting note, "A", let's say, are not objective things.   They are agreed-upon standards. 

 

 

All language is agreed upon standards.

 

Tones exist in the natural world. We have chosen the name "A" to refer to the frequencies around 440 Hz.

 

Similarly, we can see a full spectrum of colors, and we choose to call ones in a certain range "red."

 

So I'm not sure what your point there is.

 

As for what (I think) your original query was about, how far "off" of 440 would a tone have to be for a person to recognize it as a different pitch, again, I expect that varies with the individual, bringing me back to the earlier point about how someone who grows up in a world of quarter-tone music is likely to be more adept at recognizing those pitches as distinct entities. At the other extreme, I assume no one can differentiate between 440 Hz and 439.999999 Hz.

 

There are videos of the same music being played based on A=440 vs. A=432 tuned instruments, and the difference is clearly audible. But whether someone could, out of the blue, hear one of those two pitches and know which one it was, I don't know. Though I would expect it would be more likely if the listener was someone with some experience playing in both tunings. Similarly, again, I'd expect that different people with "perfect pitch" would vary at the point at which something below 440 no longer identified to them as an A as opposed to something some amount flat of an A.

 

If your point is that pitch recognition is based on memory of what a named pitch sounds like, I'm not sure what the alternative would be. Humans don't have some kind of robotic ability to count cycles-per-second of air pressure. We only have the ability to recognize that phenomenon as the subjective experience of sound. Identifying a sound based on your your memory of what that sound is called seems similar to me to identifying the color red based on your learned memory of what red looks like, though far fewer people can do the former than the latter.

 

 

[Floyd Tatum]

8 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

If your point is that pitch recognition is based on memory of what a named pitch sounds like, I'm not sure what the alternative would be.

Nor am I.     Thanks for replying.    Yes, that was the point.    It was about the name of the ability some call perfect pitch.   I don't see much about it that's perfect, that name gives the wrong impression.   It's more about the memory, imho.   I know that some things are so deeply learned that we don't have to consciously think about them, so they don't seem like memory - things like language.   But they basically are memory, imho.

Those other questions at the end of the post were just some idle speculation I tacked on - wondering about the "width" of the note being remembered by a 'perfect pitch' person.   (Note to self - stop doing that!).    KC is accustomed to questions being the main point of a post, I guess, rather than the stating of a viewpoint.

[CEB]

38 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Beethoven reportedly thought Cm/Eb was the most beautiful key. For whatever that's worth.

The whole thing just raises so many questions. Root position chords? All played in the same octave with middle C as the middle of the range? How do we reconcile the fact that the "middle" chord in each direction is Gb/F#. It sounds one way when it's Gb and another when it's F#? Is it true with individual notes or just in chords?

 

What if I record myself playing an E chord and then transpose that recording down a half-step. Will you hear the "brightness" of the sharp-key E, or the "mellowness" of the flat-key E-flat?

 

What I think is actually happening is that someone is mentally defaulting to C without realizing it, and the reason F# sounds jittery is because it's the tritone--the least related interval. Eb sounds nice and settled because it's a closely related key, the minor 7 to C. The reason the "sharp keys" sound brighter and the "flat keys" sound mellower is that someone used to practice by "rising" from C through the sharps, and "descending" from C through the flats, and over time he or she subconsciously internalized the natural brightness and mellowness of those places on the piano. I think those who hear it too, are probably falling prey to some confirmation bias.

 

But I'd still like to understand more about the concept first.

 

 

I've wondered about this.  I agree with Beethoven.  I don't like the sound of C major.  Not a fan of D major either but like D dorian.  I love Eb, Bb and Eb.  Different keys sound different .... like food.   I gravitate a lot of non Blues to Ab.  Georgia I think was in G, I play it in Eb.  I don't know why.

[CEB]

4 minutes ago, Floyd Tatum said:

Nor am I.     Thanks for replying.    Yes, that was the point.    It was about the name of the ability some call perfect pitch.   I don't see much about it that's perfect, that name gives the wrong impression.   It's more about the memory, imho.   I know that some things are so deeply learned that we don't have to consciously think about them, so they don't seem like memory - things like language.   But they basically are memory, imho.

