5 ms·

This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people). Instead, it's pretty much just

by slaymaker1907 2y ago

This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people). Instead, it's pretty much just relations that matter between pitches which makes things way more difficult to visualize. Mixing red and blue gives you a different color than red and green, but A-C is pretty much the same as Bb-Db, they're both minor thirds. If you want to analyze it algorithmically, you probably need to start looking at topology or something so that you can correctly relate musical structures in a way that is resistant to transposition.

itishappy 2y ago
> If you want to analyze it algorithmically, you probably need to start looking at topology or something so that you can correctly relate musical structures in a way that is resistant to transposition. Here's some alternative keyboard layouts that explore that idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://www.lumatone.io/ https://www.lumatone.io/
pimlottc 2y ago
> This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people). It’s worth mentioning that this includes the majority of musicians (professional and otherwise). Having perfect pitch is in no way necessary to be an excellent player or composer of music. Most of the greats didn’t have it. It is a very rare skill.
- recursive 2y ago
  It's very rare, and also not very correlated with musical skill. Some people just have it, seemingly inherently, even without any formal musical training.
- sssilver 2y ago
  I wouldn’t even call it a “skill”, but perhaps a “trait”
- rerdavies 2y ago
  And probably more of a curse than a blessing. Having to listen to Kind of Blue with the awful knowledge that it's 1/3 of a tone flat from concert pitch: that's something I'd rather live without. Among professional musicians who have perfect pitch, it's considered more of a curse than a blessing.
- bkfunk 2y ago
  It’s very rare in the West, but speakers of tonal languages seem to be much more likely to be able to do it https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172202.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172202.h...
- epiccoleman 2y ago
  > A few years ago, I had a student who had taken one of these teach-yourself-perfect-pitch courses, and I was fascinated. From time to time I would fire random notes at him in an attempt to catch him out... and I never could! When I asked him how the system worked, he explained that the best analogy was to think in terms of colours. For argument's sake, he said, think of Bb as sounding blue and D as a greenish colour. > Intrigued, I played him a Cmaj7 chord and asked him to identify that. He shook his head in despair, and gave up almost immediately. > "Can't you just home in on each note in turn and identify the separate colours?" I suggested. "Then you could look at your list of notes and figure out what the chord is." > "No, you don't understand," he replied. "All chords sound brown to me!" - Guthrie Govan, from Creative Guitar 1 (which, incidentally, I had to dig out to find the quote) I imagine that Guthrie's student might have been able to combine his pitch training with some ear training and have a better shot of hearing something other than mud when he heard a chord, but this always stuck in my brain and I'm reminded of it every time I see discussions of perfect pitch. It seems like perfect pitch is barely even desirable, in this framing. And that makes sense, as discussed elsewhere in the thread, what you really want as a musician is a great sense of relative pitch, and a good mind-body connection between the fingers and ears that lets you easily turn what you're hearing in your mind - where your ear wants to go - into actual music.
deleted 2y ago
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itishappy 2y ago

> If you want to analyze it algorithmically, you probably need to start looking at topology or something so that you can correctly relate musical structures in a way that is resistant to transposition. Here's some alternative keyboard layouts that explore that idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://www.lumatone.io/ https://www.lumatone.io/

pimlottc 2y ago

> This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people). It’s worth mentioning that this includes the majority of musicians (professional and otherwise). Having perfect pitch is in no way necessary to be an excellent player or composer of music. Most of the greats didn’t have it. It is a very rare skill.

recursive 2y ago
It's very rare, and also not very correlated with musical skill. Some people just have it, seemingly inherently, even without any formal musical training.
sssilver 2y ago
I wouldn’t even call it a “skill”, but perhaps a “trait”
rerdavies 2y ago
And probably more of a curse than a blessing. Having to listen to Kind of Blue with the awful knowledge that it's 1/3 of a tone flat from concert pitch: that's something I'd rather live without. Among professional musicians who have perfect pitch, it's considered more of a curse than a blessing.
bkfunk 2y ago
It’s very rare in the West, but speakers of tonal languages seem to be much more likely to be able to do it https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172202.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172202.h...
epiccoleman 2y ago
> A few years ago, I had a student who had taken one of these teach-yourself-perfect-pitch courses, and I was fascinated. From time to time I would fire random notes at him in an attempt to catch him out... and I never could! When I asked him how the system worked, he explained that the best analogy was to think in terms of colours. For argument's sake, he said, think of Bb as sounding blue and D as a greenish colour. > Intrigued, I played him a Cmaj7 chord and asked him to identify that. He shook his head in despair, and gave up almost immediately. > "Can't you just home in on each note in turn and identify the separate colours?" I suggested. "Then you could look at your list of notes and figure out what the chord is." > "No, you don't understand," he replied. "All chords sound brown to me!" - Guthrie Govan, from Creative Guitar 1 (which, incidentally, I had to dig out to find the quote) I imagine that Guthrie's student might have been able to combine his pitch training with some ear training and have a better shot of hearing something other than mud when he heard a chord, but this always stuck in my brain and I'm reminded of it every time I see discussions of perfect pitch. It seems like perfect pitch is barely even desirable, in this framing. And that makes sense, as discussed elsewhere in the thread, what you really want as a musician is a great sense of relative pitch, and a good mind-body connection between the fingers and ears that lets you easily turn what you're hearing in your mind - where your ear wants to go - into actual music.

deleted 2y ago

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