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Pitch Perception Skewed By Modern Tuning

Posted by kdawson on from the pretty-good-pitch dept.

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."

1 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Don't trust anything from Friemer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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.