[HN Gopher] Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment i...
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Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood
Author : dr_dshiv
Score : 148 points
Date : 2025-02-13 08:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (link.springer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (link.springer.com)
| zx2c4 wrote:
| > By the end of the training, they learned to name an average of
| 7.08 pitches (ranging from 3 to 12) at an accuracy of 90% or
| above and within a response-time (RT) window of 1,305-2,028 ms.
|
| That doesn't actually seem very promising, or at least useful at
| all. It still seems way less useful than my accurate and near
| instantaneous relative-pitch. What could I do as a musician with
| 2 seconds of latency to be wrong some amount of the time.
| neuralkoi wrote:
| I don't understand (I am not a musician). This was an 8-week
| training program (21.4h). How long have you spent perfecting
| your relative pitch?
| groby_b wrote:
| Your relative pitch gets decent within a few weeks of
| practice (<10h).
|
| Getting it always right takes longer, and so do "weird"
| intervals, but the basic intervals are not that hard. Also,
| basic knowledge of song structure, phrases, and chords helps
| with relative pitch, because it narrows down the set of
| choices in many circumstances.
|
| After all, the most useful exercise of relative pitch is
| "what's that melody", not "what's that random interval".
|
| As for precision of relative pitch: After a year of weekly
| training, most people are able to tune a guitar to within 2-3
| cents. Which is, granted, a very specific form of relative
| pitch, but it shows you can get pretty good precision at
| that. It probably extends further. (IDK, I have seen no
| examples of people explicitly practicing microtonal relative
| pitch outside of "tune an instrument")
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Pretty sure you don't lose your relative pitch, and the better
| you are at relative pitch the better results you'll have anyway
| wrs wrote:
| Yes, thank goodness _relative_ pitch is trainable, because
| that's all you need, almost all the time. This new ability
| would let you come in on the right pitch for your first note,
| which is a cool trick. But after that, relative is fine.
| Indeed, it would be awful if you heard everything absolute and
| had to translate to relative (I'm guessing you can do both at
| the same time, though).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I wonder if they combined this with Valproic acid, which
| supposedly can help adults learn perfect pitch
| https://www.npr.org/2014/01/04/259552442/want-perfect-pitch-...
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Interesting. Word of caution though, valproic acid is
| teratogenic, and should not be taken by anyone who may become
| pregnant. The linked article suggests it could be a "wonder
| drug" to enable learning, but there are also downsides to
| taking it.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Yeah, until they figure out how to target it to your
| ears/brain/whatever I would not take something that wipes
| your body's epigenetic slate
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| Is this type of training more beneficial to do first rather than
| recognizing intervals?
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I think its gotta be just interesting on the theoretical side
| around learning/cognition. Otherwise yeah, its like learning
| exactly how salty something is when you taste it: not a total
| waste of time maybe, but not directly beneficial for you as the
| cook.
|
| In school, at least when I was there, ear training was a
| combination of recognizing harmony, rhythm, and simple melodies
| with an arbitrary key, ontop of, of course, sight singing. It
| is of course quite sufficient to have this skill with all of
| that, but hardly necessary!
| olddustytrail wrote:
| It's not beneficial at all. Don't do it. The only music that
| will sound "right" is autotuned crap from the most boring types
| of music. Anything interesting will sound "out of tune".
| 2c2c2c wrote:
| i made https://perfectpitch.study a week or so ago. i am old and
| musically untrained and wanted to see if rote practice makes a
| difference (it clearly does).
|
| most of the sites of this type i found annoying as you can't just
| use a midi keyboard, so you just get RSI clicking around for 10
| minutes.
|
| I tried getting adsense on it, but they seem to have vague
| content requirements. Apparently tools don't count as real
| websites :-(. I couldn't even fool it with fake content. what's
| the best banner ad company to use in this situation?
| jawon wrote:
| Gave it a try. After a few minutes I felt more like I was
| recognising the samples than I was recognising the notes. Not
| sure what you can do about that short of physically modeling an
| instrument.
| yojo wrote:
| Latest browser APIs expose everything you need to build a
| synth. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...
|
| There are some libraries that make it easy to simulate
| instruments. E.g. tone.js https://tonejs.github.io/
|
| It should be possible to generate unique-ish variants at
| runtime.
| westurner wrote:
| OpenEar is built on tone.js:
| https://github.com/ShacharHarshuv/open-ear
|
| limut implements WebAudio and WebGL, and FoxDot-like
| patterns and samples: https://github.com/sdclibbery/limut
|
| https://glicol.org/ runs in a browser and as a VST plugin
|
| https://draw.audio/
|
| "Using the Web Audio API to Make a Modem" (2017)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15471723
|
| gh topics/webaudio: https://github.com/topics/webaudio
|
| awesome-webaudio: https://github.com/notthetup/awesome-
| webaudio
| westurner wrote:
| From the OpenEar readme re perfect pitch training;
| https://github.com/ShacharHarshuv/open-ear :
|
| > _Currently includes the following built in exercises:_
|
| > [...]
|
| > _7. Interval recognition - the very popular exercise
| almost all app has. Although I do not recommend using it
| as I find it inaffective in confusing, since the
| intervals are out-of-context._
| insomagent wrote:
| Interval training is different than absolute pitch
| training. OpenEar seems to have no absolute pitch
| training.
| 2c2c2c wrote:
| I am using midi and open source instrument packages, so this
| is all handleable. There's a few instrument options to choose
| from in the top right settings.
|
| Will probably add a "randomize instrument used per round"
| setting or something to really dial it in. I added a
| randomize velocity option but didn't test it much
| almostnormal wrote:
| Starting from the second note the brain switches to reative
| mode (at least a brain that got some relative recognition
| trained before) and no AP pitch will be memorized.
| hornytoad wrote:
| Agree. And for relative pitch training, I love this tool! The
| creator should read the paper to get ideas on how to turn it
| into an actual training tool for absolute pitch.
| westurner wrote:
| Nice! The keyboard could be larger on mobile in portrait and
| landscape
|
| Ctrl-Shift-M https://devtoolstips.org/tips/en/simulate-devices/
| ; how to simulate a mobile viewport:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode#devic...
|
| /? google lighthouse mobile accessibility test:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=google+lighthouse+mobile+acc...
|
| Lighthouse:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview
| westurner wrote:
| Another metric for changing performance: notes tested before
| finding the correct note
| 2c2c2c wrote:
| i had media queries set up and they seemed to show up as
| working in devtools simulator. but trying on my actual
| iphone14 pro max doesnt seem to work. devtools seems to imply
| that an iphones resolution is much lower than the actual
| resolution
|
| the layout is also tough to reconcile on phone. if you enable
| a large note range and keep a true piano layout it will not
| fit on phone. my plan was to break each octave into a row.
| not very satisfying visually
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Get sponsored by some kind of music related site? Maybe a music
| course?
