2 ms·

Personally, it feels to me like the ability to recognize intervals (relative pitch) is so much easier than the ability to recognize pitches (absolute pitch) tha

by baddox 12y ago

Personally, it feels to me like the ability to recognize intervals (relative pitch) is so much easier than the ability to recognize pitches (absolute pitch) that I wonder if they really are both "simply memory." Why is one so much harder than the other?

dfan 12y ago
Well, it's also a lot harder to tell a whether a given square is 20" or 19" on a side at a glance than it is to tell a whether a given rectangle is 2 x 1 or 1.9 x 1. Does that analogy help? It's more relevant than it might seem; absolute pitch is about recognizing frequencies and relative pitch is about recognizing ratios of frequencies.
- baddox 12y ago
  That's true, but can you "memorize" something that lets you tell whether a given square is 20 or 19 inches on a side?
  - sukilot 12y ago
    If you spent a lot of time with 20" squares (carpenter?), I bet you'd start to notice that 19" looked small, even in isolation.