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Fudo
Phoenix
Joined: May 05, 2009
Age: 21
Posts: 620
Location: UK, south east.
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 Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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i have relative pitch.
sometimes off-key sounds get to to me, but i really love the sliding, bending "micro-tone" sound of blues & eastern music.. &Bach's chromatic fantasy!! 
plus i love electric guitar sounds, like Hendrix' mistakes & bizarre "whammy-bar sounds", harmony is beautiful too though..
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PSN ID: Fudoichi-Dai
"My yellow in this case, is not so mellow, in fact i'm trying to say, it's frightened like me"Jimi/
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theQuail
Sea Gull
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Joined: Dec 10, 2007
Posts: 233
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| Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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I don't have absolute pitch. Actually, I still struggle with relative pitch. However, when I try to tune instruments, they sound horribly out of tune when they are as little as three cents off.  (I had a hard time in school orchestra...) |
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amazon_television
Velociraptor
Joined: Feb 18, 2009
Age: 27
Posts: 451
Location: middle ground
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| Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:32 am Post subject: |
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| ford_prefects_kid wrote: |
I know one pianist who told me he has perfect pitch from color synthasia- he sees a color in his mind for each note on the piano. He says this is strongest with piano tones because he is most used to them, but seems to be based on the overtones from certain instruments. So for instance, the colors and therefore absolute pitch will show up with the overtones present in a piano or violin or human voice, but a midi file won't do it for him.
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This is apparently pretty "common" in people with synesthesia. Oliver Sacks talks about it in great detail in "Musicophilia", I don't have the book in front of me and I can't recall all the details, but he has a lot of the percentages, and several accounts of exactly how the two relate in different individual cases. |
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ryan93
Velociraptor
Joined: Apr 16, 2009
Age: 16
Posts: 490
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| Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not pitch perfect, but I have odd musical quirks. I went into an abandoned factory once and learned Linkin Parks in the End on an old piano (it wasn't too out of tune). That was the first time I ever played a piano. I can learn simple tunes almost immediately by ear, if I'm listening to a song I can often play something that sounds a little similar on piano. I can tune a guitar by ear, and I can tell if somethings out of tune to about 10C's (1/10th of a note) I learned a few whole songs by sound, But I'm not good enough at it to be called pitch perfect. If my parents knew I had AS and I was bought a piano when I was a kid I would be pitch perfect now 
| Quote: | | I have it. I also have an excellent voice for singing and talking. I make my money as a speaker, and it is my signature - people never forget the voice. I attribute my vocal success with my perfect pitch. |
Weird question, but what note should a guy speak in to sound "normal". Not too effeminate, not too Rambo so to speak  |
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starygrrl
Deinonychus
Joined: Apr 13, 2009
Posts: 327
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| Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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| theQuail wrote: | | I don't have absolute pitch. Actually, I still struggle with relative pitch. However, when I try to tune instruments, they sound horribly out of tune when they are as little as three cents off. (I had a hard time in school orchestra...) |
You probably have atypical pitch. While it can be considered an LD at first, it can also be gift. It means you conceptualize music differantly than those with perfect pitch or even relative pitch. Both atypical and perfect pitch are extremely common for folks with ASD.
By the way certian peoples voices and certian types of music bug the hell out of me.
Most people do not know about atypical pitch, because it is less common than perfect pitch. Its also less common in classical musicians, and appears with improv musicians (rock and jazz). The best example I have is Kevin Shields from my bloody valentine. |
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Izzy_Dolphin
Blue Jay
Joined: Jun 04, 2009
Age: 20
Posts: 79
Location: Planet Ocean
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| Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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I have something kind of like 'perfect pitch'. Sometimes I can often pull the note names out of the air, and most of the time I can just tell you whether the note you're playing is out of tune or not, and which direction you need to go to fix it. I play piano and viola, and I think my obsessive practicing probably helped me train it. My mom once got this really awful guy to tune our piano, and he tuned it all way out of tune, especially down at the lower octaves. When I sat down that afternoon to play, it was awful, and we made him come back... and I tuned the piano. (I did check with my tuner both before and after the tuning, and I was right on. He was way off.) I guess you could say I have trained, rather than inherent, perfect pitch. I can, of course, figure out intervals given a note. But I can produce a 440 A (tuning pitch for strings), so I can go off of that relatively without having to hear an A pitch, so it takes me more time to pull the name out of the air, but I can usually do it.
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fiddlerpianist
Unclassified and loving it!
Joined: May 01, 2009
Age: 32
Posts: 1558
Location: The Autistic Hinterlands
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| Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:09 pm Post subject: |
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| starygrrl wrote: | | Both atypical and perfect pitch are extremely common for folks with ASD. |
I'm sort of borderline on the spectrum, I think. Is it unreasonable for me to consider my absolute pitch to be the "nail in the coffin" for me being on the spectrum?
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"That leap of logic should have broken his legs." - Janissy |
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MJE
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Nov 07, 2007
Posts: 26
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| Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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I'm belatedly coming in on this, but I think I have an unusual angle on this. I will begin with a bit of personal background on perfect or absolute pitch first.