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| The perception of perfect pitch as this magical, unattainable
| thing always seemed odd to me. Not surprised this reinforces that
| it's mostly about memorization and practice.
|
| Think of a song you know best, one you've listened to hundreds of
| times: can you sing it or hear it in your head pretty accurately
| (edit - not accurate intervals, but accurate pitch)? If so,
| congrats, you have the capacity for perfect pitch. Learn what
| note it starts on and you're 1/12 of the way there.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| > and you're 1/12 of the way there.
|
| I'm afraid my favorite song is on a microtonal scale...
| dingnuts wrote:
| >Think of a song you know best, one you've listened to hundreds
| of times: can you sing it or hear it in your head pretty
| accurately? If so, congrats, you have the capacity for perfect
| pitch
|
| No, this is relative pitch. You might be singing it in the
| wrong key. That's why you can sing something a capella and it
| sounds right and then you add an instrument playing the correct
| notes and it doesn't.
| zeroxfe wrote:
| It's not. You should actually try out the exercise. (I used
| this approach to build partial perfect pitch, i.e., to
| sing/identify a small number of specific pitches.)
|
| Close your eyes and try to imagine a song that you know
| really well. Imagine the original version playing on your
| phone/mp3 player/cd/record. Pick a stable note from that song
| (for me, the third note of the beginning of "Tears in Heaven"
| is a solid A.) Try to sing it and match the pitch in your
| head.
|
| As you practice it you'll get better, and do it faster, and
| over time even be able to recognize it in the wild.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| Wild. I read the bit about "Close your eyes and
| imagine...", and immediately also thought of the third note
| of "Tears in Heaven" without having read the rest of the
| comment. Those are either crazy odds or that's just THAT
| memorable of an opening to a song
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| That's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to songs you
| know intimately enough that you _can_ sing a capella (or at
| least hear in your head) in the right key. Edited original
| comment for clarity.
|
| This might not be something you personally can do, but for
| those who have memorized a song in that way it's a convenient
| way of demonstrating that perfect pitch isn't as unattainable
| as it might seem.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's a different exercise though... wrong direction.
| Absolute pitch recognition is hearing -> pitch. What you
| describe is memory -> performance -> comparison <- hearing.
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean.
|
| > Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is the
| ability to identify or re-create a given musical note
| without the benefit of a reference tone. [Wikipedia]
|
| This is what I'm describing: knowing a song well enough
| that you can 'hear' it in your head, and use that to
| accurately identify and re-create a note from it. This is
| a few more steps than being able to simply 'know' a note
| upon hearing it but nonetheless can demonstrate the
| capacity to do so for those who haven't specifically
| practiced it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This study is specifically about the ability to identify
| heard tones.
|
| It's literally the first line of the abstract:
|
| > Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify
| the pitch of a tone without external references.
| yongjik wrote:
| I have trouble understanding your comment. To me, it sounds
| like saying that, if I have absolute pitch (i.e., being
| able to start a song in the right key), then I have
| absolute pitch. Well, sure, the problem is that I don't
| have absolute pitch!
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| Well, yes, I suppose that is what I'm saying. Kudos for
| the perspective.
|
| I think what it is, is that it's murky whether perfect
| pitch is the ability to name notes, or the capacity to
| learn to be able to. Historical thinking has mostly been
| that the two are the same, however I'm referring to it
| more as the former whereas you're referring to it more
| like the latter.
|
| So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the two
| aren't the same, which is more or less what's being
| supported by the paper. People might have the capacity to
| learn the ability (as the 'listen to a song in your head'
| exercise I described aims to demonstrate) and think they
| don't, because the common perception is that if you don't
| have the ability you don't have the capacity to learn it.
| Or something like that.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > That's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to songs
| you know intimately enough that you can sing
|
| That's not what this study is talking about. Click the link
| and read the first line of the abstract:
|
| > Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify the
| pitch of a tone without external references.
|
| Lot of people are getting downvoted throughout this thread,
| but they're right. Absolute pitch in the context of this
| study is strictly about identifying heard tones.
|
| You also cannot self-evaluate your ability to sing or
| recreate a specific pitch. You need an actual reference
| tone and an ability to measure it.
|
| Most people will self-rate their singing pitch as being
| accurate, but when you introduce a calibrated reference
| tone and measure, it's a different story.
|
| Also note that absolute pitch requires identifying 12 tones
| across an octave. Again, not as simple as singing your
| favorite song.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > The perception of perfect pitch as this magical, unattainable
| thing always seemed odd to me
|
| Because it is really magical and unattainable
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI
|
| Show me an adult that trained to this level.
| makeset wrote:
| That example is literally Beato demonstrating that it's
| perfectly attainable through deliberate training. Adulthood
| is a separate discussion.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| What made you think this boy got through "deliberate
| training"? What point are you trying to make?
| lolinder wrote:
| The first words of the video are "we're going to do the
| hardest ear training test of all time", and the
| description contains a link to "The Beato Ear Training
| Program". I'm really not sure what it is that you're
| missing, it's pretty clear.
|
| Also, I know from my own experience that the idea that
| this is an innate skill is bunk--my wife's mother taught
| her children absolute pitch through deliberate training.
