[HN Gopher] Show HN: Perfect Pitch Ear Training
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: Perfect Pitch Ear Training
        
       Author : sergeykish
       Score  : 90 points
       Date   : 2020-10-23 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sergeykish.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sergeykish.com)
        
       | junon wrote:
       | You inspired me to make an actual Perfect Pitch Test. Not sure
       | how scientific it is but I randomized some notes prior to the
       | test note being played.
       | 
       | https://codepen.io/junon/details/YzWNxZM
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | Nice! I am not musician and randomized notes while cool have
         | not tricked me.
        
       | qppo wrote:
       | How does this train perfect pitch? I have gone through years of
       | formal ear training, the closest techniques I've seen to true
       | perfect pitch were exercises for audio engineers to recognize
       | frequency ranges (iirc, pioneered at University of Michigan a few
       | decades ago). But even that doesn't give you perfect pitch, it
       | gives you a strong intuition.
       | 
       | In conservatories and other classical schools, they teach
       | relative pitch recognition using the same techniques that have
       | been used for centuries because pitch is so subjective. When I
       | did it, they even used different keys to force the kids with
       | perfect pitch and synesthesia (they gravitate towards music
       | schools) to learn their intervals.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | As I know no one achieved perfect pitch with this tool. I have
         | no your background, I've took tool name from the web [1]. Maybe
         | it is wrong like serverless is deployed on servers though it
         | should be p2p or flat files.
         | 
         | I've thought perfect pitch is a knowledge like "this note is
         | G". You describe intuition as something different (or different
         | from perfect pitch), maybe we need a special word for it?
         | 
         | [1] https://www.google.com/search?&q=perfect+pitch+training
        
       | supz_k wrote:
       | For anyone who might not know what perfect pitch is: Absolute
       | pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a
       | person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the
       | benefit of a reference tone. - Wikipedia
       | 
       | Most people, even musicians, don't know that this talent exists.
       | When I was in high school, there was someone who has this skill.
       | He had started music when he was a very little. Most perfect
       | pitch persons starts their music in their early ages. This person
       | in my school "senses" pitches (I think it's similar to how we see
       | colors.)
       | 
       | THERE'S NO KNOWN CASES OF ANY ADULT DEVELOPING PERFECT PITCH.
       | There's a number of studies saying it cannot be developed as an
       | adult.
       | 
       | However, I'm doing research for a few months and trying to
       | develop perfect pitch myself (I have a fine relative pitch). None
       | has worked for now. I strongly believe there must be a way for
       | adults to develop this.
       | 
       | My thoughts on this app: It may help to improve something called
       | "tone identification", but that instinct of having perfect pitch
       | is completely different.
       | 
       | By the way, anyone here have perfect pitch (possibility is
       | 1/10000)?
       | 
       | (For any one interested, search Youtube for perfect pitch.
       | There's a lot of fascinating stories)
        
         | FalconSensei wrote:
         | For what I've seen, all apps/methods for 'developing perfect
         | pitch' would either not work on adults, or are not actually
         | perfect/absolute pitch.
        
         | y2bd wrote:
         | Count me in as someone who didn't know this existed/that I had
         | it until someone else pointed it out for me. I started music in
         | middle school and got frustrated with a friend who couldn't
         | play back a melody from a video game we both liked even though
         | I could (he was much better at violin so I wanted to hear him
         | play it, haha).
         | 
         | Thankfully, he knew what perfect pitch was and after figuring
         | out the disconnect, explained it to me. I honestly thought he
         | was lying until I asked other folks in the class and found out
         | they couldn't identify the notes by ear either. I just assumed
         | it was something I learned to do as a part of the class
         | instruction.
         | 
         | I wouldn't say I have any attached feelings/synesthesia to
         | particular notes besides their western names.
        
           | supz_k wrote:
           | That's awesome. Did you have any musical training when you
           | were little? (below 7 years)
        
             | y2bd wrote:
             | I think I played recorder for like two months around 8
             | years old, but no education beyond that. Didn't have a
             | musical family either. My younger siblings all picked up
             | instruments during their schooling as well and I don't
             | believe any of them have perfect pitch.
        
       | kayson wrote:
       | I realize it defeats the purpose, but if you guess the correct
       | answer once you can keep clicking the same answer to make the
       | counter go up
        
       | ChrisSD wrote:
       | If the same instrument is played one after the other I can tell
       | if it's higher or lower in tone. Otherwise I'm pretty useless.
       | I'm starting to thing I'm almost tone deaf.
       | 
       | That would explain my singing.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | HN did tone deafness the other day:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24852401. From one extreme
       | to the other.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | That's why I've posted my tool. It is private but looking at
         | the interest on Tone-Deafness Test why not to share it?
        
