Pitch Perception Skewed By Modern Tuning

The feed deliverers us news of research suggesting that the use of A as the universal tuning frequency has made our ears less discerning of the notes immediately around it. Here's the abstract from PNAS describing research with people possessing the rare quality of "absolute pitch."

Comments

Blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some orchestra went with 435Hz instead of 440Hz? The cads!

Re:Blame.

[UnknownSoldier]

Yeah, the bastards should of used the 256 Hz Scientific Scale

Re:Blame.

[DupleMeter]

Many practitioners of early music tune to an A415 (hence the term 'Baroque Standard' for such a thing). Antonio Stradivari, builder of the famed Stradivarius violins, was known to tune to A415 (actually A414.97 was what his reference fork measured when found). Most owners/players of Stradivarius violins tune to an A415 and claim it is like having a completely different instrument, in term sof how the violin responds at the tuning it was designed for.

You'll also find that many guitarists (acoustic guitarists particularly, but others too) tune to A415 (or 'a half step down' as you'll hear it referred to). It tends to open up the instrument and also seems to 'sit' better key wise (at least IMO).

The A440 is a new standard, only nearing 70 years now. When decided upon very little was taken into account, though the story goes that the string section was pleased at being noticeably louder at A440 than at lower 'A's. A415 has a much longer history and several heavy hitters backing it up (the entire Bach family, Vivaldi, Mozart, Scarlatti, et al).

Amusingly, some from the Romantic period were fond of tuning up for a more 'intense' timbre...sometimes as high an A462 (which comes out to be about a half step higher than A440)!

Back on topic...I think the inexcusable lack of music education is the reason people have trouble with pitch recognition, not an arbitrary reference for musicians. For example, if you went through life never being trained to discern colors you'd be a visual moron - painting (as it were) is very broad strokes ('it's reddish') rather than having the subtlety to see real differences in similar colors (bright red, brick red, maroon). It's even worse for music, since we are not necessarily penalized for not being astute listeners (in the sense of pitch and timbre). I mean, how many times has someone said "is that a major or minor chord?" to you, or what you thought of a chord grouping in an arrangement? Now when was the last time someone asked your visual opinion? Sadly this is even true for musicians...being trained from a young age to hone sight and speech, but not listening. Hell, I know "musicians" who cannot solfege a simple major scale (you know - do re mi fa sol la ti do) & hit all the notes. Just starting from a note and moving up in a major scale pattern relative to the starting note. And man, relative pitch is so much more important than perfect pitch.

Frist Psot?

[mcrbids]

It's interesting that pitches can be amalgamated by experience. Which is a basic part of human nature - the mind adapts to fit circumstances, and if the key of A is what we tune in to, why wouldn't our minds adapt to fit this reality?

It's all how it works. The article is weak on details, but this post is probably bigger. If every time you heard a sound like a jet engine, you got smacked upside the back of your head, wouldn't you get jumpy when you heard anything that sounded like a jet engine, even if it wasn't *exactly* the same?

Sometimes it's funny how Science has to prove the stuff that "Everybody Knows". (TM)

Re:Frist Psot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody _knows_ the world is flat... :)

Re:Frist Psot?

[Incoherent07]

Adding to the shrug factor, the twelve-tone pitch system as a whole is a human invention. This makes perfect pitch that much stranger, because it means people have an innate ability to attune themselves to an artificial note naming scheme.

So since that scheme can vary somewhat, it would make sense that depending on "which" A your perfect pitch is tuned to, you may have trouble distinguishing G# or A# in a different tuning.

Re:Frist Psot?

[semiotec]

I am not sure whether you really understood much here.

First, the "article" is not "weak on details". It's the abstract, if you want details, read the full article (link on the right-hand side, "Full Text (PDF)".

Second, "absolute pitch" or "perfect pitch" is sort of a innate ability. You can either have it or you don't, as the article shows that pitch accuracy is best in younger people. But there's different levels of the ability. If I hear a relatively clean note, I can pretty much identify what the pitch to within a semitone. However, I have problem just singing/humming a specific note as correctly without help. but I know a few people that can sing any note accurately without help and they can tell you whether your instrument is out of tune simply by their innate ability, without having to check with another instrument or tuning fork or some other gadget.

I've heard stories that it is possible to train to have the "perfect pitch" temporarily. Someone I know sang in the Stravinsky Mass, and they practiced so much that for a few months he was able to sing a B note correctly without assistance. But this is not permanent, they lose this if they stop "training" for it.

Now, what the article is reporting is that, people with perfect pitch, are starting to have this ability blurred due to the way orchestras inaccurately tune to a wide range of A. I assume this means they would have had exposure to such "tuning sessions" at the beginning of concerts and so on.

So this sort of the reverse of what you have written. AP is not trained, not acquired from accumulated experience, but it can be degraded gradually if you keep blurring their idea of what A should be.

The interesting part is, as per the abstract, they systematically get notes around A wrong, and more frequently than other notes:

"given as a pure tone, G# is as perceived sharp far more than any other tone, whereas errors in D occur infrequently"
"Interestingly, pure A# is most often perceived as flat, not in keeping with the other pitches,"
"A statistical analysis shows that G# is uniquely error-prone."

Re:Frist Psot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to keep in mind that my favorite character is Hammond, he clearly is a God compared to Tealc, Tealc is pathetic...he should be cooked and eaten by Hammond at most...notice how Hammond in Season 1 looks somewhat normal, but then skip to say, season 7 and hes bigger, He lost his neck and looks like he would get stuck trying to go through the gate. I love him, his size must mean he gets more powerful, and has eaten Tealc many times by Season 7, he clones Tealc repeatedly and keeps eating him.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Gordonjcp]

The interesting part is, as per the abstract, they systematically get notes around A wrong, and more frequently than other notes

Equal tempered scales aren't perfect. If you look at early keyboard instruments, some had distinct E-flat (slashdot won't let me use unicode symbols - slashdot janitors, please note that most of the world doesn't use straight ASCII any more) and D-sharp keys (again, lack of unicode prevents me from writing this properly). On fretless stringed instruments, you don't play the "exact" note in the same pitch as it would sound on a piano, you play a little above or below where it sounds "right".

Of course, why we should have some innate sense of when a note is in tune or not after being exposed to a lifetime of equal-temperament tuning is a bit strange. You'd think we'd get used to the slightly wrong tuning of modern pitch intervals.

Re:Frist Psot?

[hazem]

This makes perfect pitch that much stranger, because it means people have an innate ability to attune themselves to an artificial note naming scheme.

I don't believe perfect/absolute pitch is being born with the ability to simply hear a note and know that it's C#. Rather, you have to be trained at least once that a certain sound is Bb, but later, any time you hear it, you know it's Bb. And I doubt that they'd be limited to a 12-tone pitch system unless that was all you ever exposed them to.

I think the same thing can happen with color. Some people (tetrachromats, I think) have a very sensitive ability to discern and remember colors, such that they could see paint swab at the store and know if it matches the paint on the wall at home.

I know I don't have perfect pitch myself, but I play piano. Now suppose I sit down at the piano at the beginning of the day, having not listened to any music, I can almost always tell what the note I'm about to hit first will sound like. In fact, sometimes I'll play a game and try to hum the sound before playing the first note. Sometimes, though, I'm off by up to a whole step. Someone with perfect pitch would probably never make that mistake.

Re:Frist Psot?

[dreddnott]

The big villain in equal temperament is the sharp major thirds, perfect fifths and fourths are very close to the arbitrary ones, at 702 and 498 cents respectively. We're used to it enough to tolerate it but it's not the whole story of modern music.

We hear just-temperament tuning all the time. Consider that the overtones of resonant instruments are tuned perfectly (C-octave, G-fifth, C-fourth, E-major third, G-minor third, then that weird flat-seven Bb interval that still manages to be in tune, then C-major second) and you'll see that it really does get beaten into us all the time. Barbershop and even high school or college choirs end up with perfectly-tuned chords, often by accident, but it's natural. Really only modern keyboard instruments (organ, piano, glockenspiel, whatever) and electronic music (although some of the experimental stuff is just-toned) are based on equal temperament. Most other instruments are flexible enough (lipping, slides, fretless, half-holed, embouchure, whatever) to play tuned chords in whatever key.

Setting up a Yamaha electronic piano to play in one of the various unequal temperaments was quite an eye-opening experience for me, and it confirmed everything my music teacher had already been telling me. How good the pure chords sounded was almost as striking as how bad chords out of the key center sounded (Ab in Pure C, blech). I've become curious about studio pitch-correctors that seem to be so common in modern, over-produced 'music' - I know they are set up for analysing and correcting pitches to fit in certain keys, but are they equal- or just-tempered?

Re:Frist Psot?

[semiotec]

thank you for pointing that out, and yes I am perfectly aware that it was around Bach's time that "well-tempered" scales came in the wide-usage and that early virginal/harpsichords/cimbalo have split keys for the black keys.

However, I'd advise you to just read the paper and you will see what their point is. It's quite straight-forward, and despite publication in a high-profile journal, it's quite easy to read.

G# and A#/B-flat are frequently wrong, and tend to be wrong in the same direction. They haven't proven orchestra-tuning is the case, it's just their hypothesis that the blurring around A is likely due to that factor.

Re:Frist Psot?

[iangoldby]

The twelve tone pitch system may well be a human invention, but it is based very closely (but not exactly) on the natural harmonics of a string (or open pipe).

If you take a string whose fundamental frequency is 440 Hz (an A) then harmonics are produced at twice, three times, four times, etc. that frequency. The notes corresponding to these are:

A (fundamental)
A one octave above (first harmonic)
E one octave and a fifth above (second harmonic)
A two octaves above
C# two octaves and a third above
E two octaves and a fifth above
G two octaves and a seventh above - slightly flat
A three octaves above

Beyond that the notes you get approximate less closely to the even-tempered western scale.

The pitch ratios for the even-tempered scale are given by a power-relationship:

p'/p = 2^(n/12)

where n is the number of semitones above p.

So for example, the closest even-tempered note to the second harmonic of A 440, E which is 19 semitones above, would have a pitch of

p' = 2.9966 * 440 Hz

which is slightly flatter than the natural harmonic 3 * 440 Hz.

What is interesting (to me at least) is that this means that if you follow a cycle of fifths from a starting note using natural pitches rather than even-tempered pitches, you never exactly get back to the note you started on. (Apparently Pythagoras was one of the first to record this observation.)

This caused no end of problems for early musicians. Instruments used to be tuned with systems based on natural pitches. This meant that instruments with fixed tunings (that the musicians could not easily alter as they played) would sound more in-tune in some keys than in others.

J S Bach was one of those who worked on a solution to this, and he came up with the modern even-tempered scale, which averages out the intervals so that all keys are equally in-tune (or out-of-tune).

If you have a well-trained ear then you can hear the slight beating that indicates this slight out-of-tuneness when you strike an open fifth on an even-tempered instrument (such as a piano). String and wind players are of course able to make the slight adjustments to overcome this tuning compromise, and if you listen to a really good string quartet you can sometimes hear the difference.

Re:Frist Psot?

[cybereal]

I think you misunderstand what perfect pitch is. It's not the ability to associate a note name with a pitch. Though, that may be a side effect given proper practice. Perfect pitch is the ability to recognize a given tone/pitch without relationship to a previous tone. Most people don't know if they hear an A or an E without something before it that is identified.

More practically, most people could listen to a song's melody played in a specific key, then hear the same melody in another key the next day, and never know there was a difference. Those with perfect pitch would know there was a difference even if they weren't musicians and didn't know the letters assigned to those pitches. The fact that most of these people don't care plays into the perceived rarity of the ability. I, however, having perfect pitch, have made it a point to discover this quality in people I know. I find many people can do this and it's not as rare as often stated.

Re:Frist Psot?

[El Jynx]

not entirely. The doubling of pitch is the difference in an octave; the complementary pitches in the octave (in other words, the sounds that sound happy, so no minors or sharps) are directly related (e.g. half of the doubling, 1/4, etc).

And on the side, I think anybody who has a mom with a voice as loud as my mom's learns absolute pitch as a natural defense mechanism.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Stooshie]

Good post (don't have mod points just now).

Natural/Just temperements have some interesting side effects. Bach (and some other composers) always claimed that if you played the same piece in a higher or lower key (even a semi-tone) that the whole mood changed. This would make sense as the beats between A and C# (key of A) and the beats between C and E (key of C) would be different in Natural Temperement.

Re:Frist Psot?

[plams]

No, no, no! Twelve-tone pitch is derrived from perfect intervals, such as perfect thirds, fourths and fifths. These can be defined very cleanly as the integer ratio between two frequencies (look up just intonation). The ratios are mathematically beautiful and simple, and also sound particularly good. The temperated (12 note) scale used by nearly all instruments today is an attempt to fit these intervals into a common scale. You may say that this approximation is a human invention (even though it's cleanly defined as freq = 440hz * 2^(n / 12), where n is the semi-note distance from A4), but as a whole? No.

In other words, it proabbly wouldn't make any sense to use a 16 note scale or something like that. The 12 note scale has roots in something very mathematical, not something random or "human".

Re:Frist Psot?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most common studio (and live, these days, they're rack mountable) pitch corrector is the Antares Auto-Tune...it can be tuned to a wide variety of scales (all your regular scales, plus a few chromatic variants) but as far as I know all the Automatic mode ones are equal tempered. However, it can be set up with manual pitch correction, and so it is possible for a skilled producer with an unskilled vocalist to produce vaguely authentic music in unusual keys.

Re:Frist Psot?

[venicebeach]

It's worth noting that the Indian classical music system, while also focusing on the same 12 intervals, further divides the scale into 22 smaller intervals or "shrutis". As others have pointed out, there is a logic and physical basis for the 12 notes, but also cultural factors have clearly played into this as well.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear notes played and know if they're flat or sharp with no reference- but I can't tell you what note it is. I wonder if that counts.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Gordonjcp]

Setting up a Yamaha electronic piano to play in one of the various unequal temperaments was quite an eye-opening experience for me

It's something I'm quite interested in trying, actually. It would be pretty easy to modify a soft synth to use any arbitrary scale you like. If you have a look here around line 46 (code originally from Sean Bolton's Xsynth-DSSI), you'll see that the pitch table is constructed from the 12th root of 2 as per normal equal-tempered tuning. If you wanted to use a different scale you'd just bang other values into that array and your tuning would be adjusted to suit.

If you're interested in helping out, let me know.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Kagura]

I hear notes played and know if they're flat or sharp with no reference- but I can't tell you what note it is. I wonder if that counts.

Same here. I'm not sure if I have perfect pitch, and I cannot sing on key, but flats and sharps sound different in my head somehow. I used to play trumpet until I decided it was no fun years ago.

Re:Frist Psot?

[log0n]

This is exactly right. I also have perfect pitch. I've been a musician for 20 years (currently making my living as a performer) and I don't know now if this ability was something I was born with or if it was something I developed overtime (though interestingly, my father and my uncle [biological - his brother] who are also professional musicians also have perfect pitch) - probably a bit of both.