| Sing a note to them, they identify it, they check
| themselves on the piano. Repeat.
|
| No one in any prior generations had the skill, nor do any
| of the cousins. Just the kids my wife's mom trained.
|
| I'm sure like most skills it's one that is easier to pick
| up in childhood than later, but it's not some musical
| innate ability that you either have or lack, it _is_
| trained.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > The first words of the video are "we're going to do the
| hardest ear training test of all time", and the
| description contains a link to "The Beato Ear Training
| Program". I'm really not sure what it is that you're
| missing, it's pretty clear.
|
| So you heard a word "test", then looked at a link that
| says "ear training" (and leads to a page that says
| "improving your __relative__ pitch") and decided that
| this 8yo went through the training and got this perfect
| pitch? Is that what you're saying?
| lolinder wrote:
| I notice you pointedly neglect to even touch on my
| anecdotal experience that says that it's a trainable
| skill.
|
| And yes, he's 100% implying that this boy practiced to
| get there. He's not saying that he's going to be able to
| train any random person to get there with an online
| course, but he's 100% saying that this boy practiced the
| skill.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Your "anecdotal experience" is just your words. It can be
| (and most likely is) just a lie from some internet rando.
| Did your wife (or who trained who, I don't remember)
| document the progress or followed some methodology that's
| proven successful and reproducible? How do she know her
| kids didn't have it before "training"?
|
| Beato's explanation is that his son was exposed to a lot
| of different music since the age 0 and at some age they
| noticed that he associates sounds like "hey, microwave
| sounds like star wars". Nobody drilled sine waves 5 hours
| a day. His whole point is that you need to immerse
| children into the world of tones, that will train to
| "see" them.
| lolinder wrote:
| How in the world do you square this reply with your
| original comment?
|
| > Because it is really magical and unattainable
|
| If it's unattainable, how can you also embrace the idea
| that there's a path to attaining it (immerse children in
| the world of tones)?
|
| If this latest reply reflects your actual opinion then we
| don't actually disagree. No one said anything about
| drilling sine waves besides you.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > The perception of perfect pitch as this magical, unattainable
| thing always seemed odd to me.
|
| Not sure why, it's taught and commonly considered to be an
| ability you're born with rather than something you can develop
| yourself later on.
|
| > However, no adult has ever been documented to have acquired
| absolute listening ability, because all adults who have been
| formally tested after AP training have failed to demonstrate
| "an unqualified level of accuracy... comparable to that of AP
| possessors".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch
|
| The Wiki article also describes just prior to this cited
| section that there have been countless attempts at it over the
| centuries.
|
| Doesn't exactly sound like a learnable skill to me.
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| This is literally what the paper we're commenting on is
| challenging. The source for that claim in Wikipedia (Levitin
| & Rogers) is expressly addressed in the paper.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Think of a song you know best, one you've listened to
| hundreds of times: can you sing it or hear it in your head
| pretty accurately (edit - not accurate intervals, but accurate
| pitch)? If so, congrats, you have the capacity for perfect
| pitch.
|
| Absolute pitch can't be self-assessed subjectively like this.
| Hearing a song in your head is meaningless because you don't
| have an absolute reference to compare to.
|
| Also, please read the first line of the abstract: Absolute
| pitch in this context also specifically refers to
| identification of heard tones, not ability to produce those
| tones yourself (in your head or otherwise). The test for
| absolute pitch involves playing different pitches spanning an
| octave and measuring how accurately and quickly the candidate
| can identify each pitch.
|
| The first line of the abstract:
|
| > Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify the
| pitch of a tone without external references.
|
| Even studies of students at prominent music Conservatories have
| shown low prevalence among their students. These are people who
| have been training for years and started at a young age. So you
| can't expect to come anywhere near perfect pitch as a casual
| person singing a song in your head.
|
| Absolute pitch isn't a strictly defined trait. The participants
| in this study improved their pitch identification abilities
| after intense training, but they still haven't approached the
| thresholds of absolute pitch identification used in many of the
| studies of music students.
|
| A common theme among absolute pitch studies is that people who
| started music at a young age (typically less than 5) score
| higher on absolute pitch tests. This study doesn't undermine
| that fact.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I had a music theory teacher who suggested that to acquire
| absolute pitch, you listen to a tuning fork at A = 440 for 10
| minutes a day. Everyone in the class could do all the
| intervals by ear, so with a strong memory of an A reference,
| you can fake it.
|
| However, my sister does have absolute pitch (I don't), and
| the difference between "studying a known reference and
| knowing the intervals" and true absolute pitch is crazy. She
| can tell you what pitch the fluorescent lights are vibrating
| at, she can tell you what pitch your speaking voice is at,
| and all sorts of other things. My understanding of the
| psychology is that this is more like synesthesia than like
| something that you can study.
|
| There are some people who suggest that kids who hear a lot of
| "atonal" music (modern jazz, modern classical, etc. - things
| whose pitch is hard to predict) at a young age are more
| likely to develop absolute pitch, which makes sense to me but
| also seems like it might be pseudoscience.
| musicale wrote:
| > listen to a tuning fork at A = 440 for 10 minutes a day
|
| The people who impress me are those who can count cycles
| and identify/sing A440 vs. A415 (perhaps for a Baroque
| ensemble), different temperaments, etc.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Identifying A440 vs A415 and knowing baroque temperaments
| are completely different skills. A415 is about a half
| step below A440, but without absolute pitch you can't
| really tell. Tuning is mostly about counting the beat
| frequency between overtones of two notes in an interval,
| and then you sort of learn the "color" of the exact
| interval. Things like equal tempered fifths and the
| Werckmeister F4-A4 third become pretty recognizable when
| you know them.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| To me it seems like there is a Fourier Transform in their
| head.
| jampekka wrote:
| Everybody[1] has a frequency domain transform in their
| ears. The absolute frequency gets lost at some point at
| the nervous system, a bit like you can't see absolute
| luminous intensity.