For as long as I can recall, I have had perfect pitch, in that, whenever I can hear a piece, I can tell what key it is without even thinking about it, because each key just sounds subtly different from any other.
I am a pianist and composer (or at least was until more recent years, when these have faded, for a variety of reasons), but I don't know whether this has cultivated my perfect pitch, or whether I would have had that anyway. I suspect that people who have perfect pitch but who never train as musicians may never recognize that they have this. After all, maybe I can tell if a piece is in C major, not D-flat major or B major; but a person who doesn't even know what the concepts of "C major", "B major", etc. mean would never even know if they have the inherent ability to tell the difference between them.
But I have noticed a change in my faculty in the last few years which I would find profoundly worrying if I were still active as a musician - and that is that my sense of absolute pitch seems to have shifted by one semitone. The meaning of this is best illustrated by an example: I might hear a piece on the radio and get the feeling that it is in B major, in just the way that I have always been able to do; but so often now, when I go to the piano to test it out, I find that it is in fact in B-flat major, a semitone lower. (And I know my piano has not shifted, in every one of its keys, by an exact semitone, and it still tests correctly the key of pieces whose key I *know* anyway.)
But even after I've confirmed that the piece is in B-flat major, it still *feels* like B major to me - and if I visualize what the score of the piece might look like (something I find difficult to avoid doing), I involuntarily see the 5-sharp key signature of B major instead of the 2-flat key signature of B-flat major, and I hear all sorts of passing chords a semitone out too. If the leading note of the relative minor appears in the melody, I actually hear it as an F-double-sharp instead of just F-sharp - and so on. It's across the board, and I don't have to think about it - these things just spontaneously come into my mind as I hear the piece.
So I have frequently found myself hearing C-major pieces as being in C-sharp major, F-major pieces as in F-sharp major, and so on. As a result, I very frequently hear pieces as being in very remote sharp keys. (I am thoroughly familiar with all 30 key signatures from 7 flats to 7 sharps, so this causes me no difficulty.) Also, the C-sharp major perception remains resolutely in C-sharp major, and I cannot shift it to the much commoner and slightly less remote enharmonic equivalent key of D-flat major. In other words, the shift is always by a chromatic semitone, not a diatonic one (for those musical people who know what the difference is).
However, this is not invariable, and sometimes I do get it right. So I was a bit confounded when, a few years ago, I first heard the Beach Boys' "California Girls", and thought to myself, "That's odd - that seems to be in B major - a very unusual key for a popular song" - but my piano showed that this song is indeed in that key.
I don't know why my absolute pitch has shifted by a semitone like this, and don't entirely like it. I have never heard of this happening to anyone else at all. Weird. Has anyone heard of this before?
I even wonder if it could be a symptom of deteriorating hearing. (I am 55, so this is a possibility.)
Regards, Michael. |
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Who_Am_I
stubbornness keeps me alive
Joined: Aug 28, 2005
Age: 25
Posts: 4781
Location: My body is in Brisbane and my mind is in the gutter. :D
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| Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Weird. Has anyone heard of this before? |
Yes, I have. I've read a number of studies that show that this shift in perceived pitch is very common with age. I can't recall the exact reason. Oliver Sacks discusses it in his book Musicophilia ; if I can find my copy I'll read what he says to remind myself. I believe that hearing things up to a minor third higher than they actually are is quite normal.
If you hear a note in isolation, can you tell what it is? The ability that you described sounds like absolute tonality, which is related to, but not the same thing as absolute pitch.
_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I !!!!
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I |
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MJE
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Nov 07, 2007
Posts: 26
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Who_Am_I wrote: | | Quote: | | Weird. Has anyone heard of this before? |
Yes, I have. I've read a number of studies that show that this shift in perceived pitch is very common with age. I can't recall the exact reason. Oliver Sacks discusses it in his book Musicophilia ; if I can find my copy I'll read what he says to remind myself. I believe that hearing things up to a minor third higher than they actually are is quite normal. |
Always higher? - never lower?
I should read that book - it sounds as if it might be interesting. I'd be interested to know if a reason for this is known, and whether there is any remedy for it. If not, and if it is age-related, this is just yet another thing that increasingly convinces me that ageing absolutely *sucks*.
| Quote: | | If you hear a note in isolation, can you tell what it is? |
It would be less likely heard in isolation without any harmony accompanying it, and less likely outside of at least a brief surrounding musical context. Even so, I think I'd probably usually get it right if it was a single note on the piano, my own instrument. Even for other instruments used in classical music, I might do it more often than not; and if I failed, it would probably be only by a semitone or two. And it would be less likely still in an instrument strongly different from those I'm used to (electric guitar, for instance) - and less likely yet further still if someone sung the note. My skills in this are weakest of all with singers - possibly because their pitch is more liable to waver than almost any instrument.
| Quote: | | The ability that you described sounds like absolute tonality, which is related to, but not the same thing as absolute pitch. |
I've never heard a distinction made before between absolute tonality and absolute pitch. What is the difference between them?
