13 ms·

Show HN: Perfect Pitch Ear Training

172 points by sergeykish 6y ago

raidicy 6y ago
I was under the notion that perfect pitch cannot be obtained after a certain age.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  I doubt it. I have G and C harmonicas, they are very different. When playing harmonica ears help to find holes. I've been practicing for two weeks, currently on G3, C4, G4, C5, mostly confident (100 correct answers) though sometimes it tricks me.
  - necubi 6y ago
    You're talking about relative pitch, not perfect (absolute) pitch. Any competent musician will have excellent relative pitch, which is the ability to recognize intervals between pitches. This is necessary for transcription, learning music by ear, jamming, etc. Perfect pitch means that, if someone plays a sine wave with no context, you can tell what pitch it is.
    - davio 6y ago
      We had a guy in our college band with perfect relative and absolute pitch. One time we walked out of the dorms and the AC was squealing on top the building across the street. "Hey Dave, what note is that?" "Do you really want to know?" heads nod "It's a G" One of the other tales was someone with true perfect pitch could tell the difference between A at 440 vs 441 hz.
      - dekhn 6y ago
        I've seen this. When I was in grad school I was playing with assembly language to click a speaker in a timed loop, such that it would generate A440. I played it to my coworker who was working in my lab, and he said: "I'm a singer and I have perfect pitch. THat isn't A440, it's slightly low. Probably one hertz." I checked my code and indeed, I had miscomputed the timer, it was slightly longer than it should have been. Fixed the code and he confirmed it sounded better, but not absolutely perfect.
      - filmor 6y ago
        AC squealing (and a lot of other noises that are somehow synchronous to the grid frequency) would be a slightly off G outside of North America (slightly to high, G is ~49 Hz and the grid frequency almost everywhere is 50 Hz), no need for perfect pitch to guess that. In North America (60 Hz grid frequency), I'm not quite sure whether one would recognise it as a A# (58.3 Hz) or a B (61.8 Hz).
    - yorwba 6y ago
      > Perfect pitch means that, if someone plays a sine wave with no context, you can tell what pitch it is. What bothers me about that definition is that it doesn't specify accuracy. If I play a sine wave at 498.753 Hz, how many of those decimal places will someone with perfect pitch get correct? Since classical music is based on discrete notes with intervals of at least a semitone, maybe an error of less than half a semitone is acceptable, because that's enough to sort a note into the correct bucket? But then what's the average error for people who don't have perfect pitch?
      - FalconSensei 6y ago
        I think it's like: at which point it's a sharp A or a flat A#? Because when we talk about perfect pitch, is in a musical context, in the sense that a person can tell the note that would classify that wave, even without knowing how many Hz it is
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - sergeykish 6y ago
        At which point red becomes orange, brown, pink? What about cherry, coral? We describe color names by association — sky blue, grass green, ochre, rose, pink, violet. Rick Beato pointed that children catch names by association with a song. > average error for people who don't have perfect pitch I've tried once with a kid 10 years old, she expected and answered C, D, E, while I was playing same note (unison) with long pause on harmonica. Our perception skewed by our believes. I've heard same applies to drawing — one has to learn to see.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      I know the difference and that's what I am striving for. So far several weeks, an hour a day, it is quite hard, 700 answers on answer / 5s rate.
- necubi 6y ago
  I think it's not so cut-and-dry. As a violinist, I can recognize absolute violin pitches, but can't do so with other instruments. This is definitely a learned skill; presumably there's something about the timbre of the different pitches that my brain has memorized after so many years of playing. However someone with "true" perfect pitch is able to detect pitches across instruments (or even a sine wave) and can distinguish minute differences in pitch; for example, someone with perfect pitch can tell that an instrument has been tuned to A415 (a typical tuning for Baroque music) instead of the standard A440.
  - thewebcount 6y ago
    Similar thing here. I'm a pianist, and while I don't have perfect pitch, there are certain piano chords that I can pick out and definitively say, "That's an F major, root position, with the root just over middle C". But other chords or even individual notes – I'm not able to distinguish them in that way.
  - Bud 6y ago
    Extremely wrong. The difference between A=415 and A=440 is not "minute" at all; it's a full half-step difference! Also, no: absolute pitch does not necessarily confer the ability to distinguish very small differences in pitch. Many people with perfect pitch can name a given note if played, but can't reliably identify if the pitch in question is 5 or 10 cents off. This is a common misconception.
- getpost 6y ago
  I was intrigued by this paper. Haven't tried it though. Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be acquired early in life. However, research has shown that histone-deacetylase inhibitors (HDAC inhibitors) enable adult mice to establish perceptual preferences that are otherwise impossible to acquire after youth. In humans, we found that adult men who took valproate (VPA) (a HDAC inhibitor) learned to identify pitch significantly better than those taking placebo—evidence that VPA facilitated critical-period learning in the adult human brain. Importantly, this result was not due to a general change in cognitive function, but rather a specific effect on a sensory task associated with a critical-period.
pier25 6y ago
