Re: Pitch timbres

Hi Paul,

The thing is that I hear musical pitches as very similar to a kind of instrument timbre.

In fact, when young, got them kind of confused, and music was rather a muddle to me
as I couldn't really distinguish properly between the instruments playing and the pitches
they were playing (especially if played on some not too high fidelity radio rather than
live).

Only really when adult at univ. that I managed to get it sorted out.

Musicians who have absolute pitch often describe the pitches as colours, but I don't
particularly have colour associations with them myself.

So, coined a word for this, "pitch timbre".

I've been noticing recently that I hear them in all sorts of things - footsteps, wind,
paper rustling, ...

Kind of took it for granted that that's how everyone perceived pitch.

But I can't name notes I hear, because there are so many pitch timbres, and ones
close together often sound unlike, and ones far apart in pitch, very similar in "timbre".

Never made the association with perfect pitch because I thought that involved being
able to name notes. In that sense, don't have perfect pitch, but do seem to have
absolute pitch, if one makes the distinction, as is sometimes made.

Wish I had a better sense of relative pitch, but it is kind of nice to perceive things
this way too. (Guess you always want what you haven't got!)

But it is very much something one takes for granted, until ones attention is drawn to it.

I discovered it through trying the random chord quiz in FTS, and finding that I can't tell
the difference between a major and a minor chord, or even coarser distinctions like
between a 6/5 and a 4/3, if they are played one after another at random transpositions
of pitch, out of any musical context.

I can tell them apart if there is some melodic context to key in a sense of relative
pitch.
It is there somewhere, but not available for analysis of single intervals. At least, not
at present anyway,..

Robert.