Regards, Michael. |
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Izzy_Dolphin
Blue Jay
Joined: Jun 04, 2009
Age: 20
Posts: 79
Location: Planet Ocean
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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I heard a really cool study recently that found that people who speak a tonal language as their first language (such as Mandarin) are 5 times more likely to have perfect pitch than those who speak a Latin language for their first language (English). The scientists think this is because in tonal languages, the ability to differentiate slight variations is a matter of comprehension of the mere words, so those people are better at it. I wonder if there's a link to type of language you spoke first and Asperger's expression, because tone of voice is something that a lot of us struggle with. I don't know. I think that might be a topic for another thread, but its a cool idea.
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Who_Am_I
stubbornness keeps me alive
Joined: Aug 28, 2005
Age: 25
Posts: 4781
Location: My body is in Brisbane and my mind is in the gutter. :D
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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| MJE wrote: | | Who_Am_I wrote: | | Quote: | | Weird. Has anyone heard of this before? |
Yes, I have. I've read a number of studies that show that this shift in perceived pitch is very common with age. I can't recall the exact reason. Oliver Sacks discusses it in his book Musicophilia ; if I can find my copy I'll read what he says to remind myself. I believe that hearing things up to a minor third higher than they actually are is quite normal. |
Always higher? - never lower?
I should read that book - it sounds as if it might be interesting. I'd be interested to know if a reason for this is known, and whether there is any remedy for it. If not, and if it is age-related, this is just yet another thing that increasingly convinces me that ageing absolutely *sucks*. |
All the cases that I've read of were higher. You should read the book, it was very interesting.
| Quote: | | If you hear a note in isolation, can you tell what it is? |
It would be less likely heard in isolation without any harmony accompanying it, and less likely outside of at least a brief surrounding musical context. Even so, I think I'd probably usually get it right if it was a single note on the piano, my own instrument. Even for other instruments used in classical music, I might do it more often than not; and if I failed, it would probably be only by a semitone or two. And it would be less likely still in an instrument strongly different from those I'm used to (electric guitar, for instance) - and less likely yet further still if someone sung the note. My skills in this are weakest of all with singers - possibly because their pitch is more liable to waver than almost any instrument. [/quote]
That's interesting; you're partially the opposite to me in that harmony accompanying a note makes it more difficult for me to determine its pitch.
| Quote: | | The ability that you described sounds like absolute tonality, which is related to, but not the same thing as absolute pitch. |
I've never heard a distinction made before between absolute tonality and absolute pitch. What is the difference between them?
Regards, Michael.[/quote]
Absolute pitch: the ability to identify a note upon hearing it (passive absolute pitch) or to produce any note with one's voice (active absolute pitch) without a reference pitch.
Absolute tonality: the ability to identify what key a piece is in by hearing it (again, without any reference being given).
Absolute pitch implies absolute tonality, but the reverse isn't always the case. I've known people with absolute tonality without absolute pitch. Related to this is the (very common) ability to hear that different keys sound different, while not being able to tell exactly what key a piece is in.
Izzy_Dolphin: I read that study.  I also read more than one that said that generally speaking, musical training before the age of 6 is needed if perfect pitch is to occur. It was hypothesised in one such study that this is because of a shift after that age from processing things in absolute terms to processing them relative to each other: hence, the reliance of most people on relative rather than absolute pitch structures.
_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I !!!!
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I |
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MikeH106
Phoenix
Joined: May 20, 2006
Age: 26
Posts: 1103
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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I used to say that I had it.
I know what C sounds like, and I can judge any other note by reference to it. I've also noticed that I have an unusual ability to recall the exact tones of movie lines. (Maybe it's just because I watched them so much!)
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Daniel09
Blue Jay
Joined: Jun 08, 2009
Age: 17
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| I have perfect tonal memory, but I can't match them to notes unless I refer to when I used to play the violin and slowly go through the notes in my head. |
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fiddlerpianist
Unclassified and loving it!
Joined: May 01, 2009
Age: 32
Posts: 1558
Location: The Autistic Hinterlands
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| Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:22 am Post subject: |
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| Izzy_Dolphin wrote: | | I heard a really cool study recently that found that people who speak a tonal language as their first language (such as Mandarin) are 5 times more likely to have perfect pitch than those who speak a Latin language for their first language (English). The scientists think this is because in tonal languages, the ability to differentiate slight variations is a matter of comprehension of the mere words, so those people are better at it. I wonder if there's a link to type of language you spoke first and Asperger's expression, because tone of voice is something that a lot of us struggle with. I don't know. I think that might be a topic for another thread, but its a cool idea. |
I think my fascination with sounds from a really early age led me to be a great imitator. As result, I suspect this is why I never had a flat effect... maybe a "weird effect" but not a flat one.
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"That leap of logic should have broken his legs." - Janissy |
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