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Absolute pitch: a completely useless skill, which having can in some cases even be detrimental. While being very hard to impossible to acquire. So naturally I w

by w-m 2y ago

Absolute pitch: a completely useless skill, which having can in some cases even be detrimental. While being very hard to impossible to acquire. So naturally I will stop at nothing trying to develop it :) A couple of months ago, this paper made the rounds: Absolute pitch in involuntary musical imagery [0]. In a small sample group, nearly half the time (44.7%) when someone was asked to sing their current earworm, were they perfectly in pitch. Random chance would be 8.3%. It’s a fun thing to try for yourself. Just hum your current earworm into a voice memo, and check the correct pitch against the recording of the original song. You may discover a skill you never knew you had, implicit perfect pitch on involuntary music! Trying to make this more interesting, reproducing a particular song on demand (there’s references to that too in the paper - it also works better than random chance, but less so than the involuntary kind), I find it works best for songs that start off with a single note, preferably sung. Or then at least you can immediately check whether you were right, e.g. “Tom’s Diner”. I’ve been having a lot of fun humming the first tone to Laufey’s cover of Sunny side of the street [1] whenever I open YouTube. I’m more often right than wrong, and if I was wrong, I can just listen to the whole thing to brighten my day anyways. [0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-024-02936-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-024-02936-0 [1]: https://youtu.be/wK6gbKC90Ps https://youtu.be/wK6gbKC90Ps

amatecha 2y ago
I find I can recall something with accurate pitch, but the "memory" of that pitch fades over time. Whatever my current favorite song is, I can hum it at the right pitch. But, if I were to try to do so a month later, it will probably be transposed a bit because I somehow lost that sense of the exact correct pitch. My idea of what "feels right" in that regard somehow fades, or something...
zeta0134 2y ago
This is really a fun skill to learn that you have. I've had a pretty good ear for relative pitch since birth, which my music teachers picked up on right away (I could play songs "by ear" after hearing them a couple of times), but I struggled with blind pitch in the mornings... until I realized that, for whatever reason, I can hear the theme from Zora's Domain in perfect clarity in the proper key. I used that to fake absolute pitch for a while in college, then explained to my voice coach what I was doing, and he looked at me like I had three heads. I'll never forget it. :)
deleted 2y ago
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jsphweid 2y ago
This post isn't compelling to me. > a completely useless skill It's probably an overrated skill depending on the musical task, but to say it's completely useless is really ignorant. Nearly anyone who studies music at the university level or above would find this statement ("completely useless") to be wildly incorrect. > Random chance would be 8.3%. A random human won't sing off the cuff with their tonal center magically quantized to one of the twelve keys in our modern western tuning (Equal Temperament).
- w-m 2y ago
  This criticism isn't compelling to me. The smiling emoji at the end of the first paragraph indicates that these statements were made somewhat in jest, or perhaps exaggerated. Of course some uses can be found for absolute pitch. I saw one a couple weeks back, when Jacob Collier was tuning the audience choir to lead into "Somebody to Love" played on the piano. But, hadn't he had absolute pitch, he might just have picked up a reference note from the piano or his in-ear monitors, like a filthy commoner. Usually when making music, having good relative pitch is required, and a reference instrument is mostly handy, making perfect pitch somewhat redundant. But do tell what you're doing with perfect pitch, I'm curious. And on curiosity, I went to your website and randomly listened to "The Fugue Song" [0]. Really loved it! Very nice moment when the singing comes in, repeating the phrase from the fugy guitar intro. Good song! (I'm a total sucker for Nina Simone's "Love Me Or Leave me", do you know that? A song where she's inserting some counterpoint improvisations in the middle). I'm listening to a bit of "Hiss" now. > 8.3% Rounded to the next semitone of course, I left that detail out, it's in the paper. [0]: https://josephweidinger.com/project/the_fugue_song/ https://josephweidinger.com/project/the_fugue_song/
  - whstl 2y ago
    It's just an anecdote, but: I remember playing in a band with an amateur musician friend who told me had perfect pitch, and it was "very annoying", according to him, when we transposed songs to fit our voices. They just "sounded wrong" to him. He would make beginner mistakes since he relied on pitch memory rather than listening to us to know what to play/sing. I have no idea how it works in general, but it seems like it was a problem for at least this one guy.

by w-m 2y ago

amatecha 2y ago

I find I can recall something with accurate pitch, but the "memory" of that pitch fades over time. Whatever my current favorite song is, I can hum it at the right pitch. But, if I were to try to do so a month later, it will probably be transposed a bit because I somehow lost that sense of the exact correct pitch. My idea of what "feels right" in that regard somehow fades, or something...

zeta0134 2y ago

This is really a fun skill to learn that you have. I've had a pretty good ear for relative pitch since birth, which my music teachers picked up on right away (I could play songs "by ear" after hearing them a couple of times), but I struggled with blind pitch in the mornings... until I realized that, for whatever reason, I can hear the theme from Zora's Domain in perfect clarity in the proper key. I used that to fake absolute pitch for a while in college, then explained to my voice coach what I was doing, and he looked at me like I had three heads. I'll never forget it. :)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jsphweid 2y ago

This post isn't compelling to me. > a completely useless skill It's probably an overrated skill depending on the musical task, but to say it's completely useless is really ignorant. Nearly anyone who studies music at the university level or above would find this statement ("completely useless") to be wildly incorrect. > Random chance would be 8.3%. A random human won't sing off the cuff with their tonal center magically quantized to one of the twelve keys in our modern western tuning (Equal Temperament).

w-m 2y ago
This criticism isn't compelling to me. The smiling emoji at the end of the first paragraph indicates that these statements were made somewhat in jest, or perhaps exaggerated. Of course some uses can be found for absolute pitch. I saw one a couple weeks back, when Jacob Collier was tuning the audience choir to lead into "Somebody to Love" played on the piano. But, hadn't he had absolute pitch, he might just have picked up a reference note from the piano or his in-ear monitors, like a filthy commoner. Usually when making music, having good relative pitch is required, and a reference instrument is mostly handy, making perfect pitch somewhat redundant. But do tell what you're doing with perfect pitch, I'm curious. And on curiosity, I went to your website and randomly listened to "The Fugue Song" [0]. Really loved it! Very nice moment when the singing comes in, repeating the phrase from the fugy guitar intro. Good song! (I'm a total sucker for Nina Simone's "Love Me Or Leave me", do you know that? A song where she's inserting some counterpoint improvisations in the middle). I'm listening to a bit of "Hiss" now. > 8.3% Rounded to the next semitone of course, I left that detail out, it's in the paper. [0]: https://josephweidinger.com/project/the_fugue_song/ https://josephweidinger.com/project/the_fugue_song/
- whstl 2y ago
  It's just an anecdote, but: I remember playing in a band with an amateur musician friend who told me had perfect pitch, and it was "very annoying", according to him, when we transposed songs to fit our voices. They just "sounded wrong" to him. He would make beginner mistakes since he relied on pitch memory rather than listening to us to know what to play/sing. I have no idea how it works in general, but it seems like it was a problem for at least this one guy.