[HN Gopher] How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
___________________________________________________________________
How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
Author : bluecalm
Score : 128 points
Date : 2023-06-21 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)
| obilgic wrote:
| (n=2) :D
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i also noticed the title is shorter as "How My 2 Children
| Acquired Absolute Pitch".
|
| but i smiled too.
| deelowe wrote:
| I'm not sure what the of perfect pitch is in any realistic
| setting. As musicians, we're going to be matching the rest of the
| band and environment.
| whafro wrote:
| Not to be a buzzkill - this is a cool story! But it's worth
| noting that perfect/absolute pitch can be a negative for
| musicians in some contexts, especially vocal music.
|
| Since even the vast majority of musicians employ relative pitch,
| entire choruses can move together off of the original key, for
| good reasons and bad, but those with perfect pitch will
| (sometimes stubbornly) maintain the original key, even when doing
| so is counterproductive to the performance.
|
| Lead singer in the ensemble is a little under the weather and
| can't hit the high notes? Normally, you'd consider starting the
| piece down a step or two, and get on with the show without much
| trouble. But if you have members with perfect pitch, that may not
| be an option without some significant rehearsal to familiarize
| them.
|
| This also translates to musical appreciation - I know people who
| can't stand when a singer covers a song in a modified key, saying
| it sounds "wrong" and "terrible" compared to the original. For
| the vast majority of the audience, the key doesn't matter
| terribly much, but for those with perfect pitch, the key is a
| significant attribute of the original piece, and it's just as
| major as changing the words might be.
|
| In other contexts, perfect pitch can be very handy, but it's not
| always quite as "perfect" as it's sometimes portrayed.
| appletrotter wrote:
| It sounds like people who have absolute pitch are a little
| worse at relative pitch than normal?
| coliveira wrote:
| Relative and absolute pitch are orthogonal. A person with
| absolute pitch needs to practice relative pitch. So, this is
| not necessarily the case. However, people with absolute pitch
| have far easier time reading notation, which may result in
| less familiarity with relative pitch.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I used to be a harpsichord tuner, and I can tell you that
| perfect pitch would have driven me nuts dealing with A being
| 415, 430, or 440 (+/- 2) Hz on any given day, as well as
| dealing with unequal temperaments. I have very good relative
| pitch in comparison to the average musician, and that is a lot
| more useful (and an entirely learnable skill as an adult). I
| know a lot of musicians with perfect pitch, but only one piano
| tuner.
|
| My sister has perfect pitch, and she definitely had a leg up
| learning music, but she can't stand baroque music played in
| authentic pitch/tuning. Some modern music also uses effects to
| raise and lower the pitch of the song, and those annoy her too:
| think about the Janet Jackson song that breaks hard drives - it
| is in E, but the tuning is almost A=450 thanks to the use of
| varispeed. That one is pretty far, but many other songs have
| A=435-445 thanks to post-production.
|
| Her orchestra plays at A=441, and I think she has basically
| learned that tuning or doesn't care - it's only about 5 cents
| sharp (1/20th of a half step).
| smeyer wrote:
| >I used to be a harpsichord tuner
|
| I have to ask out of curiosity, does this mean you worked
| full-time tuning harpsichords or rather that you did a lot of
| e.g. piano tuning and also occasionally tuned harpsichords?
| I'm hoping the former but expecting the latter.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I was a student at the time, and harpsichord tuning was a
| side job (~10 hours/week). My big "competitive advantage"
| over piano tuners was that I was very much into playing
| baroque music and knew a lot about unequal temperaments and
| harpsichord technology. I could also do pianos (tuning
| only, no maintenance), and did a few when needed, but
| harpsichords need tuning once a week plus an extra tune
| before every concert. For comparison, most pianos tend to
| get tuned on a several-monthly cadence, so you need a lot
| more clients to fill up a schedule.
|
| Essentially, instead of a fee for service (like piano
| tuning) product, harpsichord tuning is a subscription
| product. However, I think there were <10 other people who
| tuned harpsichords in the same major metro area, so the
| market is pretty tiny.
| cascades42 wrote:
| Wow this is so interesting! So you are saying that the person
| with absolute pitch often has lost the ability to intuitively
| follow relative pitch, such that they are having to transpose
| in their heads?
|
| I had always assumed they could still intuitively match pitch
| and just had an extra information overlay.
|
| Do these people you know who dislike transposed covers also
| dislike genres of music with dissonant elements, such as
| certain types of jazz or microtonal music?
| gnulinux wrote:
| It's not losing relative pitch at all[0], it's actually kind
| of the opposite. Relative pitch and absolute pitch are at
| odds with each other in some contexts. There are many reasons
| as to why, and if you search tuning theory [1] you can find
| some amount of technical information. In this post I'll only
| cover a tiny portion of the reason, there are many other
| reasons, but this is one fundamental reason why.
|
| To give a basic gist, two of the most fundamental intervals
| in music are octave (2:1 frequency ratio) which is 1200
| cents, and perfect fifth (3:2 frequency ratio) which is about
| 702 cents. You'll find that if you stack 12 of these perfect
| fifths you come back to the same note (seven octaves up) but
| 23.46 cents off. 23.46 cents off is very much audible by
| every human being who is not speech impaired, so it'll sound
| extremely jarring (dissonant). This makes musical composition
| within the tradition of Western art/church music challenging.