|
| See e.g.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3280891/
|
| [1] Everybody with a functional cochlea at least.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It takes a bit of work, but you can learn to isolate
| specific overtones by ear.
| mquander wrote:
| A lot of people arguing in this thread. I'm an adult who
| started learning piano about two years ago. I found that the
| following exercise was immediately easy for me with no special
| practice:
|
| - Learn a piano song, memorize it, play it many times.
|
| - My wife plays random keys on the keyboard.
|
| - I tell her when she got to the opening note of the song by
| comparing what she played to my memory of the sound.
|
| So then I was confused because aren't I not supposed to be able
| to do that?
|
| After reading online it became clear to me that this is called
| "pitch memory" by musicians and it's a totally normal ability
| that anyone should be able to do if they remember a sound well
| enough, and it's distinct from "absolute pitch" because people
| with "absolute pitch" don't try to remember a sound and match
| it up. They just know what a D sounds like abstractly and can
| identify any D based on that feeling. It would be like the
| difference between me knowing what green and red look like, and
| me identifying green and red things by imagining whether they
| look similar to traffic lights.
|
| The study linked is also aware of this distinction:
|
| > It remains unclear whether the participants [in prior
| research] really learned the chroma of the tones, which is
| shared by notes that are one or more octave(s) apart with the
| same pitch name and considered the essence of AP (Bachem, 1955;
| Zatorre, 2003), or they merely learned to name a highly
| specific set of tones based on pitch height.
| lolinder wrote:
| > and it's distinct from "absolute pitch" because people with
| "absolute pitch" don't try to remember a sound and match it
| up. They just know what a D sounds like abstractly and can
| identify any D based on that feeling. It would be like the
| difference between me knowing what green and red look like,
| and me identifying green and red things by imagining whether
| they look similar to traffic lights.
|
| What you're describing is the same concept as fluency in a
| language. You're at the place where you are still translating
| the language in your head, but once someone becomes fluent it
| just comes out in the second language.
|
| That there exists a lower bar of skill is actually evidence
| that it is a learned skill, not evidence that the higher bar
| is only attainable by some select few who were chosen by
| genetics or something. We'd expect it to be relatively
| teachable to young children and rather difficult to pick up
| as an adult, like languages, and that's pretty much what I've
| seen in my experience with a lot of very musical people.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Actually many ordinary people have perfect pitch when it comes
| to hearing a song and singing it
|
| https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/singing-memory-u...
|
| It's the being able to name a note and sing it or hear a note
| and give the name that's rare.
| lolinder wrote:
| Right, but their point is that if what the article you link
| to is true--if 44% of people are right on key when singing a
| song--then it should also be just a matter of collecting 12
| songs with different starting pitches and mapping songs to
| notes and now you've learned a full scale of absolute pitch.
|
| Few people do this because it's simply not practical, but
| that 44% of recordings match the pitch of their source
| exactly shows pretty conclusively that there's nothing
| magical behind absolute pitch, it's just that most of us
| learn to associate pitches with songs rather than giving them
| names.
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly what I meant. There are many different
| interpretations of the original comment in these replies
| but you're spot on here, thank you for articulating it
| better.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That could be a formula to generate notes but might not
| work backwards.
|
| There is something special about musical memory. When I was
| starting out as an anime fanatic I would quickly learn to
| sing theme songs like [1] [2] although I didn't understand
| Japanese at all then.
|
| Notably different language have different words for colors,
| for instance the Japanese word Qing i (pronounced aoi) can
| mean either blue or green. [3] There's been a lot of
| controversy over whether language shapes perception, but if
| you do psychophysical tests that don't involve language you
| find people can tell colors apart pretty much the same no
| matter how rich or impoverished their vocabulary is [4].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hulET9tn9M
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW9BapLxwkw
|
| [3] ramu (Lum), the girl with oni horns and a tiger stripe
| bikini who appears in [1] has Qing i-colored hair which
| seems to drift in the blue-green area throughout the
| 5-season anime
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and
| _the_...
| losvedir wrote:
| I disagree. Absolute pitch is a neurological phenomenon. People
| who have it experience the world differently. It's not a party
| trick like you're talking about here to name a note in
| isolation.
|
| There's a fascinating phenomenon known as the Stroop effect[0],
| where if you get people to read a series of color words (e.g.
| "purple blue green red"), where the words are colored, but in
| the wrong color, it slows them down quite a bit. This was used
| to identify Soviet spies by showing them colors written in
| Russian; native Russian readers were slowed by the incorrect
| coloring, people who didn't know Russian could read it quickly.
|
| Well, the Stroop effect applies to music notes, too! People
| with absolute pitch are impaired from reading a sequence of
| note names when a non-matching pitch is played at the same
| time. People without AP can read it just fine.
|
| People with true absolute pitch can't help but know immediately
| and automatically what note a sound has. It taps into the
| language center of the brain. Does your song trick give you
| such an overwhelming sense of the note, that if someone played
| a different note it would be noticeable and distracting enough
| that you can't read a simple word or music note on the page?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
| smogcutter wrote:
| > This was used to identify Soviet spies by showing them
| colors written in Russian; native Russian readers were slowed
| by the incorrect coloring, people who didn't know Russian
| could read it quickly.
|
| Hold up, I'm confused. How could people who didn't know
| Russian read them at all? There's probably something obvious
| I'm missing, but I just can't parse this at all.
| Crespyl wrote:
| I think the idea is that you're reading out the _color_ of
| the printed word, not the word itself (despite the fact
| that the word is the name of a different color).
|
| So you might have, in a red font, the word "blue", followed
| by the word "green" in yellow letters. The correct response
| is to say out loud "red, yellow". This is hard to do when
| the words are in your native language. So if the words are
| in Russian, it's an easier task for someone who doesn't
| read that language, because they aren't distracted by the
| meaning of the word and can just see the colors.
|
| See the example on the wiki page for reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Imagine Red written in Blue
|
| Imagine krasnyi written in Blue
|
| With the Russian word you just see a funny shape and it's
| blue.
|
| With the English word you see red and blue at the same
| time!
