Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re:Recoginising intervals and absolute pitch

I've added a Random chord quiz button to FTS

This is about the new release that unfortunately I've had to withdraw
because of the bug - if curious to see it anyway (Joseph's crash
reports are the only ones I've ever had since release of Fractal Melody
in 1999, so you may find it works fine, as it does here)
http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/FractalTuneSmithySetup_109.exe
(or for the zip / se zip - just rename from 1082 to 109 in the file name).

I tried 5/4 and 6/5 to start with, thinking that would be easy and I'd go
to something trickier.

However, was astonished to find that I couldn't do it, not for an isolated
interval completely out of context. I could recognise them easily at, say,
concert pitch A, but transpose up say 20 cents, and I could no longer
distinguish them at all.

FTS does random transpositions, and I find at some transpositions I know
instantly which it is, and at others, I have no idea at all!

After a while, one learns them in a new transposition, and though one
can't remember them as such, yet later in the day it is still possible
to distinguish them in the new transposition.

Add a few more notes to make them into a major or minor melody and once
more I could distinguish one from the other at any transposition.

But for single interval, had to go to even wider intervals. Testing melodic
sequences, I ended up trying 16/15 and 3/2. Even then, got them confused in
a few rare transpositions first time I tried it!

Obviously the times before when I was distinguishing really close
intervals, it was on the basis of absolute rather than relative pitch.

So, I've been practising it, and gradually getting better. I've been doing
it by working inwards from the most closely separated interval I can
reliably distinguish. Yesterday, for the first time, could distinguish 9/8
and 4/3 as melodic sequences at any transposition! Today I seem to
be well on the way to distinguish 6/5 and 3/2 at any transposition, but
haven't yet got it quite.

It is rather exciting! Probably won't be that long to reach 6/5 and 5/4, I hope!
(Funny thing is, would never sing a 4/3 for a 9/8, at least, I think not!)

Remember, I'm an amateur, and haven't had anyone getting at me to use
relative rather than absolute pitch.

Also tried singing a familiar tune on my own, then immediately transposing
it up by a fraction of a semitone - it was really hard, needing a _lot_ of
concentration. I don't notice that when singing with others as I seem to be
able to follow at octave interval, presumably using interval sense there.

I don't have colour synthesia - absolute pitch sounds more like an
instrument timbre to me. Also it is rather jumbled up with some close
together notes sounding far apart in pitch timbre, and some far apart notes
sounding similar. Also not able to name notes that I hear - it is somewhat
untrained.

To explain it a bit to those who rely mainly on relative pitch, I tend to
hear an isolated chord as two pitch timbres sounding together. A bit like
hearing a flute and a violin playing in unison - is that closer or further
apart than a tuba playing with a bassoon? The pitch timbre almost
completely overwhelms the much weaker sense of relative pitch in an
isolated interval.

Yet the interval sense is clearly there in larger passages, just that it is
hard to pinpoint it in a single interval taken in isolation. I appreciate
the wide variety of scales, and love JdLs adaptive re-tunings of music,
which makes a tremendous difference to my ear.

I wonder if anyone else on the list has had similar experiences. I'm also
interested to hear how musicians get on who become involved in microtonal
music and who have a strong sense of absolute pitch beforehand. Do they
learn to make the tiny distinctions between sizes of intervals at arbitrary
transpositions, and is it just a matter of time and application to learn to
do so?

I'd sometimes wondered before if I had absolute pitch, but since I couldn't
name notes I hear, or sing a named note, thought perhaps not (except that
when learning the cello there were times when I used to be able to sing the
tuning fork A when I wished, remembering it at least from one day to the
next, so that prob. is an absolute pitch thing).

Here is a page about difficulties some people have because of absolute
pitch, including, inability to hear intervals easily at first.
http://shrike.depaul.edu/~abreeden/prime.htm

There is some evidence that absolute pitch can be learnt, and is a
disposition we all have to some extent. It is rare for many language users,
but may be common for language users who rely on pitch to convey meaning
(e.g., Chinese or Vietmanese).
See Speaking in Tones (Scientific American 1999)
http://www.sciam.com/exhibit/1999/110199pitch/

They measured the pitch used for a word on subsequent days, and found the
pitch accurate to within a few cents, close enough to suggest absolute
pitch.

I wonder if this is related to earlier remarks on the TL about Chinese
music, and their tendency not to use intervals language to describe it?

I've also been reading Shepard's original article on Shepard tones (j. of
Acoustical soc. of Am, v38 number 12 1964). He wanted to check out how his
new endlessly ascending scales were heard. So he tested 50 employees of
Bell laboratories, where he worked. As a preliminary test, since his
example scale consisted ascending semitiones, he needed to know which of
the group could distinguish a step of a semitone in pitch, knowing in
advance that some listeners to music can't.

He was astonished to find only 62 percent could always tell which way is up
of two notes a semitone apart selected from
the octave starting at E4 flat (311 Hz). For quiet notes played two octaves
lower, only 30 percent got all the pairs of notes right.

