Do key signatures actually matter?

[nuffink]

Maybe it's a case that more of us have perfect pitch than we realise... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 080600.htm

Warning: Anecdotal evidence coming...

Firstly, I don't have perfect pitch. Play me a note in isolation and there's a 1 in 12 chance I'll name it correctly. I don't even have very good relative pitch, I'd like to think I could tell you the interval between two notes but I wouldn't bet the house on it.

A while back I wanted to sample an obscure 12" single I have called "Breakin' Down (Sugar Samba)" from an outfit called Julia and Company. At the time I'd misplaced the 45rpm adaptor for my record player. I ripped it at 33rpm and re-pitched it from memory using a wave editor. I hadn't played the track for the best part of a decade and, due to it's obscurity, I can't believe I'd heard it elsewhere.
After the event I realised that I could tell how accurate I'd been by comparing the length of the track on the label (7:08, I'm looking at it now) with my re-pitched version. I was within a second. I'd re-pitched a song I hadn't heard for a decade to within a cent or two. Given that my pitch recognition is terrible by the accepted measure, what mechanism had allowed me to be so accurate?

[BertKoor]

Given that my pitch recognition is terrible by the accepted measure, what mechanism had allowed me to be so accurate?

Maybe you matched the tempo, and you can recognise if vocals etc are repitched. It sounds unnatural when repitched...

Related story: some years ago I got a new turntable. It's tempo was set wrong, and by ear I couldn't set it right. I think I was playing an instrumental album and it didn't have enough clues for me. The stroboscope was very helpful though (once you know which of the four to look at)

[Tony Ostinato]

when someone is working alone, or with people who know their specific codes for getting things done, then you can do things however you want. absolutely.

music theory comes in more when youre tryin to get large groups of people on the same page fast with little rehersal.

for instance you could chart everything in c and have lots of accidentals on your charts making them look nasty and making the players roll their eyes and whisper things about you.

theres another thing where if you know the key of your song it helps a little when the singer says "can we take it down a step?".

youll notice with a lot of famous singers they start taking their songs down by steps as they get older.

with easy to read charts and good players you can avoid rehersals altogether, or you can do much more complex pieces with less rehersals.


its hard to avoid anyways, even if you chart it in c and insist its in c if everyone else says its in d youll be pretty alone.

[jancivil]

What would it look like if you looked at it any other way???

I really, really need to see a good argument for 'smaller is not smaller' [Arithmetically or geometrically].

I'm doubtful.

It's not about size it's about shape! fnarr fnarr.

Say you've got an A at 220hz. The first few overtones will be:
440, 660, 880, 1100

And now say you have a C at whatever C is. 260 or something. You get:

520, 720, 1040, 1300,

Now it seems to me that you're saying that because the A's harmonics, (880 and 1100) are not the same distance apart as the C's (1024 and 1300) the note will have a different 'colour'
But the waveform will be exactly the same shape. What your describing is not a difference in colour, but a difference in pitch, which is where we came in in the first place!

Would this not be about both?

By 'the note' - You mean the resultant combination of harmonics? So, what gives it a different 'color'?
If you are using the same 'waveform'. On a piano, that might be true. But, this is why I asked, has anyone measured it, graphically. I wonder, does that 'a' key hammering a string give the same shape as, let's go a ways, a 'c' a major tenth above?

(I just saw jmeier's post, which I think must be right, with a stringed instrument, that 220 hz should have a different shape on a cello's a string than it does stopped on a lower string. Which is another point.)

My argument, half-baked though it may be, is that this narrower set would account for a difference.

[jancivil]

Maybe it's a case that more of us have perfect pitch than we realise... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 080600.htm

Warning: Anecdotal evidence coming...

Firstly, I don't have perfect pitch. Play me a note in isolation and there's a 1 in 12 chance I'll name it correctly. I don't even have very good relative pitch, I'd like to think I could tell you the interval between two notes but I wouldn't bet the house on it.

A while back I wanted to sample an obscure 12" single I have called "Breakin' Down (Sugar Samba)" from an outfit called Julia and Company. At the time I'd misplaced the 45rpm adaptor for my record player. I ripped it at 33rpm and re-pitched it from memory using a wave editor. I hadn't played the track for the best part of a decade and, due to it's obscurity, I can't believe I'd heard it elsewhere.
After the event I realised that I could tell how accurate I'd been by comparing the length of the track on the label (7:08, I'm looking at it now) with my re-pitched version. I was within a second. I'd re-pitched a song I hadn't heard for a decade to within a cent or two. Given that my pitch recognition is terrible by the accepted measure, what mechanism had allowed me to be so accurate?

The tempo. Your particular familiarity with the overall sound.

perfect pitch, I don't even know what it is. Does it mean the ability to name that pitch and at what register, with 100% accuracy?

Does everyone that can nail that have the ability to discern timbre, like - I can tell two phone rings apart that to practically everyone else is the same tone. I can tell you what key a guitar part is in. But, on a piano I cannot tell you, 100%, what note is that, on a given day.

[Tony Ostinato]

i have what i would call a good ear, whenever id meet an attractive girl who had a good ear id try and get her to play stripnotes, where you play a note on the keyboard and the other person guesses the note and each time your wrong you take off a piece of clothing.

but i always roll my eyes a bit during talk of perfect pitch because i cant imagine anyone can tell the difference between 440 and 440.0000000001, at some point its gotta be undetectable.

[runagate]

It reminds me in the movie Heimat when the guy is taking the test at the conservatory blind-guessing intervals played on the piano and he realizes he can see the professor's hands in a reflection

[vurt]

i have what i would call a good ear, whenever id meet an attractive girl who had a good ear id try and get her to play stripnotes, where you play a note on the keyboard and the other person guesses the note and each time your wrong you take off a piece of clothing.

i played it with tonnes of tone deaf and deaf women.

[jancivil]

did you win?

[VicDiesel]

I can hear a small noticeable difference in the sound of different keys on the piano,

I once discovered that I could hear the difference between black and white keys. My solfege teacher would play a chord and I would say "the middle key is black, so that has to be D, E, or A". Drove him crazy "I'm a professional pianist! I can play evenly over all keys!"

Victor.

[VicDiesel]

To preserve the real logarithmic relationship between the notes in the triad you need to space them out further as you go down. When you go higher up you can get away with 9ths and things that would sound muddy in the middle and a complete mess farther down.

I think you have things thoroughly confused. The logarithmic relationship stays exactly the same. Play a triad anywhere, and the third is 6/5 the frequency of the root, and the fifth 3/2.

Triads played high have fewer overtones because of the physics of the string and the limitations of our ears.

Triads played low generate beats that sound unpleasant to us. Every triad generates beats, but the lower you get, the more they are in the unpleasant range (up to 30Hz? I'd have to look up my Helmholtz).

Victor.

[jancivil]

To preserve the real logarithmic relationship between the notes in the triad you need to space them out further as you go down. When you go higher up you can get away with 9ths and things that would sound muddy in the middle and a complete mess farther down.

Triads played high have fewer overtones because of the physics of the string and the limitations of our ears.

have fewer audible overtones.

Triads played low generate beats that sound unpleasant to us. Every triad generates beats, but the lower you get, the more they are in the unpleasant range (up to 30Hz? I'd have to look up my Helmholtz).

A lot of these beats are down to equal temperament, by the way. You are correct, I think, all this is down to our ear's capacity.