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| No, you've misunderstood. What people with perfect pitch are
| doing is a fast and more fluent version of what the other
| commenter describes. They may not experience or describe it
| that way but it's an area of interest for a lot of people and
| the research is clear.
|
| > can't help but know immediately and automatically what note
| a sound has
|
| Well, and what note _does_ a sound have? What is "a note?"
| Is it just a name for a specific frequency? Then why
| enharmonics. Is that D a little flat, or are you just tuned
| to A 442? Oh actually we're in 24TET over here, that's simply
| a quarter tone.
|
| Sound is just a sound, you need other context to make a note.
| To infer a note from a pitch, someone (with perfect pitch or
| not) knows already or is _assuming_ a lot of context that
| makes that work.
|
| But that context isn't universal, and if it has changed
| they'll need to find out how and adapt to it. The fact that
| they _can_ adapt is because there 's no universal mapping
| from frequencies to notes, either in their mind or anywhere.
| rectang wrote:
| A fun prank to play on someone with absolute pitch is to play
| a favorite recoding of theirs detuned by 20 cents or so. It
| will drive them crazy.
|
| This same prank would have no impact on someone who memorized
| approximately where A440 is by listening to a tuning fork
| every day for 10 minutes.
|
| Absolute pitch and tonal memory are different physical
| phenomena.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Should be called absolute bitch!
| f1shy wrote:
| Yes. And btw that is what naturally happens after about age
| 40, together with presbyopia. So real absolute pitch people
| stop enjoying listening to music at some point... it is a
| curse, not a gift!
| djmips wrote:
| So we have corrective lenses for Presbyopia maybe you
| could have corrective 'hearing aids' for whatever
| phenomenon causes hearing pitch to go bad?
| f1shy wrote:
| More difficult. Also little people affected, so not much
| research going there, and most important, is just a
| nuisance, not a problem like not being able to see.
| bjoli wrote:
| No. I think a lot of people would notice. Especially string
| players.
|
| A lot of orchestra musicians don't like listening to
| recordings that deviate too much from their preferred
| concert pitch. I don't like listening to British or
| American recording where a equals 440 or some old German
| ones at 445-446. That is less than 20 cents.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Any chance you have a source for the spy bit? (I know it's
| obviously not a domain where few things are public).
| losvedir wrote:
| Ah, bummer. Looks like it might be a factoid. I can't find
| it _confirmed_ anywhere. This discussion[0] quotes a
| textbook giving the story, but says "whose veracity we
| cannot vouch". I forget where I heard it, and I took it for
| granted because it was interesting and made sense, but
| maybe it never happened.
|
| [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41599/was-
| the-s...
| bjoli wrote:
| I have acquired "perfect pitch" for some notes. I have a
| problem with this. I know that an F is an F. An A an A. A C a
| C.
|
| I experience this effect a lot, despite "learning" these
| notes when I was 21.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yep. There's so much ignorance around this topic it's kind
| of insane. I have no idea why so many people have such a
| vested interest in absolute pitch being something magical
| instead of a learned skill.
|
| I've spent a lot of time with musical people, and it's very
| clear that it functions similarly to a foreign language:
| it's a learned skill that is easiest to pick up in
| childhood. Like distinguishing /r/ and /l/, if you start
| young you can do it, if you start late it may always be
| difficult.
|
| Why we would assume that it functions differently is beyond
| me.
| vacuity wrote:
| > Why we would assume that it functions differently is
| beyond me.
|
| The cognitive bias to put some people on a pedestal and
| worship them for being extraordinary. The perceived
| rareness and specialness of absolute pitch.
| bjoli wrote:
| I made the exact same language comparison in another
| reply. Learning a foreign language after the age of 9
| means you most certainly never will sound like a native
| speaker. I think perfect pitch is the same. But if you
| have something that is functionality perfect pitch, why
| is it not perfect pitch?
| TimByte wrote:
| It's probably just a skill most people never consciously
| develop because relative pitch is so much more useful in
| practice.
| narag wrote:
| "Code availability: The codes used in this study were not
| available to the public."
| viraptor wrote:
| Watch out what you wish for though. With age our hearing degrades
| and the experienced frequency shifts. There's a number of people
| with perfect pitch recognition who mentioned getting annoyed when
| they got older and everything sounded slightly off. For practical
| music, relative pitch is fine and commonly trained.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Dave Smith restarted making Prophet 5 synthesizers a few ago,
| and the initial batch of users complained that the high
| frequencies weren't like the original but when he tested them
| he couldn't see any issue...
|
| Turns out he was testing by ear, and he was a few decades older
| since stopping the last production run, and his hearing had
| rolled off on the high end!
|
| Remake users were instructed on how to fix it and newer batches
| had the fixes built in - maybe by using a younger ear :)
| brailsafe wrote:
| The existential dread he might have felt after realizing this
| suddenly would be palpable.
| musicale wrote:
| > his hearing had rolled off on the high end!
|
| Depending on the degree of hearing loss, I wonder if hearing
| aids might have helped a bit?
| physicles wrote:
| This is currently happening to me: I'm starting to be off by a
| half step when I guess what key something is in. I'm 40 now,
| and I started noticing it a few years ago. Maybe it started
| early because I don't play much music so I wasn't using it
| much.
|
| This video by Adam Neely was helpful:
| https://youtu.be/QRaACa1Mrd4
| dbalatero wrote:
| I'm 38, and my pitch recognition will degrade a half step off
| sometimes, often when I haven't been playing much.
| yowzadave wrote:
| Absolute ("perfect") pitch is, for some people, a kind of
| shorthand for supreme musical giftedness...when in reality it's
| more of a curious party trick than a skill that is valuable for a
| musician or composer. So you can train yourself to do it--what's
| the point exactly? Plenty of people who don't have that skill
| have an extremely accurate ear for relative pitch, which is the
| one that actually matters.