I do know that my training has enabled me to identify the invented aspect of PP.. knowing the note name without a previous reference. My main instrument is bass guitar/double bass (upright), and it started off as "recalling" the open strings and then mentally figuring the difference to the pitch in question. Now though, any note (in a typical 88 key piano range - crazy high hz is tough) is pretty much identifiable without this recall.

My totally unscientific finding has been a bit different. Most of my regular associates/peers are musicians and only one other has perfect pitch to the same level I do. Most musicians I know fall into the category of knowing the difference between notes but requiring knowing where they started to figure out where they are now (not sure if that made sense given the description of PP - and I say most because one of the best set drummers I know is tone deaf). My wife and her non-musical friends range anywhere from completely tone deaf (my wife ;-) to a musicians ability - though very underdeveloped. The biggest sort-of 'shocker' for me is my wife being unable to recognize something out of tune - like a perfect 5th with one string a little off from the other. She either doesn't recognize or hear the pulsing created by the conflicting frequencies.

I disagree with the article.. having an open A string has triggered something in my brain to always know it's open A which has given me enormous benefit in my chosen profession. The ability to transpose anything from any key to another.. alternate tunings.. etc etc and all of it in real time. I've been able to do this since the beginning.

Re:Frist Psot?

[locofungus]

JS Bach was one of those who worked on a solution to this, and he came up with the modern even-tempered scale, which averages out the intervals so that all keys are equally in-tune (or out-of-tune).

Actually Bach came up with the well-tempered scale. The equally tempered scale is just a special case of the well-tempered scale (and I'm pretty sure Bach wouldn't have written his 48 if he'd really intended an equally tempered scale. He'd have written one major and one minor piece transposed into 12 keys each)

If it weren't for being well-tempered, anybody could tune a piano - infact it would be fairly simple to design a robot to do it but a good piano tuner will tune a piano to suit the room and the type of music being played and not rely on electronic tuning except maybe for the first note.

If you have a well-trained ear then you can hear the slight beating that indicates this slight out-of-tuneness when you strike an open fifth on an even-tempered instrument (such as a piano). String and wind players are of course able to make the slight adjustments to overcome this tuning compromise, and if you listen to a really good string quartet you can sometimes hear the difference.

And singers. My partner can sing a full cycle of descending fifths (jumping up an octave where necessary) and arrive at exactly the "wrong" note.

(for non-musicians, a perfect fifth has a frequency 3/2 and a perfect octave 2x the fundamental. A perfect fourth is 4/3. (Note a fourth plus a fifth = 4/3*3/2=2=a perfect octave) (she finds this easier to sing repeated descending fifths but we can pretend a descending fifth is an ascending fourth plus an octave jump)

Going up a fourth 12 times brings us back to the same note (5 octaves higher) but:

going up 12 fourths (4/3)^12 = 31.56929 while going up 5 octaves:
2^5=32.

So these are the same note arrived at via two different routes and going up in fourths the singer arrives back at the tonic about a quarter semitone flat as compared to the piano.

I've always wondered what people with perfect pitch do in this circumstance. I think one of the Beethoven piano sonatas has a complete cycle of fifths. Obviously, on the piano there are 12 tiny errors that mean at the end we're on the same note we started with.

But a similar piece sung by unaccompanied choir should end up on the "wrong" note at the end.

Tim.

Re:Frist Psot?

[log0n]

Wanted to add on.. my first instrument was trombone and I've played that nearly as long as string bass. This could be why I have no problem discerning G/G#/A/A#(Bb). First possession on trombone is Bb (essentially it's 'open' note), bass with an open A.. by working in both I've most likely trained my brain to be more aware of the difference than most other musicians whose instruments are only in concert tuning, or only guitar tuning, etc.

Re:Frist Psot?

[log0n]

first possession?? I mean position (duur? gotta go back to bed :)

Re:Frist Psot?

[MartinB]

Adding to the shrug factor, the twelve-semitone pitch system as a whole is a human invention.

And if you want it in spades: the equally spaced twelve-semitone system is a pretty late, Western European-specific invention. Because the deep joy of the acoustics is that to be perfectly in tune by the frequency multipliers, each key has each note (eg A above middle C) at a slightly different pitch. So the question of whether A=440 is more correctly answered with the question "In which key?".

This is fine and dandy for infinitely variable pitch instruments such as non-fretted string instruments, but causes all kinds of problems for keyboard instruments. You can play perfectly in tune, as long as you never, ever change key. At that point, it starts sounding *really* nasty.

However, in the 18th Century, a fudge was devised whereby each note did have a standard tuning - this is Well Temperament. The result is that you can then modulate between keys without disaster. But each semitone step has its own spacing, and different keys have different characters because the different spacings fall differently in the scale. Bach's 48 uses this very effectively as he cycles through the keys (a Prelude and Fugue for the major and minor of each semitone key... twice)

In the C20th, this was fudged again to the usually used contemporary Equal Temperament, where each semitone is an equal distance apart from all the others.

More on temperaments here and at Wikipedia.

Interestingly, some other cultures that have different tuning systems allow a greater deal of laxity about what's in tune, allowing quite a lot of crowbarring of their systems into a 12 tone, equal temperament system.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Jay L]

I've used Antares AutoTune and Celemony Melodyne, two of the popular pitch-correctors, and both default to equal-tempered. I never looked to see if they'd support alternate tunings, since it wasn't relevant to the music I was working on.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Koiu Lpoi]

The very article you link to says that the 3rd is imperfect. And it is.

Re:Frist Psot?

[FlyingGuy]

As an amateur musician of some experience, I can only ass the following:

She is a brilliant musician and is one hell of a hottie!

Lara St. John penned a minor little bit that will help explain this.

Re:Frist Psot?

[bidule]

Exactly! Try with any K note scale and see how well 3:2, 4:3 and 5:4 fit in that scale. My father has been rambling about this for more than 30 years, at least twice a year. I have this thing etched in my brain so deep that I'll prolly remember this after my death.

So try it:
- 3 * 2^(a/K) ~= 2 * 2^(b/K)
- 4 * 2^(c/K) ~= 3 * 2^(d/K)
- 5 * 2^(e/K) ~= 4 * 2^(f/K)

And you won't find any other K with less error.
- 3:2 -> 19 vs 12 = 1.498 -> 0.113%
- 4:3 -> 24 vs 19 = 1.335 -> 0.113%
- 5:4 -> 28 vs 24 = 1.260 -> 0.794%

Re:Frist Psot?

[Twinbee]

I'll take issue with the fact that equal tempered is necessarily a compromise, and how vocalists and violinists etc. will naturally strive for the 'pure' ratios.

In fact various studies have shown the reverse (equal temperament being the preferred intervals), and many more studies have shown ambiguous results.

The numbers of equal temperament might look arbitrary (1.25992 instead of 1.25 for the major third, and 1.3348 instead of 1.3333 for the major fourth), but on a logarithmic scale, they are perfectly neat (2^(4/12) or 2^(5/12)).

I myself prefer the equal tempered intervals. To me, it's the Just ones which sound off. Yes, I might be culturally conditioned, but then who's to say that the people who prefer just intoned intervals aren't culturally conditioned?

After tons of research into the phenomenon, I haven't even begun to touch upon some of the more intricate issues, but the earlier link, and particularly this one (my site) is a good place start to learn how crazily complex the whole thing is.

Re:Frist Psot?

[MartinB]

J S Bach was one of those who worked on a solution to this, and he came up with the modern even-tempered scale, which averages out the intervals so that all keys are equally in-tune (or out-of-tune).

Close, but no cigar.

You're thinking of Well Temperament, which Bach showcased, but didn't invent.

Equal Temperament is a C20th invention.

Re:Frist Psot?

[locofungus]

G# and A#/B-flat are frequently wrong, and tend to be wrong in the same direction. They haven't proven orchestra-tuning is the case, it's just their hypothesis that the blurring around A is likely due to that factor.

Just as likely that these are the ones that are the most out of tune.

In a good orchestra, A# and B-flat and G# and A-flat won't even have the same pitch in the same piece even if the orchestra is tuned to A-440. (Obviously if they are playing a piano concerto then the orchestra will tend to play a bit more out of tune so they will converge)

Tim.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Mr. Slippery]

Interestingly, some other cultures that have different tuning systems allow a greater deal of laxity about what's in tune

IIRC, some of that is based on what type of instruments are primarily used in the culture. You get a different set of harmonics off of a chime than you do off of a string, for example, so consonance and dissonance come out a little bit different.

Re:Frist Psot?

[a_nonamiss]

Adding to the shrug factor, the twelve-tone pitch system as a whole is a human invention. This makes perfect pitch that much stranger, because it means people have an innate ability to attune themselves to an artificial note naming scheme. Not so much, if you consider that pitch is just varying wavelengths on a vibrating column of air. Different colors are just different wavelengths for EM waves. You can look at something that is red and you know it's red, even though you weren't given a reference color. Most people don't say that colors are a human invention.

In addition to this, the western twelve-tone chromatic scale is not really a human invention. All of the frequencies represented in the scale have mathematical relationships that are basically whole number ratios. The reason certain tones, when played in certain combinations, sound pleasing to the human ear is really a factor of the mathematical relationships of the frequencies. They are equally divisible, meaning that the vibrations sync up at regular intervals, creating what we think of as harmony.

Now, the notation system is a human invention. We call 440Hz "A" because that's the standard we decided on hundreds of years ago. We could just as easily have called it "7" or "Pink" or "Delta" or whatever, but there is a logic to the notation system we use. People with perfect pitch would just as easily be able to identify notes or frequencies in any notation system.

Re:Frist Psot?

[nsayer]

I have perfect pitch, but in my case I think it's in the form of a virtual 880Hz tuning fork in my brain. I can't just instantly say, "oh, that's C#". I would have to internally recognize that it's a major third higher than A and then say that it's C#. Since I'm not in the music business, I don't get regular practice, so I may be off a bit sometimes, but I do believe I'm right more often than not.

I think it's an ability that can be practiced and obtained - not something inborn. Just try and recognize tonal sounds around you. For example, most domestic car horns are an F and an A. The Italian sports cars that sound more "sportier" are usually an A and a C#. Train horns are harder because they're usually 5 note diminished chords.

Re:Frist Psot?

[poot_rootbeer]

The numbers of equal temperament might look arbitrary [...], but on a logarithmic scale, they are perfectly neat

This is true, but as far as perception of musical consonance/dissonance goes, logarithms don't mean much. It's the harmonic series that serves as the foundation of music.

But yes, individual preference for one tuning over another is surely a result of cultural conditioning. There's a noticeable difference between the pentatonic scale formed by the "black keys" of the 12tet scale and the 5-tone "slendro" scale used in traditional Javanese gamelan, but one cannot say one of these scales is better, or truer, than the other; merely that one has a subjective preference.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Brad Eleven]

What about the touchstones for B flat found in nature?

From http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=7442915

• B Flats and Alligators: Alligators respond by bellowing, alone/in groups to a Bb tone.
  
• B Flat and Glenway Fripp the Piano Tuner: Fripp hums Bb on a stairway landing and the tone persists
  
• B Flat and Black Holes: Waves passing through gas near the black hole resonate at Bb, 57 octaves below middle C.
  

Re:Frist Psot?

[Mr. Slippery]

Now, what the article is reporting is that, people with perfect pitch, are starting to have this ability blurred due to the way orchestras inaccurately tune to a wide range of A.

Which is a bizarre question, since orchestras have always tuned to a wide range. Indeed, having a standard at all is fairly recent; A=440 is a modern invention.

And it's not as if tuning to A means that only A has variance. If you tune to A at 440 Hz and I tune to 415, our C and our G and all our other notes will be off by the same factor.

Re:Frist Psot?

[mrbooze]

I've always wondered what people with perfect pitch do in this circumstance.

My wife has taken a few harmony classes, and more than once the instructor has complained about someone in the class insisting on keeping to the "correct" pitch no matter where the rest of the class is. The instructor's position has been that singing harmony means being in harmony, whether the pitch is precisely right or not, so it's a case where insisting on being right just makes you wrong.

Re:Frist Psot?

[blank axolotl]

The intervals may be mathematical, but the absolute pitch is not as far as I understand You could shift all the notes half-way up to the next note, and the intervals would be preserved, but the notes would be different. Therefore people with perfect pitch are artificially tuned to the A=440 Hz scale. (rather than eg. A=450 Hz)

Re:Frist Psot?

[Twinbee]

This is true, but as far as perception of musical consonance/dissonance goes, logarithms don't mean much. It's the harmonic series that serves as the foundation of music.

I think it would be more correct to say that the harmonic series serves as the foundation of timbre, rather than music or harmony per se. The twelve notes may use very similar, but not quite the same pitches as those found in the harmonic series.

Evidence of this is how the seventh harmonic feels nice in it's own way (in a timbral/camouflaging sense), but in another way, it feels very flat compared to the 12-et equivalent. More importantly, the minor third isn't adequately represented by the harmonic series.

But yes, individual preference for one tuning over another is surely a result of cultural conditioning.

Despite what I said about this, it could still be the case that one of the models (ET or Just) represents the intervals of the scale best. I only meant that Just intonation had no particularly special reason to be chosen over ET as the basis of the scale.

but one cannot say one of these scales is better, or truer, than the other; merely that one has a subjective preference.

Yes one may be able to say that :P Despite rare excpetions such as the Slendro scale (where the intervals are mainly used for textural/timbre purposes than for real harmony), it would be premature to slip into hardcore relativism, and say that all 'scales are just as good'.

Quoting from that article:

"...at least a subset of the [12-ET] scale at least partially generalizes to at least Indian, Chinese and Arab-Persian music as well [55][56][57][58] (also see [59][193][195][61][62]))."

See all the references from 55 onwards - a real goldmine of info :)

Re:Frist Psot?

[u38cg]

Most auto-tuners just go for even temperament, though any other system would be arbitrarily as easy.

Something I've been meaning to do for ages is an attempt at an algorithm that accepts a MIDI tone row from an even temperament source (ie keyboard) and attempts to fit it into one of the closed systems - such a system would let a pianist stick to a system he knows while providing more attracive harmonies - I hate listening to a piano which has been tuned dead straight.

Re:Frist Psot?

[ceoyoyo]

It's more of a perfect memory. You can carry around reference pitches in your head instead of having to hear them like regular people.

The article summary is pretty misleading though. It looks like the research shows that people with perfect pitch carry around a slightly smeared reference pitch in their heads because not everybody always tunes to a tuning fork. Why this is worthy of PNAS, I'm not sure.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Bob Uhl]

I keep waiting for some French-unit (i.e. 'metric') loon to come up with a decimal tuning, never mind that music just ain't decimal. Neither's the rest of life, which is why French units simply don't make sense.

Re:Frist Psot?

[UnknownSoldier]

There any Windows or OS X versions?

Re:Frist Psot?

[squidfood]

In other words, it proabbly wouldn't make any sense to use a 16 note scale or something like that. The 12 note scale has roots in something very mathematical, not something random or "human".