       | ksherlock wrote:
       | Doesn't work on Safari. tried it on chrome and clicking on the
       | correct answer has a tendency to not do anything.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | Click on correct answer increases the counter. My routine
         | 
         | 1. Ctrl-t to hear the sound
         | 
         | 2. Ctrl-* to give answer
         | 
         | 3. Wrong if hear sound, try again (2)
         | 
         | 4. Correct if no sound, take next sound (1)
         | 
         | Unfortunately can't check on Safari yet, any errors in console?
        
       | raidicy wrote:
       | I was under the notion that perfect pitch cannot be obtained
       | after a certain age.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | I doubt it. I have G and C harmonicas, they are very different.
         | When playing harmonica ears help to find holes.
         | 
         | I've been practicing for two weeks, currently on G3, C4, G4,
         | C5, mostly confident (100 correct answers) though sometimes it
         | tricks me.
        
           | necubi wrote:
           | You're talking about relative pitch, not perfect (absolute)
           | pitch. Any competent musician will have excellent relative
           | pitch, which is the ability to recognize intervals between
           | pitches. This is necessary for transcription, learning music
           | by ear, jamming, etc.
           | 
           | Perfect pitch means that, if someone plays a sine wave with
           | no context, you can tell what pitch it is.
        
             | davio wrote:
             | We had a guy in our college band with perfect relative and
             | absolute pitch. One time we walked out of the dorms and the
             | AC was squealing on top the building across the street.
             | 
             | "Hey Dave, what note is that?" "Do you really want to
             | know?" heads nod "It's a G"
             | 
             | One of the other tales was someone with true perfect pitch
             | could tell the difference between A at 440 vs 441 hz.
        
               | dekhn wrote:
               | I've seen this. When I was in grad school I was playing
               | with assembly language to click a speaker in a timed
               | loop, such that it would generate A440.
               | 
               | I played it to my coworker who was working in my lab, and
               | he said: "I'm a singer and I have perfect pitch. THat
               | isn't A440, it's slightly low. Probably one hertz."
               | 
               | I checked my code and indeed, I had miscomputed the
               | timer, it was slightly longer than it should have been.
               | Fixed the code and he confirmed it sounded better, but
               | not absolutely perfect.
        
               | filmor wrote:
               | AC squealing (and a lot of other noises that are somehow
               | synchronous to the grid frequency) would be a slightly
               | off G outside of North America (slightly to high, G is
               | ~49 Hz and the grid frequency almost everywhere is 50
               | Hz), no need for perfect pitch to guess that.
               | 
               | In North America (60 Hz grid frequency), I'm not quite
               | sure whether one would recognise it as a A# (58.3 Hz) or
               | a B (61.8 Hz).
        
             | sergeykish wrote:
             | I know the difference and that's what I am striving for. So
             | far several weeks, an hour a day, it is quite hard, 700
             | answers on answer / 5s rate.
        
             | yorwba wrote:
             | > Perfect pitch means that, if someone plays a sine wave
             | with no context, you can tell what pitch it is.
             | 
             | What bothers me about that definition is that it doesn't
             | specify accuracy. If I play a sine wave at 498.753 Hz, how
             | many of those decimal places will someone with perfect
             | pitch get correct? Since classical music is based on
             | discrete notes with intervals of at least a semitone, maybe
             | an error of less than half a semitone is acceptable,
             | because that's enough to sort a note into the correct
             | bucket? But then what's the average error for people who
             | don't have perfect pitch?
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | FalconSensei wrote:
               | I think it's like: at which point it's a sharp A or a
               | flat A#? Because when we talk about perfect pitch, is in
               | a musical context, in the sense that a person can tell
               | the note that would classify that wave, even without
               | knowing how many Hz it is
        
         | getpost wrote:
         | I was intrigued by this paper. Haven't tried it though.
         | 
         | Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch
         | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
         | 
         | Absolute pitch, the ability to identify or produce the pitch of
         | a sound without a reference point, has a critical period, i.e.,
         | it can only be acquired early in life. However, research has
         | shown that histone-deacetylase inhibitors (HDAC inhibitors)
         | enable adult mice to establish perceptual preferences that are
         | otherwise impossible to acquire after youth. In humans, we
         | found that adult men who took valproate (VPA) (a HDAC
         | inhibitor) learned to identify pitch significantly better than
         | those taking placebo--evidence that VPA facilitated critical-
         | period learning in the adult human brain. Importantly, this
         | result was not due to a general change in cognitive function,
         | but rather a specific effect on a sensory task associated with
         | a critical-period.
        