| yongjik wrote:
| I don't think it's just a parlor trick. (I don't have it, BTW.)
| Obviously it depends on the instrument: for example, if you're
| playing the piano you can completely forget about absolute
| pitch. But if you're singing a long passage without
| accompaniment, without absolute pitch you may end up drifting.
|
| Also, a lot of classical composers enjoyed elaborate key
| changes: e.g., you'll have your main theme in A major, and then
| it appears again in D major, and later it comes back as A
| major. If you have absolute pitch (those composers likely did),
| then they all sound different, as if you first see a picture in
| black and white and later it comes back in blue. If you don't,
| then that part of composition completely passes over your
| brain.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _But if you 're singing a long passage without
| accompaniment, without absolute pitch you may end up
| drifting._
|
| You don't need absolute pitch to not drift.
|
| You just need to maintain relative pitch. That maintenance
| requires attention and some practice, but it doesn't even
| remotely require absolute pitch.
|
| And remember that singers with absolute pitch have their own
| problems, in that singing the same song when accompanied by a
| new piano that is tuned slightly differently becomes much
| harder and annoying. Whereas for most people they don't
| notice and sing in tune with it effortlessly.
|
| Also, people with relative pitch certainly experience key
| changes, the sense of tension introduced by a new one, and
| the sense of "returning home" and relief when you go back.
| Composers write for _that_ sensation which is shared by
| everyone. Not for any kind of absolute perception. And I don
| 't know why you think classical composers overwhelmingly had
| absolute pitch. Do you have any evidence?
| physicles wrote:
| It can also hurt in some situations. I have absolute pitch,
| and used to sing in a choir. Sometimes the director would
| decide to use a different key than the one written on the
| sheet music, which meant that I'd have to transpose in my
| head in real time.
| Orzelius wrote:
| > Also, a lot of classical composers enjoyed elaborate key
| changes: e.g., you'll have your main theme in A major, and
| then it appears again in D major, and later it comes back as
| A major. If you have absolute pitch (those composers likely
| did), then they all sound different, as if you first see a
| picture in black and white and later it comes back in blue.
| If you don't, then that part of composition completely passes
| over your brain.
|
| Even if one doesn't have perfect pitch they'll still notice
| the key change itself unless it's performed very subtly or
| after a long pause. If the key change is drastic enough the
| timbre of the instruments will change as well resulting in a
| different sound.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Absolute pitch is frequently a nuisance. American orchestras
| tune to A=440, but in Europe A=442 or A=443 are more common.
| Analog recordings often deviate significantly from any pitch
| standard, either due to inaccuracies in tape speeds or due to a
| deliberate stylistic choice. These variations are completely
| unnoticeable to someone with good relative pitch, but can be a
| source of confusion or discomfort for someone with absolute
| pitch.
| skulk wrote:
| Just to provide a data point here, I have absolute pitch
| (from a very young age) in that all the different notes FEEL
| different in an incredibly obvious way the same way different
| animal noises feel different. I have no issues identifying
| chords played on pianos, even somewhat dissonant ones.
| Listening to slightly detuned orchestras doesn't bother me at
| all. I probably can't tell 440 from 432 or whatever.
| xhevahir wrote:
| This guy, Chris Aruffo, has an interesting blog about his
| research in absolute pitch. I don't think it's been updated in
| quite a while though: http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/
| laurieg wrote:
| What's the gold standard for learning relative pitch?
|
| Related, how can you learn to hear multiple notes at the same
| time? It blows my mind that people can hear a piano chord and
| pick out individual notes.
| jdietrich wrote:
| There are lots of different approaches to ear training. A very
| useful starting point is an app like EarMaster or Perfect Ear,
| which offer a Duolingo-like gamified course in ear training.
|
| Hearing simultaneous notes is really just a matter of
| decomposition. Can you sing the first three notes of _Kumbaya_
| or _Ob-la-di Ob-la-da_? If you can, then you already know the
| three notes of a major chord - root, major third and perfect
| fifth. If I were to play you a C major triad on the piano (C E
| G) then you 'd easily be able to pick out those individual
| notes. Most people already have that kind of intuitive sense of
| pitch, they just need to learn how to name things to
| systematise that intuition.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhDIm_2qS5s
| laurieg wrote:
| > If I were to play you a C major triad on the piano (C E G)
| then you'd easily be able to pick out those individual notes
|
| Unfortunately, that is exactly the thing I cannot do. I play
| the piano but I can't pick out multiple notes. From a
| simultaneous sound. To me it's like witchcraft. Same with
| singing. I find it very hard to tell if a recording is one
| person singing or two people singing in harmony.
| lmpdev wrote:
| I've learnt absolute pitch for a single note - F3
|
| I was learning to sing for the first time at age 20. Learning
| Michael Buble's cover of the jazz standard Fever with my singing
| teacher at the time Mohini
|
| It took about an hour of reinforcing the first 5-10 seconds of
| the start of the song on loop
|
| That was almost 10 years ago - still nail that specific pitch
| every time
|
| From there I can usually sing that scale correctly without
| reference, but it's all anchored on the initial interval of F3
| down to D#3
|
| Accurate relative ear is more important anyway, I don't sing
| anymore but if I was learning I'd focus on intervals and
| scales/modes over anything else
|
| ------
|
| Another helpful interval is just nailing the octave jump, an
| example is Chet Baker's You Don't Know What Love Is
| sarreph wrote:
| That is not absolute pitch - it's pitch memory, see:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_memory
|
| I too have experienced the same phenomenon of being able to
| recall a particular note.
|
| Agree with you that relative pitch is more important!
| mettamage wrote:
| Oh, is absolute pitch the ability to recall every note?
|
| I once heard a C on a piano and played it a few times and
| then remembered it. I thought it was absolute pitch.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Perfect pitch is being able to name any individual note
| _and to hear when they 're not quite in tune._ Although
| it's also a curse, because perceived pitch changes with
| age, so you have to keep learning to compensate. And
| domestic acoustic pianos are often tuned a semitone flat,
| which really messes with your head.