Been making music on and off for the past 20 years. Over the years, I've tried many ear training apps but there was little progress after hours of frustration. A couple of months ago I found a very different method. The idea is is to internalize pitch by singing. For example, you play a triad on the piano and then sing the 3 notes individually. Or you train yourself to sing an interval. Say you're working on fifths. You play a C in the piano and then sing G, then play D and sing A, etc. I saw results within the first hour. If anyone is interested I can try to find the video where I got this from. Another method I can recommend is transcribing music by ear. You'll be amazed how quickly you will be able to find notes and then chords once you get more experience.
- ggrrhh_ta 6y ago
  I am interested. I put around 30 focused minutes to distinguish E5 and have been able to endure that memory both to recognize it in the piano and to sing it since.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Yes, please. Are not interval training and perfect pitch different things? I'm mostly concentrating on confidence and quantity — one test / 5s, running hundreds of tests, trying to discard intervals and feel chroma.
- memset 6y ago
  Singing - perhaps you know this - is standard in ear training courses. We are required to sing intervals, sing Bach chorales, and sing chords in all inversions and qualities, and sing their resolutions. At advanced levels we are required to sing atonal passages. Then there is the inverse - melodic dictation. Not just identifying intervals, but chords, their qualities, and inversions. The goal of these is to develop relative pitch, as it is assumed that adults would generally not be able to acquire perfect pitch.
- supz_k 6y ago
  This is RELATIVE pitch, which anyone can develop. Perfect pitch is kind of a mystery. (However, there are some known dogs and frogs with perfect pitch)
Zarathu 6y ago
B-natural is missing.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Thank you! Fixed.
- junon 6y ago
  Yeah lol. A# is not the same thing as B. It's the same as Bb though. Also, how do you answer sharps or flats? It just has the natural notes as answers.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    I will add buttons, which accesscodes would you recommend?
    - kayson 6y ago
      ctrl shift for # and ctrl alt for b?
      - sergeykish 6y ago
        I've thought of separate names "A z B C u D v E F w G" (from the end of the alphabet). Your approach looks more practical, have to ditch accesskey though.
      - sergeykish 6y ago
        Done, with Shift, with Alt.
biggieshellz 6y ago
Semi-pro musician for 20+ years here. You can't teach this. My mom has perfect pitch, and I do not. I can play a record and move the pitch knob to make it play a bit fast, and it will bother her enough to get up off the couch and change it back. No matter how much ear training I do, that will never be the case with me. I have very good relative pitch, and a highly trained ear, and that you can teach. If you play me C, I can tell you what the other notes are based on that, and my internal reference for what C is persists for quite a while. If you play me a song, I can hear what the chords are -- the color (major, minor, dominant, diminished, etc.) and the degree of the scale. But that is all relative to itself. If I hear the same song played in C, and then in Db, the two of them will hit me emotionally the same. Whereas for someone with perfect pitch, I understand it can be different. And for someone with perfect pitch and synesthesia, I understand it can be different still -- notes and keys are perceived as colors. And while I can imagine what that might be like, there's no way for me to train myself to be that.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  I've heard a story of adult acquiring perfect pitch [1]. He made a tool for Win32 platform years ago [2]. I play (hobby) harmonica and I feel them differently. I like dark tone of G (blues in D), bright and someone neutral tone of C, I have A and don't play it much. How can one explain this? Do you experience Doppler effect on ski elevator? It was devastating. Can it be that harmonica trains ears to find a hole and bend notes? But any fretles instrument should have same requirement (violin). Some people claim adults can't learn languages, while in reality we lack not neuron plasticity but time, patience, culture. Maybe skill learned by adult and child is different but serves same function. It is fine by me to learn "perfect ear equivalent". At least I can train myself and play with a kid, maybe he would acquire this skill in full potential. [1] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/ http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/ [2] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/software/ http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/software/
  - losvedir 6y ago
    Does Aruffo ever claim to have acquired perfect pitch? I followed his enormous blog as it was happening 10-15 years ago (I'm even quoted in it :)), and it was utterly fascinating to see his journey, but I never thought he actually successfully got perfect pitch.
supz_k 6y ago
For anyone who might not know what perfect pitch is: Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. - Wikipedia Most people, even musicians, don't know that this talent exists. When I was in high school, there was someone who has this skill. He had started music when he was a very little. Most perfect pitch persons starts their music in their early ages. This person in my school "senses" pitches (I think it's similar to how we see colors.) THERE'S NO KNOWN CASES OF ANY ADULT DEVELOPING PERFECT PITCH. There's a number of studies saying it cannot be developed as an adult. However, I'm doing research for a few months and trying to develop perfect pitch myself (I have a fine relative pitch). None has worked for now. I strongly believe there must be a way for adults to develop this. My thoughts on this app: It may help to improve something called "tone identification", but that instinct of having perfect pitch is completely different. By the way, anyone here have perfect pitch (possibility is 1/10000)? (For any one interested, search Youtube for perfect pitch. There's a lot of fascinating stories)
- y2bd 6y ago