         | necubi wrote:
         | I think it's not so cut-and-dry. As a violinist, I can
         | recognize absolute violin pitches, but can't do so with other
         | instruments. This is definitely a learned skill; presumably
         | there's something about the timbre of the different pitches
         | that my brain has memorized after so many years of playing.
         | 
         | However someone with "true" perfect pitch is able to detect
         | pitches across instruments (or even a sine wave) and can
         | distinguish minute differences in pitch; for example, someone
         | with perfect pitch can tell that an instrument has been tuned
         | to A415 (a typical tuning for Baroque music) instead of the
         | standard A440.
        
           | thewebcount wrote:
           | Similar thing here. I'm a pianist, and while I don't have
           | perfect pitch, there are certain piano chords that I can pick
           | out and definitively say, "That's an F major, root position,
           | with the root just over middle C". But other chords or even
           | individual notes - I'm not able to distinguish them in that
           | way.
        
       | Nimitz14 wrote:
       | I do not understand how to use this... how is this supposed to
       | train something when I'm selecting and can see the note played?
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | Thank you, I've updated instructions.
         | 
         | Click on "Test" to selects new sound and play it. Click buttons
         | for answer, it plays sound if answer is wrong. I use it with
         | eyes closed to concentrate on sound. Guess visual indication
         | would be a good start. I've changed it so it marks wrong button
         | with color until next "Test".
         | 
         | The idea is not to guess but to start with one sound, make it
         | familiar, add another, etc.
        
       | grizmaldi wrote:
       | Rick Beato's take on adults not being able to develop perfect
       | pitch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM
       | 
       | I must say though, watching videos of his kid demonstrate perfect
       | pitch is quite astounding!
        
       | Dowwie wrote:
       | Rick Beato explains on his YouTube that a child can learn pitch
       | perfection but it must be trained before 10 years of age
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/816VLQNdPMM
        
       | RunawayGalaxy wrote:
       | Rick Beato has some great videos on this subject
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXivZlPu0ms
        
       | pier25 wrote:
       | Been making music on and off for the past 20 years. Over the
       | years, I've tried many ear training apps but there was little
       | progress after hours of frustration.
       | 
       | A couple of months ago I found a very different method. The idea
       | is is to internalize pitch by singing. For example, you play a
       | triad on the piano and then sing the 3 notes individually. Or you
       | train yourself to sing an interval. Say you're working on fifths.
       | You play a C in the piano and then sing G, then play D and sing
       | A, etc. I saw results within the first hour.
       | 
       | If anyone is interested I can try to find the video where I got
       | this from.
       | 
       | Another method I can recommend is transcribing music by ear.
       | You'll be amazed how quickly you will be able to find notes and
       | then chords once you get more experience.
        
         | powersnail wrote:
         | That's exactly how I was trained.
         | 
         | The first step is always sight-singing. The teacher gave me a
         | drone note (for example an A4), and I sang according to a sheet
         | music. Not necessarily a triad, though.
         | 
         | Then, it's the other way around, where the teacher played on a
         | piano, and I tried to figure out the note.
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | > _The first step is always sight-singing. The teacher gave
           | me a drone note (for example an A4), and I sang according to
           | a sheet music._
           | 
           | That's a demonstration of relative pitch, not
           | absolute/perfect pitch.
           | 
           | > _the teacher played on a piano, and I tried to figure out
           | the note._
           | 
           | It makes sense that you'd be able to retain it for a little
           | bit, but could you, say, walk into your lesson, cold from the
           | prior week, and immediately the teacher hits a note, and you
           | identify it, without practicing first?
        
         | supz_k wrote:
         | This is RELATIVE pitch, which anyone can develop. Perfect pitch
         | is kind of a mystery. (However, there are some known dogs and
         | frogs with perfect pitch)
        
           | coffeemaniac wrote:
           | That's not true, by learning what it feels like to sing
           | different notes it's absolutely possible to "learn" perfect
           | pitch. There are some individuals of course who are born with
           | a very acute sensitivity from a very young age (which is
           | spooky) but there are also people who learn it later.
           | 
           | If you can imagine learning to recognize and accurately sing
           | just one particular note (say, middle C). Then if you develop
           | amazing "relative" pitch it's basically the same thing.
           | Training more still will enable you to hear very subtle
           | differences in tuning, but it has to be a standard part of
           | your training.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | Yes, please. Are not interval training and perfect pitch
         | different things?
         | 
         | I'm mostly concentrating on confidence and quantity -- one test
         | / 5s, running hundreds of tests, trying to discard intervals
         | and feel chroma.
        