Those other questions at the end of the post were just some idle speculation I tacked on - wondering about the "width" of the note being remembered by a 'perfect pitch' person.   (Note to self - stop doing that!).    KC is accustomed to questions being the main point of a post, I guess, rather than the stating of a viewpoint.

This is deep stuff you yall are trying to discuss.  It is going to be difficult ... I mean society doesn't even know how to define what a woman is anymore.  A concept as complicated as perfect pitch is doomed to see the failure of colloquial and common language. 

[jazzpiano88]

I wonder why Beethovens Moonlight Sonata was written in C#?   
I think it sounds sublime in C# compared to C.   

[funkyhammond]

47 minutes ago, Floyd Tatum said:

Nor am I.     Thanks for replying.    Yes, that was the point.    It was about the name of the ability some call perfect pitch.   I don't see much about it that's perfect, that name gives the wrong impression.   It's more about the memory, imho.   I know that some things are so deeply learned that we don't have to consciously think about them, so they don't seem like memory - things like language.   But they basically are memory, imho.

 

 

That reasoning makes sense. But there does seem to be some innate component, too, which is why some people can seem to develop it at much greater skill and more quickly. Of course, developing it involves memory. I guess it's the people that have a strong innate part that people have taken more notice of and that's why the term developed that way.

 

As for the term "pitch memory", I think I might finally understand how that is currently being used. You know that old Simon toy where you had to remember the order of the lit colours (which also had tones)? Well, if you do something like that but only with pitches, no visual cues, that would be pitch memory. In other words, it's how good your short-term memory is at remembering a sequence of pitches. People with better "pitch memory" can remember longer sequences correctly.

[Floyd Tatum]

21 minutes ago, funkyhammond said:

 

That reasoning makes sense. But there does seem to be some innate component, too, which is why some people can seem to develop it at much greater skill and more quickly. Of course, developing it involves memory. I guess it's the people that have a strong innate part that people have taken more notice of and that's why the term developed that way.

 

As for the term "pitch memory", I think I might finally understand how that is currently being used. You know that old Simon toy where you had to remember the order of the lit colours (which also had tones)? Well, if you do something like that but only with pitches, no visual cues, that would be pitch memory. In other words, it's how good your short-term memory is at remembering a sequence of pitches. People with better "pitch memory" can remember longer sequences correctly.

Short term pitch memory, and long-term pitch memory, right?  🙂   Endless sub-categories.......

[dazzjazz]

Let’s see if I can clear things up.

 

after spending a fair bit of time on the David Burge Perfect Pitch course, I came to understand that each note in the western 12-tone system has its own distinct tone colour. Now this is a hard thing to accept, as it seems unlikely and also counterintuitive. But David goes to great lengths to describe it and point that PP is not pitch memory. A very prominent Sydney saxophonist/arranger taught himself PP using this course, and he has ears like an elephant. 

 

Many people I know can reproduce a certain pitch from memory - a famous Sydney trombonist comes to mind, and he teaches his students to remember the sound of F as a reference point. All other pitches are relative to that memorized pitch from then on. 
 

So when starting the actual work of the PP course, you sit with your main instrument (the one you actually play every day, not just any old piano, for example) and you listen DEEPLY to the sound of Eb and F#. David clues you up that Eb is mellow sounding and F# is buzzy. I started to be able to hear it. At first I thought I was kidding myself, like trying to believe Santa Clause is real, but every day, there it was, hidden in plain sight.

 

Now, to be clear, that’s about as far as I got. Other aspects of musicianship took priority, and I decided that better relative pitch was far more useful. I was also reminded of a colleague who has PP but also the worst time on the planet. I cannot hear the tone colour of Eb and F# in other instruments in a reliable way yet. 
 

However, my main teaching room at Sydney Uni has a really nice Yamaha C5 that I particularly vibe with in terms of tone and action. I can hear these tone colours really clearly on it. Furthermore, Ab sounds super dark, and C quite bright, and E brighter still. These are probably not the best adjectives but they will do. 
 

So in summary, I do think it’s possible to learn PP in this way. Perhaps I will start the process again, as my ears continue to get better all the time. 
 