|
| Advanced pitch recognition is being able to pick out the
| notes in a complex chord in open form.
|
| Professional pitch recognition - as demonstrated by some
| conductors - is being able to list the pitches in any
| random set of notes played at the same time on a piano.
| Including notes in the lowest octave.
|
| It's a lot easier to get to the last two if you have the
| first.
| lolinder wrote:
| They're the same phenomenon, just different amounts and
| precision of memory.
|
| Source: my wife and multiple of her siblings have absolute
| pitch and we've spent hours and hours talking about their
| experience with it.
| TimByte wrote:
| Totally agree that a solid relative ear is more practical for
| most musicians. Absolute pitch is cool, but, I think, relative
| pitch and good interval recognition are what actually make
| someone a great singer...
| f1shy wrote:
| Absolute is no cool at all. At age 40, when physical changes
| deform the ear (same as with the eyes) your absolute scale
| will shift. People with real absolute pitch have problems to
| enjoy music (much worst to play) after 40.
|
| I wanted to have my kids have absolute pitch, then I asked
| around, and was told to me that is not the best idea.
| cma wrote:
| Wouldn't you just be able to adjust for it like reading
| music that's keyed in B flat concert pitch for clarinets?
| f1shy wrote:
| As far as I read online: yoy can consciously understand,
| is not the music shifted but you, but it will sound off.
|
| There seems to be a "treatment" whichbis to listen to
| music and gradually change its speed. If done for (i
| think) it was 2 ha or so, you can throw a person
| withbperfect pitch off. The effects seem to last for a
| couple of months. Again, that is all I found online, but
| that las bit is based on papers of scientific studies.
| djmips wrote:
| Why aren't you singing anymore?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Code availability The codes used in this study were not
| available to the public._
|
| Eyeroll
| TimByte wrote:
| Many singers can reproduce pitches with high accuracy, even
| without formal AP. Would love to see a study comparing pitch
| accuracy in trained singers versus instrumentalists
| 20k wrote:
| >size of error reduced by 42.7% (from 2.62 to 1.50 semitones) for
| the trained timbre, which generalized partially to an untrained
| timbre. Overall, results provide more convincing evidence for the
| learnability of AP judgment in adulthood beyond the critical
| period, similar to most perceptual and cognitive abilities.
|
| >they learned to name an average of 7.08 pitches
|
| Its worth noting that this does not fall under a standard
| definition of absolute pitch. Being a semitone out with 7 tones
| of recognition isn't even close
|
| Its always been true that adults can learn pseudo absolute pitch
| - ie improved pitch classification compared to an untrained
| adult. What's up for debate is if you can learn true absolute
| pitch, which has an error of 0 semitones, and you can name all 12
| pitches with a 0% error rate
|
| The slightly amusing thing is that the evidence they have is
| precisely the opposite of the conclusion - you cannot learn
| absolute pitch as an adult
| debeloo wrote:
| > you cannot learn absolute pitch as an adult
|
| Why?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| You can easily look it up yourself. Early
| musical training appears to be necessary but not sufficient
| for the development of AP. Forty percent of musicians who had
| begun training at <=4 years of age reported AP, whereas only
| 3% of those who had initiated training at 9 years of age did
| so. Self-reported AP possessors were four times more likely
| to report another AP possessor in their families than were
| non-AP possessors. These data suggest that both early musical
| training and genetic predisposition are needed for the
| development of AP.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000292970.
| ..
| debeloo wrote:
| > You can easily look it up yourself.
|
| Thanks for the quote and link. I do appreciate those who
| make the internet a better place even though they toss
| around a slightly passive aggressive advice along the way!
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| If you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me
| at my best
|
| Just kidding, you're welcome buddy
| soyyo wrote:
| this is a brain thing, it appears that the neural parts for
| whatever is going inside to have absolute pitch can only be
| formed when the brain is still developing as a child.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > you cannot learn absolute pitch as an adult
|
| Interestingly, you maybe can; albeit with chemical help [0]
| (previously mentioned in the comments).
|
| Unfortunately, the drug involved (valproic acid) also comes
| with serious side effects including liver toxicity, weight
| gain, and birth defects.
|
| 0 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3848041/
| bjoli wrote:
| Of course you can learn absolute pitch. I learned to hit C, F
| and A 100% of the time in just a couple of weeks without trying
| very hard at all. I just tried to hear one of them every time I
| walked past a piano before chilecking if I was right.
|
| Now, that is "remembered" pitch, but to this day - despite not
| trying to uphold it - I still just know if a note is a C, F or
| A. I can sing the notes within about 10 cents if you give about
| 5 seconds to find them.
|
| I am absolutely certain I could learn every other note, because
| I never mistake an e, B or Ab for any of the other notes. They
| sound completely different.
|
| A friend of mine - a solfege teacher - said that she realized
| she had perfect pitch about a year into her education. Her
| teacher said he could usually stop telling people the key
| somewhere around that time.
| 20k wrote:
| There's no scientific evidence that adults can learn absolute
| pitch with anywhere near the accuracy of people who've had it
| from a young age, despite a lot of testing. The article we're
| talking about is a negative result with that respect
|
| I'd love to see any controlled experiment indicating its
| possible, but every study has turned up a negative here.
| People can learn pseudo absolute pitch, but its not the same
| thing
| bjoli wrote:
| If it quacks like a duck ...
|
| The same can be said for language: learning a language
| after the age of 10 (a number taken out of my behind just
| now) will make you never sound completely native. I have
| never met someone who did this that didn't make mistakes a
| native speaker would not do - however small.
|
| I have not seen a functional definition of perfect pitch
| that doesn't make it a spectra.
|
| Whatever I have is not perfect pitch, but the three notes I
| do always know fit in the definition of it. I can sing F A
| and C at any time. I know the notes instinctively when I
| hear them, even in chords or noises. I really don't like
| when they are flat (sharp is less of an issue). I can feel
| the notes in my head. Both F and A are like a fizzy
| champagne. C is like sitting down in a really comfortable
| chair.