| So, to fix this, we use 700 cents as the interval of
| approximate perfect fifth and each semitones apart by 100
| cents (so that perfect fifth is 7th note and octave the
| 12th). We call this system "12 tone equal temperement" which
| is standard in all genres of Western music (from classical to
| jazz to pop to rock... but other cultures have many other
| systems). Now your piano will be tuned to these notes (0,
| 100, 200, 300... cents) such that it's impossible to play
| other notes. When people learn absolute pitch, they learn
| these notes are C, C#, D, D# etc. But when an instrument with
| continuous pitch plays (such as violin, cello, human voice
| etc) you do not need to be bound by this tempering. So you
| can actually play a perfect fifth as 702 cents. As long as
| the piece is not so chromatic/atonal such that you need 12
| perfect fifths to add up to seven octaves, it'll work out.
| But when someone with perfect pitch listens to this effect,
| it can feel jarring, particularly because music is "out of
| tune". This can make piano music feel "out of tune" for
| people who are used to just intonation (e.g. violinists) and
| violin music feel "out of tune" for people who are used to
| 12TET (e.g. pianists with perfect pitch).
|
| [0] Note that relative pitch is required to understand spoken
| human language, so as long as you don't have a speech
| impediment, you can likely understand relative pitch just
| fine. Of course, ear training can help you label the
| intervals you hear and associate them with names, not
| something all laymen can do.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_tuning
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Most professional violinists play in perfect equal
| temperament. I never got that deep into string playing, but
| I assume that a lot of study of "intonation" is actually
| about unlearning the natural frequency ratios (3/2 for
| 5ths, 5/4 for 3rds, etc) and learning to use the equal
| tempered counterparts (2^(7/12) and 2^(1/3) respectively).
|
| However, there are a lot of times when you can make music
| more interesting and exciting by adding some pure thirds
| (equal temperament is off by the most on thirds, and thirds
| are very harmonically important) at strategic places. You
| just can't do this on a keyboard instrument.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| It gets worse than that. It can drift over time so that even
| if you're in the right key, you end up as much as a half step
| out of tune.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRaACa1Mrd4
| musicfan1 wrote:
| The voice is the only instrument where you can "play" (sing)
| what note you think. So, the advantage of absolute pitch for
| improvisation is minimised.
|
| However, AP would be advantage in vocal sight reading. With AP,
| you will never sing a wrong note, whereas a non-AP could make
| some mistakes, depending on how strong there musical
| ability/relative pitch is.
|
| I am not sure shifting keys in singing would be hard for people
| with AP. Of course they would be aware of the exact new notes
| they would be singing whereas nonAP would simply thing
| "everything is X steps up/down" but relatively the same.
|
| I don't think AP has an effect on tolerance to listening to a
| song in a different key, it is more your personal taste. I
| don't have AP, but I can tell when a song is in a different key
| from the original. I find it acceptable, so long as it is in
| tune. But I vastly prefer the original key simply due to
| familiarity. Also, some songs really do sound better in certain
| keys than others.
| cordellwren wrote:
| Audiation is a basic skill for any instrument. Accomplished
| musicians are trivially able to improvise complex melodies
| that they can play and sing simultaneously.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > The voice is the only instrument where you can "play"
| (sing) what note you think.
|
| More often than not it is:
|
| The voice is the only instrument where you think you "play"
| (sing) what note you are thinking of.
|
| With other instruments it is much easier to notice to be
| wrong.
| nardi wrote:
| > The voice is the only instrument where you can "play"
| (sing) what note you think.
|
| This is not even close to being true.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| Funny how some people believe that having AP is some kind of
| super power. It is neither necessary or sufficient for "learning
| music easily."
| coliveira wrote:
| The main benefit is the automatic connection between note names
| and sounds. You can easily learn written music if you can just
| read the note and know how it sounds in your mind.
| boise wrote:
| I have AP and I'm a terrible musician but it's a great party
| trick!
| musicfan1 wrote:
| Well, it sort of is a "super power". As you say, it won't teach
| you technique or musical taste, but it is a great help for
| improvisational music and composing.
|
| I have played music for quite some time and have worked on my
| relative pitch a fair bit, and I still struggle to improvise
| what I think in my head, whereas a person with perfect pitch
| would do it effortlessly and perfectly every time.
| Stephen304 wrote:
| Seeing this made me curious to test my pitch accuracy after a few
| years of not playing music and I've discovered that my mind's A4
| is now closer to 423 rather than 440 and it's driving me nuts.
| Feels like the Berenstein/stain Bears thing all over again
| nardi wrote:
| Perfect pitch is actually kind of a curse in many, many contexts.
| I'd be very hesitant to experiment on my kids this way without
| their understanding of the consequences.
| zwieback wrote:
| The fact that these kids can also improvise and compose makes me
| wonder if they were born with a lot of innate musical talent
| beyond pitch recognition. Of course that's the kind of "old
| thinking" the author doesn't want us to believe.
|
| I do believe AP can be taught to some degree. My pitch
| recognition isn't that great in general but when I play my
| instruments I can immediately tell if something is off so the
| super-strong feedback loop you gain from learning an instrument,
| especially something that can go off-pitch, is a strong driver.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > innate musical talent
|
| Show me a proof there is such a thing and that it can be
| objectively measured.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| If I am ever fortunate enough to have a child in a world that can
| sustain them, I hope I let them choose their own path and that I
| can guide them with enough care to make them feel loved and
| guided but with enough distance that their choices are what they
| would have been if they saw all their possibilities.