         | memset wrote:
         | Singing - perhaps you know this - is standard in ear training
         | courses. We are required to sing intervals, sing Bach chorales,
         | and sing chords in all inversions and qualities, and sing their
         | resolutions. At advanced levels we are required to sing atonal
         | passages.
         | 
         | Then there is the inverse - melodic dictation. Not just
         | identifying intervals, but chords, their qualities, and
         | inversions.
         | 
         | The goal of these is to develop relative pitch, as it is
         | assumed that adults would generally not be able to acquire
         | perfect pitch.
        
         | ggrrhh_ta wrote:
         | I am interested. I put around 30 focused minutes to distinguish
         | E5 and have been able to endure that memory both to recognize
         | it in the piano and to sing it since.
        
       | Zarathu wrote:
       | B-natural is missing.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | Thank you! Fixed.
        
         | junon wrote:
         | Yeah lol. A# is not the same thing as B. It's the same as Bb
         | though.
         | 
         | Also, how do you answer sharps or flats? It just has the
         | natural notes as answers.
        
           | sergeykish wrote:
           | I will add buttons, which accesscodes would you recommend?
        
             | kayson wrote:
             | ctrl shift for # and ctrl alt for b?
        
               | sergeykish wrote:
               | I've thought of separate names "A z B C u D v E F w G"
               | (from the end of the alphabet). Your approach looks more
               | practical, have to ditch accesskey though.
        
       | biggieshellz wrote:
       | Semi-pro musician for 20+ years here. You can't teach this. My
       | mom has perfect pitch, and I do not. I can play a record and move
       | the pitch knob to make it play a bit fast, and it will bother her
       | enough to get up off the couch and change it back. No matter how
       | much ear training I do, that will never be the case with me.
       | 
       | I have very good relative pitch, and a highly trained ear, and
       | that you _can_ teach. If you play me C, I can tell you what the
       | other notes are based on that, and my internal reference for what
       | C is persists for quite a while. If you play me a song, I can
       | hear what the chords are -- the color (major, minor, dominant,
       | diminished, etc.) and the degree of the scale. But that is all
       | relative to itself. If I hear the same song played in C, and then
       | in Db, the two of them will hit me emotionally the same. Whereas
       | for someone with perfect pitch, I understand it can be different.
       | And for someone with perfect pitch and synesthesia, I understand
       | it can be different still -- notes and keys are perceived as
       | colors. And while I can imagine what that might be like, there 's
       | no way for me to train myself to _be_ that.
        
         | nojs wrote:
         | I have perfect pitch. For me it's much easier to identify tones
         | on piano (which I play) than other instruments or sine waves.
         | So I feel like there is some part of it that's "tuneable".
        
           | alfiedotwtf wrote:
           | Perfect pitch here too...
           | 
           | Curious if this happens to others - you'll hear a noise (e.g
           | a glass hitting something, an object falling to the ground
           | etc) that makes a single tone, and a song immediately starts
           | playing in your head because it starts with that same tone?
           | 
           | My stand up desk at an old job was the starting pitch to
           | Beyonce's Crazy in Love
        
             | StavrosK wrote:
             | Not perfect pitch, but yeah, this does happen to me. I'll
             | hear a sound and start singing the rest of the song the
             | sound reminds me of, and everyone will look at me oddly.
        
             | toolslive wrote:
             | Not perfect pitch, but I play a fretless instrument. I
             | learned to map specific intervals to songs.
             | minor 2nd : Jaws         major 2nd : Frere Jacques
             | ...
             | 
             | Now every time I hear an interval these things enter my
             | brain.
        
           | toolslive wrote:
           | but the pitches on the piano are not perfect, aren't they ?
           | It uses equal temperament iso just temperament. So shouldn't
           | a piano sound out of key to you ?
        
             | core-questions wrote:
             | That's not what perfect pitch means, per se. It should work
             | with any tonal system.
        