  Count me in as someone who didn’t know this existed/that I had it until someone else pointed it out for me. I started music in middle school and got frustrated with a friend who couldn’t play back a melody from a video game we both liked even though I could (he was much better at violin so I wanted to hear him play it, haha). Thankfully, he knew what perfect pitch was and after figuring out the disconnect, explained it to me. I honestly thought he was lying until I asked other folks in the class and found out they couldn’t identify the notes by ear either. I just assumed it was something I learned to do as a part of the class instruction. I wouldn’t say I have any attached feelings/synesthesia to particular notes besides their western names.
  - supz_k 6y ago
    That's awesome. Did you have any musical training when you were little? (below 7 years)
    - 6y ago
ksherlock 6y ago
Doesn't work on Safari. tried it on chrome and clicking on the correct answer has a tendency to not do anything.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Click on correct answer increases the counter. My routine 1. Ctrl-t to hear the sound 2. Ctrl-* to give answer 3. Wrong if hear sound, try again (2) 4. Correct if no sound, take next sound (1) Unfortunately can't check on Safari yet, any errors in console?
  - ksherlock 6y ago
    [Error] Unhandled Promise Rejection: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: AudioContext (anonymous function) (perfect-pitch-ear-training:20) asyncFunctionResume play (perfect-pitch-ear-training:19) (anonymous function) (perfect-pitch-ear-training:29) per MDN, AudioContext() is implemented as webkitAudioContext() in Safari. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContext https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContex...
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      Thank you, updated with let AudioContext = window.AudioContext || window.webkitAudioContext
grizmaldi 6y ago
Rick Beato's take on adults not being able to develop perfect pitch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM I must say though, watching videos of his kid demonstrate perfect pitch is quite astounding!
- sergeykish 6y ago
  He has some loose comparisons. Adults acquire foreign languages including foreign sounds. English is a separate entity in my mind, neutral position of the jaw, tongue system is entirely different from my native language. Different cultures has different color naming schemes. I have hardware problems on color perception (protanomaly) yet I can learn new color names. Looking at children it takes years to learn color names. His example of learning — pressing keys on the piano and saying name — is incorrect. It should be game, music is game. We live in the age of unprecedented gamification. Maybe it is possible to make baby steps. Some people claim they've internalized F#, ok internalize every note. He is right that recognition should be instantaneous. His real argument — teaching has not been achieved as course, probably it is impossible, I'll try.
RunawayGalaxy 6y ago
Rick Beato has some great videos on this subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXivZlPu0ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXivZlPu0ms
- sgdpk 6y ago
  He has a strong opinion that you can only develop perfect pitch while young, and I have to agree. His videos are great.
qppo 6y ago
How does this train perfect pitch? I have gone through years of formal ear training, the closest techniques I've seen to true perfect pitch were exercises for audio engineers to recognize frequency ranges (iirc, pioneered at University of Michigan a few decades ago). But even that doesn't give you perfect pitch, it gives you a strong intuition. In conservatories and other classical schools, they teach relative pitch recognition using the same techniques that have been used for centuries because pitch is so subjective. When I did it, they even used different keys to force the kids with perfect pitch and synesthesia (they gravitate towards music schools) to learn their intervals.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  As I know no one achieved perfect pitch with this tool. I have no your background, I've took tool name from the web [1]. Maybe it is wrong like serverless is deployed on servers though it should be p2p or flat files. I've thought perfect pitch is a knowledge like "this note is G". You describe intuition as something different (or different from perfect pitch), maybe we need a special word for it? [1] https://www.google.com/search?&q=perfect+pitch+training https://www.google.com/search?&q=perfect+pitch+training
Nimitz14 6y ago
I do not understand how to use this... how is this supposed to train something when I'm selecting and can see the note played?
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Thank you, I've updated instructions. Click on "Test" to selects new sound and play it. Click buttons for answer, it plays sound if answer is wrong. I use it with eyes closed to concentrate on sound. Guess visual indication would be a good start. I've changed it so it marks wrong button with color until next "Test". The idea is not to guess but to start with one sound, make it familiar, add another, etc.
kayson 6y ago
I realize it defeats the purpose, but if you guess the correct answer once you can keep clicking the same answer to make the counter go up
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Yeah, it is kind of on purpose, not sure should I fix it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
junon 6y ago
You inspired me to make an actual Perfect Pitch Test. Not sure how scientific it is but I randomized some notes prior to the test note being played. https://codepen.io/junon/details/YzWNxZM https://codepen.io/junon/details/YzWNxZM
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Nice! I am not musician and randomized notes while cool have not tricked me.
dang 6y ago
HN did tone deafness the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24852401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24852401. From one extreme to the other.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  That's why I've posted my tool. It is private but looking at the interest on Tone-Deafness Test why not to share it?
  - dang 6y ago
    Sounds great to me!
Dowwie 6y ago
Rick Beato explains on his YouTube that a child can learn pitch perfection but it must be trained before 10 years of age https://youtu.be/816VLQNdPMM https://youtu.be/816VLQNdPMM
blunte 6y ago