| bluGill wrote:
| Absolute pitch in equal temperment. Which is a bad skill to have
| for many instruments. Tuning is a compromise, since chords are
| what count. A third is a 3:2 relationship between frequencies, an
| octave is 1:2, and a fifth is 4:3. (I might have the ratios above
| backwards). If you work out the math each will result in a
| different pitch for each note, and you need all 3
| renewiltord wrote:
| Cool stuff. Perhaps associated with Bloom's 2-sigma problem. Kids
| can learn all sorts of things when provided with consistent
| mastery learning.
| ctvo wrote:
| > For my older son this ability has translated into what seems
| like a stunning effortlessness when it comes to his music
| lessons. He finds it easy to sit down at his instrument and
| improvise in any key. He composes beautiful music. He has been
| taking piano for a few years now, and even though he practices no
| more than 30 minutes a day on average, if he's motivated, he can
| learn to play a simple Chopin composition within a week or two.
|
| There has to be a better way to brag about your children.
| lisasays wrote:
| Just keep reading. It gets better:
|
| _My older boy is also taking a few online music classes in his
| two non-dominant languages. (My kids are trilingual and I
| always look for ways to increase their non-dominant language
| exposure.)_
| bluecalm wrote:
| It's just reality for immigrants from different countries
| living in America, you know? You gotta learn three to
| function and communicate with your grand parents and and the
| rest of the family as they rarely speak any English. That is
| especially so if you want to teach them something about
| culture in a country you grew up in.
|
| (I am not the author, my family member is. I find the
| comments about bragging just silly. It's a lot of work to
| keep the family connections across cultures and languages).
| lisasays wrote:
| _I find the comments about bragging just silly_
|
| Don't know what to tell you, other than that the whole
| piece just reeks of compulsive status signalling. And why
| would one throw their "just look at our little prodigies-
| in-bloom" story up on the internet -- except to have people
| comment on it? Or is it only fawning and applauding
| comments they were expecting?
| bjornlouser wrote:
| I think this is marketing for the app 'Little Musician'
| ctvo wrote:
| I wrote the original comment, and I (obviously) agree.
| It's cringe, and could have been written without these
| additions. It reminds me of the Tiger mom articles
| popularized with Amy Chua's work.
|
| - Tiger parenting:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_parenting
| Mutlut wrote:
| There is no real culture left after just 2 generations.
|
| We already live in a modern world. I have seen probably
| more culture from a lot more countries than anyone before
| us all.
|
| It really takes time and energy to get culture. Culture is
| not just a few family traditions or a little bit of food.
|
| Besides, i do think culture became much more generic the
| last 30 years due to how we are now connected. Everyone has
| coca cola (which is ridiculous), everyone ewars colorful
| tshirts from adidas and all the other brands we know. We
| took culture and mangeld it in sending cheap old cloth to
| other countries, exporting everything and stop embracing
| local things.
|
| And even if you do, sometimes you see how those local
| people cook (in which conditions) and than you are happy
| about the generic imported coca cola because they never
| heard of hygene.
|
| There was a Youtube Video were someone interviewed people
| in germany / munich and asked them how living here changed
| them. And thats very interesting culture wise: They said
| things which were very german like 'no longer talking to
| anyone on the street just for fun' or being more on time
| etc. I bet this cultural trades took much more than just a
| few weeks to get ingrained.
| zwieback wrote:
| The kids will complain to each other about their overbearing
| parents in a language only they understand.
| euroderf wrote:
| Speaking of which, there are anecdotes about twins who
| invent and use their own "DIY" spoken languages, but I've
| never read a good academic treatment of the topic and I
| don't even know what the proper search terms would be.
| planb wrote:
| And I'm not even sure if haven perfect pitch helps this much in
| playing existing music on an instrument. You still need the
| routine and practice to move your hands fast and accurate
| (which for me learning to play the guitar is the much bigger
| problem than understanding what notes to play)
| DennisP wrote:
| I play piano, and memorizing notes takes me a while for new
| songs. I know what they sound like though. If I could skip
| most of the note-learning, I'd spend that much more time on
| practicing the movement.
|
| (And actually, even more time than that; it'd be more fun so
| I'd probably practice more.)
| klodolph wrote:
| Ordinary, relative pitch helps a lot learning new songs,
| and it is much more learnable. If you know what key you are
| in, and you can hear the intervals in a melody, you can
| play it back without needing absolute pitch to do it.
|
| > (And actually, even more time than that; it'd be more fun
| so I'd probably practice more.)
|
| That's the circular dependency there--if you practice
| enough, you develop the skills to make it easier to learn
| songs, which makes it more fun to practice, so you practice
| more. I really think there are just two things you gotta
| do--"push through" and get the practice work done anyway,
| and make sure that you are practicing effectively.
| coliveira wrote:
| I have news for you: relative pitch can give you the same
| benefits. I for example play songs faster by ear than by
| reading notes. The only difference is that relative pitch
| takes time to develop, while it seems that absolute pitch
| is easier to acquire for the people who have it.
| ilyt wrote:
| But it saves you spending $20 once in your life to get a
| tuner!
| antegamisou wrote:
| Still surprised how shit like this makes it to the front page
| and stays there for quite a while.
| dools wrote:
| I would say that her children's musical abilities have nothing to
| do with absolute pitch and everything to do with having a super
| smart, well organised and consistent mother. Their earliest
| memories are of bonding with the world's most important person
| over music, almost every day of their lives. They speak 3
| languages, they talk with their friends about synethsesia, etc.
| They're a family of absolute brain boxes.
|
| So I think following this method with your toddlers will probably
| recreate musical ability, and absolute pitch, but following a
| different musical routine with this level of regularity and
| consistency would also recreate the musical ability.