What I said about the cycle of fifth's is only partially related to what I’ve described above. As someone who has had to play and transpose a LOT of music, it is obvious to me that the “flat-side” of the cycle of fifths is increasingly dark-sounding as you head through the key centres of C/F/Bb/Eb/Ab/Db and that the “sharp-side” of the cycle of fifths are increasingly bright as you head through the key centres of C/G/D/A/E/B. This is an experiential thing for me, meaning I can hear it when I play and compare for example the key of Eb (lovely and warm) with the key of E major (too bright!). I don’t claim to be able to listen to a piece of music and discern its key reliably but I do get it right fairly often. 
 

I hope this clears up my experienced- based point of view. 

[Floyd Tatum]

2 hours ago, funkyhammond said:

That reasoning makes sense. But there does seem to be some innate component, too, which is why some people can seem to develop it at much greater skill and more quickly. Of course, developing it involves memory. I guess it's the people that have a strong innate part that people have taken more notice of and that's why the term developed that way.

Innate component - absolutely.   Rick Beato says there's a particular gene.   If that's true, it would seem that the gene gives you the capability to acquire PM, but if that capability is not encouraged (according to Beato), then the person might not develop the ability.   Yet, I hear stories from people that have that ability (two in our midst, for example), and IIRC, their stories didn't mention too much about specific schooling in PM as kids, but I might be wrong about that.

Re innate component:  in our family (five kids), music lessons and/or the possibility to play music, or get music lessons, etc., was always an option.   One of my sisters had piano lessons, but never developed ear playing.  I'm the only one that started playing by ear as a 5 or 6 year old kid.   Lucky for me, my parents encouraged that with music lessons, so I got to develop my ear playing and also my music-reading/conservatory side.    In other words, I had the innate ability to be good at interval recognition, and the innate desire to play the piano.    Whatever gifts God gave you, you've got to tray to make the best of 'em.

[Bill H.]

OK so here's what I do. If I want to determine the key of a song in my head, I imagine a "C" on a piano, and count the semitones up or down from there. In my younger years when I was playing the piano all the time, I always got it right. I'm a little rusty at it now though. 

 

So what did I have? Perfect pitch? Relative pitch? Or nothing?

[funkyhammond]

2 hours ago, Floyd Tatum said:

Short term pitch memory, and long-term pitch memory, right?  🙂   Endless sub-categories.......

 

Yup, those terms occurred to me right after I posted that. And there is a logic to it. But, there is also a logic to the terms that the psychoacoustics researchers use. They call it absolute pitch (AP) because the ability allows individuals to identify or recreate musical notes accurately, and independently of a reference. In contrast, relative pitch implies that a reference is needed. I think most non-musicians would understand the difference between the words "relative" and "absolute" a lot more than they would understand what a musical "interval" is if you were going to call relative pitch "interval memory", like you had suggested in a previous reply. I think relative vs. absolute makes more intuitive sense for most people. That's just my guess. Also, if you noticed in a previous reply I made to someone else, I had mentioned a research paper where they used the extended term "overt absolute pitch memory". So, researchers already have a phrase in mind that also includes "memory" but they use absolute pitch (AP) as the convenient shorter label. And they talk about AP and non-AP subjects. That's the thing. It's semantics. It's convention. So, unless you can challenge why "absolute pitch" is not a good term, then I'm not sure there is much left to say on the subject.

 

Anyway, what matters is actually learning what those terms actually mean rather than what would be a "perfect" label for "perfect pitch".

[Floyd Tatum]

12 minutes ago, funkyhammond said:

 

Yup, those terms occurred to me right after I posted that. And there is a logic to it. But, there is also a logic to the terms that the psychoacoustics researchers use. They call it absolute pitch (AP) because the ability allows individuals to identify or recreate musical notes accurately, and independently of a reference. In contrast, relative pitch implies that a reference is needed. I think most non-musicians would understand the difference between the words "relative" and "absolute" a lot more than they would understand what a musical "interval" is if you were going to call relative pitch "interval memory", like you had suggested in a previous reply. I think relative vs. absolute makes more intuitive sense for most people. That's just my guess. Also, if you noticed in a previous reply I made to someone else, I had mentioned a research paper where they used the extended term "overt absolute pitch memory". So, researchers already have a phrase in mind that also includes "memory" but they use absolute pitch (AP) as the convenient shorter label. And they talk about AP and non-AP subjects. That's the thing. It's semantics. It's convention. So, unless you can challenge why "absolute pitch" is not a good term, then I'm not sure there is much left to say on the subject.