Unless you have a really good reason, I advise against learning absolute perfect pitch. If you do, it will drive you absolutely nuts to hear almost any music (since it will almost never be perfectly tuned). Imagine for a moment that you could see all decimal numbers to 100 places, and it turned out that almost never was any number used by anyone else exactly x.0. Suddenly your world becomes full of "insignificant" but very distracting/annoying .9999887424151515 garbage. That, at least for me, is what absolute perfect pitch is like. (And thankfully, it can fade away as an ability just as it can arrive as one.) Relative perfect pitch, which simply means you can accurately perceive relative distances between pitches, is very useful. I would expect that most experienced musicians (and some inexperienced but ?gifted? people) have this. It is also attainable, as nearly every other skill is.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  I have that doubt. But is it not same as not hearing pitch? I would be surprised if I could train to cent accuracy. And what about Just Intonation vs Equal Temperament? If relative pitch is correct every tone would be shifted. I can imagine picture made entirely out of unusual colors — no red, yellow, orange, but red-orange, yellow-orange.
- Bud 6y ago
  Once again, this is incorrect: absolute pitch (also known as perfect pitch, but there is no such thing as "absolute perfect pitch) does not necessarily imply or bestow the ability to perceive differences in pitch that are very small (say, 5 cents). Many people can identify a C# or an A-flat or what have you, but without the ability to tell whether that pitch is very very slightly flat or sharp. They nevertheless are said to have "perfect" pitch.
throw7 6y ago
"I do not perceive notes in different octaves as same. This makes Toned Ear pitch training guesswork." ??? How so? Is not this problem all of (ok, "all" of us not musically inclined) has? Perfect pitch isn't important in music anyway... relative pitch is way more useful and is actually learnable.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Guesswork is a bad start. Imagine learning alphabet with five different lettering. Latin "Q", "q", Greek "Γ", "γ", Arabic "ـب", "ـبـ", "بـ" (a form of "ب") but five of them plus timbre. I want immediate recall, I can add forms one by one. And that is the only difference with linked tool.
khazhoux 6y ago
There are several abilities that can be called "perfect pitch" -- identification vs recall, automatic vs labored. I've never seen this categorized before, but here's my attempt: 1. The ability to immediately identify a pitch name from listening. This is the common definition. It is analogous to a native language speaker recognizing a spoken word -- it's automatic and requires no effort. 2. The ability to /recall/ a pitch from memory accurately. When you sing a tune, are you singing in the same key as the original recording? Some people can't do this. 3. The ability to identify a pitch name from listening, not immediately/reflexively but by mentally matching it against a well-remembered reference pitch. This requires (2) and also requires some work on your part, to remember a "catalog" of reference pitches. 4. Ability to recognize a chord type and root, either automatically (like #1) or by mental reference to some well-remembered chords (like #3). Of course, the root can be ambiguous and tricky to find. I can't do #1 (immediate automatic pitch recognition) but once in a rare while it happens. I can do #2 easily -- mentally recall or sing any remembered tune within probably 25 cents. That means I can tune a newly-strung guitar, e.g., pretty well (though not perfectly) by just remembering a reference low E (first note in Airbag) or drop-D (first note in Everlong). I can do #3 with some mental effort -- requires me remembering my catalog of opening note for a handful of songs/pieces, and then doing a slow mental match.
- Bud 6y ago
  No. Example #4 above has absolutely nothing to do with perfect pitch, and is instead simple ear training combined with some music theory training. (Professional classical musician, here.) All classically-trained music students learn to identify various chords and hear which note the root is, and only a small percentage of them have perfect pitch. #1 and #2 in your list are definitely examples of perfect pitch, however. #3 is a bit more like extremely good relative pitch combined with above-average pitch memory that lasts longer than most people's.
  - khazhoux 6y ago
    My "taxonomy" wasn't meant to be a perfect delineation, but just to show that there's lots of variations of tonal and harmonic recognition and recall. I agree that the way I phrased #4, sounded more like what you do in simple ear training exercises ("Is this chord a major or minor?"). But... when I watch, say, a video of Herbie Hancock copying another player's complex chord progression perfectly, there is clearly a harmonic+melodic version of "perfect pitch" for those few people who can hear music and reproduce it accurately.
russellbeattie 6y ago
When I was a kid, I had a music program on my Apple IIe that taught you the scales, and would test you on the notes. Using the speaker in the computer case. It was amusing. "Brrrrrrrr beeeeeee brrrrrr boooooooo." Ummm... A# B A# C? Correct!
aoeusnth1 6y ago
My understanding is that it’s easy to teach toddlers perfect pitch, but it’s not possible to learn as an adult.
yomly 6y ago
@sergeykish this is fantastic! Please can you make it possible to hear the same note again?
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Thank you! Sure, but I'd like to understand how to fit it in instructions. It plays same note if you choose wrong answer, do you still want it? Can you please describe use case?
  - yomly 6y ago
    I don't want to commit to an answer but want to hear the tone again. I guess there's an argument to the game deliberately pushing to only hearing it once, on the other hand.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      Done. For me failing is fun, when in doubt I try and if fail click right note several times to memorize it. Though I don't want to enforce this worldview.
      - yomly 6y ago
        What a turnaround! Thank you :) I probably could do better to embrace failure like you but when I'm on a streak I don't want to lose it

