perfect pitch

i haven't tested it b/c i like to think i have it...

(xpost)

I've also found that my own "absolute" pitch gets sharper or duller depending on how much I'm using it -- like when I was in music school it was pretty instantaneous for any note. Now (probably due to pounding on the drums too much) I have to think for a second and occasionally I get a bit off.

Susan, pls. explain.

xpost

Google Image Search unfortunately didn't turn up the even goofier picture of a younger David Burge grinning and clenching his fist triumphantly. (A full-page ad for his course ran in every issue of Keyboard Magazine back in the 80s.) Now he has gray hair (but presumably his pitch is as perfect as ever:

http://www.perfectpitchpeople.com/burge.jpg

well, if you're used to the A being the one note your tuning fork (or whatever) plays, it's easy to summon it up in your mind.

99.99999999% of those people can't even tell when two things are in the same key, even when they're played at the same time.

I'm no expert, but isn't what you're talking about really a matter of overtones created, xp? I don't think any of those things change the frequency of a pitch, but they might add other frequencies on top of it that cloud or color the sound in certain ways.

i'm a drummer and an electronic musician, i've based my whole life around not tuning things.

i'm not an expert either but i know our tuning guy would at times not tune to the exact frequency and would spend a good amount of time on it at different days

but i don't know, my baby grand is not so fancy relative to what's out there

xp to man alive

i think it's true that there's a different feel even with equal tempering; i believe it was more evident with early well-tempering but i haven't ever looked (or listened) into this -- i suspect there's a subjective element to the robust attribution of specific emotions (D major happy, Eb sexy etc)

um, frequencies?

given a particular choice of frequency for middle C, there's a further choice to be made for the most suitable precise frequency for (say) the Eb above it. It's a cultural choice, not a scientific choice. pythagorean commas! i'm not linking it again :)

that's what i (and everyone) was saying though, that pianos aren't tuned to exact frequencies, at least once you get a starting point. it would be possible but would not have good results.

xp

Isn't this overtone idea partly an origin myth, along with the story of the four anvils? Isn't the scale most close to the actual overtone series the Lydian Dominant, which is a nice scale, especially if you are playing Baio, but nothing about it makes the most natural-sounding scale.

I think what matters is whether or not you think 3:2 is a REAL fifth, i.e., a fifth that is actually in tune.

yes we're mostly aggressively agreeing -- all i'm really saying that i think it's a bit weird calling the frequency system that isn't used any longer the "exact" or "scientific" frequencies

pythagorean is fine (and i guess he was a mathematician) but musicians in his day used them because they liked the effect (and probably because it was a convenient procedure on the kinds of instruments then popular), not because they're some platonic ideal of tuning: they're not more scientific than any other tonal system

xp

Piano wouldn't be tuned in a way that would make good, Pythagorean chords -- that's essentially what mark is saying above, re: the compromise they made when going with well-temperament. Older keyboards and harpsichords were though, but they could only sound good in the one key where all the Pythagorean intervals were tuned to (that particular culturally validated mode of) perfection. ;)

The thing about Pythagorean tuning, and the intervals he talked about -- they may be culturally validated in Western harmony, but to me, that's not exactly saying they are only cultural in value. The intervals are real enough, and when you're tuning a chord, the harmonic "beats" you're trying to get rid of, and the fundamental tone you're trying to produce in perfectly tuned chords are real, physical sensations. They ratio and resultant sound is not actually subjective -- it's just that not every culture goes for the sensation.

Yeah, the fact that the intervals are naturally occurring has always made me think that, in that sense, they are scientific.

(xps)

so iirc strings on a piano have to be tuned/tightened slowly

you can't tune the first string to the right frequency, but you have to build up to it by slowly tightening each string one at a time

even after that, the strings move, and tuning a single string will change another string (usually one located on the opposite side iirc)

my memory is hazy on this tho, so getting the right frequency across every single string is impossible because of the strength/quality of the box). the better constructed and older pianos have better stability because the glue and such as settled in making it tighter

an instrument can never be built to a scientifically perfect proportion/dimension so as to keep a string tuned at the exact frequency we are theoretically talking about

this is why old well built instruments are sought after -- it has already settled and is sturdier, making it able to hold strings in place better

having said all this! if i remember correctly, this is why you don't tune to some theoretical frequency, because each piano will be a bit off. so you tune to what the heavier strings settle into, meaning you make that your 'base' and divide the octaves mathematically based on that set of stable strings

Didn't Galileo's father come up with a tuning system, based on the number 17 perhaps? There was a lot of talk about using rational numbers before equal temperament came along, iirc. Maybe somebody already mentioned or linked to.

