4 ms·

So if I hear the opening bar of either The Simpsons or Futurama, I can absolutely tell if it's been pitch shifted, even slightly. Some episodes of Futurama have

So if I hear the opening bar of either The Simpsons or Futurama, I can absolutely tell if it's been pitch shifted, even slightly. Some episodes of Futurama have a slightly sped up opening theme to make up for the episode being a bit too long. This clearly requires the ability to distinguish absolute pitch, but isn't this something most people could do?

gavinray 5y ago
Time-stretching algorithms like Elastique/ZTX make up for the change in time by compensating and keeping a neutral pitch AFAIK, in most audio/visual software tools used by professionals, this is baked in and so you'd have to purposefully pitch-shift it up and make it noticeable for this to happen. IE, when I mess around in REAPER, and my song is set to 110BPM, listening to/dragging in a 170BPM loop keeps the exact same pitch (nearly, it's quite amazing) as the original it's just stretch/compressed to fit into 110BPM.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  While true, it is somewhat tangential to what I'm talking about. The Futurama theme was not pitch compensated when it was stretched, perhaps as it's from 1999.
CheezeIt 5y ago
Huh, I just tested out tThe Simpsons and yeah, I got the key dead on.
- jcheng 5y ago
  Wow!! I just tried it too and nailed it--I certainly wasn’t expecting that!
shannifin 5y ago
This supports the article's assessment that "it may be better thought of as a continuous spectrum." Long term memory for the key or opening note of a particular song seems to be a more widespread skill than naming the pitch class of a pitch without such context. From wikipedia: "People who are not skilled singers will often sing popular songs in the correct key, and can usually recognize when TV themes have been shifted into the wrong key." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Pitch_memory_related_to_musical_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Pitch_memory_re... See also: "The Levitin Effect" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1CBPV1_uTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1CBPV1_uTI

gavinray 5y ago

Time-stretching algorithms like Elastique/ZTX make up for the change in time by compensating and keeping a neutral pitch AFAIK, in most audio/visual software tools used by professionals, this is baked in and so you'd have to purposefully pitch-shift it up and make it noticeable for this to happen. IE, when I mess around in REAPER, and my song is set to 110BPM, listening to/dragging in a 170BPM loop keeps the exact same pitch (nearly, it's quite amazing) as the original it's just stretch/compressed to fit into 110BPM.

cameronh90 5y ago
While true, it is somewhat tangential to what I'm talking about. The Futurama theme was not pitch compensated when it was stretched, perhaps as it's from 1999.

CheezeIt 5y ago

Huh, I just tested out tThe Simpsons and yeah, I got the key dead on.

jcheng 5y ago
Wow!! I just tried it too and nailed it--I certainly wasn’t expecting that!

shannifin 5y ago

This supports the article's assessment that "it may be better thought of as a continuous spectrum." Long term memory for the key or opening note of a particular song seems to be a more widespread skill than naming the pitch class of a pitch without such context. From wikipedia: "People who are not skilled singers will often sing popular songs in the correct key, and can usually recognize when TV themes have been shifted into the wrong key." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Pitch_memory_related_to_musical_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Pitch_memory_re... See also: "The Levitin Effect" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1CBPV1_uTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1CBPV1_uTI