172 points by sergeykish 6y ago

raidicy 6y ago

I was under the notion that perfect pitch cannot be obtained after a certain age.

sergeykish 6y ago
I doubt it. I have G and C harmonicas, they are very different. When playing harmonica ears help to find holes. I've been practicing for two weeks, currently on G3, C4, G4, C5, mostly confident (100 correct answers) though sometimes it tricks me.
- necubi 6y ago
  You're talking about relative pitch, not perfect (absolute) pitch. Any competent musician will have excellent relative pitch, which is the ability to recognize intervals between pitches. This is necessary for transcription, learning music by ear, jamming, etc. Perfect pitch means that, if someone plays a sine wave with no context, you can tell what pitch it is.
  - davio 6y ago
    We had a guy in our college band with perfect relative and absolute pitch. One time we walked out of the dorms and the AC was squealing on top the building across the street. "Hey Dave, what note is that?" "Do you really want to know?" heads nod "It's a G" One of the other tales was someone with true perfect pitch could tell the difference between A at 440 vs 441 hz.
    - dekhn 6y ago
      I've seen this. When I was in grad school I was playing with assembly language to click a speaker in a timed loop, such that it would generate A440. I played it to my coworker who was working in my lab, and he said: "I'm a singer and I have perfect pitch. THat isn't A440, it's slightly low. Probably one hertz." I checked my code and indeed, I had miscomputed the timer, it was slightly longer than it should have been. Fixed the code and he confirmed it sounded better, but not absolutely perfect.
    - filmor 6y ago
      AC squealing (and a lot of other noises that are somehow synchronous to the grid frequency) would be a slightly off G outside of North America (slightly to high, G is ~49 Hz and the grid frequency almost everywhere is 50 Hz), no need for perfect pitch to guess that. In North America (60 Hz grid frequency), I'm not quite sure whether one would recognise it as a A# (58.3 Hz) or a B (61.8 Hz).
  - yorwba 6y ago
    > Perfect pitch means that, if someone plays a sine wave with no context, you can tell what pitch it is. What bothers me about that definition is that it doesn't specify accuracy. If I play a sine wave at 498.753 Hz, how many of those decimal places will someone with perfect pitch get correct? Since classical music is based on discrete notes with intervals of at least a semitone, maybe an error of less than half a semitone is acceptable, because that's enough to sort a note into the correct bucket? But then what's the average error for people who don't have perfect pitch?
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      I think it's like: at which point it's a sharp A or a flat A#? Because when we talk about perfect pitch, is in a musical context, in the sense that a person can tell the note that would classify that wave, even without knowing how many Hz it is
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      At which point red becomes orange, brown, pink? What about cherry, coral? We describe color names by association — sky blue, grass green, ochre, rose, pink, violet. Rick Beato pointed that children catch names by association with a song. > average error for people who don't have perfect pitch I've tried once with a kid 10 years old, she expected and answered C, D, E, while I was playing same note (unison) with long pause on harmonica. Our perception skewed by our believes. I've heard same applies to drawing — one has to learn to see.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    I know the difference and that's what I am striving for. So far several weeks, an hour a day, it is quite hard, 700 answers on answer / 5s rate.
necubi 6y ago
I think it's not so cut-and-dry. As a violinist, I can recognize absolute violin pitches, but can't do so with other instruments. This is definitely a learned skill; presumably there's something about the timbre of the different pitches that my brain has memorized after so many years of playing. However someone with "true" perfect pitch is able to detect pitches across instruments (or even a sine wave) and can distinguish minute differences in pitch; for example, someone with perfect pitch can tell that an instrument has been tuned to A415 (a typical tuning for Baroque music) instead of the standard A440.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  Similar thing here. I'm a pianist, and while I don't have perfect pitch, there are certain piano chords that I can pick out and definitively say, "That's an F major, root position, with the root just over middle C". But other chords or even individual notes – I'm not able to distinguish them in that way.
- Bud 6y ago
  Extremely wrong. The difference between A=415 and A=440 is not "minute" at all; it's a full half-step difference! Also, no: absolute pitch does not necessarily confer the ability to distinguish very small differences in pitch. Many people with perfect pitch can name a given note if played, but can't reliably identify if the pitch in question is 5 or 10 cents off. This is a common misconception.
getpost 6y ago
I was intrigued by this paper. Haven't tried it though. Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of a sound without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e., it can only be acquired early in life. However, research has shown that histone-deacetylase inhibitors (HDAC inhibitors) enable adult mice to establish perceptual preferences that are otherwise impossible to acquire after youth. In humans, we found that adult men who took valproate (VPA) (a HDAC inhibitor) learned to identify pitch significantly better than those taking placebo—evidence that VPA facilitated critical-period learning in the adult human brain. Importantly, this result was not due to a general change in cognitive function, but rather a specific effect on a sensory task associated with a critical-period.