I once read a good discussion about piano tuning that I can't quite remember in a nice book about the physics of music by a guy named almost like an ilxor, but this book is expensive and even a used copy might cost you $900 grandmothers.

^^^this (x-post)

i just got my piano restrung and the guy says for a while i need to get it retuned more often than usual in this climate -- bcz the strings are settling against each other

(actually i should probably get it done soon)

ie what F♯ A♯ (∞) said

Aargh can never spell this word right, baião.

But yeah, whatever I read was more or less what F♯ A♯ (∞) said

I have one word for you: inharmonicity.

The natural inharmonicity of a piano is used by the tuner to make slight adjustments in the tuning of a piano. The tuner stretches the notes, slightly sharpening the high notes and flatting the low notes to make overtones of lower notes have the same frequency as the fundamentals of higher notes.

Also:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)

Which Dominique already mentioned

So everyone has moved on from this thread, but now in the cold light of the day after wanted to untangle some piano stringssubthreads underlying the tuning discussion, one of them perhaps in my mind if no one else's:

The intervals are real things based on real ratios, but there is some wiggle room of where exactly to put them. The majority of people can live with some version of equal temperament and don't need just intonation the same way most people don't have absolute pitch (of course these are different things)

There have been various attempts to mathematically derive what we now think of as the Major/Ionian Scale based on the full overtone series or just going up and in fifths, but these may be more academic exercises than proofs of anything. In fact, I think I read that at one point in history the Lydian was the default major scale. Also, it is doubtful that the ancient peoples of Ionia and Lydia played or preferred the scales named after them a century or two after the fact.

The piano tuning problem has to do with the fact that a piano string is not an ideal string and therefore its overtone series is mathematically impure, its octave partials may run sharp, causing the unpleasant acoustic phenomenon known as 'beating' when interacting with the strings for the same note in higher octave. (Beating occurs when two notes are very close together but not quite the same). To adjust for the sharpened octave overtone the fundamental tone has to be tuned a little flat, or the octave has to be tuned a little sharp, hence the 'stretching' of the octave.

sure, sounds about right

i really enjoyed retuning instruments, playing with different voicings and beat tones in a mellow and warm way

but i'm also into dissonance and microtones so i'm sure it's not something most enjoy

Wonder what this kid is going to do with his life, mad skills...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1YUu9Oh4MU

that's amazing

Anecdotal supporting evidence in favor of absolute pitch being there underneath the hood, if not available to conscious control, in most is not all: singing “Happy Birthday” in the key of C, starting on the G.

Whenever I play piano or guitar along with a group singing "Happy Birthday", it's in F; that's where men and women with average ranges seem to be able to sing it.

Yeah, F is my key, finally found out.

I can just about get two octaves.

So my friend started on G in key of C but now I just tried and sang A in the key of D.

I just feel like one can readily hear a pitch for a short period of time after which it might drift. Absolute/perfect pitch is internally hearing it indefinitely which comes naturally to a few but theoretically might be trainable in others with the right approach.

Wikipedia sez:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Influence_by_music_experience

Absolute pitch sense appears to be influenced by cultural exposure to music, especially in the familiarization of the equal-tempered C-major scale. Most of the absolute listeners that were tested in this respect identified the C-major tones more reliably and, except for B, more quickly than the five "black key" tones,[29] which corresponds to the higher prevalence of these tones in ordinary musical experience. One study of Dutch non-musicians also demonstrated a bias toward using C-major tones in ordinary speech, especially on syllables related to emphasis.

I brought this up and my friend got annoyed and said “But what about the pentatonic scale?” and didn’t like it when I said that was the same tonality so what’s the difference.

This morning started on G again.

i tried just now and it was in e flat, starting on b flat. not surprising b/c that is generally the most comfortable key for me to sing in.

emerging theory: what if it's BAD to have perfect pitch?

as in, what if most people with imperfect pitch hear a (very very) slightly "off" note in a good way, because the sound it creates falls somewhere in the "vibrato/artful/improvement" category? whereas someone with perfect pitch might hear that as "not perfect"

i am very much not a "perfect pitch" person, in general. i like messy things

thelonious monk bio claims he had perfect pitch. which is weird if dissonance or "offness" bothers such people

I think it actually might be BAD, as you say, for various reasons.

In the Gordon Lightfoot thread, there's a link to an epic article about his oeuvre, that suggests that his obsession for having his guitars tuned and re-tuned in concert might be that he has perfect pitch.
Of course, if the aptitude for this skill might be innate, the actual pitches are arbitrary and therefore learned.

