4 ms·

I wonder what's the physical basis of perfect pitch? Neurons growing in a certain pattern? When I was in my late teens I went to a concert which was way too lo

by Tade0 4y ago

I wonder what's the physical basis of perfect pitch? Neurons growing in a certain pattern? When I was in my late teens I went to a concert which was way too loud - for a few years after that incident I could hear something akin to modulation distortion if the sound was loud enough - a sort of low ringing like what you hear if you spin a suitcase wheel using your hand. It was unpleasant, but surprisingly helpful in identifying pitch, because the distortion would just sound differently depending on pitch - I associated it with a few notes and could roughly identify them - especially the lower ones (E, D and C# specifically). The effect faded over time and now I can't do it any more. In any case, non-newtonian fluids exhibit such distortion and the body is full of them(most notably blood). I wonder if they play any role in this?

1letterunixname 4y ago
I can't sing or carry a tune to save my life and have a speech impediment, but I can tune a guitar or a piano by ear, confirmed by tuning fork. From ages roughly 10-25, I could tell the type of (US civilian or military) aircraft or helicopter flying above and the number of engines it had without looking. My hearing now is fairly shot and I have SCDS. I can hear my left eyeball move, eating chips is a noisy affair, and it sounds like water is perpetually in my left ear.
- tomcam 4y ago
  That is a very interesting constellation of symptoms. Thank you for sharing, and I feel for you. I have much acute sensitive hearing response than the rest of my family and friends and it’s a hard thing to explain with no one else notices. For me however it’s a largely positive experience. I am hugely grateful for things like the sounds of frogs, birds, voices I like, movie soundtracks, and for cleanly processed digital music. On the other hand, musicians playing or singing out of tune, gives me a visceral response, and I have been down to leave clubs when a musician is having a slightly off night.
  - ChainOfFools 4y ago
    do you also suffer from ( sometimes socially compromising) misophonia as well? I also have what I consider to be above average hearing sensitivity, although not to the point where artifacts from music compression bother me that much. I don't have an official testing result to prove or define this in quantifiable terms, only that I seem to notice things in the ambient sound environment that most others either don't notice or tune out, and this has at least as many downsides as benefits. If someone is a loud chewer, or drink slurper, it's as if I can hear every single bit of muscle and conjunctiva flexing and saliva sloshing around inside their jaw, and the glorp glorp sound of their swallows, if we're both in an otherwise quiet room. Or if there is a car alarm going off or dog barking three blocks away, sounds other people appear to be completely unaware of or passively filter out can sometimes drive me into quiet boiling stress that is completely irrational yet impossible to reason myself out of, and i just have to leave.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      Exactly as you describe. Agonizing but it sounds insane to people so you can’t say anything. I excuse myself from social situations more than once a week.
    - Tade0 4y ago
      Oh, this is a fun (deep-fried sarcasm here) thing to have, ask me how I know. It's not well researched, but apparently what you (or actually we) are feeling is a fight-or-flight response. I started using it to gauge whether I'm upset with a particular person over something, because it would intensify in such cases, and reflect on that. Also helped my friend manually remove breath and lip sounds from a recording he was doing for an indie mod for a game because, well, with enough compression it was painful to listen to for me.