pier25 6y ago

Been making music on and off for the past 20 years. Over the years, I've tried many ear training apps but there was little progress after hours of frustration. A couple of months ago I found a very different method. The idea is is to internalize pitch by singing. For example, you play a triad on the piano and then sing the 3 notes individually. Or you train yourself to sing an interval. Say you're working on fifths. You play a C in the piano and then sing G, then play D and sing A, etc. I saw results within the first hour. If anyone is interested I can try to find the video where I got this from. Another method I can recommend is transcribing music by ear. You'll be amazed how quickly you will be able to find notes and then chords once you get more experience.

ggrrhh_ta 6y ago
I am interested. I put around 30 focused minutes to distinguish E5 and have been able to endure that memory both to recognize it in the piano and to sing it since.
sergeykish 6y ago
Yes, please. Are not interval training and perfect pitch different things? I'm mostly concentrating on confidence and quantity — one test / 5s, running hundreds of tests, trying to discard intervals and feel chroma.
memset 6y ago
Singing - perhaps you know this - is standard in ear training courses. We are required to sing intervals, sing Bach chorales, and sing chords in all inversions and qualities, and sing their resolutions. At advanced levels we are required to sing atonal passages. Then there is the inverse - melodic dictation. Not just identifying intervals, but chords, their qualities, and inversions. The goal of these is to develop relative pitch, as it is assumed that adults would generally not be able to acquire perfect pitch.
supz_k 6y ago
This is RELATIVE pitch, which anyone can develop. Perfect pitch is kind of a mystery. (However, there are some known dogs and frogs with perfect pitch)

Zarathu 6y ago

B-natural is missing.

sergeykish 6y ago
Thank you! Fixed.
junon 6y ago
Yeah lol. A# is not the same thing as B. It's the same as Bb though. Also, how do you answer sharps or flats? It just has the natural notes as answers.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  I will add buttons, which accesscodes would you recommend?
  - kayson 6y ago
    ctrl shift for # and ctrl alt for b?
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      I've thought of separate names "A z B C u D v E F w G" (from the end of the alphabet). Your approach looks more practical, have to ditch accesskey though.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      Done, with Shift, with Alt.

biggieshellz 6y ago

Semi-pro musician for 20+ years here. You can't teach this. My mom has perfect pitch, and I do not. I can play a record and move the pitch knob to make it play a bit fast, and it will bother her enough to get up off the couch and change it back. No matter how much ear training I do, that will never be the case with me. I have very good relative pitch, and a highly trained ear, and that you can teach. If you play me C, I can tell you what the other notes are based on that, and my internal reference for what C is persists for quite a while. If you play me a song, I can hear what the chords are -- the color (major, minor, dominant, diminished, etc.) and the degree of the scale. But that is all relative to itself. If I hear the same song played in C, and then in Db, the two of them will hit me emotionally the same. Whereas for someone with perfect pitch, I understand it can be different. And for someone with perfect pitch and synesthesia, I understand it can be different still -- notes and keys are perceived as colors. And while I can imagine what that might be like, there's no way for me to train myself to be that.

sergeykish 6y ago
I've heard a story of adult acquiring perfect pitch [1]. He made a tool for Win32 platform years ago [2]. I play (hobby) harmonica and I feel them differently. I like dark tone of G (blues in D), bright and someone neutral tone of C, I have A and don't play it much. How can one explain this? Do you experience Doppler effect on ski elevator? It was devastating. Can it be that harmonica trains ears to find a hole and bend notes? But any fretles instrument should have same requirement (violin). Some people claim adults can't learn languages, while in reality we lack not neuron plasticity but time, patience, culture. Maybe skill learned by adult and child is different but serves same function. It is fine by me to learn "perfect ear equivalent". At least I can train myself and play with a kid, maybe he would acquire this skill in full potential. [1] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/ http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/ [2] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/software/ http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/software/
- losvedir 6y ago
  Does Aruffo ever claim to have acquired perfect pitch? I followed his enormous blog as it was happening 10-15 years ago (I'm even quoted in it :)), and it was utterly fascinating to see his journey, but I never thought he actually successfully got perfect pitch.

supz_k 6y ago

For anyone who might not know what perfect pitch is: Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. - Wikipedia Most people, even musicians, don't know that this talent exists. When I was in high school, there was someone who has this skill. He had started music when he was a very little. Most perfect pitch persons starts their music in their early ages. This person in my school "senses" pitches (I think it's similar to how we see colors.) THERE'S NO KNOWN CASES OF ANY ADULT DEVELOPING PERFECT PITCH. There's a number of studies saying it cannot be developed as an adult. However, I'm doing research for a few months and trying to develop perfect pitch myself (I have a fine relative pitch). None has worked for now. I strongly believe there must be a way for adults to develop this. My thoughts on this app: It may help to improve something called "tone identification", but that instinct of having perfect pitch is completely different. By the way, anyone here have perfect pitch (possibility is 1/10000)? (For any one interested, search Youtube for perfect pitch. There's a lot of fascinating stories)

y2bd 6y ago
Count me in as someone who didn’t know this existed/that I had it until someone else pointed it out for me. I started music in middle school and got frustrated with a friend who couldn’t play back a melody from a video game we both liked even though I could (he was much better at violin so I wanted to hear him play it, haha). Thankfully, he knew what perfect pitch was and after figuring out the disconnect, explained it to me. I honestly thought he was lying until I asked other folks in the class and found out they couldn’t identify the notes by ear either. I just assumed it was something I learned to do as a part of the class instruction. I wouldn’t say I have any attached feelings/synesthesia to particular notes besides their western names.
- supz_k 6y ago
  That's awesome. Did you have any musical training when you were little? (below 7 years)
  - 6y ago

ksherlock 6y ago

Doesn't work on Safari. tried it on chrome and clicking on the correct answer has a tendency to not do anything.