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| glad to see the other comments getting it right. relative pitch
| is a much more useful skill than perfect pitch.
|
| this mom sounds insufferable.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > Deutsch posed a question that really got me thinking: how come
| most people can identify and label colors with ease without
| needing any "reference colors" to do so, but absolute pitch is so
| rare
|
| People usually identify and label colors with much lower
| granularity. There are 7 conventional spectral colors with wide
| subjective boundaries between them, but e.g. piano has 88
| distinct tones and that is still not full audible range.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| I got this board game called "Hues and Cues"; it has a large
| board with a color grid and players take turns drawing cards of
| a color on the board and give a couple verbal hints to try to
| get the other players to guess the color. After playing it with
| multiple people and adjusting the rules all sorts of ways I
| don't think humans are as good as identifying colors as you
| think.
| tzs wrote:
| What are the limits of color discrimination, I wonder? Can we
| discriminate between close colors of light better than we can
| between close frequencies of sound?
|
| For pitch Googling suggests we can hear a difference of about 5
| cents. A cent is 1/100th of a semitone, or 1/1200th of an
| octave, so N cents is a frequency ratio of 2^(N/1200).
|
| At 440 Hz (A above middle C) 5 cents would be a difference of
| 1.27 Hz.
|
| For light, a 5 cents difference would be about 2 nm wavelength
| at the red end of our visible range and about 1.1 nm at other
| end. (That's about 1 gHz frequency difference at the red and
| and 2 gHz at the other end). Can a human tell if two light
| sources differ in wavelength by 1-2 nm?
| itishappy wrote:
| Huh. That feels about right on both counts. It's neat that 5
| cents is about the resolution of both eyes and ears,
| particularly considering how drastically different their
| range is:
|
| Ears: about 10 octaves
|
| Eyes: about 1 octave
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A trained musician can hear a pitch difference much smaller
| than 5 cents. I think designers and artists can also likely
| see a difference in wavelength of 1-2 nm, and probably a lot
| smaller.
| mrob wrote:
| Are they actually hearing the pitch difference, or are they
| hearing beat frequencies between simultaneous notes? You
| can hear beat frequencies even in monophonic music if the
| reverb is heavy enough.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Pitch difference is what I am referring to. Play one note
| after the other, and many musicians can hear 1 cent up or
| down.
|
| With simultaneous notes, counting the beats you can hear
| much smaller differences.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Previously, I had heard that the best way of teaching kids
| absolute pitch is to have them listen to modern jazz and modern
| classical music, where unexpected pitches often show up. That
| innately trains them to think of individual note pitch as an
| important detail to listen to. That would suggest that
| reference pitches aren't needed, beyond giving each note a name
| later in life when the kids go for musical training, which in
| turn means that color and pitch discrimination are actually
| fairly similar processes, we just decide that one is important
| and the other is not.
|
| I didn't realize there were methods like Deutsch's, and they
| honestly seem a little wonky. I'm glad it worked for her.
| nescioquid wrote:
| > ... listen to modern jazz and modern classical music, where
| unexpected pitches often show up. That innately trains them
| to think of individual note pitch as an important detail to
| listen to.
|
| I don't think the absolute value any pitch class carries is
| of much intrinsic musical interest. Musical comprehension is
| not aided by knowing the pitch-class of a specific note, but
| in perceiving its relationship to other tones.
|
| I'm guessing you picked those two genres of music because
| they are often referred to as "dissonant" or "noise". As far
| as modern classical music is concerned, much of the material
| has a unity between the foreground, background, and middle-
| ground details. Imagine you've been listening to an orchestra
| busily sawing away on pitch set [0 1 4] (in all its
| permutations) and then you realize the lonely glockenspiel's
| three disembodied notes over the last minute and a half
| spelled [0 1 4].
|
| Training someone to listen to such a piece so that they might
| tell you the glockenspiel's second note was an e-flat does
| not improve anyone's musical comprehension. Training someone
| to listen to such a piece so that pitch-relationships in the
| foreground can be heard to form relationships at different
| scales of the composition does greatly aid in musical
| comprehension (and is routinely accomplished -- pretty much
| anyone can do it).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think the big thing to note here is that kids don't
| intuitively do Schenkerian analysis on the music they
| listen to. I agree with you that a lot of music has a lot
| more internal structure than most people think, but it's
| reductive to say that dissonant music contains only
| "expected" pitches (as heard by an untrained ear).
| nescioquid wrote:
| Yes, children can learn to hear pitch-relationships at
| different scales of a composition. Schenker wouldn't have
| much to say about post-tonal music, but really we are
| talking about a matter of _perception_ , not analysis,
| even if I used analytical notation to explain.
|
| Musical comprehension depends on the relationships
| between pitches. A modest investment in ear training will
| pay handsome dividends in comparison to absolute pitch
| acquisition (even if the later worked).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I agree completely. Absolute pitch is extraneous for
| musicians at any level, and not worth the effort from the
| original article.
|
| IMO if you want your kid to have absolute pitch, you
| should expand your own musical palate by listening to
| some Schoenberg or Stravinsky with your child. If you
| want your children to be musicians, you don't need to do
| that but you should give them some theory and ear
| training lessons.
| kerblang wrote:
| Rick Beato made several videos about perfect pitch, also
| featuring his kid who has PP and can identify entire chords.
| Apparently his opinion is that the key was listening to
| atonal music at an early age, like you say.
|
| Here's one of the more interesting videos:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM
| tzs wrote:
| Is perfect pitch good to have?