 

Anyway, what matters is actually learning what those terms actually mean rather than what would be a "perfect" label for "perfect pitch".

You've got a point there!    Changing the behaviour of 8 billion people is not gonna be easy!   It's like steering an ocean liner.   Worse, even.  🙂

Just kidding.   I know nothing's going to change.   Doesn't stop me from having a viewpoint, though.

[funkyhammond]

1 hour ago, Bill H. said:

OK so here's what I do. If I want to determine the key of a song in my head, I imagine a "C" on a piano, and count the semitones up or down from there. In my younger years when I was playing the piano all the time, I always got it right. I'm a little rusty at it now though. 

 

So what did I have? Perfect pitch? Relative pitch? Or nothing?

 

A mix of both, I would say. A dash of perfect pitch, with a whole lot of relative pitch. I believe that is one of the techniques for learning perfect pitch, but it's really mostly learning relative pitch. People with greater perfect/absolute pitch ability don't need to use any relative pitch. They can just hear and recall instantly or sing a named note back instantly. That's my understanding. 

[jazzpiano88]

Math, take a note....

 

1. Set up an experiment to find the time constant where people forget the pitch they were exposed to.

 

This will determine if memory has nothing to do with perfect pitch as you an Nathan posit.   If there is a significant time constant, you guys may be wrong, IMO.

 

[Finale]

Sorry but what was written above about Beethoven is totally wrong. A better starting point is that Beethoven and other great masters of that era didn't use equal temperament.

[funkyhammond]

37 minutes ago, K K said:

Sorry but what was written above about Beethoven is totally wrong. A better starting point is that Beethoven and other great masters of that era didn't use equal temperament.

 

Oh right, well temperament, great point. 

[MathOfInsects]

5 hours ago, K K said:

Sorry but what was written above about Beethoven is totally wrong. 

Are you referring to the Cm thing? I’m afraid it’s not. Much is written about this. He wrote in Cm over and over again, at a time when his contemporaries rarely touched it. I can’t remember if it’s primary-source or secondary-source, but he’s reputed to have overtly said something about the weight of that key, harmonically.

[CyberGene]

Most of the time when I try to replay in my head some of the most famous classical works, I get it right, for instance Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, those (in)famous G G G Eb. But other times I can be up to two semitones off 😕

[Markay]

On 12/7/2023 at 1:55 PM, AnotherScott said:

The reference to "absolute" pitch is to distinguish it from "relative." Relative pitch means you can figure out what a pitch is by hearing it relative to another known pitch, which presumably virtually every musician can do. Absolute rather than relative pitch recognition means you can identify the pitch by itself, without figuring it out relative to some other pitch, and that's typically what people mean by perfect pitch. "

 

This nails it for me. I had a guitar teacher once who had perfect pitch. I have relative pitch. He could pick a  chord or key without a reference point. I  could pick the rest but always needed to know where I was starting from, mainly by trial and error.

 

[Finale]

To make a very long story short, Beethoven and other great masters of the time used UTs (unequal temperaments) and choose certain keys for each of their compositions because they believed they all had different meanings. So Beethoven didn't think Cm was more beautiful than others, he happened to choose it more often partly because of his particular ways of orchestrating (opus 18-4, 30-2, 67, etc.) and mostly because the opus he composed in Cm simply had to be in that key. Just like he wrote the very tender movement of the Emperor Concerto in B, etc. So if Beethoven had a modern digital keyboard, he would never have used the transpose button.

 

Sorry for the off topic passage and back to perfect pitch programming.

[Dave Bryce]

20 hours ago, dazzjazz said:

each note in the western 12-tone system has its own distinct tone colour.

 

I’m very much inclined to agree with this.  

 

I remember trying to figure out Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” when I was really young.  I could hear the intervals and tried to play it in C…but it sounded off, and I wasn’t sure why - all I know is that it made me uncomfortable.  Too…clean and happy, for lack of better words; however, the moment I played in Ab, it was like everything snapped immediately into proper focus.  I was really surprised as to how much the personality of the tune was affected.