As an (amateur) player of middle-eastern music I find this comment laughable. middle eastern scales have 9 distinct divisions between whole notes, and a "scale" may consist of 12-20 of these divisions between an octave (yes, I'll grant "natural"ness of an octave). The distinction from western music is that the middle-eastern tunes depend on melodies rather than harmonies, so the need for simultaneous notes to have harmonic (e.g. rational, matching) subfrequencies is obviated, and in fact sounds quite artificial to the middle eastern ear listening to a cascading melody with many subtones.

A common comment among professional musicians of this background is "his A is not my A", implying that different musicians will select different and arbitrary starting points based on their own tastes, and this is an expression of their art rather than a mistake.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Gen.Anti]

Guys, numerous synthesizers allow using arbitrary scales, from the program "Scala", for example. Just see the list on the homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/

Re:Frist Psot?

[graphicsguy]

The problem with this argument is that the "class" will tend to get more and more wrong over time, creating a pretty awful piece, even if any given moment has well-tuned harmony.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Anonymous Coward]

"too many notes"

Re:Frist Psot?

[linguizic]

We are born with an innate ability to discern very minute changes in tonality--not perfect pitch, but relative changes in tonality. There are languages that depend on tonality to differentiate phonemes for example. None of them have a phoneme where you say the "ooh" sound at 440hz or anything like that, but rather they have a phoneme where you say "ooh" with a slight falling intonation.

The languages that are grouped together and called 'Chinese' are some of these languages. It makes me wonder if traditional Chinese music uses pentatonic scales (5 notes) to accommodate the inherent changes in tonality in the language when they sing.

Re:Frist Psot?

[rcw-home]

Going up a fourth 12 times brings us back to the same note (5 octaves higher) but: going up 12 fourths (4/3)^12 = 31.56929 while going up 5 octaves: 2^5=32. So these are the same note arrived at via two different routes and going up in fourths the singer arrives back at the tonic about a quarter semitone flat as compared to the piano. I've always wondered what people with perfect pitch do in this circumstance.

You sound knowledgeable enough that you might have already considered everything I'm about to say, but here goes anyway:

If the singer with perfect pitch is attuned to the even-tempered chromatic scale, then they will not end up a quarter semitone flat. If they are attuned to a meantone temperament, then one of the fourths will sound really bad.

You seem quite aware that with even temperament, a fourth is not a perfect fourth. It is not a ratio of 1.333333, it is a ratio of 2^(5/12), or 1.334839. Likewise, a fifth is not a ratio of 1.5, it is a ratio of 2^(7/12), or 1.498307. 1.334839^12=31.999754 (32, if it wasn't for cumulative rounding errors.)

I suspect that most (perhaps not all) people with perfect pitch have a better sense of whether the note they are currently singing matches with the pitch they know that note should be than a sense of whether the interval they just sung is 0.15% off.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Anonymous Coward]

For interesting examples of alternate tunings, try this:

http://www.amazon.com/Easley-Blackwood-Microtonal/ dp/B0000018Z8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easley_Blackwood_Jr.

Re:Frist Psot?

[Gordonjcp]

I believe they will build on OSX if you have jack. I don't know about Windows. In theory it should be possible. If you want to do a Windows port, ask me about it.

Did anyone

[hax0r_this]

deliverer this article to an editor?

Re:Did anyone

[Adambomb]

Yes, but it was delivered orally in the key of A, so the discrepancy was not noticed.

Re:Did anyone

[Negatyfus]

This post deliverers!

Mental reference pitches

[ihuntrocks]

I have pretty good pitch (not sure if you'd qualify it as "perfect"). Tuning to A (440 Hz) didn't really distort this ability though while I've been a musician. I do have a set of "reference pitches" that I can internalize and I can determine pitches relative to them. A440 is one of those pitches, but not the first one I use for reference, even though it is the "universal" tuning note. Could have something to do with it not being one of the notes I tuned my instrument to,and that I had a transposing instrument relative to concert pitches though.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[u38cg]

Most people with a bit of training can produce and recognise various reference pitches - it's often made easier in that most instruments' tone varies with pitch, so people can learn to recognise the in-tune tone of their instrument. If you have that ability, naming other pitches by recognising the interval is not that far behind.

What is rare is true perfect pitch, and if you have real perfect pitch you will have no problem distinguishing a G# from an A. Not only that, you would most likely be able to nail it down to a few cents.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[ihuntrocks]

I don't have a problem differentiating chromatic pitches either. It's just a half step interval after all. Tuning I'm fairly good on by ear, though I tend to be a few cents flat by ear, but nothing bad. I find this to be true on all of the instruments I play also, as well as when I try to sing pitches (I may have a terrible singing voice, but I can sing the correct pitches).

Re:Mental reference pitches

[arth1]

A440 is important because an orchestra is supposed to follow the first violin, and the main string on a violin is the A string, tuned at 440. The fine tuning cacophony you hear before a concert starts quite often has a plain A repeated at intervals throughout it -- this being the first violin letting others know what to tune against, if it isn't a standard 440. Sometimes it isn't, due to other instruments that might be hard to tune, like a concert piano (which can be 440, 442 or 452 Hz depending on where you are) or an old pipe organ (in which case all bets are off). Luckily, a violin is relatively easy to tune, and it's (in theory) the job of the first violinist to ensure he has a working A, which others then can tune their instruments to.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Mental reference pitches

[The -e**(i*pi)]

The oboe is the instrument that stays in tune the best, and is the one a Symphony Orchestra tunes too. Most, if not all professional orchestras are Symphony's. So most professionals tune to the Oboe, not the first violin. Tuning starts where all the woodwinds and brass tune, then the oboe plays another A and the strings tune, and the percussion tune somewhere . Of course the woodwinds have to keep using their instruments or they will get cold and be out of tune so they keep playing until the start, while strings only need to warm up their fingers.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[Anonymous Coward]

>The oboe is the instrument that stays in tune the best, and is the one a Symphony Orchestra tunes too

So they bring in a piano tuner for each time the orchestra plays? It is much easier to tune an oboe by adjusting it;s mouthpiece.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[Creepy Crawler]

Do you know WHY it stays in tune the best?

Oboes, along with flutes use high pitches. Flutes are almost always sharp (hence why they use more finger to cover holes), and that leaves the oboe. If they are 2 or 3 Hz out of tune, they are only logarithmically away very little at all.

Now if you notice, the oboe pitch is much higher (I cant remember if its 880 or 1760) so its relative distance is much lower than that of the violins.

Now, in terms of who we follow, in a symphony, we follow Principal Clarinet, Principal Trumpet, and Principal Violin (or concertmaster).

If the Conductor is wrong or just plain unreadable conducting style, we follow either our principal or the triad.

BTW, I was a principal clarinettist for a local symphony. Dropped out due to heavy demands on college.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[gaffle]

Any oboe player I've ever met (and I've met more than I care to know - they're always obnoxious people) has said that the reason the orchestra tunes to the oboe is because the oboe is shit for tuning, and if it's out of tune even a little bit from the orchestra (which is common) is sounds like complete ass because of its high register and distinctive timbre. So the orchestra attempts to make up for the oboe being an ancient-ass instrument that has almost no way to adjust the tuning beyond very slight adjustments.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[Stooshie]

... Luckily, a violin is relatively easy to tune, and it's (in theory) the job of the first violinist to ensure he has a working A, which others then can tune their instruments to. ...

The orchestra actually tunes itself to the most difficult instrument to tune (the oboe). The theory being that the other instruments can more easily tune to it, than it can to them.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[ceoyoyo]

Well... the oboe is the only instrument that requires a knife to tune properly, so it's best just to let us be so the weapons stay in the bag.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[The -e**(i*pi)]

a piano is not a regular part of a symphony orchestra, but anyways, the piano and oboe would have the same pitch anyways because they stay in tune for professionals. If the oboe is out of tune the conductor will get pissed and help the oboe tune in front of everyone depending on the conductor, which may be the reason they are in tune (fear).

Re:Mental reference pitches

[Gabrill]

The only percussion that generally needs tuning are the timpani. Most other percussion instruments are shaved, sanded, or molded to tune at the factory. Temperature can vary the pitch on most keyboard style percussion instruments, including bells, chimes, xylophone, marimba, and similar instruments.

Re:Mental reference pitches

[phossie]

No kidding. I don't know where these "oboes stay in tune the best" people are coming from. Yeah, maybe the instrument might not need adjusting. I don't know about that. But the embouchure... oh, the embouchure. Pitch for any given note can range all over the place with no change in the instrument itself. Listening to even an advanced-beginner oboist is cause for any of a number of violent acts. Far worse than the endless mississippi-hot-dogging of beginning violinists (also a fearsome instrument as far as intonation goes).

Excuse me

[clarkkent09]

The feed deliverers us news of research ...

And my thanks go to "The feed", for deliverering us this information.

Re:Excuse me

[mjeppsen]

All hail the mighty feed...

The feed deliverers us

[Anonymous Coward]

"The feed deliverers us news of research suggesting that the use of A as the universal tuning frequency has made our ears less discerning of the notes immediately around it."

Am I the only one who understands what each of those words means (well, at least the ones that were spelled right), and yet totally failed to comprehend what was being said?

Summary is misleading

[piojo]

The article summary leaves out the important part. The summary:

the use of A as the universal tuning frequency has made our ears less discerning of the notes immediately around it. It's not the use of A that distorts perfect pitch, it's the use of "alternate A's". A is accepted to be 440Hz. Some orchestras use other pitches, sometimes for a more Baroque feel--the pitch of the accepted A has changed over time (don't ask me how we know that), and on some instruments, it may sound more authentic to use the pitch a piece was originally composed for. So when people use different pitches for A (specifically, when the orchestra tunes), it messes up the perfect pitch that some people have just a little bit.

Re:Summary is misleading

[EdelFactor19]

I dont know if i'd go that far. it doesnt matter what pitch you tune to, it matters what key the song is in.. Everyone tunes to A=440, but it doesn't mean the song is in that key, it just means everyone agrees on a certain pitch definition to allign the different instruments around.

what this post really seems to lack is the basic notion that it doesnt' matter which pitch we choose to tune to or what frequency its tuned at... the same thing will happen no matter what. If we tuned to A =220 itd be the same thing.

no matter what you tune to, it suggests that you will be bad at tuning things close to it... which basically just says we are bad at tuning because we are bad at tuning.. No matter what pitch you take we will be bad at it over time....

The only thing that this article possibly suggests is that you constantly change the note you tune to.
This of course is preposterous because of the large amounts of tempered tuning types that place different notes differntly, notable is the piano and even the guitar (nutvana, buzz feiten... anyone else who flatens the 3rd string so it sounds decently)

so todays circular logic lesson is that we are bad because we are bad; because any choice would lead us to the same place we are already at... So how much research money did we waste on this discovery?

Also the final conjecture is also a bit fishy... if you tune to different A's all the time wouldn't that widen every band... because A isnt the only note thats shifting everything else moves up or down a couple cents as well..... either way I honestly think this research in particular was a waste of time.. can i publish that people have a hard time finding shoes that fit because everyone thinks 12 is something different? Its the exact same thing pretty much, except theres money to be made. If I had any faith that wearing a size X in brand A meant I'd actually wear that size in brand Z i'd buy more sneakers online... Whereas I don't have perfect pitch and I doubt I will (or that I want it, my gf has it and hates it because everything out of pitch/tune/key leaps out at her), so I deal with having decent relative pitch and keep a tuner in my guitar case.. Real Hard

whats making people tone deaf? more likely the crap that passes for music these days thats on our airwaves that consists of lots of random clicks, booms, sampled random noises and everyones favorite: screaming :-P

Re:Summary is misleading

[GomezAdams]

It's not the use of different A's that make it authentic but rather the use of alternate scales. The modern tempered scale allows us to play music in any key. Older scales having different relationships among the 4ths, 5ths, 3rds, 6ths, minor 3rds, etc within the octave, was what many composers used to make the music have certain charateristics they wanted to bring out in the music. Mozart's "Requiem in D Minor" is a much different creature using the scales of Mozart's time vs the modern tempered scales. J.S. Bach popularized the modern scale with his "Well tempered Clavier" series - teaching pieces in all the scales to train pianist to play in any key. Before this time all instruments were scaled to meet the existing standard meaning differnt length of tubing on brass instruments than modern horns.

Re:Summary is misleading

[Bo'Bob'O]

The "standard" is different in other countries too. It's 440 here in the US, but 444 in Germany for instance. Also, there is not a universal "right" frequency for a note. "In Tune" depends on the particular cord. Pianos and the like are tuned to a set of notes that works pretty well, but wind and string players will often adjust pitches to be in tune properly. I can't tell you much more of the technical specifics myself, but as usual, Wikipeida provides: Musical temperament

Re:Summary is misleading

[dreddnott]

Helmoltz's book "On the Sensations of Tone" written in the mid-19th century has an entire section devoted to pitch wandering over time (and region).

Apparently tuning forks are very accurate and do not degrade more than a few cents over hundreds of years. Typically every major hall would have its own tuning fork, owned by the master conductor or organist. Occasionally, in some traditions, the choir would have a much lower lower "A" pitch (400-415Hz was typical, even less was possible) than the orchestral or chamber musicians.

I can scarcely imagine how they worked this out if an instrumentalist or two were borrowed for the choir. I guess key-change slides for brass horns would come in handy. Dark times...

Re:Summary is misleading

[Harold Halloway]

As well as using a slightly lower 'Baroque' tuning, orchestras have, over the past ten or twenty years, been experimenting with using a slightly higher reference. Apparently this gives the music slightly more dynamism and excitement.

Re:Summary is misleading

[kripkenstein]

I don't follow this argument. If this is so, why is perfect pitch particularly messed up regarding A, and not other notes? Surely if you move A up by a few Hertz, you move everything else accordingly?

Re:Summary is misleading

[edittard]

The modern tempered scale allows us to play music in any key.

Isn't it more of a fudge allowing us to play in an approximation of any key, without being too far off any of them?

Re:Summary is misleading

[Mr Jazzizle]

Now, I'm not an expert, but I've studied this stuff. Everything else does indeed move, but not by the same amount. Other pitches are determined using a certain formula, sort of like centrigrate to farenheite formula, just because one goes up the other doesn't go up by the same amount. Terrible analogy. But I think maybe you get the point. Other notes might be less different. Or maybe *guessing* we're use to other notes wavering around, but the tone of the A sticks with us. I don't know.

Re:Summary is misleading

[GomezAdams]

True - modern tunng is a case of 'tempering/fudging' the octave to fit all the notes into regular intervals. And BTW, I'm surprised that there are so many knowlegable folks on slash here that can discuss music and the physics of music.

Re:Summary is misleading

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Don't you know, Slashdot is filled with the very models of the modern Major Generals? We're gentlemen and scholors, and judges of fine whiskey? And our good looks are exceeded only by the kindness of our hearts? Certainly with all that we're going to find nearly everybody here has perfect pitch, plus a tendency to bitch about the frequency of our concert tuning.

Re:Summary is misleading

[Creepy Crawler]

I have a crazy story about that kind of tuning...