However their description of what was happening varied. Some couldn't hear
any difference in pitch at all, or with great difficulty. Others could hear
a difference, but didn't always know which way was up of the two notes.
Some, given more time to sing the notes to compare them, were then able to
tell the direction of the difference. He suggested this may be similar to
the confusion some have of left with right, or with the confusion that (he
says) unpracticed subjects have with the order of the dots and dashes
heard when transcribing fast Morse code.

I remember well that when learning the 'cello, at the beginning it took a
fair while to learn which way to turn the tuning knob for the A string to
get to the pitch of the tuning fork. It was exactly the experienced
described. I could hear the notes were different, but couldn't tell which
way was up.

I also had lots of problems trying to sing the same note as someone else as
a child, and was regarded as someone who couldn't sing in tune (and took
art instead of music at school - maybe it wouldn't be the same today when
there is more emphasis on teaching everyone to sing I believe).

Combining Shepard's observations with the numbers of Chinese and Vietnamese
who seemed to have a sense of absolute pitch in their ordinary speaking
voice, I wonder (purely as speculation of course) if a strong sense of
absolute pitch, in an unanalysed form, may be present in more people than
one realises, and that it may get trained out of us because of the strong
emphasis on interval relationships in our "Western" (anyone know a better
term) music?

Nowadays, I do at least always know which way is up of any two notes that I
can distinguish in pitch, no matter how close, so one can learn that with
time. And hopefully, now that my attention has been drawn to it should be
able to gradually develop a better sense of relative pitch for intervals
heard in isolation, since there is strong evidence that the interval sense
is there somewhere, and quite finely tuned too probably.

Robert

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Robert Walker" <robert_walker@r...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16758

>
> I tried 5/4 and 6/5 to start with, thinking that would be easy and
I'd go to something trickier.
>
> However, was astonished to find that I couldn't do it, not for an
isolated interval completely out of context. I could recognise them
easily at, say, concert pitch A, but transpose up say 20 cents, and I
could no longer distinguish them at all.
>

Well, this really shouldn't be all that difficult, so my guess is
that you're correct, and you have some sense of "absolute" pitch as
you quoted in the interesting articles. It's particularly
interesting in a Setherian sense since, apparently, you are fixating
on harmonics to the detriment of intervallic assessment. It would be
interesting to know how you perceive a music where the
intervallic construction IS parallel to the timbral fabric... some of
the stuff Setheres is working with...

By the way, there are computer programs out there that can improve
relative pitch recognition. I even had one years ago with a
Commodore 64, back when the IBM computers cost $3,000... Sometimes,
for me, I had trouble distinguishing intervals accurately without
transposing octaves... to determine accurately, for instance, that
what I was hearing was a major sixth, and not a minor one,
(totally out of any context) sometimes I had to sing them and
determine the MINOR THIRD relationship BELOW... and then correctly
determine the interval as a MAJOR sixth!

The program not only gave random intervals, but it assessed the
"progress" or grade of the listener. It really was fun, and improved
"ear training" greatly.

The "pre-eminent" computer ear-training system I have encountered was
MAINFRAME-based at the University of Delaware. I was there as a
guest composer, but spent most of my time in this theory lab, which I
loved.

It was essentially 4-part dictation... the "traditional" sort.
However, it was done with "touch screens" and this was 'WAY before
they became popular (well, in banking, anyway).

One humorous incident happened one day when the computers became
overheated. All the pitches were off, except the phrases landed
correctly on major chords. We concluded that the equipment was in a
kind of "Hindemithian" mode....

> There is some evidence that absolute pitch can be learnt, and is a
> disposition we all have to some extent. It is rare for many
language users, but may be common for language users who rely on
pitch
to convey meaning (e.g., Chinese or Vietmanese).
> See Speaking in Tones (Scientific American 1999)
> http://www.sciam.com/exhibit/1999/110199pitch/
>
> They measured the pitch used for a word on subsequent days, and
found the pitch accurate to within a few cents, close enough to
suggest absolute pitch.
>
> I wonder if this is related to earlier remarks on the TL about
Chinese music, and their tendency not to use intervals language to
describe it?
>

> Combining Shepard's observations with the numbers of Chinese and
Vietnamese who seemed to have a sense of absolute pitch in their
ordinary speaking voice, I wonder (purely as speculation of course)
if a strong sense of absolute pitch, in an unanalysed form, may be
present in more people than one realises, and that it may get trained
out of us because of the strong emphasis on interval relationships in
our "Western" (anyone know a better term) music?
>

Well, I remember having the good fortune to take several anthropology
classes when I was in college... I remember that cultural and
physical anthropology were VERY closely intertwined. In other words,
it is rather difficult in some cases to determine what part of
evolution is cultural and which part is physiological...

So, in other words, it could be possible that people of the Chinese
or Vietnamese races have actually a greater PHYSICAL capacity to
recognize such pitches... perhaps a physical alteration or
enhancement that went, ear in ear, so to speak, with the cultural
communication of their pitched language.

Dunno.... (??)

__________ ____ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

Re:Recoginising intervals and absolute pitch

🔗Robert Walker <robert_walker@rcwalker.freeserve.co.uk>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>