           | pvarangot wrote:
           | That's fairly common and the simplest explanation I know
           | about is that you can "memorize" a sound if you train for it
           | and then when you hear it you recall the memory without going
           | through the whole "pipeline" for understanding what it is.
           | Your memory or "cache" for what C is indexes with the
           | specific harmonics that make the timbre of a piano. On
           | another instrument it's a different sound, the main harmonic
           | is the same one but the timbre is so different that you need
           | to go through the "let's use perfect pitch for this" part of
           | your brain.
           | 
           | It's the same thing mechanics use to identify engine sounds
           | quickly or why some people can tell who's walking on a
           | hallway because of how the steps sound. Repeated exposition
           | to a stimulus that then gets associated with something etches
           | a memory.
           | 
           | This not only happens with perfect pitch. To for example know
           | how to tell a major third from a minor third on all keys you
           | can "memorize" all the sounds and know which one they are. I
           | think my brain kinda did that and now I sometimes get
           | confused with M3 and P5 because of how "similar" they sound
           | even though you can like totally fit another tone comfortable
           | between the root and the fifth and the root and the third
           | don't have enough air for that.
        
           | subroutine wrote:
           | My partner did her dissertation on exactly this.
           | 
           | If you are interested, see Chapter 3:
           | 
           | https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0rp5w2rd
        
         | dorkwood wrote:
         | This just makes me want to learn it even more.
        
         | sergeykish wrote:
         | I've heard a story of adult acquiring perfect pitch [1]. He
         | made a tool for Win32 platform years ago [2].
         | 
         | I play (hobby) harmonica and I feel them differently. I like
         | dark tone of G (blues in D), bright and someone neutral tone of
         | C, I have A and don't play it much. How can one explain this?
         | 
         | Do you experience Doppler effect on ski elevator? It was
         | devastating. Can it be that harmonica trains ears to find a
         | hole and bend notes? But any fretles instrument should have
         | same requirement (violin).
         | 
         | Some people claim adults can't learn languages, while in
         | reality we lack not neuron plasticity but time, patience,
         | culture. Maybe skill learned by adult and child is different
         | but serves same function. It is fine by me to learn "perfect
         | ear equivalent". At least I can train myself and play with a
         | kid, maybe he would acquire this skill in full potential.
         | 
         | [1] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/
         | 
         | [2] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/software/
        
         | lhorie wrote:
         | I'm curious how perfect pitch works in terms of temperaments
         | and tunings standards. For example, do they get bothered by
         | regular guitar over microtonal ones? (those weird guitars w/
         | extra mini-frets)[1]
         | 
         | I'm really fascinated by our ability to perceive relative pitch
         | even without training. See, for example, how "detuning" by a
         | few cents in lo-fi hip hop provides a very distinct feel to the
         | genre, compared to playing the same tune in standard equal
         | temperament tuning.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.thatericalper.com/wp-
         | content/uploads/2015/06/max...
        
           | mhh__ wrote:
           | Jacob Collier can be accurate to a few cents, microtonal or
           | not (I assume he thinks in terms of offset to the nearest ET
           | pitch)
        
         | aczerepinski wrote:
         | I agree, you can't learn this after childhood. As somebody who
         | went to music school for 10 years I've been around literally
         | thousands of musicians and have never once met somebody who
         | developed perfect pitch as an adult.
         | 
         | On the other hand, if you do have perfect pitch, you can lose
         | it over time! I've had perfect pitch all my life, and now that
         | I'm going on 40 I surprise myself by sometimes hearing a song a
         | half-step off (i.e. I'll assume a song is in F but it's really
         | in E). This has never happened to me until the past few years.
         | Not sure how much is due to my ears aging, and how much due to
         | I'm not a practicing musician anymore.
        
           | SeanLuke wrote:
           | I'm going sharp as well (this started in my 40s). My
           | understanding is that this is pretty common for people with
           | perfect pitch. And it is frustrating!
        
         | maxov wrote:
         | I agree, the scientific consensus appears to be that absolute
         | pitch cannot be developed after a certain age, and that this
         | age is related to the 'prime' language acquisition ages. Tonal
         | language speakers (e.g. Mandarin) have absolute pitch with
         | higher frequency, possibly because their ears have needed to
         | train to distinguish tones in this critical period.
         | 
         | As someone with absolute pitch, I should say I have not found
         | it musically useful, and I would hesitate recommending people
         | train for it even if it was possible. When I was learning to
         | play jazz, it was actually a major crutch for me. For jazz
         | especially, the modes, chords, progressions, and relationships
         | between tones are really important and are what determines the
         | 'color' of what you're playing. Harmony in general is
         | determined by the relationships between tones, not the absolute
         | tones themselves (mostly - there are of course differences in
         | sound playing three octaves up or down), and an ear for
         | absolute pitch doesn't help much there at all.
         | 
         | I could use absolute pitch to identify chords and modes, but it
         | didn't help me 'think' about and play within them the way
         | relative pitch does. A good ear for relative pitch, and an
         | understanding of harmony go much farther.
        