Once at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, they had a guest pianist from Japan who was playing contemporary and native pieces. Ok, this would normally work out OK, but natively made pianos were tuned for A=415, not A=440.

When the Conductor heard this, he DEMANDED that everything be tuned to A=440 (with about a 1 cent error margin).

When the piano tuner did his job, close to the end of the job, the bridge snapped (or whatever the piano strings are attached to).

It was only a $100,000 piano.

Re:Summary is misleading

[agg-1]

J.S. Bach popularized the modern scale with his "Well tempered Clavier"

Not true. The WTC was actually written for, well, a "well-tempered" scale (musicologists and music theorists are still debating which one it was, there were various during Baroque). In well-tempered scales different keys still sound different (hence the point of having 24 pairs of preludes and fugues in 24 different keys), whereas in equal temperament (the modern tuning) they all sound the same.

Re:Summary is misleading

[rcw-home]

Other pitches are determined using a certain formula, sort of like centrigrate to farenheite formula, just because one goes up the other doesn't go up by the same amount.

Logarithmically, yes, they do go up and down by the same amount. Each octave is double the frequency of the last. Since there are twelve notes in the chromatic scale, each note is a frequency 2^(1/12) (or 1.05946309436) higher than the last. If A4 is 440Hz, then A# is 466.16Hz, B is 493.88Hz, C is 523.25Hz. If A4 is 435Hz, A#, B, and C are 460.87Hz, 488.27Hz, and 517.31Hz. In the chromatic scale, the frequency ratios between notes are always the same.

Re:Summary is misleading

[Discoflamingo13]

I would like to think I'm not alone in wanting to have something to show for nine years of getting beaten up for keeping my books in my band locker ;-)

Re:Summary is misleading

[EEBaum]

Because A is given to you at the start of each orchestral performance. Heck, I *don't* have perfect pitch, but I can hear in my head a pretty good estimate of A (which probably falls in the range of G# to A#) without reference, just because I've heard "This is A" associated with that general pitch area so many times. For any other note, if I had to make a guess, I'd think of the general area of A in my head and relative-pitch the note from there.

Re:Summary is misleading

[piojo]

I agree, what EEBaum said is pretty much what I meant. I would add that when you are playing or singing a piece, every pitch sounds relative--the only thing that matters is its (logarithmic) distance from the notes around it. Except the first note. Or the node that is tuned to. These stand out, and musicians are more likely to remember them.

A435 is old standard

[GomezAdams]

About 1939 A440 was adapted instead of the "French" A435 standard. In recent history some orchestras went to A445 but they are the exception. Modern piano scales are designed for A440. The length, diameter, and tension of the strings are all taken into the scale calculations. To raise pitch on a piano 5 CPS(Hz) is quite an undertaking and can add several hundreds of pounds of tension to the back (wooden part) and plate (big harp looking thingee made of cast iron and usually painted brass color) of a piano, A standard piano can have 11 tons, or more for grands, up to 20 tons of combined tension on the frame. The whole of the piano is designed to handle a certain amount of tension and can be stressed if too much tension is added. Same as letting a piano fall way below in pitch (pitch = tension) and bringing it up to pitch in one sitting. It must be done carefully & quickly to be effective. It isn't pretty to see a piano with the plate bolts sheared off and the plate bowing out from the rim. I'm a former piano technicain with 25+ years of piano tuning and rebuilding behind me so I've yanked strings on more than a few pianos, raising pitch and doing battle with aged instrments not kept in repair. Also have done complete restringing and rebuilding of all sorts of pianos.

Re:A435 is old standard

[alyosha1]

A guitar has several tons of tension on its neck No it doesn't. Each string has a few kilograms of tension, depending of course on string thickness and mass per unit length. Total tension can typically be in the range of around 50 kg.

Re:A435 is old standard

[alyosha1]

Sorry, that should presumably 500N, i.e. equivalent to 50 kg hanging from the strings under normal gravity.

Re:A435 is old standard

[dreddnott]

Piano strings are certainly not very slack, and a guitar cannot EVER have several tons of tension on its neck (or at the bridge, or anywhere). Assuming the guitar was made of cast iron instead of wood (which is typically solid, and steel-bar-reinforced at best) and did not instantly collapse from the tension, you wouldn't even be able to pluck the strings. Assuming you were Superman and could actually pluck a string, the pitch would be hypersonic and inaudible to all (except your Super-hearing I suppose).

Classical guitars have an average of about 25 pounds of tension per string. Of course it's slightly more for steel-stringed abominations (hence the neck reinforcement).

Re:A435 is old standard

[Anonymous Coward]

The "French" A435 tuning came into being in 1859 before that there was no standard and the pitch varied roughly from A380 to A480.

Re:A435 is old standard

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised it's as low as that. A guitar has several tons of tension on its neck.

And yet the average joe can bend a guitar string with the pinky on his left hand. You might want to rethink your position.

Re:A435 is old standard

[demi]

I have an enormous desire to see a comic book cover of Superman giving a concert with his superguitar and taunting us all with how we can't hear his beautiful music, like the dick he is.

Re:A435 is old standard

[Associate]

Idle curiosity, how much would a tunning a 35ish year old upright Kawai that hasn't been tuned in 20 years cost? It's always lived in a climate controlled space and isn't terribly out of tune that I know of.

Re:A435 is old standard

[leenks]

I suppose piano strings, particularly the lower ones, are quite slack.

I think it is the other way round (or at least that's how it has been explained to me) - the bass strings are at a higher tension than the treble ones (they are much much longer and thicker)

Re:A435 is old standard

[leenks]

It depends. It could be completely screwed if it hasn't had a humidifier fitted, or is one of the earlier Kawai imports that suffered from not having suitably dried wood.

That said, if it hasn't suffered too badly, then it's tuning will have dropped quite a bit (even though it is in tune with itself) and you will need a course of 2-4 tunings at say 4 month intervals to bring it back up. I usually pay between 35 and 50 GBP per tuning, but no idea what the US rates are (probably 70-100 US assuming $2 to the pound).

Re:A435 is old standard

[CrazedWalrus]

Hah! Genius!

3.) Letting Bruce Wayne know that his parents are going to be gunned down in front of his very eyes in a filthy alley, you dick!

(http://www.superdickery.com/dick/6.html)

Re:A435 is old standard

[NulDevice]

The bass strings behave more like rods than strings, which is one reason it's really hard to acoustically model a piano.

Oboe

[nyet]

The oboe, not the worthless violinist. Violins a dime a dozen. You only get two oboists (generally).

Re:Oboe

[Anonymous Coward]

unless there's a piano being used, then it's the piano. typically it takes longer to tune the piano than other orchestral instruments...

Re:Oboe

[Anonymous Coward]

unless there is a fish in the orchestra. In that case, the whole ordeal becomes very difficult: how can you tune a fish ?

Re:Oboe

[eutychus_awakes]

You know how to get two oboes to play in tune, don't you?

Re:Oboe

[oboeaaron]

You know how to get two oboes to play in tune, don't you?

Hire me?

Re:Oboe

[FlopEJoe]

"You know how to get two oboes to play in tune, don't you?"

"Kill one of 'em?" is the only thing that comes to mind. (not that I'm advocating Oboest-icide)

Re:Oboe

[Megane]

Is tuning a fish anything like tuning a filesystem? Does ZFS tune to a different key than ext3 or HFS+?

Re:Oboe

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I can't help you. I can tune a fish to 554.4 Hz, but I cannot tune a filesystem.

Re:Oboe

[Creepy Crawler]

Yup.

Re:Oboe

[Dragonslicer]

You know how to get two oboes to play in tune, don't you? If you're in a marching band, replace "oboe" with "piccolo".

The answer, of course, is to shoot one.

Re:Oboe

[ChrisMaple]

I suppose that it might be possible to tune brasses and woodwinds by providing a special mix of gasses to the instrument and the performer. You might, for instance, increase the helium flow to an instrument that's flat. Temperature is also relevant, but keeping an instrument chilled or heated would be inconvenient and might be uncomfortable for the performer.

Re:Oboe

[ceoyoyo]

And only in a full orchestra. In smaller groups you're lucky if you have one. We sit in splendid isolation (at least when we can get the flute or piccolo to quit jabbing us) like the crown jewel of the ensemble.

Re:Oboe

[Gabrill]

With mayonnaise and relish, of course.

Re:Oboe

[njchick]

Tuna can be tuned easily.

not related to technology at all

[mateomiguel]

There is no mention of modern tuning methods in the first article. The article simply says that different orchestras use different frequencies roughly around the same pitch for A. This is not a new thing.

You would expect modern tuning methods to make the official definition of A more exact, thus eliminating the problem spoken about in the article. That's what I thought, and I'm a musician. In fact the standard A4 frequency has been defined as 440 Hz. That means that if you hear the London Philharmonic Orchestra they should be tuned to A4=440 Hz, and the Timbuktu Traditional Blowpipe Ensemble should also be tuned to A4=440Hz, because its easy to carry around a pocket piece of electronics to make a perfect 440 Hz sound.

BUT

This article does not say that. In fact it says that different orchestras all over the world still are not in sync, which has been the case for ALL OF RECORDED HISTORY. The article says that because of this phenomenon, even those who can hear absolute pitch are confused as to what name they should give the frequencies immediately around 440Hz because of the variations. This is not new, or news, or related to technology in any way. Its just a fact of life.

Re:not related to technology at all

[uglyduckling]

Thank-you, well said. I've heard a few musicians say that 'perfect' pitch is actually a curse - due to equal temperament and the fact that concert pitch is a variable concept, those with that gift are likely to hear most of the music they listen to as out of tune.

Some studios change the speed of recordings without correcting pitch because it sounds better (apparently) - I'm a musician (rock, not classical) and I often have to retune my guitar to play along with recordings even though I have a decent electronic tuner set to A4=440. I've often wondered (maybe because I don't have that gift) who gets to say what 'perfect pitch' is: is it just people who happen to have an inbuilt sense of A4=440; should be people with an inbuilt sense of A4=415 be called 'perfect dystonics' or something ?!

Far more useful is a very good relative pitch - being able to instantly recognise all the intervals and sing/play harmonies without thinking about it will make a far better musician than someone who happens to be able to tune their instrument to concert pitch without a reference note.

Re:not related to technology at all

[Aladrin]

What -is- new, relatively speaking, is the ability to hear music from all over the world. Throughout most of recorded history, you had very limited exposure to music in other countries. Now, we have Radio, TV, CDs, Internet... We're flooded with it. Instead of a person with Perfect Pitch only being exposed to local music, they actually experience much more non-local music than local.

Re:not related to technology at all

[Megane]

I'm a musician (rock, not classical) and I often have to retune my guitar to play along with recordings even though I have a decent electronic tuner set to A4=440.

Are these recordings on magnetic tape? The speed of magnetic tape can vary due to stretching and other such issues, which is noticeable enough when you try to put subtitles over a videotape source that a ramp factor is standard in any decent video subtitling package. So surely the speed variations of magnetic tape (and vinyl records) could be enough to affect tuning.

Re:not related to technology at all

[Miraba]

"Far more useful is a very good relative pitch - being able to instantly recognise all the intervals and sing/play harmonies without thinking about it will make a far better musician than someone who happens to be able to tune their instrument to concert pitch without a reference note."

That may be true, but it's still very annoying to subconsciously transpose a piece and realize it only when you find that you're missing a string.

Re:not related to technology at all

[uglyduckling]

I've found that a lot of studio recording of pop/rock music are not recorded at concert pitch, A4=440, regardless of whether it's CD/Vinyl/MP3. I'd be interested to see what others think: why not pick your top 10 pop/rock songs of all time, tune your instrument of choice to A4=440 and try to play along with each one. I'd be surprised if you made it through your top 10 without having to change your reference pitch - and since it's pop/rock it's unlikely due to a difficult-to-tune pipe organ or an old piano etc. dictating the reference note.

Re:not related to technology at all

[Maximum Prophet]

Thank-you, well said. I've heard a few musicians say that 'perfect' pitch is actually a curse - due to equal temperament and the fact that concert pitch is a variable concept, those with that gift are likely to hear most of the music they listen to as out of tune.

It's much worse than that. As you age, your ears shift your pitch perception. This doesn't affect people with relative pitch, (good or bad), but for people with perfect pitch, it can make *everything* off pitch. One of the articles said that young people tested better at identifying pitches, if they studied the mistakes they should find some people who were perfectly wrong the same amount all the time.*

*IANAA. (I am not a Audiologist, but I used to work for one.)

Re:not related to technology at all

[Reziac]

"The article simply says that different orchestras use different frequencies roughly around the same pitch for A."

I wonder how much that has to do with individuals developing preferences among orchestras -- ie. the ones you like best are those pitched at frequencies your ear deems best.

Re:not related to technology at all

[kisielk]

Many popular bands, the Talking Heads come to mind, intentionally change the speed of their recordings for effect.

Re:not related to technology at all

[Twisted64]

I've heard a few musicians say that 'perfect' pitch is actually a curse

Absolutely - the best example I know was by Gerald Moore, piano accompanist. He wrote that when playing for singers, they would ask him to transpose the music up or down, and having perfect pitch in his early life was only a hindrance. Also the quote about not being able to play on the cracks may have originated from him, after being asked to play higher, then lower, by a singer.

PS

[GomezAdams]

I have no idea if the concept of a standard desenses us to nearby frequencies as put forth in the article. I use aural tuning techniques and count beats and match tones to tune. I'm a non-believer in "perfect pitch" as claimed but have known several individduals with very good pitch perception or having "absolute pitch". Frank Sinatra was rumoured to be able to sing any note dead on pitch upon request without a reference note.

I'm missing something

[xx01dk]

I dunno. I'm one of those few (I won't call myself rare) that can detect the slightest bit of off-key-edness and it drives me bat shit crazy when I can hear it. Like I'll be grooving to a live performance and then I'll notice that the lead guitarist is oh-ever-so-slightly out of tune, and it will ruin the whole experience for me. But as long as everyone is in tune with each other, then what does it really matter, or am I missing something?

I'll also look up if I hear an airplane engine when the pitch doesn't sound "right" to me. Not that I'd really know or anything, I'm no airplane mech or anything.

Re:I'm missing something

[rivaldufus]

that's a good sense of "relative" pitch. It's pretty handy for all of us who don't have perfect pitch. One of the annoying things for people with perfect pitch is that most of them (if not all of them) start hearing all pitches (even when they're perfectly in tune) sharp. With good relative pitch, you have no issue starting off on a different A.

You can be trained to have good relative pitch, but I'm not so sure you can "learn" perfect pitch (although there are methods for developing perfect pitch - I've never met anyone who succeeded.)

Re:I'm missing something

[Tony Hoyle]

I've got that but not to that degree probably.. I've heard top 40 tunes that have been really popular have off key notes and/or singers and nobody around me noticed.. I just can't listen to it. It's not perfect pitch - I couldn't name the note that's wrong.. it's just *wrong* dammit!

Re:I'm missing something

[rivaldufus]

I know what you mean. Of course, a lot of newer stuff has so much pitch correction that you think you're listening to a keyboard. Lay off the Autotune/Melodyne a little! Of course, they try to adjust it to sound more human, but then it just sounds strangely out of tune.