      - tomcam 4y ago
        > apparently what you (or actually we) are feeling is a fight-or-flight response. OK I can come out of the closet. These sounds provoke a kind of panic inside me, but I never connected it to fight or flight. Feels very right to me.
- stevekemp 4y ago
  I used to recognize cars by their engine-noises, and hear bats when I was walking home through various parks late at night up until I was early twenties. These days too much loud metal, and age, have taken their toll, and I have no ability to do either of these things any more.
aphexcx 4y ago
What you heard is likely a rare hearing disorder called Diplacusis or Polyacusis - aka hearing additional erroneous pitches: https://www.neilsperlingmd.com/blog/2018/05/everything-you-need-to-know-about-diplacusis/ https://www.neilsperlingmd.com/blog/2018/05/everything-you-n... I've had it in my right ear ever since being exposed to a loud engine for 9+ hours in 2021. It gets noticeable for loud sounds, especially in the 3700-5200hz range; in my right ear, I'll hear a high-pitched ringing overtone on top of whatever external I'm hearing. It's quite frustrating, but seems to come and go. Nice to hear that it faded over time for you - gives me hope!
- Infernal 4y ago
  I'm really curious about the circumstances of a loud engine for 9+ hours. Were you involved in auto racing or something?
- Tade0 4y ago
  I think it was three years before it stopped being unpleasant and another three that made it largely go away. I remember designing an amplifier circuit for a college project, listening to the output sine wave while looking at the frequency domain and thinking "that unpleasant feeling is just the THD being over 0,5%". Fingers crossed for your recovery!
seanhunter 4y ago
Absolute pitch is just a learned skill like a lot of other things. People learn to identify the pitches because they sound different and learn the names for them. Nerd note: the name "Perfect pitch" is something of a misnomer because the frequencies the note names refer to is a social construct which has changed over time[1]. A=440 is the predominant concert pitch now but since "pitch taste" generally gets brighter/sharper over time A=443 is used now by the Berlin Philharmonic for example instead as a concert pitch. In the Baroque period we know (from looking at surviving fixed-pitch instruments like historical organs) that their reference A was generally a bit flatter than that but it's not consistent. Nowadays musicians playing historically-informed performances have settled on A=415 as a common baroque pitch standard because it's helpful for everyone to agree so they can have instruments made that play that pitch standard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch_standards_in_Western_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch...
- kayson 4y ago
  I don't think "pitch taste" is a good way of describing it. It's not about the pitch itself. It's about the timbre. Musicians wanted a brighter sound, which they could accomplish, for example, by tightening their strings a little more. I personally really like a darker mellow sound and very much enjoy the 415 A and historically informed performances. I also think pushing to a 443 modern A is stupid and tune all my ensembles to 440. There is a little practical bonus to starting higher, though, which is that it helps mitigate the tendency of pitch to drop over the course of the piece.
- bmitc 4y ago
  > Absolute pitch is just a learned skill like a lot of other things. Is that true though? I had a friend in college who had perfect pitch. I asked him all the time how he learned it, and he said he didn't know. It just started happening. He never explicitly trained for it. It also wasn't just about notes. He could nearly instantaneously tell chords and keys from the radio or going to the symphony. I would test him using my guitar as well, an instrument he didn't play. It's quite rare to obtain skills by never practicing them.