|
| I've read of older musicians with perfect pitch saying that when
| they get up near their 50s their perfect pitch drifts. They start
| hearing things as being higher or lower than they really are. For
| some that drift can be up to two semitones. This can make it very
| annoying to listen to music--it all sounds off.
|
| For everything you need as a musician relative pitch is fine, and
| won't go out of whack when you get older possibly ruining your
| ability to enjoy music.
| Mutlut wrote:
| Funny enough i just watched a documentary (in german) about child
| prodigies (musical ones) and david garrett said: there are no
| child prodigies, every note is trained hard.
|
| the gist was that a child prodigy is defined as a child who can
| play at 10 what professional can play but the kids need a few
| 'talents': 1. stamina and a lot of it 2. motivation/fun for
| playing music and 3. a ton of exercise.
|
| And this blog article sounds definitly much more involved while
| trying to give of the vibe of 'look i have prodigy kids' and 'i
| only do a little bit of excercising with them and its just 5
| minutes a day or so'.
|
| Nonetheless, 30 minutes a day on avg is still so much more than a
| lot of other kids do and as others said, the bragging is
| annoying.
| lisasays wrote:
| _The more fluent Asian students are in a tonal language, the more
| likely they are to have AP. And if they don't speak a tonal
| language at all, they fare no better on AP tests than Caucasian
| students._
|
| So the complement of Asian is ... Caucasian? Seriously, I would
| expect a self-described furious shape rotator to know better.
| mcherm wrote:
| I don't think the article in any way suggested that non-Asian =
| Caucasian, merely that "Caucasian" was the group whose
| reference point they compared it to.
| feoren wrote:
| Could have been phrased better, but I think both points
| emphasize that it's the mastery of tonal language, not
| student's race, that seems to be making the difference.
| lisasays wrote:
| Hmm -- it definitely strikes me as not just poorly phrased,
| but quite weird that they brought up racial groupings at all.
| Otherwise they could have just said:
|
| _If they don't speak a tonal language at all, they fare no
| better on AP tests than students who grew up speaking non-
| tonal languages._
| bluecalm wrote:
| The racial grouping is brought up because it's a common
| claim that Asians (the children are half Asian if it's not
| clear enough from the text) have (or are born with) AP more
| often than other races. The author counters that while it's
| statistically true it might be not because of race but
| exposure to a tonal language (% wise more Asians speak a
| tonal language than Caucasians and those are the two that
| are relevant here).
| a_c wrote:
| Perfect pitch is the monad in musical training. Everyone not
| having it thought they want to get it. Those who gets it would
| know it really isn't helping that much. Disclaimer, I don't get
| neither
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Came for the science, stayed for the prose. You have a
| genetically predetermined talent for storytelling, that was a
| great read.
| earthbee wrote:
| I've heard that all people with absolute pitch will lose it once
| they get older into their 40s or 50s, as their sense of pitch
| drifts away from reality and everything will sound slightly out
| of pitch to them from then on.
| euroderf wrote:
| FWIW this echoes another comment further up the page.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| There is a fun experiment you can do yourself to show that you
| have the capability for Absolute Pitch. Think of some pop songs
| or specific music recordings that you like listening to. Sing it,
| or play it in your mind. Then listen to the actual recording. If
| you can do this with some songs, then you have (at least the
| capability for) absolute pitch.
|
| The reasoning is simple. You can sing a song in any key you like
| (within the bounds of your vocal range). You don't even have to
| sing in a standard key. (You could sing it half-way between C#
| and D for instance). If you pick the exact right key out of the
| effectively infinite possibilities, you have remembered a
| specific pitch. If you can remember specific pitches, you can
| label them. (It's just that music always makes things easier.
| Writing a song to memorize something is an underused technique
| IMHO).
| caditinpiscinam wrote:
| I can do this reliably for songs I've listened to recently
| (within the last couple of days), but after that I somehow
| "forget" the pitch. If I played a C scale on my guitar a few
| times in the morning every day, I could probably identify
| pitches correctly based on that reference. But I'd still need
| the reference.
| CoolestBeans wrote:
| Is absolute pitch actually a desirable skill? I'm a total amateur
| but from my perspective once your instrument is tuned up and you
| have some sort of reference point it makes more sense to think
| about things in relative terms. Like I don't really care what the
| actual chord I'm playing is, I just care that about what the root
| note is relative to the last chord I played, what quality the
| chord is (major, minor, any additional colorful interval added),
| and the maybe if it's inverted.
|
| Like if I learn a song and then for whatever reason I have to
| change what key it's in, all I gotta do is start playing a couple
| steps higher and lower and then I'm good. But if I had thought in
| absolute terms, I would be screwed.
|
| Am I off base here? I just play for fun I don't know.
| cascades42 wrote:
| I think it depends on what you do in music. I also just play
| for fun and do not care about trying to gain absolute pitch
| (not that this is an option from what I've read).
|
| My friend's brother has absolute pitch. I've played 10 note
| chords for him & he can pick out every note and also tell me if
| each note is in tune, sharp, or flat.
|
| He is a high school band director. I can imagine that this is a
| very useful skill for his job.
| feoren wrote:
| You're right that it's not at all necessary for being a
| professional musician, but it doesn't hurt either. It's
| particularly helpful if you want to be able to sit down and
| play a song you know from memory in its original key. More of
| party trick than anything else. It seems to me that having
| perfect pitch is more of an indicator that your brain is highly
| tuned to remembering pitches accurately -- it's not that
| perfect pitch itself helps, but that people with perfect pitch
| just also have very good ears in general.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Like if I learn a song and then for whatever reason I have to
| change what key it's in, all I gotta do is start playing a
| couple steps higher and lower and then I'm good. But if I had
| thought in absolute terms, I would be screwed.