Re:I'm missing something

[yada21]

So I ouht to count the fact that I have tin ear's as a blessing?

Re:I'm missing something

[eutychus_awakes]

What I hate is when old classic rockers sing their tunes in concert at a lower key, since their voices can't quite hit the high notes like they used to. . .it makes the whole thing sound flat and lifeless to me. Plus, I know EXACTLY what they're doing and why. Cheap cheap cheap.

Re:I'm missing something

[ConceptJunkie]

That bugs me too, but what bugs me even more is the live music is often played at a different tempo, usually faster, than the studio recording.

Re:Cursed PDF Format

[Nullav]

Here's the article in the less evil HTML format. (Or here if that link doesn't work.)

No, perfect pitch is a natural talent

[TheMCP]

Thereminists discuss perfect pitch frequently, because a number of noted Thereminists have had it, and it's (falsely) rumored that perfect absolute pitch is required to play the instrument. (Actually, you just need very good relative pitch.)

People who have perfect absolute pitch tend to have always had it: it's a natural talent, or curse as the case may be. They find it painful to listen to tones that are "off key" - indeed, the family of the great Clara Rockmore tells us that she even hated touch tone telephones because the tones were not on-key notes and she didn't want to hear them.

While it is possible to train someone who has a pretty good sense of absolute pitch in the first place to refine it to become extremely good, they'll never reach that level of perfect absolute pitch which some have, in which they can't stand to even hear off key pitches. And someone who has a poor sense of absolute pitch may easily be able to develop their sense of relative pitch, but is unlikely to ever reach the level of being extremely good at it.

Re:No, perfect pitch is a natural talent

[semiotec]

I am not sure what you disagree with.

I said absolute/perfect pitch is an innate ability and that acquired AP skills is only temporary.

The finding of the article is that people with AP are having their senses of G#-A-A# blurred due to the way orchestras tune to a wide range of "A" sound.

So, what exactly are you disagreeing with?

Re:No, perfect pitch is a natural talent

[edittard]

Clara Rockmore tells us that she even hated touch tone telephones because the tones were not on-key notes and she didn't want to hear them.

My understanding is that the tones were chosen so to avoid having harmonics in common, as that might cause the machinery to misidentify them. The jarring noise they make is a consequence of this.

Re:No, perfect pitch is a natural talent

[Corporate Troll]

They find it painful to listen to tones that are "off key" - indeed, the family of the great Clara Rockmore tells us that she even hated touch tone telephones because the tones were not on-key notes and she didn't want to hear them.

I'm totally tone-deaf and I don't like them either. I do not want to hear a sound when I push a phone button. That's why you can disable that crap on all touch tone telephones.

I know one...

[dreddnott]

I'm pretty sure he didn't have "it" when he started at college, but after enough practice my friend Rhonert got the hang of it. He can whip out any pitch now on demand and he's always been confirmed to be right. At least in his case, holding himself to a higher standard and becoming immersed in musical performance and music nerd culture did the trick.

I, on the other hand, have excellent relative pitch (I can tell you if a sequential interval is out of tune by 10 cents, wide or narrow) but only a weak sense of absolute pitch - if I guess a pitch I'll be close but typically flat, occasionally sharp, and it usually depends on how well my voice is doing that day, whether I'm singing the pitch or not, or if I can associate that pitch with a song I know well. When I spontaneously break out into a favourite aria in public I'm usually very near the original key, but a popular or traditional song I will definitely sing in the key of Comfortable!

Re:I know one...

[rivaldufus]

Interesting. I wonder if he always had perfect pitch, but had never developed it.

I developed good relative pitch in college (and have lost it, somewhat, years later.) I can "remember" for some time how, say, D sounds after playing piano for while, but eventually I "forget."

equal temperament also affects people...

[rivaldufus]

especially string players (with no frets.) It's very difficult, if not impossible, for them to play continually in equal temperament (unless playing with an equal temperament instrument such as piano.) The usual definition of Equal temperament is that octave is (usually) divided into 12 evenly spaced pitches. Modern day keyboard instruments are all tuned like this. It's fairly effective compromise, as all the keys (C Major, F minor, Eb minor, etc.) all sound the same. Unfortunately, a fifth or even a third for a given key is slightly out of tune (the half step and the octave are the only perfectly in tune intervals on a modern day piano.) In the other systems, there may be a perfectly tuned fifth and third for a given key, but other keys may sound horribly out of tune. Certainly, equal temperament is a more practical solution than constantly retuning a piano to a different pitch each time you drastically change keys.

Unrelated - My wife has perfect pitch - and I sometime "detune" my clavinova to D mean tone or some other system and play something in Eb minor. I certainly notice the difference, but it drives her crazy. She also has great difficulty when required to tune her violin for Baroque music (A 415.)

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[lysse]

Unfortunately, a fifth or even a third for a given key is slightly out of tune (the half step and the octave are the only perfectly in tune intervals on a modern day piano.)

And even saying that, many pianos employ "stretch tuning", where notes are tuned progressively sharper the higher up the keyboard they are. So octaves aren't even tuned in tune either...

Having said which, much of the richness of an ensemble sound comes from the fact that each player is just slightly out of tune with the others; likewise, much of the richness of an analogue synth comes from the marginal tuning instabilities of analogue oscillators... and one of the most universally recognised sounds in dance music is basically a bunch of sawtooth waves wildly out of tune with each other (the spread can be as much as half a semitone). So there's a lot to be said for not being quite in tune.

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[jpfed]

The worst discrepancy between a just-tempered interval and its corresponding equal-tempered interval is the major third, which at four semitones is 2^(4/12) = 1.259. This is quite perceptibly different from the ideal major third, 1.25. But most of us grew up listening to equal-tempered music, so we're used to it.

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[agg-1]

Unfortunately, a fifth or even a third for a given key is slightly out of tune (the half step and the octave are the only perfectly in tune intervals on a modern day piano.)

And even saying that, many pianos employ "stretch tuning", where notes are tuned progressively sharper the higher up the keyboard they are. So octaves aren't even tuned in tune either...

Neither is the equal-tempered halfstep/semitone (as the GP incorrectly asserted), in just intonation it's usually something like 16/15 (depending on which step it actually is inside the scale), from which the ET semitone is some 12 cents flat...

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[rivaldufus]

It's inherently imperfect; there are no perfect solutions for the tuning of instruments such as piano. You have to pick which interval you want to be perfect and you have to know that the rest won't be perfect.

I also find the phase issues on piano and other instruments to be interesting. If the hammer doesn't hit all the strings for a given pitch at the same time, there will be phase issues. Of course, there will always be phase issues, but it can be pretty bad - depending on the piano.

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[toddhisattva]

"Equal temperament is equally unfair to all keys."

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Phase of different notes is only audible as a difference in loudness.
Of course, for slightly detuned notes that are close, this can result in beating, and is, in fact, one of the tools piano tuners can use to get the right temperament.

Re:equal temperament also affects people...

[rivaldufus]

loudness is, indeed, the issue. If one pitch is "quieter" than the rest, that can be a problem. A pianist can compensate, but only so much. It's certainly much more difficult to compensate in difficult music.

Phase issues also happen frequently in recording. The sound level of an instrument in a recording is as important as the pitch it's playing - at least in some music.

Re:Cursed PDF Format

[Nullav]

http://view.samurajdata.se/ I suppose I should use the preview button more often.

Don't trust anything from Friemer

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't trust any study from Nelson Friemer. I took a Genetics class at UCSF when he was there. He gave a lecture,
and showed us a graph that didn't look right- as if the axes were swapped. The main lecturer for the class, Ira Herskowitz was sitting next
to me and noticed the same thing. I will always remember his comment- "Nelson, normally, in science, we align the dependent variable with the vertical axis when
trying to imply a functional relationship".

After that, I noticed pretty much everything he said showed a pernicious lack of rigor and every pitch study he's produced has been a load of bullcrap.

Re:Don't trust anything from Friemer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, on the one hand an anecdote from Anonymous Coward.

OTOH, a peer-reviewed article in PNAS, one of the premier science publications out there.

Which to trust, which to trust? It's quite the quandary.

Re:Don't trust anything from Friemer

[Creepy Crawler]

Oh, I'm SURRRE you did, anonycoward.

How about proof on your libel?

Re:Don't trust anything from Friemer

[Anonymous Coward]

PNAS doesn't have a great reputation. The problem is that PNAS is the worst of the buddy-system because of the way
articles are submitted and vetted. There is a ton of crap published in PNAS. It's not as bad as Science or
Nature, where people are just racing to get their newest fanciest results out with the most spin as possible.
Often time, if you read the papers that cite a Science or Nature paper, the original paper ends up trashed because
the Science or Nature paper was published in a rush with scanty data and overreaching conclusions.
I'll admit, some of the stuff in PNAS is great because some of the people who publish there do great work,
just not very exciting, so that the hotter journals won't touch it. It's that data the foundation of great science is built upon.

Also, just because a journal is peer reviewed doesn't mean that the science is good. It just means whoever peer
reviewed it read the paper and gave it a good score. Not even that: the editors can override
the bad scores from reviewers.

I am the original Anonymous Coward who made the observation Nelson's work is substandard. I got a PhD from a top-rated
program at a top-rated school, and one of the most important things I learned is that careful perusal of the literature
shows that about 90% (estimate) of the papers published are worthless: wrong experiment, wrong conclusion, overreaching conclusions, etc.
It's just a natural outcome of the way science is funded: based on 'hot papers', and not much else. Go read the Black Swan to learn a bit
more about how power laws apply to funding scientists- a few very hot scientists eat the majority of the funding, leaving
many other great scientists to toil in obscurity.

Anyway, regarding the paper and Nelson's work. Go read it yourself and decide. His studies are riddled with incredibly
poor design, so he ends up concluding completely incorrect things. For example, he used a self-selecting web survey
which has incredibly skewed results and then never normalized for that. If he's making such basic errors, can you imagine
what happens when he tries to do more complex things? Heck, my whole original post is that this guy was incapable of understanding the
basic fundamental functional relationship of a graph.

Perfect pitch is a learned ability

[flyingfsck]

I don't agree with the article. In my experience, Perfect Pitch hearing is a learned ability. I had it while I studied and practiced music and I don't have it anymore. I've also found the same with friends who played for a while and then stopped. If it is a genetic trait, then you would neither need to learn it, nor would one ever unlearn it.

Re:Perfect pitch is a learned ability

[jonbryce]

Someone with perfect pitch still needs to learn their reference notes to be able to make use of their abilities. Of course, if you haven't played any music for a long time, you will forget these.

The point is that someone who doesn't have perfect pitch wouldn't be able to learn it.

Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch?

[N Monkey]

I don't believe perfect/absolute pitch is being born with the ability to simply hear a note and know that it's C#. Rather, you have to be trained at least once that a certain sound is Bb, but later, any time you hear it, you know it's Bb. And I doubt that they'd be limited to a 12-tone pitch system unless that was all you ever exposed them to.

I'm sorry that I don't have a reference, but I believe I heard (pardon the pun) that we may all be born with perfect pitch but the vast majority of us soon lose this as we develop.

Tetrachromats (OT)

[jhdevos]

I think the same thing can happen with color. Some people (tetrachromats, I think) have a very sensitive ability to discern and remember colors, such that they could see paint swab at the store and know if it matches the paint on the wall at home.

This is completely off-topic, but tetrachromacy is something else: it is when the eye has not three but four different types of color-discerning cells. That means the number of 'dimensions' in the visible color-space goes up by one -- the result is that tetrachromats can see some color-pairs as being completely different, while we normal people see them as completely the same.

See wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy

Jan

Re:Tetrachromats (OT)

[TeknoHog]

That means the number of 'dimensions' in the visible color-space goes up by one -- the result is that tetrachromats can see some color-pairs as being completely different, while we normal people see them as completely the same.

I think the grandparent makes a sensible point about tetrachromats having an enhanced sensory response to different colors, which probably translates to better cognitive abilities related to color.

In terms of spectroscopy, normal human vision divides the whole spectrum of visible light into three bands, while tetrachromats have four bands. So I wouldn't call it an extra dimension (though it's true in a way), but rather simply increased resolution. Compare this to spectrometers, which usually have hundreds of bands.

From what I've read, tetrachromats have the extra band in addition to the usual three of RGB, so the four are not equally spaced. IIRC, the fourth is usually very close to R or G, so the extra sensitivity is not spread throughout the spectrum.

Re:Tetrachromats (OT)

[Megane]

From what I've read, tetrachromats have the extra band in addition to the usual three of RGB, so the four are not equally spaced.

Here is an example.

Re:Tetrachromats (OT)

[Eponymous Bastard]

In terms of spectroscopy, normal human vision divides the whole spectrum of visible light into three bands, while tetrachromats have four bands. So I wouldn't call it an extra dimension (though it's true in a way), but rather simply increased resolution. Compare this to spectrometers, which usually have hundreds of bands. Careful there. You're making the standard mistake that light is monocromatic. In that case you would be right, but most of the time it's not that simple.

Say you have two #888888 paints. Notice that this is a gray, made from the addition of multiple colors, not necessarily red, green and blue, but close enough that we perceive the addition as #888888. You can't make such a color with a single laser, for example. Now a tetrachromat might see the two paints as #88008888 and #00888888 or some mixture thereof, since they can better discern the components.

So, yes, the extra color would have to be considered an additional dimension, just like we use a 3d RGB color space rather than a simple wavelength to discern the colors we use.

Now, how you would modify the HSV color space for a tetrachromat is a good question.

Re:Tetrachromats (OT)

[h4rm0ny]

That's amazing. Unfortunately the plug-in is incompatible with my Linux system, but it's fascinating to read about. I'll have to try it from work tomorrow.

Re:Tetrachromats (OT)

[TeknoHog]

Careful there. You're making the standard mistake that light is monocromatic.

No, I'm not making that assumption. I was talking about spectroscopy after all, and I agree with your dimensional argument.

I thought the resolution argument would be easy for /. geeks to understand, since in spectroscopy you're basically splitting the light into a 'rainbow' which is read by a CCD or something like that. More pixels mean better resolution for the spectrum. With monochromatic light, it means you have a better estimate of the central wavelength, but naturally it helps with more complex spectra as well. On a computer display, a higher resolution can help you distinguish two pictures that look identical with a low resolution, which is basically your dimensional argument :)

It wasn't J.S. Bach

[jenik]

Modern equal tempering was not even developed until about 70 years after J.S. Bach's death. In his Well-tempered Clavier he made use of 'well tempering', which was an older technology. He didn't develop that one either though. http://www.jimloy.com/physics/scale.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[Stooshie]

... we may all be born with perfect pitch but the vast majority of us soon lose this ...

I think the point the GP is making is that no-one can be born with it as the 12-tone system is a man-made invention. Very experienced musicians are aware of what A is because over time they have learned what A is through the constant use when tuning instruments.

Er.... still artificial.

[brunes69]

That is all well and good, until you start with a string whose natural harmonic frequency is say, 445.6 Hz, 448 Hz, or any other random number.

