Newsgroups: comp.music
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!cs.cornell.edu!rapo
From: rapo@cs.cornell.edu (Andy Rapo)
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch
Message-ID: <1991Apr1.165504.5325@cs.cornell.edu>
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Organization: Cornell University, CS Dept., Ithaca, NY
References: <3qaBZ2w164w@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca> <3744@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> <1991Mar27.122408@Think.COM>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1991 16:55:04 GMT
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Alright,

	I agree that plenty has been said on this subject so far, and that it has little to do with Computer Music, but its a pretty interesting subject.  I've enjoyed thinking about this in the past especially in the context of trying to understand how the brain works.

	It seems clear - from our experience with visual color - that recognizing frequencies according to an absolute scale is something the brain can do.  When we see green, we see it regardless of the "relative green" of surrounding colors.  It is interesting, therefore, that many (if not most) people don't have an appreciation for the absolute frequency of sound waves.  There are a lot of reasons that could be suggested to explain this.  I like these two:
	
	(1) We humans have a built-in musical instrument - our voices - which serves as the basis for our understanding of sound.  Unlike our eyes, our voices are greatly affected by physical changes that occur throughout our development.  I could sing very high notes when I was a boy, and now I'm limited to the very low-end.  Consequently my basis for understanding sound has not been 'absolute' itself.
	Naturally I wasn't going to stop singing Puff the Magic Dragon just because I couldn't hit the high notes anymore - I just transposed the song.  In my experience, musical notes don't have the same kind of constancy as visual colors because it has been more advantageous to deal with them in a realtive manner - relative to my changing voice. 

	(2) My piano teacher once related to me a story about a particular concert to which she was invited to play the piano.  She was well rehearsed, but when she sat down to try out the concert grand intended for the performace she discovered that it was tuned down a half step.  Unbelievably, she was unable to play her concerto because it just didn't 'sound' like it was supposed to.  The notes were mapped incorrectly to the keyboard.  I guess this would be like trying to type on a DVORAK keyboard when you're u





sed to using a QWERTY.  Fortunately she was a skilled enough musician to transpose the piece in time for the concert (I assume she did this in her head).
	The point here would be that perfect pitch may be useful in a lot of cases, but it certainly imposes some restrictions on one's ability to work within an inherently variant spectrum of sound.


	Light is not affected much by things like the doplar effect and teperature changes.  Sound is.  I would suggest that the advantages of being oblivious to absolute sound frequencies (assuming one has good relative pitch) are at least as rewarding as having the ability to pull a C# out of a hat.  Though I'd love to be wearing that hat sometimes.

Andy Rapo
Cornell University
Computer Science 