by Tade0 4y ago

1letterunixname 4y ago

I can't sing or carry a tune to save my life and have a speech impediment, but I can tune a guitar or a piano by ear, confirmed by tuning fork. From ages roughly 10-25, I could tell the type of (US civilian or military) aircraft or helicopter flying above and the number of engines it had without looking. My hearing now is fairly shot and I have SCDS. I can hear my left eyeball move, eating chips is a noisy affair, and it sounds like water is perpetually in my left ear.

tomcam 4y ago
That is a very interesting constellation of symptoms. Thank you for sharing, and I feel for you. I have much acute sensitive hearing response than the rest of my family and friends and it’s a hard thing to explain with no one else notices. For me however it’s a largely positive experience. I am hugely grateful for things like the sounds of frogs, birds, voices I like, movie soundtracks, and for cleanly processed digital music. On the other hand, musicians playing or singing out of tune, gives me a visceral response, and I have been down to leave clubs when a musician is having a slightly off night.
- ChainOfFools 4y ago
  do you also suffer from ( sometimes socially compromising) misophonia as well? I also have what I consider to be above average hearing sensitivity, although not to the point where artifacts from music compression bother me that much. I don't have an official testing result to prove or define this in quantifiable terms, only that I seem to notice things in the ambient sound environment that most others either don't notice or tune out, and this has at least as many downsides as benefits. If someone is a loud chewer, or drink slurper, it's as if I can hear every single bit of muscle and conjunctiva flexing and saliva sloshing around inside their jaw, and the glorp glorp sound of their swallows, if we're both in an otherwise quiet room. Or if there is a car alarm going off or dog barking three blocks away, sounds other people appear to be completely unaware of or passively filter out can sometimes drive me into quiet boiling stress that is completely irrational yet impossible to reason myself out of, and i just have to leave.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Exactly as you describe. Agonizing but it sounds insane to people so you can’t say anything. I excuse myself from social situations more than once a week.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Oh, this is a fun (deep-fried sarcasm here) thing to have, ask me how I know. It's not well researched, but apparently what you (or actually we) are feeling is a fight-or-flight response. I started using it to gauge whether I'm upset with a particular person over something, because it would intensify in such cases, and reflect on that. Also helped my friend manually remove breath and lip sounds from a recording he was doing for an indie mod for a game because, well, with enough compression it was painful to listen to for me.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      > apparently what you (or actually we) are feeling is a fight-or-flight response. OK I can come out of the closet. These sounds provoke a kind of panic inside me, but I never connected it to fight or flight. Feels very right to me.
stevekemp 4y ago
I used to recognize cars by their engine-noises, and hear bats when I was walking home through various parks late at night up until I was early twenties. These days too much loud metal, and age, have taken their toll, and I have no ability to do either of these things any more.

aphexcx 4y ago

What you heard is likely a rare hearing disorder called Diplacusis or Polyacusis - aka hearing additional erroneous pitches: https://www.neilsperlingmd.com/blog/2018/05/everything-you-need-to-know-about-diplacusis/ https://www.neilsperlingmd.com/blog/2018/05/everything-you-n... I've had it in my right ear ever since being exposed to a loud engine for 9+ hours in 2021. It gets noticeable for loud sounds, especially in the 3700-5200hz range; in my right ear, I'll hear a high-pitched ringing overtone on top of whatever external I'm hearing. It's quite frustrating, but seems to come and go. Nice to hear that it faded over time for you - gives me hope!

Infernal 4y ago
I'm really curious about the circumstances of a loud engine for 9+ hours. Were you involved in auto racing or something?
Tade0 4y ago
I think it was three years before it stopped being unpleasant and another three that made it largely go away. I remember designing an amplifier circuit for a college project, listening to the output sine wave while looking at the frequency domain and thinking "that unpleasant feeling is just the THD being over 0,5%". Fingers crossed for your recovery!

seanhunter 4y ago

Absolute pitch is just a learned skill like a lot of other things. People learn to identify the pitches because they sound different and learn the names for them. Nerd note: the name "Perfect pitch" is something of a misnomer because the frequencies the note names refer to is a social construct which has changed over time[1]. A=440 is the predominant concert pitch now but since "pitch taste" generally gets brighter/sharper over time A=443 is used now by the Berlin Philharmonic for example instead as a concert pitch. In the Baroque period we know (from looking at surviving fixed-pitch instruments like historical organs) that their reference A was generally a bit flatter than that but it's not consistent. Nowadays musicians playing historically-informed performances have settled on A=415 as a common baroque pitch standard because it's helpful for everyone to agree so they can have instruments made that play that pitch standard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch_standards_in_Western_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch...

kayson 4y ago
I don't think "pitch taste" is a good way of describing it. It's not about the pitch itself. It's about the timbre. Musicians wanted a brighter sound, which they could accomplish, for example, by tightening their strings a little more. I personally really like a darker mellow sound and very much enjoy the 415 A and historically informed performances. I also think pushing to a 443 modern A is stupid and tune all my ensembles to 440. There is a little practical bonus to starting higher, though, which is that it helps mitigate the tendency of pitch to drop over the course of the piece.
bmitc 4y ago
> Absolute pitch is just a learned skill like a lot of other things. Is that true though? I had a friend in college who had perfect pitch. I asked him all the time how he learned it, and he said he didn't know. It just started happening. He never explicitly trained for it. It also wasn't just about notes. He could nearly instantaneously tell chords and keys from the radio or going to the symphony. I would test him using my guitar as well, an instrument he didn't play. It's quite rare to obtain skills by never practicing them.