It's not like in nature there is some "ideal guitar string tree" that grows strings of exactly 440 Hz. **We create strings** for our instruments that have harmonics that fit our **artificially created** scale.

Humans love to take natural elements and put them in pretend boxes.

Re:Er.... still artificial.

[iangoldby]

I'm not sure what your point is, but I don't think we're really in major disagreement. Of course A 440 Hz is an arbitrary standard. Come to that, 440 Hz as a number is dependent on an arbitrary definition of the length of a second, the use of the base ten number system, etc.

What isn't arbitrary is the relative pitches of notes in the Western scale - that is the ratio between pitches - which as I was trying to explain above, is related to real physics and is not at all arbitrary.

Re:Er.... still artificial.

[bidule]

You totally missed the point. The base natural harmonic frequency has no impact on the GP.

p' = 2.9966 * 440 Hz

which is slightly flatter than the natural harmonic 3 * 440 Hz.

So, as you say it isn't 440 Hz but some random 445.6 Hz, well then:

p' = 2.9966 * 445.6 Hz

which is slightly flatter than the natural harmonic 3 * 445.6 Hz.

Oh what a surprise!

BTW, our time unit the second doesn't have any magic property that makes it behave differently than the Magrathean's or the Golgafrincham's time unit. Nor does measuring your weight in newton rather than pounds make you fall faster. Thank God Galileo used the same balance for both cannonballs otherwise who knows what would have happened!

I am sure this is a case of submitting before thinking, but let's make sure everyone screw their head straight after that long weekend.

Re:Er.... still artificial.

[strstrep]

Which is why we have these little things called tuning knobs. You turn them, and it changes the tension in the strings. With a good enough ear or a proper tuner, you can make it very close to any pitch you want within a reasonable range, such as 440 Hz.

Re:Er.... still artificial.

[agg-1]

Of course the absolute pitches are just convention, but, as already noted elsewhere, the relative pitches (frequency ratios a.k.a. musical intervals) aren't. They are more or less given by the physical laws of sound generation and how our ears and brains perceive a mixture of partials and assign one or more pitches to it. It's true that, as far as our knowledge of history goes back, the Greeks (and possibly the Babylonians before them) invented those "natural" scales, but that doesn't mean that they are totally arbitrary.

There are other kinds of instruments which produce different, non-harmonic spectra, especially in non-Western music, and these also use different scales (like in gamelan music). It has been argued that the scales these musical cultures use relate to the spectra of their instruments as well, see Sethares, Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale. Specifically, it seems that scale pitches are usually very near to points where the total auditory dissonance attains local minima. (Auditory dissonance is due to different partials exciting the same "critical band" on the cochlea, when hearing two or more complex tones sounding together in musical intervals or chords.)

Another possible (but, AFAIK, at the moment still hypothetical) explanation of at least the "harmonic" scales is certain kinds of "phase-locking" oscillations of pairs of neuron groups forming a kind of "neural oscillators" with non-linear resonances.

Also, note that we share a lot of our ear apparatus (and quite possibly also a part of the central auditory nervous system) with other mammals, so some of this might actually be relevant to other mammals as well.

Re:Er.... still artificial.

[eh2o]

It isn't much of a box, really, as 440 is just one number in use. It used to be more like 435. And, its not really even 440 any more as many orchestras tune to 442, some up as high as 445. (being a bit "sharp" makes the music sound a bit more lively).

Which brings us back to TFA -- the research in the article finds that because of this ever-sharpening of A 440, people with perfect pitch are more likely to confuse A and A# and G / G# than any other pair of notes. That is actually pretty interesting because no one has managed to show before that there is some kind of systematic degradation in the perfect pitch ability.

Bring on the penis jokes!

[SanityInAnarchy]

PNAS! Come on!

I know we've done it before, but that doesn't stop us. Allow me to demonstrate:

In Soviet Russia, us stops that! Frist psot! Reductium Ad Hitler.

Re:Cursed PDF Format

[Anonymous Coward]

Nitpicker...
Just be glad it ain't a .doc format, or .rtf, or whatever.
pdf might be annoying in its loading time, but it's quite convenient to preserve an article's layout in different environments.

Some people just need to whine about everything.
Atleast PDF doesn't contain bloody huge advertisements which float over your page blocking your view to the text, and that suck up your entire display real-estate...

only on earth

[jovius]

So.. a minuscule amount of people with accurate pitch sensing ability are screwed because of human invention of a modern western twelve tone system, to which they are forced into. The technology shapes our realities in a way where we are being tested against rigid and arbitrary standards devised by ourselves. Sounds like a normal day on Earth, whose inhabitants seem to have the amazing ability of locking themselves into their own mental labyrinths.

J.S. Bach

[oboeaaron]

J S Bach was one of those who worked on a solution to this, and he came up with the modern even-tempered scale, which averages out the intervals so that all keys are equally in-tune (or out-of-tune).

This notion, that J.S. Bach "invented" equal temperament, is a canard that arose sometime in the early 20th century. Twelve-tone equal temperament had been proposed as a theoretical tuning system prior to Bach, but no one took it seriously enough to put it into practice. Instead, a (large) number of "unequal" temperaments were proposed and used; these tuning systems made some keys more "pure" in intonation than other keys, while still trying to preserve the playability of most of the keys. Around 1722, Bach wrote the first volume of the "Well-tempered clavier" ("clavier" was a generic term for any kind of stringed keyboard instrument), demonstrating that with a suitable temperament, all 24 major and minor keys were in-tune enough to be musically viable. There is, however, not a single shred of evidence or documentation that he ever used equal temperament. His tuning method was described by his son C.P.E. some years after his death, and while his description is vague, it clearly indicates the use of an unequal temperament (he refers to J.S. tuning "most of the fifths slightly flat;" in equal temperament all of the fifths are tuned slightly flat).

In fact, equal temperament was probably not consistently employed until the very late 19th or even early 20th century. See Owen Jorgensen for more on this. The modern fantasy that J.S. Bach employed equal temperament for the Well-tempered clavier is probably due to the modern proponents of this tuning system needing an historical "pioneer" to legitimize it.

The authors of many recent articles claim to have discovered Bach's intended tuning (see the last two years of the journal "Early Music"), but the reality is that he did not record the steps he used to tune his instruments, and the precise tuning system he devised will forever remain a mystery.

Re:J.S. Bach

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, Bach did it, you hate it, and you're so petty and vindictive that you need to manufacture an argument to denounce him.

How pathetic.

Guess what band geek, no one gives a fuck about your opinion, and in this case you're wrong and you know it.

Choke on your oboe you loser.

Re:J.S. Bach

[Dogtanian]

You're so petty and vindictive that you need to manufacture an argument to denounce him. [..] Guess what band geek, no one gives a fuck about your opinion, and in this case you're wrong and you know it. Mmm... yeah, I like the way that you backed this up with a convincing and detailed rebuttal explaining just *why* he's wrong. Otherwise I'd suspect that you were trolling.

Re:J.S. Bach

[Anonymous Coward]

And you bit.

How stupid does that make you look?

But hey, at least you're not a fucking band geek (unless you are then holy shit...)

Octave?

[rossdee]

Since the whole world (with the exception of the USA) uses the metric system, why not change to metric music?

You could use 1000hz as the reference frequency and have a 10 note decave instead of a 12 note octave. (Hey shouldn't an octave be eight notes?)

Re:Octave?

[Mode_Locrian]

There are plenty of alternative tuning systems, though I don't know if a "metric" tuning has been done (though I wouldn't be surprised at all if someone had already tried it). Just as an example, Javanese Gamelan music uses two different tuning systems, both of which (iirc) divide the octave unevenly between five pitches. In any event, I think that our current tuning system is really quite a reasonable one. Ignoring the fact that A is the note commonly tuned (this, I think, is more of a historical accident based on the fact that this is an open string on a violin) the frequencies of the "home note", C, are actually all powers of 2. Middle C is 512Hz, an octave above it is 1024Hz, an octave below it is 256Hz etc. That strikes me as being a lot neater than a "metric" system anyway. Oh, and I think that the reason it's called an octave has to do with the fact that the eighth note of the traditional Western scale is the repeated one. E.g. C D E F G A B C

Re:Octave?

[Mattwolf7]

Why does everyone want to make things "metric" (when you really mean decimal) that don't need to be? Just because 10 is an easier concept, it doesn't make music or time easier. Both fit perfectly into our system by using 12 instead of 10.

Re:Octave?

[my $anity 0]

We could call it Hol-rock!

something to try

[v1]

You can demonstrate perfect pitch to a bystander that's butchering something if you can whistle a good solid tone and so can they.

Not sure if it's uncommon or not, but I can match another person's whistle to the cycle, and it has an interesting effect. Ask them to whistle a good pure solid tone and not waver or drift. Be sure to tell them to NOT STOP whistling, even if they feel they're not whistling anymore.

If you can lock onto their whistle quickly, (before you run outa breath!) you can beat them cycle for cycle, and it has the effect of zeroing out the tone. When you are near perfect, the sound where the whistle originates will change. Instead of hearing it from yourself and your friend, it will appear to be coming from somewhere between where the two of you stand. (be sure you're a good 5 ft apart) This is very unsettling because for a time during the duration you can't hear yourself or the other person whistling and it tends to influence one or both of you "move" a little bit up or down just so you can hear yourself again.

People standing off to the side will get the weirdest look on their face as they can hear the whistle slowly drifting back and forth between the two of you, as your pitch is 1/8 cycle or so off from each other, causing it to nearly zero beat. You can of course perfectly match them but that's no fun as the perceived origin of the sound does not drift between the two of you, it merely stops somewhere in between.

Re:something to try

[ceoyoyo]

That is not what's called perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is if you can walk up to that whistling bystander and identify the note he's whistling, tell him if he's in tune with something you heard last week, or identify the exact tone next week. The key is there is no reference pitch, except in your head.

You've described tuning to an actual reference pitch, something every musician is supposed to be able to do.

Standards

[Gothmolly]

The nice thing about standards, is that there's so many to choose from.

Idiotic premise of this article - you have to tune to SOMETHING.

Re:Standards

[Creepy Crawler]

Then I say we tune to 60Hz.

That low rumble is soo easy on the ears. And there's more sound output at 60Hz than concert bands playing. After all, isnt our electric grid up and running 24/7?

Web-based surveys are not cheat-proof

[maccallr]

I've only read the abstract, but my first thought was that someone doing a web-based survey might pick up their guitar and figure out the correct answers...

For more web-based music, see my sig.

Erm, Indian Music, not to mention others?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this means diddly squat outside Western codifications of the diatonic note system. Indian and Arabic music use microtonal variations (quartertones and smaller) within a broadly speaking diatonic scale. Even the tonic note is negotiable - in part because Indian musicians aren't bound to such an arbitrary standard, but mainly because instruments such as sitar and tabla, with gourd or animal skin resonators and, in many cases, sympathetic strings are the devil to keep in tune given variations of temperature and humidity.

441Hz for easier maths

[Andy_R]

It might be worth throwing into the debate the use of 441Hz that I've seen in quite a few computer-based synthesisers. With the CD standard of 16bit 44.1kHz sampling (or more recently multiples thereof), having an A at 441 makes tuning tables a bit easier to work out.

A transposing instrument

[tepples]

She also has great difficulty when required to tune her violin for Baroque music (A 415.) A at 415.0 Hz is pretty much the same as concert G# at 415.3 Hz. Does your wife also have difficulty with a Bb trumpet, whose A is at concert G (392.0 Hz) or other such transposing instruments?

Re:A transposing instrument

[Creepy Crawler]

You dont play the instrument's "A", but rather you compensate for your transposition and play up or down. Us Bb clarinets and trumpets play C. My A Clarinet plays B for concert pitch.

My C Saxophone (circa 1914 Conn), you just play A. They quit making them just after the war.

Re:A transposing instrument

[rivaldufus]

well, she doesn't play trumpet or any transposing instrument, so it doesn't matter to her. The transposing instruments still tune to the same A as everyone else in the orchestra... it's just that their "A" might be a "B" or an F#.

Re:A transposing instrument

[EEBaum]

Us Bb clarinets and trumpets play C. My A Clarinet plays B for concert pitch.

Got it backwards there, buddy. To play a concert A, your Bb plays B, your A plays C. In a band, you might play a C, given the ensemble's tendency to tune to Bb rather than A.

My Eb, you tune on F#, which is just nasty.

Re:A transposing instrument

[Creepy Crawler]

Whoops. Sorry.

I play in a symphony and a band.. I know kinesthetically which notes are which fingers but sometimes tend to mess them up ;)

10edo?

[tepples]

You could use 1000hz as the reference frequency and have a 10 note decave instead of a 12 note octave. (Hey shouldn't an octave be eight notes?) A 10-edo (10 equal divisions of octave) scale would be similar in character to the slendro scale, which is approximately 5edo. But would it have anything close to the nice 3:2 and 5:4 just intervals that the more familiar Western 12edo based scales approximate?

Just be glad HD mfrs havn't gotten involved...

[Overzeetop]

Or your second C would really only be 1000hz!

(actually, I believe middle C is 256hz, as A440 occurs in the second space of the treble clef)

Re:Just be glad HD mfrs havn't gotten involved...

[Mode_Locrian]

Haha yeah. And yes, you're right--middle C is 256Hz. My bad.

Re:Just be glad HD mfrs havn't gotten involved...

[Overzeetop]

Don't feel bad. I figured A440 was below middle for years. The only time we tuned to A440 was in the wind ensemble or symphony. I played horn, so we usually tried to con the conductor into giving us an F which would be open C on both F and Bb sides of the instrument. It wasn't until I was goofing around on the a piano one day during symphony practice and realized that (1) the oboe wasn't even close to the piano and (2) I'd been thinking an ocatave off for years. Not that it mattered - I dropped keyboard as an early teen, and since I don't sight-transpose and the horn is a fifth off of the actual pitch, the only thing I'm good at is relative pitches.

Harder time discerning notes around A?

[soulexposed]

This may just be me, but if you use A to tune all the time wouldn't you become more accustomed to its pitch and therefore notice more often if it was sharp or flat?

Also, as someone who has been told they have perfect pitch (I haven't done any official tests so I'm not 100% sure), when I'm listening to music that may not be precisely on-key it doesn't bother me or sound "wrong", it just sounds different. That is, as long as the instruments are all tuned together; if it's just one instrument that's out of key from the rest of them, it does bother me. :P

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all relative, Tillis...

I think you misunderstood everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you guys misunderstood it all. My interpetation is that the chaotic tuning sound (of which the constituents are all supposed to be A440, but aren't) cause this effect; the pitches hover usually around Ab to A#, so it's no wonder that people's pitch perception gets confused if they don't take some special lessons, from Chiaki-sama for instance.
I bet you've sat in an orchestra a number of times, so dare to contradict me!