sergeykish 6y ago
Click on correct answer increases the counter. My routine 1. Ctrl-t to hear the sound 2. Ctrl-* to give answer 3. Wrong if hear sound, try again (2) 4. Correct if no sound, take next sound (1) Unfortunately can't check on Safari yet, any errors in console?
- ksherlock 6y ago
  [Error] Unhandled Promise Rejection: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: AudioContext (anonymous function) (perfect-pitch-ear-training:20) asyncFunctionResume play (perfect-pitch-ear-training:19) (anonymous function) (perfect-pitch-ear-training:29) per MDN, AudioContext() is implemented as webkitAudioContext() in Safari. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContext https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContex...
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    Thank you, updated with let AudioContext = window.AudioContext || window.webkitAudioContext

grizmaldi 6y ago

Rick Beato's take on adults not being able to develop perfect pitch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM I must say though, watching videos of his kid demonstrate perfect pitch is quite astounding!

sergeykish 6y ago
He has some loose comparisons. Adults acquire foreign languages including foreign sounds. English is a separate entity in my mind, neutral position of the jaw, tongue system is entirely different from my native language. Different cultures has different color naming schemes. I have hardware problems on color perception (protanomaly) yet I can learn new color names. Looking at children it takes years to learn color names. His example of learning — pressing keys on the piano and saying name — is incorrect. It should be game, music is game. We live in the age of unprecedented gamification. Maybe it is possible to make baby steps. Some people claim they've internalized F#, ok internalize every note. He is right that recognition should be instantaneous. His real argument — teaching has not been achieved as course, probably it is impossible, I'll try.

RunawayGalaxy 6y ago

Rick Beato has some great videos on this subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXivZlPu0ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXivZlPu0ms

sgdpk 6y ago
He has a strong opinion that you can only develop perfect pitch while young, and I have to agree. His videos are great.

qppo 6y ago

How does this train perfect pitch? I have gone through years of formal ear training, the closest techniques I've seen to true perfect pitch were exercises for audio engineers to recognize frequency ranges (iirc, pioneered at University of Michigan a few decades ago). But even that doesn't give you perfect pitch, it gives you a strong intuition. In conservatories and other classical schools, they teach relative pitch recognition using the same techniques that have been used for centuries because pitch is so subjective. When I did it, they even used different keys to force the kids with perfect pitch and synesthesia (they gravitate towards music schools) to learn their intervals.

sergeykish 6y ago
As I know no one achieved perfect pitch with this tool. I have no your background, I've took tool name from the web [1]. Maybe it is wrong like serverless is deployed on servers though it should be p2p or flat files. I've thought perfect pitch is a knowledge like "this note is G". You describe intuition as something different (or different from perfect pitch), maybe we need a special word for it? [1] https://www.google.com/search?&q=perfect+pitch+training https://www.google.com/search?&q=perfect+pitch+training

Nimitz14 6y ago

I do not understand how to use this... how is this supposed to train something when I'm selecting and can see the note played?

sergeykish 6y ago
Thank you, I've updated instructions. Click on "Test" to selects new sound and play it. Click buttons for answer, it plays sound if answer is wrong. I use it with eyes closed to concentrate on sound. Guess visual indication would be a good start. I've changed it so it marks wrong button with color until next "Test". The idea is not to guess but to start with one sound, make it familiar, add another, etc.

kayson 6y ago

I realize it defeats the purpose, but if you guess the correct answer once you can keep clicking the same answer to make the counter go up

sergeykish 6y ago
Yeah, it is kind of on purpose, not sure should I fix it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

junon 6y ago

You inspired me to make an actual Perfect Pitch Test. Not sure how scientific it is but I randomized some notes prior to the test note being played. https://codepen.io/junon/details/YzWNxZM https://codepen.io/junon/details/YzWNxZM

sergeykish 6y ago
Nice! I am not musician and randomized notes while cool have not tricked me.

dang 6y ago

HN did tone deafness the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24852401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24852401. From one extreme to the other.

sergeykish 6y ago
That's why I've posted my tool. It is private but looking at the interest on Tone-Deafness Test why not to share it?
- dang 6y ago
  Sounds great to me!