|
| What I am trying to say is that I am not sure making a hard
| line for what is absolute pitch is functionally usable
| outside of some kind of synesthesia discussion.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Whenever AP comes up I feel I see the same discussion over and
| over:
|
| A bunch of people with AP state that AP can't be learned in
| adulthood, that it is a rare gift that can only be learned in
| childhood.
|
| Another group of people who enjoy music deeply who did not learn
| AP as children counter: they have trained themselves to be able
| to recognise notes well enough that they can play or sing by ear,
| to a high degree of accuracy.
|
| AP crowd counter: you've learned relative pitch. That's a party
| trick. The "gift" is being able to hear an obscure note and
| immediately recognise it out of context and to tell when it's
| even very slightly out by a tiny amount.
|
| The other group counter that _that_ sounds like a party trick,
| and anyway, doesn 't that make getting old really horrible as
| hearing changes?
|
| AP group insist that no, it's not a party trick and you can't
| come in. The difference is like being a native fluent speaker of
| a language instead of learning it as an adult: when you learn a
| language you translate it in your head, that's not true fluency,
| and people with AP have "fluency" in tones in a way that isn't
| like a "translation step" that learned behaviour is like.
|
| Then the other group come back with "Wait, I know people who
| became fluent in another language in adulthood by complete
| immersion and who think and dream in their adopted language, so
| are you saying that's not real, or that a musical equivalent
| can't exist?"
|
| AP crowd stand firm: you just don't understand, you can't learn
| it, please don't say you can, you're doing something different...
|
| And this goes on, and on, and on...
|
| And this thread is just more of that.
|
| People with AP insist it can't be learned in adulthood, but I'm
| not sure what scientific evidence they have to support this,
| other than their own (seemingly unscientific) observations and
| interpretation. Studies that show RP improving towards AP are
| dismissed because the subjects have yet to reach the same skill
| level, but without evidence that it _can 't_.
|
| I think most people would argue relative pitch allows you to
| enjoy listening to and creating music at least as much as AP
| does, but does not have the downside of hearing degradation
| causing existential angst and disappointment to the same degree
| in later life.
|
| As somebody who likes listening to music and occasionally
| tinkering at a keyboard or bass guitar, I'm a bit confused why
| this is such a contentious debate every time, and why in
| particular the AP crowd are insistent they're special even though
| it seems to be a curse to have AP rather than a blessing, as they
| themselves describe it.
|
| I'm also not convinced that somebody starting out with RP can't
| develop "fluency" in terms of AP over time. Instead of everyone
| just arguing about their own interpretations and experiences, is
| there clear science one way or the other?
| soyyo wrote:
| Maybe someone can correct me, but I don't think this is absolute
| pitch. It is pseudo-perfect pitch, based on pitch memory, and it
| was already known that it can be trained.
|
| As an amateur musician myself, I understand the desire to have
| perfect pitch, but it seems that the problem of perfect pitch is
| seldom mentioned.
|
| Usually, people talk about the common annoyances, such as
| transposed music, non-standard tuning, choruses that drift in
| pitch, etc... but the actual hard one is that it fades away with
| age. First, it starts "shifting," and people will start to
| believe that a note is actually a semitone higher or lower than
| it actually is, and then eventually, it is completely lost.
|
| There is research that indicates that this is very common, and
| people with perfect pitch are more likely to lose it than to keep
| it. This is a huge blow--imagine a whole life relying on this one
| skill to support all your music-related activities, and suddenly,
| it's completely gone.
|
| I think this video gives a nice summary of all this from the
| point of view of a musician:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRaACa1Mrd4
| bjoli wrote:
| I think one problem that the people with extreme sensitivity
| have is that not only choruses but also orchestras drift in
| pitch.
|
| I work professionally, and some orchestras are extreme. My
| orchestra usually starts at a at 442 but end up at 443,5 but I
| have played in places that start 441 and end up above 445. Good
| orchestras with very good reputation.
|
| Some are extreme at the other end. I played with the Munich
| Phil and despite the concert being a killer for every woodwind
| and brass instrument involved, we didn't drift a cent despite
| the hall being almost 28c and the end of the concert.
|
| A colleague (now retired) had the crazy kind of perfect pitch
| where he could say the note and how many cents off it was. At
| least to something like a 5 cent sensitivity.
|
| Back before we switched to LED lighting that must have been
| horrible. The stage r got crazy hot during concerts, and I
| remember having to struggle to not end up at 446.
| tzs wrote:
| > Piano tones from three octaves (C4 to B6) were generated using
| two different digital pianos (Roland FP60 and Yamaha Arius), and
| guitar tones spanning the same range were generated by an online
| synthesizer
|
| B6 would be the 31st fret on the high E string on a guitar, which
| is why I suppose they had to use a synthesizer instead of a real
| guitar since real guitars generally have 19 frets (classical),
| 19-22 (acoustic), or 21-24 (electric). Guitars have been built
| with more than 24 frets but most guitar players will have never
| played one or even heard one.
|
| Personally I'd find about half of that C4 to B6 range to be in
| what I consider to be the annoyingly screechy range which would
| probably affect my performance on the training.
| antoinebalaine wrote:
| That's not perfect pitch. 90% accuracy in pitch recognition based
| on memory retrieval is not perfect pitch. As for the bunch of
| comments here claiming they acquired AP at adult age for "only"
| one or two notes: that's not perfect pitch either. AP can't be
| acquired at adult age - your brain only learns to recognize
| pitches during your neural plasticity phase as a baby (provided
| it's exposed to enough variety), just like it acquires speech and
| color-discrimination. Also, AP is not a party trick. Not having
| it is akin to being color blind - even if you could "remember"
| what colors are supposed to look like, you would _still_ be color
| blind.
|
| That the article's abstract and researchers are willing to claim
| the opposite despite their own evidence : this smells like butt-
| hurt denial.
| viburnum wrote:
| Looking at the graphs it appears that two people had big
| improvements and the others not very much.
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