|
| I don't have absolute (or very good relative) pitch, but I find
| transposing something I already know pretty easy. I was able to
| sight read concert C sheet music and play it up a step on a Bb
| trumpet, for instance, whereas trying to find intervals that I
| don't already know is really difficult for me. So if were
| magically granted AP, I think playing up or down a step would
| be simple.
| aldanor wrote:
| It may be very undesirable as you grow older and your peception
| of pitch slowly slides over time, so you have to remind
| yourself that it's not correct and has to be adjusted. You can
| find interviews with many famous musicians talking about that.
| cm2012 wrote:
| It is really good for tuning instruments though. My buddy with
| perfect pitch can do it in no time flat.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| But can they do it at concert pitch too?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| In my experience (I have pretty good relative pitch but not
| absolute), absolute is strictly better than relative pitch (ie.
| people with absolute pitch can do everything I can do with
| relative pitch, they can just _also_ do absolute pitch)
| klodolph wrote:
| From what I've heard, absolute pitch can be distracting in
| certain scenarios, like if you are listening to something
| which does not use A=440 (more common than you might think,
| just imagine that some instrument in a band is flat, and then
| everybody else tunes to match that instrument, or consider
| choral music, which drifts over the course of a song for
| various reasons). The other problem is that absolute pitch
| often drifts as you age, so someone with AP in their 40s or
| 50s might start hearing everything as out of key, because
| their sense of pitch has drifted.
| musicfan1 wrote:
| I don't have perfect pitch, just an average hobby musician,
| but I can immediately tell when an orchestra is tuned up or
| down (A 440Hz vs 441 or 442, or baroque, really low).
|
| I also find out of tune music extremely distressing, and
| can't stand it. My ears actually have this weird "bleeding"
| sensation if I listen to out of tune music long enough.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It sounds like you may have perfect pitch, but not enough
| ear training to link the note "colors" to names.
| musicfan1 wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't. I wish I did though. I have tried
| some training, to no avail. When hear a pitch I have no
| notion of uniqueness.
|
| However, since I listen to so much music and tune my
| violin to A 440Hz every time I play, my ear knows when
| something is off even by a degree or two when listening
| to some European orchestras. And I think every musician
| hates out of tune music :)
|
| There is a really cool phenomenon with some musicians who
| play instruments with a one to one correspondence between
| a pitch and feeling + fingering (so woodwinds, and sort
| of brass) that have played long tones for so long that
| they have internalized the "feeling" of a note and can
| (with a small delay) seem like they have absolute pitch.
| Really cool stuff. A youtuber called Saxologic dubbed
| this ability "Real Pitch". Really interesting video
| showing this in action:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4zo6POThHc
| klodolph wrote:
| The skill you are describing is usually called "absolute
| pitch"--someone without absolute pitch cannot easily tell
| the difference between A=440 and A=432 in isolation (to
| say nothing of something like A=442).
|
| > And I think every musician hates out of tune music :)
|
| The notion of "out of tune" is different for people with
| and without absolute pitch. Someone with absolute pitch
| can hear something as "out of tune" just because it uses
| A=432 instead of A=440, whereas someone without absolute
| pitch will hear it as in tune. That is, more or less, THE
| characteristic difference between having absolute pitch
| and not having absolute pitch.
|
| I don't have absolute pitch. I'll hear a guitar as out of
| tune if it is not tuned to itself. Like, if one string is
| flat relative to the others. However, if you tune a
| guitar to standard tuning in A=432, that sounds "in tune"
| to me. I think I have a decent sense of tuning--you can
| tune to equal temperament, and you can tune to just
| intonation, and I can tell the difference between the
| two. But I cannot tell the difference between A=440 and
| A=432.
|
| The difference between 440 and 442 is exceptionally
| small, I'd be surprised if you could hear the difference
| in an A/B test.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| With all due respect, I think you may be underestimating
| the amount of training that you would need. My sister has
| perfect pitch, but only really honed her skill at it
| after ~5 years of music theory/ear training classes. That
| was about when I learned to identify intervals by ear.
|
| Singers also get "real pitch," I think, and in general,
| when you know the sound of an instrument's registers
| really well, it can be a hack for professionals to turn
| their relative pitch into "perfect pitch."
|
| Also, FWIW most professional musicians I know can't tell
| whether their A is sharp or flat by a few cents (eg the
| difference between 440 and 442), but they can tell
| interval size immediately. The interval sizing tends to
| determine "out of tune" rather than the frequency of the
| A.
| mrob wrote:
| I'm glad I don't have absolute pitch. I enjoy listening to
| beat-mixed DJ mixes, and if I had absolute pitch most of them
| would sound out of tune.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatmatching
| agos wrote:
| not sure if I agree that having AP ensures that learning music
| will be easy. at least for contemporary western music,
| identifying and producing a pitch is a nearly useless skill
| compared to identifying and producing intervals (relative pitch)
| klodolph wrote:
| It's hard to deny how useful AP is for people who transcribe
| music.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Pretty much anyone who has absolute pitch has relative pitch.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| That's great, but it's the absolute pitch that's not as
| useful
| elros wrote:
| I read that as "How My Chicken" and honestly as much as I'm sure
| the process for children is interesting, I'd be lying if I said I
| don't find it more fascinating to get chicken to have absolute
| pitch instead :-)
| kashunstva wrote:
| As a professional musician, this made me very uncomfortable for
| more reasons than I could easily count. Mainly, it seems to
| inflate the utility of absolute pitch. Some pros have it, other
| do not. Some composers have it, other do not. It really isn't
| considered a mark of musical ability or competence.