 

I suspect that one of the aspects that contributes to confusion when it comes to differentiating between relativity of audio perception and visual perception is that we’re pretty much all taught fairly well at an early age what to expect visually…but the average person isn’t exposed to much of that when it comes to audio.  Visually, we all pretty much have a common frame of reference as to what is in and out of focus, what each color looks like, etc.  With audio, not so much.  I don't know a lot of people who can tell the difference between a 4k tone and a 7k tone, or when there’s too much/too little of certain frequencies present in the way a sound system is performing in a space.

 

I’m also another one who finds that keys a fifth apart sounder more similar to each other color-wise than adjacent keys.  G and D have more in common to my ear than G and F#.

 

dB

[MathOfInsects]

3 hours ago, K K said:

To make a very long story short, Beethoven and other great masters of the time used UTs (unequal temperaments) and choose certain keys for each of their compositions because they believed they all had different meanings. So Beethoven didn't think Cm was more beautiful than others, he happened to choose it more often partly because of his particular ways of orchestrating (opus 18-4, 30-2, 67, etc.) and mostly because the opus he composed in Cm simply had to be in that key. Just like he wrote the very tender movement of the Emperor Concerto in B, etc. So if Beethoven had a modern digital keyboard, he would never have used the transpose button.

 

Sorry for the off topic passage and back to perfect pitch programming.

This is not completely off-base, but it reverses cause and effect. Beethoven didn't orchestrate first and then pick a key that matched his orchestration second. He composed, and then orchestrated in the way that sounded best in that key. I agree that from our perch in the future, it all sounds inevitable and like it must have always existed that way. But in fact, there is a fair amount written about his affection for this key and the nature of the sound.

 

I went off to the Big Bad Web to find the Grove quote I remembered, and discovered that lo and behold there is a separate Wikipedia entry about the topic of Beethoven and C Minor. I still can't remember if I was taught (second-hand) that he expressed a preference for the key, or read (first-hand) something he or a biographer said about it, but it's more than transactional. He had a noted preference for this tonality. It's to his credit that we hear it now and think he must have had the whole picture in mind before playing the first note that created it. 

[Finale]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

Beethoven didn't orchestrate first and then pick a key that matched his orchestration second.

And I have never said that either - as I wrote in italics above "...had to be in that key." I've studied and play Beethoven since forever. I have little time to argue but will say that rather than opinions, I prefer to rely on what the maestro wrote himself : his notebooks, manuscripts, conversations, letters and such.

 

Going back to the point, because they used UTs Beethoven and others of his time knew, consciously or unconsciously, in which key their music had to be written because each represented something unique. So Cm has for sure a special significance/importance for him, since it represented destiny's fatality and he wanted to express that in some of his famous works. But other keys were just as important when it was time to express other emotions : Bb (opus 106), E (opus 101, 109), F (6th), D (Missa Solemnis, 9th), A (opus 47), Dm (opus 31-2), etc. So I'll leave at that, see you in another discussion such as why ET (equal temperament) sucks.

[MathOfInsects]

16 minutes ago, K K said:

And I have never said that either - as I wrote in italics above "...had to be in that key." I've studied and play Beethoven since forever. I have little time to argue but will say that rather than opinions, I prefer to rely on what the maestro wrote himself : his notebooks, manuscripts, conversations, letters and such.

 

Going back to the point, because they used UTs Beethoven and others of his time knew, consciously or unconsciously, in which key their music had to be written because each represented something unique. So Cm has for sure a special significance/importance for him, since it represented destiny's fatality and he wanted to express that in some of his famous works. But other keys were just as important when it was time to express other emotions : Bb (opus 106), E (opus 101, 109), F (6th), D (Missa Solemnis, 9th), A (opus 47), Dm (opus 31-2), etc. So I'll leave at that, see you in another discussion such as why ET (equal temperament) sucks.

Not to further belabor it, but one of the things that is talked about regarding LVB and Cm is that in fact he DOESN'T use it how others do--or rather, does, but also uses it for light-hearted little bits of nothing that most composers would have written in other keys. 

We've spent centuries trying to cast off the oppressive tonality of our tuning system, and every time we try, it seems like it only gets more and more ingrained. Maybe hip-hop beds might be finally be making tonality less interesting than time-based organizations, but as soon as that's actually true, AI is going to reinforce tonality again and it's back to square one.