Conductor-san: Piano-san! Give us an A!
Piano-san: Which A?
Conductor-san: The same A as always, you tard!
* Piano-san gives A
* Chaotic tuning sounds ensue *
* Chaotic tuning sounds subside *
* Symphony begins *
Conductor-san: First violin! Wakey-wakey! Your solo!
* First violin starts playing in an Appologgiatura manner *
Conductor-san: What is this nonsense! This is to be played like this!
* Conductor grabs the poor girl's violin and plays piece ten times better than all violinists put together *
Orchestra (kvetchendo): WHAT? Conductor-san can not only play Rachmaninoff's piano concerto No. 2 on a level that makes $critic remain aseat for two hours after the performance is over, he is also a a God of violin?
* Conductor breaks his baton

Oh wait, this is quite different from what I wanted to say at first, but nevermind.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[locofungus]

12-tone system is a man-made invention

Not really.

The (perfect) octave, fourth and fifth are natural harmonics. So natural, infact, that if you silently hold down a G and then strike the C an octave and a half below the G will start to audibly resonate (even though on the piano the G is slightly out of tune compared to the C)

Twelve consecutive fifths (and I'm using consecutive here to mean going up a fifth, then another fifth etc rather than it's musical meaning) will (almost) bring you back to the original note but 7 octaves higher.
Twelve consecutive fourths will (almost) bring you back to the original note but 5 octaves higher.

Other intervals also have rational ratios.

Major third = 5/4

And if you look at the harmonics of the fundamental:

1 - Fundamental
2 - Octave
3 - Fifth (3/2)
4 - Octave
5 - Major third (5/4)

And as an aside, the clarinet only has odd harmonics, therefore the upper register is an octave and a fifth above for the same fingering.

A bell has a resonance a minor third (6/5) below the fundamental.

(The minor third is the interval between the major third and the dominant: 3/2 / 5/4 = 6/5)

Tim.

Physics of Music

[fiber_halo]

I'm surprised that there are so many knowlegable folks on slash here that can discuss music and the physics of music

I'm an engineer and self-taught on the guitar and keyboard/piano, although I need a lot more practice. One thing that I'm lacking is a good reference on the theory. For example, I know that "no sharps of flats" is the key of C-major/A-minor. Why? Is it by definition? No one, even the few musicians I've talked to seem to be able to tell me. The same thing with the progression of the progression of the keys G-major, D-major.. I want to be able to derive this sort of thing and not have me be told "just memorize it".

If anyone knows of any web sites or books, I'd love to know which ones are good.

-David

Re:Physics of Music

[rcw-home]

I know that "no sharps of flats" is the key of C-major/A-minor. Why? Is it by definition?

I'd imagine C was picked arbitrarily.

The same thing with the progression of the progression of the keys G-major, D-major.. I want to be able to derive this sort of thing

Check out the circle of fifths.

Re:Physics of Music

[agg-1]

I'm surprised that there are so many knowlegable folks on slash here that can discuss music and the physics of music

Me too. :) Myself I'm a mathematician who happens to lead a computer music department, so I guess I'm supposed to know this stuff.

One thing that I'm lacking is a good reference on the theory. For example, I know that "no sharps of flats" is the key of C-major/A-minor. Why? Is it by definition?

Basically, yes. But the details are surprisingly complicated. I've also noticed time and again that many musicians know zilch about this, as it involves a good deal of mathematics and physics and many musicians abhor these subjects. If you're looking for online materials, it might be worth to take a look at the Just Intonation Network which has a wealth of information on different kinds of tunings and the rationale behind them, as well as links to the literature. And then there's the Tuning & temperament bibliography. Last but not least, if you want to get really serious about learning the mathematics behind music, I'd recommend Mazzola's tome Topos of Music.

Re:Physics of Music

[Je-Tze]

I'm sure there are many great references out there, and i'd wager that serching Wikipedia for things like "chromatic scale" and "musical temperment" will give you a good start, and more importantly, point you to many good references.

My personal recomendation though, would be the Encyclopedia Britanica's set of articles on the subjects. I read it as a teen and it really helped me get a grasp on the whole field. This would have been like a mid-late 80's U.S. edition, but i'm betting not much has changed with it. It was a very thorough treatment including everything from the physics of sound waves and octaves to the workings of, and the history/reasoning behind, all the various types of scales and temperments. From there if you wish you can also get into their treatments of the various musical systems from around the world. Fascinating stuff!

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[Mr. Slippery]

The (perfect) octave, fourth and fifth are natural harmonics.

Except that the perfect fourth and fifth are not what are used in the modern well-tempered 12 note scale.

Our scale is based on the twelth root of two. (Thus the octave, a factor of two, is broken up into twelve steps.) It's a convenience to let us have instruments that can play in many different keys without needing to be re-tuned.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. And once you've heard music that isn't on a "well tempered" scale, you wonder how the hell people put up with it. Or at least I do. One of the great things about computing is that you're no longer bound by well-tempered "ScrewyScales(tm)", with a little audio programming.

Complete junk....

[Joce640k]

The article is complete junk.

440Hz is used as a reference for the tuning of instruments, it has no relationship whatsoever to the notes actually played by those instruments.

Re:Cursed PDF Format

[Runefox]

Offtopic, but actually, PDF isn't bad if you're using a decent (non-Adobe) reader. Foxit's quite good on the Windows front.

MOD PARENT UP

[raddan]

foo (lameness).

just just

[dickens]

There is arguably no one alive today in the west that is culturally conditioned to prefer just intonation. Just intonations is "just", meaning it's mathematically correct - intervals are the ratios of small integers. Other intonations are not. I'm sure peoples' ears can be conditioned to expect anything.

I'm a barbershop singer, and we have to deal with oddities such as having to sing an ascending third sharper than we think it should be when the melody is moving up by that interval, yet when singing the third as part of a harmony, it will have to be flatter to be in tune.

If you want to hear a correct third, just get 50 guys in a room and have them all sing the same vowel, in the intervals root/fifth/root. The third will just jump out and wail away without anyone singing it.

Re:just just

[Twinbee]

There is arguably no one alive today in the west that is culturally conditioned to prefer just intonation.

Playing or listening to music in JI (and there is quite a lot of the stuff out there if you look carefully) could be enough to be 'conditioned', and of course, there are many JI advocates who prefer the sound of JI for whatever reasons.

I'm a barbershop singer, and we have to deal with oddities such as having to sing an ascending third sharper than we think it should be when the melody is moving up by that interval, yet when singing the third as part of a harmony, it will have to be flatter to be in tune.

Interestingly, in one study on Barbershop singing, they found a preference towards the equal tempered major third, but the minor seventh, they preferred the pure version. (ref).

I would say: Both versions (ET & JI) sound good in different ways, but the JI version sounds good in the sense that it's almost not quite there, and therefore affects the 'overall timbre', rather than the sense of harmony. I myself do appreciate the sound that can result of simple intervals like this.

However, it's worth stressing again that (I believe) this is a different kind of consonance to the consonance type usually associated with the twelve chromatic intervals of the scale. I'm sure you'd agree that they sound good in different ways, and that even as part of the a static chord, the ET version has a slight advantage (in one way, if not in the other) over the JI version?

Re:just just

[dickens]

Thanks for the link. The "two types of consonance" thing is interesting.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[Incoherent07]

Since about six people have all responded to this in the same way, I'll point out that while there is a mathematical basis for a twelve tone system, there's nothing intrinsic about the idea of only twelve tones. If you extend the idea of harmonics beyond the 12 tones most people stop at, you end up with different numbers of tones, like 19 or 31. See also: microtonal music, which a music composition friend of mine in college was really into.

Perfect Pitch: Deffinition

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to throw a banjo into a dumpster without hitting the side.

Our Ears?

[DynaSoar]

I don't see anything in TwholeFA that says anything about "modern" tuning as opposed to non-modern. The choice of A is arbitrary. Until this is replicated using different notes as the target, they've got too much confluence of musical memory and their theoretical genetics to do more than use the conclusions as the basis for more work. (And what good grant-using researcher doesn't; a PNAS publication makes that very easy for them).

The use of "none were musically naive" is a poor operational definition because it's too vague. Better to use "professionally trained performers with X years performance experience". Those with a lot of listening exposure and only enough performance experience (even if just by themselves) makes it likely that those with true AP and those with relative pitch (RP; being able to tell a pitch compared to another) are mixed together. The latter can have an extensive musical memory and be able to compare a presented tone with a song in memory that they know is in a certain key. They may well have done so, because they included at least one subject with skewed scores that were very consistent in their skewing (always one sharp off) as an AP subject.

The memory problem will probably also come out if they replicate this (as they suggest) with people from other cultures. Those who come from cultures with tonal based languages are going to have a very good tonal memory and discrimination from any given starting note and so good RP.

I'm highly suspect of a 44% sample of AP. I used the more rigorous definition of musical experience in brain imaging experiments and had about 15% true AP among them. Many of those claiming AP had good RP, and their EEG showed more memory than auditory activation, just as those claiming and having only RP. I'm also suspect of getting the same results from sinusoidal tones vs. piano tones. The latter has multiple overtones, providing multiple cues for the pitch. I used only sinusoidal for that reason.

Having the tones presented via web transmission gives no control over the actual output. Despite having as little as 0.01% total harmonic distortion in the amplifiers, output devices such as speakers and headphone or ear buds have around 1% to 3% THD, all of the different kinds having different harmonic distortion profiles.

Their description of aging causing "sharping" due to hair cell stiffening with age is very good. But the possibility remains that the documented time distortion due to perceptual slowing with age can be involved. That needs prying apart with other perceptual testing for time distortion per subject. A longitudinal study with the same "true" AP subjects decades later would be wonderful for the aging/sharpening problem, but figure the odds.

All that aside, good AP and RP probably have the same genetic source for auditory perception (minus auditory memory). I think they're on to something.

Re:Our Ears?

[dodongo]

I'm highly suspect of a 44% sample of AP. I used the more rigorous definition of musical experience in brain imaging experiments and had about 15% true AP among them. Many of those claiming AP had good RP, and their EEG showed more memory than auditory activation, just as those claiming and having only RP. I'm also suspect of getting the same results from sinusoidal tones vs. piano tones. The latter has multiple overtones, providing multiple cues for the pitch. I used only sinusoidal for that reason.

This is genuinely not-snarky, but curious: has anyone compared, e.g., a piano to sinusoidal tones among a group of AP informants? What about a 'piano' using only single strings vs. double?

E, Eb, D...

[dickens]

I wasn't aware of old rockers playing detuned.

But some people tune in other keys for different reasons. SRV had his whole band tuned to Eb so he could use 52-12 strings (or something like that) on his old strat and still be able to bend them.

My son's band plays almost everything in "dropped D" or lower. Listen to that for a while and then it sounds odd when you hear a guitar tuned to E again.

Interesting in it's futility

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending so much time arguing about what is the 'right' tuning is a bit silly. When an orchestra tunes (or any ensemble) what is arrived at is an agreement on a relative reference. (Yes, by convention A-440 is the target, but as has been pointed out, ensembles often use different references to achieve different results)
That being said, as soon as the tuning has finished, the reference to A-440 is absolutely useless (and in a sense, absolute pitch is useless and even a hindrance). When the performance starts, intonation is a negotiation among the ensemble (and if you want to extend this, it is also affected by environmental factors such as a hall that has some nasty acoustical characteristics or a vengeful HVAC system that keeps things too hot or too cold (or changes the temperature randomly))

I suppose that this is the right place for a physics or psychology discussion of pitch, but in ensemble performance, intonation (perhaps defined as playing the 'right' pitch) is a social matter.

Frequency shifting

[compwizrd]

My hearing aids frequency shift everything down to around 1000hz, the range I can actually somewhat hear in.

The brain gradually learns what high pitch and low pitch is. With hearing aids, I can hear the 8khz band being tweaked on an equalizer, whereas without the hearing aids I can't tell the difference when the 1khz or higher is adjusted.

With a cochlear implant, with time the brain learns to adjust and distinguish frequencies, but never has the same degree of sensitivity.

Piano vs. Sine

[jpfed]

Pianos have multiple overtones... but the stiffness of the strings means that those overtones do not form an arithmetic series. See The Physics of Musical Instruments for a discussion (and much much more).

When it comes to this, I am a layman, but my guess would be that if the overtones are not an arithmetic series, they will not be as straightforwardly helpful for pitch recognition as a (more typical) arithmetic series would be.

12 Tone Music is Superior

[B_SharpC]

Perhaps a person of user name of B_SharpC (B sharp = C) can clear up some misunderstanding here. I played classical piano in the past.
 
The 12 tone music in our western world is more than a 'man made' invention. From an evolution point of view, natural selection, it is an ideal selection. In prior times there were fewer notes, my recollection is like 5 or 7 notes. The con is that's too few for melody. Current Eastern societies have their scale in the 20+ notes. That's too many, too complex, too noisy.
 
12 based systems have the advantage of being easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, etc. Ideal music is mathematically divisible. 12 tone is superior as the best compromise.
 
And that is why he is called 'B Sharp'. LOL! :-)

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[ceoyoyo]

Sure, but those relations hold no matter what frequency you use as a basis. The twelve tone system is not arbitrary, and the relations between the frequencies that correspond to those notes are not arbitrary, but the actual frequencies themselves are.

Recognizing a perfect fifth is not an example of perfect pitch. Hearing a 440 Hz sound and recognizing that it's an A WITHOUT a reference to compare it to is. But A == 440 Hz is arbitrary, so perfect pitch is a memory ability, not some innate sense of music.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[locofungus]

Our scale is based on the twelth root of two. (Thus the octave, a factor of two, is broken up into twelve steps.) It's a convenience to let us have instruments that can play in many different keys without needing to be re-tuned.

No, this isn't right.

The modern piano is typically tuned with a stretched octave. The style and size of piano will determine the amount of stretch together with the type of room and type of music to be played to an extent. (In general, the larger the piano the less the stretch)

Tuning a piano well (ignoring the maintenance etc that a good piano tuner will also do) is very much a skill depending on an excellent ear and good musicality and not something that can be done with a frequency meter.

There is a very good reason top pianists take their piano and piano tuner with them when touring.

I was acting as an usher and general person helping out when Sviatoslav Richter performed in the Holywell Music Room after collecting his honourary doctorate at Oxford. The Steinway was moved out into a back room and his Yamaha installed. His tuner then tuned it up, he played a few little bits and then the tuner completely retuned it (tiny adjustments that I'm not sure I could actually hear). All to perform, IIRC, one Hayden piano sonata. (He then cancelled his concert in the QEH or Barbican - can't remember which - the following night because he was exhausted from all the excitement in Oxford :-) )

I later got a chance to play on his piano (after his death) at the Music Messe in Frankfurt. I'm certain that the only reason my playing didn't sound as good as his was I didn't have the piano tuner retune to match my style of playing and the room. ;-)

Tim.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[adrianmonk]

Not really.

The (perfect) octave, fourth and fifth are natural harmonics. So natural, infact, that if you silently hold down a G and then strike the C an octave and a half below the G will start to audibly resonate (even though on the piano the G is slightly out of tune compared to the C)

Or to put it in terms that are more mathematical, we have a twelve-tone system because of the value of the number 2^(7/12).