Dowwie 6y ago

Rick Beato explains on his YouTube that a child can learn pitch perfection but it must be trained before 10 years of age https://youtu.be/816VLQNdPMM https://youtu.be/816VLQNdPMM

blunte 6y ago

Unless you have a really good reason, I advise against learning absolute perfect pitch. If you do, it will drive you absolutely nuts to hear almost any music (since it will almost never be perfectly tuned). Imagine for a moment that you could see all decimal numbers to 100 places, and it turned out that almost never was any number used by anyone else exactly x.0. Suddenly your world becomes full of "insignificant" but very distracting/annoying .9999887424151515 garbage. That, at least for me, is what absolute perfect pitch is like. (And thankfully, it can fade away as an ability just as it can arrive as one.) Relative perfect pitch, which simply means you can accurately perceive relative distances between pitches, is very useful. I would expect that most experienced musicians (and some inexperienced but ?gifted? people) have this. It is also attainable, as nearly every other skill is.

sergeykish 6y ago
I have that doubt. But is it not same as not hearing pitch? I would be surprised if I could train to cent accuracy. And what about Just Intonation vs Equal Temperament? If relative pitch is correct every tone would be shifted. I can imagine picture made entirely out of unusual colors — no red, yellow, orange, but red-orange, yellow-orange.
Bud 6y ago
Once again, this is incorrect: absolute pitch (also known as perfect pitch, but there is no such thing as "absolute perfect pitch) does not necessarily imply or bestow the ability to perceive differences in pitch that are very small (say, 5 cents). Many people can identify a C# or an A-flat or what have you, but without the ability to tell whether that pitch is very very slightly flat or sharp. They nevertheless are said to have "perfect" pitch.

throw7 6y ago

"I do not perceive notes in different octaves as same. This makes Toned Ear pitch training guesswork." ??? How so? Is not this problem all of (ok, "all" of us not musically inclined) has? Perfect pitch isn't important in music anyway... relative pitch is way more useful and is actually learnable.

sergeykish 6y ago
Guesswork is a bad start. Imagine learning alphabet with five different lettering. Latin "Q", "q", Greek "Γ", "γ", Arabic "ـب", "ـبـ", "بـ" (a form of "ب") but five of them plus timbre. I want immediate recall, I can add forms one by one. And that is the only difference with linked tool.

khazhoux 6y ago

There are several abilities that can be called "perfect pitch" -- identification vs recall, automatic vs labored. I've never seen this categorized before, but here's my attempt: 1. The ability to immediately identify a pitch name from listening. This is the common definition. It is analogous to a native language speaker recognizing a spoken word -- it's automatic and requires no effort. 2. The ability to /recall/ a pitch from memory accurately. When you sing a tune, are you singing in the same key as the original recording? Some people can't do this. 3. The ability to identify a pitch name from listening, not immediately/reflexively but by mentally matching it against a well-remembered reference pitch. This requires (2) and also requires some work on your part, to remember a "catalog" of reference pitches. 4. Ability to recognize a chord type and root, either automatically (like #1) or by mental reference to some well-remembered chords (like #3). Of course, the root can be ambiguous and tricky to find. I can't do #1 (immediate automatic pitch recognition) but once in a rare while it happens. I can do #2 easily -- mentally recall or sing any remembered tune within probably 25 cents. That means I can tune a newly-strung guitar, e.g., pretty well (though not perfectly) by just remembering a reference low E (first note in Airbag) or drop-D (first note in Everlong). I can do #3 with some mental effort -- requires me remembering my catalog of opening note for a handful of songs/pieces, and then doing a slow mental match.

Bud 6y ago
No. Example #4 above has absolutely nothing to do with perfect pitch, and is instead simple ear training combined with some music theory training. (Professional classical musician, here.) All classically-trained music students learn to identify various chords and hear which note the root is, and only a small percentage of them have perfect pitch. #1 and #2 in your list are definitely examples of perfect pitch, however. #3 is a bit more like extremely good relative pitch combined with above-average pitch memory that lasts longer than most people's.
- khazhoux 6y ago
  My "taxonomy" wasn't meant to be a perfect delineation, but just to show that there's lots of variations of tonal and harmonic recognition and recall. I agree that the way I phrased #4, sounded more like what you do in simple ear training exercises ("Is this chord a major or minor?"). But... when I watch, say, a video of Herbie Hancock copying another player's complex chord progression perfectly, there is clearly a harmonic+melodic version of "perfect pitch" for those few people who can hear music and reproduce it accurately.

russellbeattie 6y ago

When I was a kid, I had a music program on my Apple IIe that taught you the scales, and would test you on the notes. Using the speaker in the computer case. It was amusing. "Brrrrrrrr beeeeeee brrrrrr boooooooo." Ummm... A# B A# C? Correct!

aoeusnth1 6y ago

My understanding is that it’s easy to teach toddlers perfect pitch, but it’s not possible to learn as an adult.

yomly 6y ago

@sergeykish this is fantastic! Please can you make it possible to hear the same note again?

sergeykish 6y ago
Thank you! Sure, but I'd like to understand how to fit it in instructions. It plays same note if you choose wrong answer, do you still want it? Can you please describe use case?
- yomly 6y ago
  I don't want to commit to an answer but want to hear the tone again. I guess there's an argument to the game deliberately pushing to only hearing it once, on the other hand.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    Done. For me failing is fun, when in doubt I try and if fail click right note several times to memorize it. Though I don't want to enforce this worldview.
    - yomly 6y ago
      What a turnaround! Thank you :) I probably could do better to embrace failure like you but when I'm on a streak I don't want to lose it