           | toolslive wrote:
           | There are several recorded cases of people acquiring perfect
           | pitch late in life as a result of getting _tinnitus_. So what
           | they do is learn the frequency of their 'ring' and map
           | everything from there. I guess some people would call that
           | cheating.
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | > _Tonal language speakers (e.g. Mandarin) have absolute
           | pitch with higher frequency_
           | 
           | This is interesting, because a tonal language like Mandarin
           | does not care about absolute pitch; it's all relative. For
           | example, 1st tone is a (usually higher) flat tone. But it
           | doesn't matter what pitch you use. 2nd tone is a rising tone,
           | but it doesn't matter what pitch you start at or end at; it
           | just matters that the two pitches differ enough that your
           | listener can tell that there was a change, and that it was
           | rising.
           | 
           | I wonder why that sort of thing _also_ leads to a higher
           | prevalence of absolute pitch.
        
           | akeck wrote:
           | A friend of mine has a teenager who developed perfect pitch
           | in middle school. Their first language is English, but they
           | are learning Mandarin very rapidly (along with 2-3 other
           | Chinese dialects).
        
           | Hoasi wrote:
           | > As someone with absolute pitch, I should say I have not
           | found it musically useful
           | 
           | True. Perfect pitch can indeed prevent you from appreciating
           | some kinds of music that become too predictable, too fast.
        
             | gabereiser wrote:
             | Or purposefully recorded at 432hz instead of 440hz... :(
        
               | viraptor wrote:
               | Considering 432hz is not really wrong, just different,
               | does it bother you when listening? Is it the same with
               | microtonal music? Or performances in baroque pitch?
        
         | kazinator wrote:
         | I don't have perfect pitch, but I have pitch memory. I can
         | recall the sound of the A string of a guitar being plucked,
         | then hum the note which matches what I "hear" in my head, whip
         | out tuner app and see that I'm indeed at 110 Hz.
        
         | wdfx wrote:
         | I mostly agree with all the above, but as a guitarist/singer*
         | there is distinctly something about transposing songs - it is
         | clearly obvious that most songs work best in their original
         | keys and quite a number of times transposition completely
         | changes how a song sounds, to the point where some songs when
         | transposed simply do not work at all.
         | 
         | If music was all about relative intervals, surely this wouldn't
         | be an issue?
         | 
         | * Not the world's best singer, hence my observations around
         | transposition, as I try to bend songs I like into a range I can
         | just about manage.
        
           | powersnail wrote:
           | That's because you are using a guitar, which is not perfectly
           | in tune no matter how you tune it.
           | 
           | For an equal temperament instrument (like a midi keyboard),
           | transcription would be seamless.
           | 
           | For a fretless instrument, transcription can be made
           | seamless, if the player is good at intonation.
           | 
           | However, the timbre of the instrument can still be a little
           | different for each key (e.g. open strings vs fingered notes),
           | but that's a nuance on instrument rather than transcription
           | per se.
        
             | jdashg wrote:
             | Sound recording, reproduction, and even instrument
             | resonance are usually not a perfectly flat EQ also, so
             | transposing up or down can hit different frequency-
             | dependent distortions.
        
             | sergeykish wrote:
             | Transposing with a capo should preserve it exactly.
        
             | necubi wrote:
             | At least on violin the different strings have slightly
             | different timbres, as do different fingerings. Playing a G4
             | as 3rd finger on the D string will not sound the same as
             | playing it in third position on the G string even with very
             | precise intonation.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | > My mom has perfect pitch, and I do not. I can play a record
         | and move the pitch knob to make it play a bit fast, and it will
         | bother her enough to get up off the couch and change it back.
         | 
         | This makes me wonder why someone would _want_ to have perfect
         | pitch.
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | Right. It's perhaps useful if you're a musician (though I'd
           | argue having relative pitch is much more useful), but
           | otherwise it just feels like an annoyance that will reduce
           | your enjoyment of many everyday musical things.
        
         | jdnier wrote:
         | This is such a good explanation, and similar to my experience.
         | You've hit all the points that I've tried to explain to
         | musician friends. Some people have a very different experience.
        
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