Put that expression into your calculator and evaluate it, and you'll get 1.498307. Notice that this is very close to being equal to 1.5? That's important.

Now, because of physics, objects that oscillate at some frequency N will also be stable and oscillate at 2*N, 3*N, 4*N, and so on. These additional frequencies are called "harmonics". So if I pluck a string tuned to X Hz and another string tuned to Y Hz, I will get frequencies at X, 2*X, 3*X, and so on, and I will also get frequencies at Y, 2*Y, 3*Y, and so on. And if Y = X * 2^(7/12), something interesting happens: because 2^(7/12) is approximately equal to 1.5, 2*Y is approximately equal to 3*X. That means the first harmonic of the higher note and the second harmonic of the lower note will line up. Other harmonics will line up as well. This makes a sound that is pleasing to the ear when both are played together. (Notice the similarity of the terms "harmonic" and "harmony"?)

Musical terminology gives a name to the interval between any two notes whose frequencies differ by a factor of 2^(7/12). It calls that a "perfect fifth". Musicians will notice that a perfect fifth equates to a change of 7 half steps. Moving up 1 half step equates to multiplying the frequency by 2^(1/12). A perfect fifth is 7 half steps and thus a ratio of 2^(7/12).

On a side note, I believe the reason people consider the equal temperament tuning non-ideal is that 2^(7/12) does not exactly equal 1.5. This means the harmonics line up pretty well (almost within 0.1%), but not exactly.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[turgid]

And as an aside, the clarinet only has odd harmonics, therefore the upper register is an octave and a fifth above for the same fingering.

Which brings us nicely to the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. For an example of what it sounds like, follow the link in my sig.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[EEBaum]

On a side note, I believe the reason people consider the equal temperament tuning non-ideal is that 2^(7/12) does not exactly equal 1.5

It's not so much the fifths that do you in (on a wind instrument, raising your eyebrows is usually enough to bring it to 1.5), but the much larger discrepancies with minor and major thirds, and major 7ths. 2^(4/12) is significantly further from 1.25 than 2^(7/12) is from 1.5. Sure, it's not quite 1%, but 1% at 440Hz is 4Hz, making the difference between just intonation and equal temperament variable enough to hear 4 beats (wawawawa, or weeooweeooweeooweeoo if you prefer) per second.

Temperament

[Anonymous Coward]

a fantastic book on this subject and the development of the standard tuning system we use today is called "Temperament" by Stuart Isacoff, and I recommend it to musicians and non-musicians alike.

Ishihara

[Anonymous Coward]

interestingly most printings of the ishihara test cards count on the viewer mentally considering some colors "the same" that aren't. if you can see the difference in the colors you'll miss the figure they've tried to draw pointillist-style.

Re:Standards 60 Hz

[PigIronBob]

Unless you live in Western Europe where the grid uses 50 Hz...

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[socz]

I think the point the GP is making is that no-one can be born with it as the 12-tone system is a man-made invention. Very experienced musicians are aware of what A is because over time they have learned what A is through the constant use when tuning instruments.

I agree. i started playing piano, then trombone for many years, and eventually tried harmonica and guitar. Point is, i've played many instruments for many years, but i am most proficient with the guitar. I can "feel" when i am out of tune. When i strike a string, i can hear and feel it. But that is not from natural ability, but from experience. I can not say the same for piano, which i don't play nearly as much. But when i did play trombone, which was about 7-8 years, i could also tell differences in notes. I think the reason is because trombone has such variable notes. If you don't place the slide in the correct place, your note will be off. So it's very important to learn to listen and distinguish the notes it plays correctly.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[jemenake]

Or to put it in terms that are more mathematical, we have a twelve-tone system because of the value of the number 2^(7/12). Put that expression into your calculator and evaluate it, and you'll get 1.498307. Notice that this is very close to being equal to 1.5? That's important.

Yup. I'd say that the important part is the "very close" part... as in "not exactly". It turns out that there's nothing magic or pre-ordained about the 12-tone scale. It just has the good fortune of coming very close to getting some nice ratios in note frequencies.
7 half-steps 2^(7/12) ("perfect" fifth) gives you frequencies that are pretty close to a 3:2 ratio.
5 half-steps 2^(5/12) ("perfect" fourth) gets you very close to a 4:3
4 half-steps 2^(4/12) (major third) gets you very close to a 5:4
3 half-steps 2^(3/12) (minor third) gets you very close to a 6:5
Now, the 12-tone scale doesn't have a monopoly on these ratios. A 17-tone scale can get within about .2% of the 3:2 and 4:3 ratios (while the 12-tone is within .1%). The 17-tone scale equals the 12-tone's accuracy on the 5:4 ratio (about .8%) but the 18-tone scale beats them both with .4%. And a 19-tone scale gets within 0.01% of the 6:5 ratio (compare to the 12-tone's .9% error).

So, the 12-tone scale doesn't "magically fit", and it doesn't get any of the ratios exactly. It doesn't even get some of them as well as some of the other scales. What it does have going for it, is it seems to be the one that gets listenably close to all of them.

"steel string abominations"

[rk]

Plus a comment from someone else about "worthless violins"... nothing like a technical music article to bring out catty instrument elitists. You can take my Fender Telecaster from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. ;-)

BTW, it would be ultrasonic, not hypersonic. Hypersonic means speeds far in excess of the speed of sound, typically starting at mach 5.

Re:"steel string abominations"

[dreddnott]

You never know, with tons of pressure on a thin, unnaturally strong string, you might be able to get it to vibrate back and forth faster than the speed of sound...is there a study regarding this, or a physical law that prevents it from happening? Hmmm...

Relative pitch-sense is the thing

[waterbear]

I've never understood how 'perfect pitch' can mean anything, or anything musical, unless the pitch, whatever it is, stands in good relation to other pitches.

And yet, there is plenty of evidence that the relative pitch-sense of many modern ears has been dulled, compared to what was more common two to three hundred years ago.

The parent poster wrote:
4 half-steps 2^(4/12) (major third) gets you very close to a 5:4
3 half-steps 2^(3/12) (minor third) gets you very close to a 6:5

'Very close'??? The difference between
-- the 2^(4/12) 'major third' of four semitones on the standard piano keyboard,
-- and the pure major third of 5:4,
is jarring to some, at almost one-seventh of a semitone too sharp! (Nearly 14 cents at 400 (equal-tempered) relative to 386 (5:4), is almost a seventh of a semitone.)

About the same goes for the minor third: on a standard keyboard it's more than a seventh of a semitone too flat for acoustic purity (about 16 cents, at 300 (equal-tempered) relative to 316 (pure 6:5)).

The standard equal-tempered keyboard is so dominant and close to universal, that probably many people have never even _heard_ pure harmony involving major or minor thirds. Quite a lot of musicians stick with equal temperament even when they don't have a keyboard as part of the group. I sense that the dominance of the standard keyboard with equal temperament has just about relegated pure harmony to a minority place. I play a string instrument myself, and on the basis of some tests with pitch-measurement, I find that I've been just about drilled into producing usually a close approximation to equal-temperament -- even though I do try to adjust to purer harmony with the others when I'm playing in a small group with a part to myself and when it's specially needed. Plenty of others play like that too. But pure harmony makes a stunning sound when it really is purely in tune, and it sharpens the ears and the pitch-sense to try to produce it.

Equally-tempered pitch-relations gained currency and dominance as music became generally more adventurous with its discords over the last couple of centuries, the keyboards had to be made to accommodate them, and the other players had to accommodate to the fixed-tuned keyboards whenever they played with them. The price was to throw away the pure concords. In an earlier age, when pure harmony was prized, a critic wrote of listening to harmonies based on equal temperament as like 'eating rotten meat and vinegar' -- and that's what is now the standard. Progress is not always up!

So my candidate for what has probably made modern ears less discerning is not the standard A 440, or any other standard pitch: it is the out-of-tune compromise in the pitch-relations of the standard equal-tempered keyboard.

(Or else maybe someone could explain what 'perfect pitch' is supposed to be, if it is really anything more than a pointlessly good memory for a tone that happens to be there as an arbitrary pitch on an intentionally out-of-tune keyboard? :) )

-wb-

The use of A as the universal tuning frequency.

[infiniphonic]

I actually use E.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[onion_joe]

And as an aside, the clarinet only has odd harmonics, therefore the upper register is an octave and a fifth above for the same fingering.

tell me about it. For anyone learning woodwinds out there, I highly recommend learning the clarinet first. Master it and every other woodwind is a transposition and/or embouchure adjustment only.

After learning the clarinet, the saxophone or (for you Jethro Tull fans out there) flute is a cakewalk.

Not to mention you can play some bitchin' klezmer!

University of California SF AP test

[Fuzquat]

http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu These articles are a result of people participitating in the above web site. Particularly fun is their test to determine whether you possess absolute pitch or not.

And oboists keep tuners handy

[phossie]

The funny thing is that the oboe is the instrument with the most difficult intonation problems. So every single oboist I've ever heard of keeps a tuner on the stand *at all times*. It also has a sound that can cut through the entire orchestra alone.

Er, there was another finding in the paper . . .

[BenPlonie]

"In addition, we document a gradual decline in pitch-naming accuracy with age, characterized by a perceptual shift in the "sharp" direction." My note to the researcher: Dear Dr. Gitschier, I noted with interest your incidental finding that people perceive actual pitches as sharper than their internalized or accustomed representations of them. I would like to put that together with a common phenomenon of elderly ladies applying bright pink spots of rouge on their cheeks. This is common knowledge and experience, but is easily borne out in expert documentation; a reference I turned up quickly was "A Guide to Elegance" by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, Doubleday 1964 and Harper Collins 2003 "Perhaps the most common error of the older woman is to place two bright spots of rouge on her cheeks, and I have often wondered if this isn't due more to failing eyesight than to lack of taste." Anyway, there is evidently there a similar frequency shift in which the lower light frequencies are perceived as faster or 'bluer'. I couldn't say if this has an expression in clothing and home furnishing choices for the elderly etc, but some marketing information could substantiate that. The loss of the blue end and of color discrimination (compressed spectrum?) in the elderly is documented. Beyond these examples, there is the subjective feeling we have of time passing more quickly as we age, and even the phenomenon of elderly people demanding slower speech of those around them (also usually attributable to failing senses. whatever that means). But regardless of the physical mechanism involved, anywhere from a reduction in quality and quantity of neurotransmitters, refractory tissues and membranes, etc. the common effect seems to be a general age-based change and downward mismatch in the mapping of time-based phenomena to their interior touchstones. What I am saying is that the interior product of a lifetime of perception is probably accurate or at least stable but can no longer be associated with the degraded inputs and transmissions. I am not good enough at this moment to extend that thought to more abstract (as opposed to sensory) experiences. "I feel like a spinning top or a Dreidel The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle You just slow down" - Don Mclean 1971 I would be interested in learning in the relationship of the mismatch you found to the absolute frequencies tested, that is what is it's 'frequency response' ? Both of those factors (subjective time perception and its perhaps formulaic variability along a frequency spectrum) have implications for audiology and hearing-aid design.

Re:Is it not more the case of losing perfect pitch

[Mr. Slippery]

No, this isn't right. The modern piano is typically tuned with a stretched octave.

I'll freely admit that piano tuning is a crazy art about which I have little clue.

No question that physical instruments (and their interactions with our ears and brains) aren't as clean as the numbers. Even when tuning my guitars, I find I sometimes have to adjust the low E and A strings a little bit from what the electronic tuner says they should be, to get it to sound right. If a dilettante like me can hear that on a moderate six-string, I can only imagine the compexities for a pro on a high-end 88-string. (Of course, we do have the issue of fretting on the guitar that doesn't apply on the piano.)

But I think my point still stands: the "official" pitches of the equal tempered scale are based on the twelth root of two. The stretched octave might mean that the twelth root of 2 + epsilon is used, but still the perfect fifth isn't in there.

So much misinformation

[one-egg]

Wow, I can't believe the number of people pontificating who have absolutely no clue what they're talking about.

Oh, wait. This is Slashdot.

Let's get some things straight. "Perfect" pitch (I prefer the term "absolute pitch") has nothing to do with the Western scale or equal temperament. It refers to the ability to recognize a given audio frequency as a unique individual to within a small tolerance, and possibly to be able to reproduce it without any external reference.

All of us can tell pitches apart. If I tell you I'm going to play either the highest or the lowest note on the piano, and then do so, you will reliably be able to tell me which I chose. Most people can do better than that, such as distinguishing high, middle, and low; a few can nail it to within a particular octave or even a few notes. Even fewer (including me) can get it down to the particular note, and a very few can even tell 440 Hz from 441 (I know a person who has this level of sensitivity). We usually use the term "perfect pitch" to talk about people who can at least get it down to the note in a 12-note octave.

Some individuals have a stronger sense than others. My own sense isn't bothered by 440 vs. 442, but quarter tones are clearly audible. On the other hand, if you very gradually increase or decrease the frequency, you can throw me off by as much as a half step. I'm also sensitive to the timbre of a note: I'm much more likely to be accurate with a piano note than a coloratura soprano.

Absolute pitch isn't the ability to give a name to a frequency (though most musicians with absolute pitch can do so). It's not the ability to match somebody else's note (though that's an essential talent for a musician).

As for orchestra tuning, professional musicians would laugh at the idea of there being an cast-in-stone international standard. A-440 is a nominal standard, but lots of orchestras tune a few Hertz sharp because it makes the music sound brighter. (BTW, as somebody else pointed out, the reference comes from the oboe, not the violin. The reason is that an oboe's tuning is controlled by how the reed is cut, so it's independent of things like weather and how the instrument was assembled. A violin often won't stay stable for even five minutes.) Period orchestras often tune below 440. And who knows what damage recording engineers do after the fact? The good ones wouldn't dare, but there are always the clueless ones.

Regarding issues of performing in an "off" situation, it depends on the person's sensitivity. As I said, I'm not bothered by a Hz or two in either direction. If I'm singing and the ensemble drifts, I usually don't notice until it's gotten fairly far off. At that point I just have to convince my brain that the pitch standard has shifted. If the conductor decides to transpose the piece up or down by a large amount (I've had conductors change our starting note by as much as a major third), I have to sight-transpose the music to compensate. The first time that happened, it was horrible, but it was great training and now I can do it without difficulty. But that's only incidental to the issue of absolute pitch.

how to tune a fish

[r00t]

Set an electronic tuner on a good solid table. Grab the fish by the tail, and slap it against the table near the tuner. If the tuner says that the pitch is a bit low, use your fillet knife to reduce the mass of your fish. If the tuner says that the pitch is a bit high, add some stuffing.

excellent method for a pipe organ

[r00t]

Normally, pipe organ tuning is destructive. You shave the inside of the end of a pipe, or you cut the pipe.

Per-pipe gas mixture solves this.

Per-pipe heating lamps might be another good way.

Re:Er, there was another finding in the paper . .

[Gen.Anti]

Intriguing. I think I've read somewhere about time going slower for older people (I don't know from which point of view, though). Maybe I'll remember in a few days, where. I'm not very old.

Also, when I was a kid, holidays were so long. Nonsense, probably. Cheers.