I do not find that to be true at all (what KM said). It has nothing to do with whether you like dissonance or even whether you need music to be in standard European tuning to enjoy it.

Wait sorry I mixed up a couple of different posts reading quickly. I find that I do really like the “offness” of things that are “out” at times. Which is one thing KM said.

I suspect that whether you’re more sensitive to pitch variation can translate to either liking or not liking those variations, but you’re more aware of them either way.

Lol wait no sorry. I keep misreading too fast on my phone. What I said the first time. I don’t think perfect pitch makes you per se hear off notes in a bad way.

it doesn't surprise me you "misread" it a few times, it was incredibly vaguely worded and argued on my end, per usual, lol!

i didn't mean to suggest anything so absolute, but just another way to look at it (should have said what if it COULD be bad for SOME people). i fully believe that someone with perfect pitch can still and sometimes appreciate "off" notes in the same way that i do, of course.

i started to explain what i was offering instead, but on second thought it would probably apply to so few situations/people/ears that it's kind of absurd to even contemplate!

Perfect pitch has nothing to do with liking consonance or dissonance, though? It's about being sensitive/attuned to the absolute pitch values you're hearing and being able to assign a name to them based on the musical scale you speak (in most of our cases, the 12-tone scale most prevalent in western music).

From talking to friends with pp, my impression is that it's not about dissonant intervals, more so whether the pitches themselves are sharp/flat.

And what James says about it being really good long-term pitch memory makes a lot of sense, ie it's not inherent to Western tuning. Like, say my trombonist friend can still adjust and blend with another horn player who's not quite in tune, but maybe it grates because he has an strong ingrained sense memory of where those pitches should be.

xp

https://link.medium.com/1QMZzBAP9fb
This article, which I haven’t read or maybe read a while back and forgot about and have just been reminded about by my daughter’s piano teacher, makes a distinction between two forms of this, the innate or early trained version and the later-in-life trained version, which is being called “true pitch.”

Most of the absolute listeners that were tested in this respect identified the C-major tones more reliably and, except for B, more quickly than the five "black key" tones,

This is exactly my experience. I can sing or recognize those six notes quickly, but the other notes not nearly as fast

For those six notes, I have internal references that I use, e.g. middle C on the piano, A440 from a tuner I used to use, and for the others, songs I know the key of. Dissonance doesn't bother me at all, but what does is going to karaoke and picking a song and having it be in a different key than what I'm expecting. I think I might even have more trouble than the average person transposing to a different key

I also often “tune” myself to A440 in my head. As I said upthread I think, when I was in music school I could instantly recognize all pitches but now some take longer than others or I use an internal reference.

it doesn't surprise me you "misread" it a few times, it was incredibly vaguely worded and argued on my end, per usual, lol!

i didn't mean to suggest anything so absolute, but just another way to look at it (should have said what if it COULD be bad for SOME people). i fully believe that someone with perfect pitch can still and sometimes appreciate "off" notes in the same way that i do, of course.

i started to explain what i was offering instead, but on second thought it would probably apply to so few situations/people/ears that it's kind of absurd to even contemplate!

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Sunday, May 9, 2021 2:13 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I just doubt there's any correlation one way or the other with liking vs not liking dissonance or "off" tuning. Because absolute pitch is likely just really good pitch memory, whereas any particular scale/pitch system (e.g. western scales built around A440) is arbitrary. Just for example, I often tune my guitar down a half step or more, and I often tune it to a pitch not in the A440-based scale, just because it sounds good to me that way. And I also enjoy plenty of music where things are not perfectly tuned to a western concert scale, e.g. in african guitar pop from the 70s that I listen to the guitars are often "out of tune" (so consistently and specifically so that I often suspect that it's a vestige of the way earlier regional string instruments were tuned). Like the particular intonation that you seem to so often hear in Congolese pop from the 70s must "sound right" to the guitarists there for a reason -- maybe someone has studied/written about/explained this, idk.

But in any case, I like the way it sounds even though (and likely because) the guitars are intonated differently than dave gilmour's strat, or Segovia's nylon string. I mean guitars are really never "perfectly in tune" anyway and intonation varies widely. And of course I also listen to music that's not in western intonation at all, like carnatic music. But I could also imagine someone with absolute pitch who had spent their whole life focusing on classical music finding it especially painful to listen to something in a different tuning system, but then so might any classical musician lacking exposure to other kinds of music.

Great post!

Piano tuner is here in the living room right now, maybe I should print out and show it to him.