|
| I'm a pianist and lack absolute pitch. My violinist daughter has
| infallibly accurate absolute pitch; but even with bowed
| instruments where it would seem to be an incredible asset, it's
| less useful than one would think because you're still always
| playing into the ensemble. You're matching a consensus pitch
| within a changing harmonic context. That's without getting into
| tuning systems, etc...
|
| There's also something just a little reductionist about the whole
| enterprise of teaching your kids to have absolute pitch somewhat
| in isolation. (Yes, there's something about playing Chopin etc.
| It just reads like an experiment in trying to develop
| musicianship by isolating one of a thousand parts rather than
| developing it holistically and organically.)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| My son had one use for it: He could be employed to tune the
| cellos in the orchestra , and didn't have to use an instrument.
| musicfan1 wrote:
| As a person without absolute pitch, here is my take on its
| utility. It does not help technique, does not help for sight
| read music, and does not grant musical taste or compositional
| creativity.
|
| AP helps improvisation (mostly keyboard and strings, less so
| brass, and even less so woodwinds, I can explain later). Also,
| ease/speed of composition, allowing you to focus on the
| creative aspect of composing, or just simply composing more.
|
| You can become a great improviser with relative pitch, but it
| is much harder, as you have to calculate the intervals between
| notes in real time, whereas AP spits out the exact note
| automatically for you.
|
| You should ask your daughter if she would be interested in Jazz
| improvisation! That is where her AP would actually shine. We
| need another Stephane Grappelli! :D
|
| I am a violinist myself, and although I can play every scale
| and arpeggio in the books, I still can't play freely what I
| hear in my head vs my fingers even after years of working on my
| real time relative pitch.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| From the musicians I've met who have it most have actually
| highlighted the annoying aspects of it more than the useful
| aspects, in that they can find it bothersome to hear music
| they're familiar with played in different keys or offset from
| standard pitch.
|
| I've never experienced any correlation between pitch
| sensitivity and improvisation skill in groups of trained
| musicians.
|
| I play a lot of improv and normally it takes no more than 2
| notes playing along to determine the key of the piece and
| relative pitches are very learnable.
| 49531 wrote:
| I'd argue interval training is more valuable than absolute
| pitch in improvisation. It's rare you find yourself in a
| scenario where key is unknown and unknowable, especially
| playing with other musicians. Being able to hear and
| distinguish a minor 3rd from major 3rd is much more valuable.
| duderific wrote:
| Additionally, it's the intervals that give music its
| emotional content. For example, a minor third sounds "sad"
| while a major third sounds "happy". Absolute pitches are
| meaningless in this regard.
|
| Playing a single note confers no meaning. It's only when
| subsequent notes are played that a context emerges, and
| music gains its emotional qualities.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > [...] but it is much harder, as you have to calculate the
| intervals between notes in real time [...]
|
| Not necessarily the intervals between any two notes, but the
| note of interest in relation to the tonic. But still may
| require the relative position to be mapped (offset) to a
| specific note.
| tarentel wrote:
| I am not really convinced having absolute pitch will make you
| a better improviser than someone who has good relative pitch.
|
| In most jazz music you will have the lead sheet so you don't
| really need to know anyway. Besides that, you don't really
| need to calculate anything if you have relative pitch. If you
| practice enough it's instant. If I hear a note or chord
| followed by another note or chord I can tell you their
| relationship in real time. Anyone who has done enough ear
| training can. In fact, it's one of those things where you
| either know instantly or you haven't practiced enough. I was
| never really in an in between state.
| omnicognate wrote:
| One aspect of absolute pitch that I didn't know about until
| recently is that it almost always drifts when you get past a
| certain age. An acquiantance described how in middle age his
| perception of pitches had shifted by a semitone so the
| sensation he got for say an A5 was the sensation he used to get
| for an Aflat5. It got progressively worse from there.
|
| The thing is this doesn't mean you no longer have absolute
| pitch. You can still identify the pitches but they _feel_
| different, which can affect the enjoyment of music. All the
| sensations you get from familiar music are now permanently
| altered, which can take a lot of getting used to.
|
| I added this to a short list of reasons I tend to be rather
| glad I don't have absolute pitch.
| [deleted]
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" for say an A5 was the sensation he used to get for an
| Aflat5"_
|
| This affects me--probably from wearing loud headphones too
| long and too loud. Absolute pitch, except I now interpret
| everything one semitone sharp. (Opposite direction of your
| acquaintance, assuming neither of us got things backwards).
| omnicognate wrote:
| Quite likely I got it backwards. I couldn't remember the
| direction for sure and pretty much guessed.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| How do things change if every single person in the musical
| ensemble had absolute pitch? How would it be better, and how
| would it be worse?
| quickquest234 wrote:
| You would have a big group of people who would really
| struggle if they ever had to play something familiar
| transposed, rather than just a handful.
|
| What the post you're replying to is alluding to is all the
| ways that pitch is simply not absolute. That can be for
| boring reasons: you're playing with an organ, or some other
| instrument with fixed or temperature dependent pitch, or in a
| different city with different conventions; but also for the
| interesting reason that the "correct" pitch of a C, say, is
| the result of a mostly-unconscious negotiation that considers
| ones' place within a chord that's sounding and the melody
| you're playing. Even equal-tempered tuned keyboard
| instruments involves compromise wrt placement of the octaves,
| etc.
