3 ms·
In fact, there is an interesting historical anecdote about polish-american pianistic prodigy Josef Hofmann related to absolute pitch: "Josef startled musicians
by vunderba 2y ago
In fact, there is an interesting historical anecdote about polish-american pianistic prodigy Josef Hofmann related to absolute pitch:
"Josef startled musicians by the accuracy of his ear. Once, at the Metropolitan Opera, he heard a tuning fork supposed to be at 440-A. Josef said it was a shade sharp, and it was."
This is incredibly impressive for two reasons:
- It shows absolute pitch is not necessarily limited solely to semitone identification
- A pure tone from a tuning fork doesn't have any of the characteristic overtones, timbre, etc. that you'd get from an instrument to help identify the sound
- bennettnate5 2y agoI imagine the gold standard of perfect pitch would be identifying exactly how many cents sharp or flat a given sound is--you could tune a piano by ear if you had that.
- ithkuil 2y agoYou can tune a piano by ear by listening to the beating. You need one note to be tuned according to a given reference but that reference doesn't have to be 440 hz
- dhruvrajvanshi 2y ago- It shows absolute pitch is not necessarily limited solely to semitone identification Why would it be? There's nothing fundamental about a semitone. It's an arbitrary division that varies across different musical systems.
- vunderba 2y agoI'm not saying that it is but MOST people when they think of perfect pitch - they think in terms of note identification (e.g. semitones), A, A#, etc. My point was more about how everyone's ability falls along a "Hz Range Level".