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OT - Perfect Pitch Test


sommy

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12/12 on both easily this time, doing relative first. In all my years in the music business, I've only met two people in person (until Phil) who had perfect pitch. One was in a hardcore punk band and he used to tune everybody up (they dropped to c or b as I recall).

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just because it has been found to be tied with genes, does NOT discount the fact that it can be learned. This argument of genetic vs learned is not mutually exclusive in the least.
:rolleyes:

 

I don't know why you're rolling your eyes at me... :rolleyes::) If you read my earlier posts, I clearly state that I have NO idea if it can be learned or not - I can only recount my own personal experiences, which suggest it being, for me at least, something I was born with as opposed to something I "learned". My comments regarding genetics research and research suggesting it may, in many cases, be an innate characteristic as opposed to a learned skill, were merely to point out to someone else (who was taking the "it's always a learned skill" position) that there is no conclusive "proof" of it being either innate or learned, and no current scientific consensus on the matter.

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not at all.



but vibrato does.



Nope - neither one really bothers me at all.

What DOES kind of get to me (at least momentarily) is songs that are recorded "in the cracks" - IOW, not in E, but not quite in F either - somewhere in between the two. I find it especially annoying when playing along to records / CDs, bcause you have to tweak the guitar's tuning to get it into line with the recording... then tweak back when the next song comes on... by the time you're done tweaking, you've missed a quarter of the song. :lol:

There's a song on John McGill's album Journey From La La where we wound up varispeeding the song 50 cents sharp on the final mix to speed it up or whatever... for whatever reason, John liked it better there, so we went with it. Every time that album is being played and I have not heard it for a while, or if my iPod is in random mode and it comes on unexpectedly, I hear the first second or so of that song and it seriously "tweaks" my ear. :freak: But it's not a deal breaker for me - it just takes a moment for me to realize what's going on and mentally accept / "deal" with it. :) And in general, that's true of a lot of pitch and tuning related things. I know when stuff is out, and here in the studio, I'll "call" you on it if it's getting bad, but guitars in general are never really in perfect tune or intonation, so you have to be willing to accept that to a degree or perfect pitch will drive you batty.

Joe Walsh does this thing when he's playing slide sometimes that I've never heard anyone else really mention, but I love it - he'll hit a note, slide up to it, and hold just shy of the note (by about 10-20 cents) and at the last instant, "snap" it up to the right pitch. If you listen to his slide solo on Victim Of Love by the Eagles at about (2:44-2:45), you can hear a somewhat exaggerated version of what I'm referring to.

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:facepalm:

I thought the flanger changes the pitch. so u dudes don't like vibrato and other pitch changing fx?



Flangers are modulated short delays in the single digit millisecond range that create comb filtering. Pitch vibrato is really something else... again, neither one really bothers me at all. I really like pitch vibrato quite a bit actually. Chorus is a similar effect, but with the original "dry" signal mixed in along with the pitch modulated signal of the vibrato.

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look brah, you're either born with perfect pitch or you're not. You can't learn it.

 

Can you document that? I mean - how do you know that?

 

Even if you have had the ability to recall pitches accurately from memory, and without an outside reference for as long as you can remember, you weren't "born" with the knowledge of what the names for those pitches were - everyone with perfect pitch had to learn those terms and how to associate a certain pitch (say a sine wave at 440 Hz) that they could recall with that "name" - in this case, A above middle C. You have to learn - or give the pitches a name that you can associate them with and reference them by. That part at least is learned in some way by everyone who has perfect pitch; even if those terms are self-created.

 

At least that's how it works for me. I have been able to recall the pitches from popular recordings from memory for as far back as I can remember. It wasn't until junior and senior high school that I learned musical theory and the official names to associate with those pitches.

 

As to whether or not it is something that can be learned - the ability to recall pitch from memory seems to be associated with early life experiences and exposure. Some research seems to suggest that all, or nearly all children have this capability when they're very young, but due to lack of use and early association of pitches with a "label", the ability seems to be lost, or maybe misplaced is a better word - I really don't know if it can be "taught" or "learned" or not. It is somewhat like a color, in that a specific "shade" is labelled as "green" and another one as "red". This frequency is A, that one is C. It's kind of like having an audiographic memory for pitch. I can think of a popular song, and mentally "drop the needle" (hey, it was turntables back then - my mind, my imagery - deal with it :p;) ) and what I hear in my head is the song, in the original key. That was my earliest recollection of pitch recall - being a little kid and hearing someone else reference a song by singing it, and knowing "that wasn't how it went" - not because they got the words wrong, but because they were singing it in the wrong key - even though I had no idea what a "key" was at the time. But I knew what "that song" (pitch reference or "name") on the radio or record sounded like, and I could recall the pitch at will.

 

I think like many perceptional related things, you can probably learn it in later life, but it is probably easier to learn when you're a child. But I can only speak from my own personal experience, and again, it's basically something I was born with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Epic reiteration and jumping back in... ;):o )

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Nope - neither one really bothers me at all.


What DOES kind of get to me (at least momentarily) is songs that are recorded "in the cracks" - IOW, not in E, but not quite in F either - somewhere in between the two. I find it especially annoying when playing along to records / CDs, bcause you have to tweak the guitar's tuning to get it into line with the recording... then tweak back when the next song comes on... by the time you're done tweaking, you've missed a quarter of the song.
:lol:

There's a song on John McGill's album Journey From La La where we wound up varispeeding the song 50 cents sharp on the final mix to speed it up or whatever... for whatever reason, John liked it better there, so we went with it. Every time that album is being played and I have not heard it for a while, or if my iPod is in random mode and it comes on unexpectedly, I hear the first second or so of that song and it seriously "tweaks" my ear.
:freak:
But it's not a deal breaker for me - it just takes a moment for me to realize what's going on and mentally accept / "deal" with it.
:)
And in general, that's true of a lot of pitch and tuning related things. I know when stuff is out, and here in the studio, I'll "call" you on it if it's getting bad, but guitars in general are never really in perfect tune or intonation, so you have to be willing to accept that to a degree or perfect pitch will drive you batty.


Joe Walsh does this thing when he's playing slide sometimes that I've never heard anyone else really mention, but I love it - he'll hit a note, slide up to it, and hold
just
shy of the note (by about 10-20 cents) and at the last instant, "snap" it up to the right pitch. If you listen to his slide solo on Victim Of Love by the Eagles at about (2:44-2:45), you can hear a somewhat exaggerated version of what I'm referring to.

 

 

 

 

 

hehehehehehe

 

troll-devil.png

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10/12 on the perfect pitch test. For good and/or ill, I've never been able to get the first five notes of "Stairway to Heaven" out of my head. IOW, I remember A, C, E, A and B. I count up or down from whichever one of them seems closest.

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