| flashgordon wrote:
| That's pretty insightful. I play carnatic (Indian classical
| music) violin and I don't have perfect (absolute?) Pitch. But
| the nature of carnatic music is it is all relative so I'm much
| better at pitch differences than absolutes.
| sdwr wrote:
| As a non-professional semi-musician, it also made me
| uncomfortable. The "my children are wonderful miracles"
| attitude shone through, in a way that feels unrealistic +
| overly magical.
|
| I met a Chinese couple last week coaching their young daughter
| in the pool. She's doing 2km daily, and is shaping up to be a
| pretty good swimmer. The article indulges more in this 5
| minutes of tone practice than they ever have.
| robbyking wrote:
| Why did you feel it necessary to include the family's race?
| antegamisou wrote:
| Honestly looks like another dumb American obsession, same with
| scoring high on specific subsets of IQ tests and deeming those
| who do so to be in the .0001% of intellect in the world!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > There's also something just a little reductionist about the
| whole enterprise of teaching your kids to have absolute pitch
| somewhat in isolation. (Yes, there's something about playing
| Chopin etc. It just reads like an experiment in trying to
| develop musicianship by isolating one of a thousand parts
| rather than developing it holistically and organically.)
|
| This article was a fascinatingly uneducated take on what it
| means to learn music mixed in with a classic dose of American
| "my child is better than you." Like many piano students who
| started early, I too played some easy Chopin music at ~6, and I
| bet most later starters also play some Chopin within 1-2 years
| of starting (in fact, I bet they reach the Chopin sooner).
|
| Perfect pitch is very much not required to be a professional
| musician, and seems to help only in a few areas, and only by
| accelerating your musical education a bit. I'm sure it makes
| things like the Suzuki method easier for young children, but
| you arguably shouldn't use the Suzuki method to teach music to
| your kids anyway since it tends to guide them to a local
| maximum by emphasizing ear training over reading. Learning
| pieces by listening rather than reading works for easy pieces,
| but I bet nobody has learned the Hammerklavier Sonata or a
| Paganini Caprice by ear.
|
| I really wish the idea of "racing" through your musical
| education with hacks like this would stop - the only _real_ way
| to get to advanced levels quickly is with a shit load of
| practice. My friends who went to international competitions at
| 18-20 were all practicing 5+ hours a day by age 12, and several
| of them actually started their music education at age 7-9
| rather than obscenely early like this.
| lisasays wrote:
| _The only real way to get to advanced levels quickly is with
| a shit load of practice._
|
| That, and actually digging music through forces coming out of
| your own soul (and not for the sake of meeting your parent's
| expectations ... or worse, serving as fodder for their half-
| baked education experiments) might have something to do with
| it.
|
| Don't see why your comment should be downvoted, BTW.
| calt wrote:
| > digging music through forces coming out of your own soul
|
| Agree. Art is art, and why do we make art? Well...?
|
| Technical skill helps with the nuance of the creation, but
| not with the "why."
| dbalatero wrote:
| > but you arguably shouldn't use the Suzuki method to teach
| music to your kids anyway since it tends to guide them to a
| local maximum by emphasizing ear training over reading
|
| I disagree. I did 10 years of Suzuki as a kid, then switched
| to an intermediate/advanced teacher for another 10 years. I
| had to shore up a bit of reading for, let's say 9 months, but
| I read at a professional level and played a big chunk of the
| cello repertoire. My mom teaches Suzuki and many of her
| students followed the same teacher path as I did and
| excelled.
|
| Imo Suzuki is very suited for kids, and anyone with that
| skill foundation can backfill things like reading skills
| relatively easy. I don't see a local maximum here.
| antegamisou wrote:
| > Perfect pitch is very much not required to be a
| professional musician, and seems to help only in a few areas,
| and only by accelerating your musical education a bit.
|
| It's certainly hard to see how it's useful in musical
| performance.
|
| Hand - eye coordination, hand dexterity and to a lesser
| degree span, which btw up to an extent are as genetic as AP
| is -no matter how many grifters occasionally come up with
| _Get AP as an adult with only 10 courses!_ scams, are going
| to be much valuable traits to possess when it comes to
| playing the piano.
| henjodottech wrote:
| Apparently some countries use a fixed solfeggio method while
| others don't. Meaning that in any diatonic scale the tonic would
| always be 'do' or if fixed 'do' would always be a 'c'. This
| caused me some confusion how one could use solfeggio methods to
| acquire perfect pitch.
| skulk wrote:
| I don't think having absolute pitch makes you a better composer.
| OTOH, composing music as a child will likely lead to absolute
| pitch.
|
| My anecdote is that I gained absolute pitch by playing on a
| Yamaha keyboard as a young child. Seeing the notes on the screen
| while playing and hearing them is almost certainly what made it
| click for me. I strongly believe that AP can be acquired at a
| rate that is an order of magnitude higher than what we observe
| today.
| criddell wrote:
| > My anecdote is that I gained absolute pitch by playing on a
| Yamaha keyboard as a young child.
|
| I have a similar anecdote. I had a small Casio keyboard that I
| gave to my daughter to play with when she was 3 or 4. There was
| no training or any kind of instruction beyond that. It was just
| another toy that was in her pile of toys and it wasn't
| something she played with very often.
|
| Many years later, we are in a music store and I hit a key on a
| piano and she tells me it's wrong. I didn't really understand
| what she was saying and then we found out the keyboard had some
| pitch shift mode enabled and she was right. That's the day we
| found out she had perfect pitch.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-06-21 23:01 UTC)