KVR Audio

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:18 am

Kingston wrote: But when you quickly have to write down a song you heard on a radio or something (in standard tuning), it's indispensable. And no matter how good realtive pitch you might have, it's useless if you have no pitch reference around.

Nope, nothing more than relative pitch is needed to hear relations of harmony.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:20 am

chagzuki wrote:
Kingston wrote: But when you quickly have to write down a song you heard on a radio or something (in standard tuning), it's indispensable. And no matter how good realtive pitch you might have, it's useless if you have no pitch reference around.
Nope, nothing more than relative pitch is needed to hear relations of harmony.

well of course!

but there are plenty of scenarios where you do not have a pitch reference around, and you do need to be able to play/sing in a certain specific key. (never in our studios though)

I'm just saying it's extremely useful bonus to be able to recognise pitch, but you might as well do without.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:24 am

I find it a load of nonsense. Orchestral tuning went up and up over the years: what was middle C to Bach isn't the same frequency that we now call middle C; does that somehow spoil the music? Apparently not.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:29 am

chagzuki wrote:I find it a load of nonsense. Orchestral tuning went up and up over the years: what was middle C to Bach isn't the same frequency that we now call middle C; does that somehow spoil the music? Apparently not.

bleh. you can argue against the merits if you have to. doesn't make them go away. It is a learned skill and estabilished on whatever standard you were taught. I'm sure mozart had it different than the average perfect pitcher or today. Studies have shown that the recognition "reference" goes down with age. So what you heard as "right" twenty years a go isn't the same as what you might hear today. And this might actually become a living hell for professional orchestra players as they age for example.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:31 am

The point is that perfect pitch has next to nothing to do with composition, whereas relative pitch has everything to do with composition.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:34 am

Again, it might or might not. Depends on how you use it. There is no right way to compose.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:35 am

If perfect pitch was crucial to composition, you'd have a load of people with perfect pitch nowadays saying that the expression of a piece by Bach was ruined by the the fact that orchestral tuning has changed, but that's not the case.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:39 am

this is stupid really. It's so highly subjective that you can't really say ye or nay.

What you *perceive* as relative pitch and harmony might be something entirely different to someone with pitch regocnition since he/she was 4. How can you say that it doesn't influence compositions either way?

This has nothing to do with the estabilished pitch standards. What the composer heard in his head might be a slightly tilted version of what the orcestra actually played. When it turns to a score, it's subject to changes depending on the standards.

Besides, there ARE purists who say bach compositions should be played in the original temperaments and tunings. God knows if some of them have perfect pitch or not.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:45 am

Perfect means/implies perfect. Relative means relative.

Someone with perfect pitch supposedly can hear a sound and tell you whether it's middle c, d, whatever, according to the system of tuning that we currently use. But why not play a sound and ask someone the frequency, plus the frequency of all the harmonics, etc.? There will be a limit to the degree of accuracy. So 'perfect' actually looks rather relative. There's no clear distinction.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:47 am

Kingston wrote: Besides, there ARE purists who say bach compositions should be played in the original temperaments and tunings. God knows if some of them have perfect pitch or not.

According to what degree of accuracy? There will always be some discrepancy.

droolmaster0 · Post by **droolmaster0** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:59 am

chagzuki wrote:Perfect means/implies perfect. Relative means relative.

Someone with perfect pitch supposedly can hear a sound and tell you whether it's middle c, d, whatever, according to the system of tuning that we currently use. But why not play a sound and ask someone the frequency, plus the frequency of all the harmonics, etc.? There will be a limit to the degree of accuracy. So 'perfect' actually looks rather relative. There's no clear distinction.

There is a clear distinction. Obviously 'perfect' means 'perfect' but that's not really relevant. The meaning of a word is simply how it is used, which takes into account the context in which it is used. 'Perfect pitch' simply means that you can recognize what pitch a sound is. If you can do that you have perfect pitch. It can come in degrees, sure, but there is a clear distinction between someone who can hear any note on a piano or violin and tell you immediately what pitch it is, and someone who can't even imagine what that ability is like.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 2:03 am

chagzuki,

bleh bleh and bleh. The words 'perfect pitch' have a very clearly established and defined meaning and you know that. There is a very clear distinction between relative and absolute pitch recognition.

You seem to have some kind of grudge against this. Don't whine to us if you're not happy with the wording. There's nothing any of us can do about it.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 2:07 am

chagzuki wrote:
Kingston wrote: Besides, there ARE purists who say bach compositions should be played in the original temperaments and tunings. God knows if some of them have perfect pitch or not.
According to what degree of accuracy? There will always be some discrepancy.

Yeah and what's the exact right shade of blue? Or should it really be orange. RGB or CMYK?

You're up to your neck in subjective argumentation.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 3:28 am

chagzuki wrote:If perfect pitch was crucial to composition, you'd have a load of people with perfect pitch nowadays saying that the expression of a piece by Bach was ruined by the the fact that orchestral tuning has changed, but that's not the case.

Actually, Peter Yates and various other writers think that the different intonation does make a difference.

But perfect pitch as it is being used here has nothing to do with it.

Since 1600 or so western music has employed various different forms of intonation:

Just intonation is the most pure, in the sense that it employs acoustically pure consonances. The problem is that the nature of acoustics (and the dreaded Pythagorean comma) limits one to only a few keys and a few octaves.

To deal with this, the system of temperament called meantone was employed, which retains the acoustically pure thirds while narrowing the fifths and fourths. This was the regnant system when Bach was writing his early music. It allows for 8 different keys and has a rich harmonic coloration that changes from key to key (which is the historical origin of the notion that there are mood/key associations).

Meantone was very slowly replaced with equal temperament. It didn't happen overnight the way midi has. There is reason to believe that the well tempered clavier is in fact written in an intonation different from the one we use today.

A different intonation is completely different from a different tuning. The relationships between the intervals don't change in equal temperament, no matter what middle A is. Conversely, a keyboard in meantone intonation will sound different from a keyboard in equal temperament., even if middle A=440 on both of them.

And so (lets have some bold lettering),

1. No one is born with an innate 'natural' knowledge of equal temperament! This is impossible because, as we have seen, equal temperament isn't natural! If that is what people mean by 'having perfect pitch' they are flat out wrong. Certainly there are some people who have really good pitch recognition skills. But they still have to learn the system.

2. There is no particular musical virtue in equal temperament. On the contrary, most music that is harmonically simple enough to support it (which is the vast majority of the music discussed here) sounds way better in just intonation. In fact, a great deal of contemporary music would be intolerably dissonant to Bach, even if it were a song where everyone was banging away on one simple open fifth.

Now it is true all of this is useless from the standpoint of the music business. And if one wants above all else to be a 'pro', then the ability to remember what all of the notes of our tempered scale sound like at different registers might be useful. But I have trouble believing that it is all that important. I mean when is a pro likely to be without an assortment of tuned instruments and tuners?

"Our A Cappella group forgot our pitch pipe and its going to be recorded and it has to be perfectly at middle A=440 because it is going to be synced up with some other prerecorded thing later"

However, none of this has a damn thing to do with musicianship, the ability to sing or play well, or the ability to write brilliant compositions.

Did Beethoven have 'perfect pitch' when he was deaf and writing his 9th symphony?

Does it matter?

who has perfect pitch?