Neurodivergence and perfect pitch?

[MildredHubble]

Heretic!!!

EDIT: This may sound implausible, but I honestly only read the "I could never stand bit..." I must have picked up the heresy bit subliminally! Lol!

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Perfect pitch may just be one attribute some of us have among others sensitivity to sound better than normal colour perception unusually steady hands. I enjoy music do not any special ability in it. Took of piano lessons 60 years ago did not pick up much, I have noticed if the music is off like bending notes, Hendrix, shrill singing, Rush, bothers it me. Even though they are acclaimed, I Cannot get my mind around what others get out of this music .to me it is just irritating. I spent my career working with colour, I like primary colours not into muted colours , maybe explains why I preferred to use the spectrophotometer rather than visual even though after testing I really performed well.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

My mother had perfect pitch. She also told me that chords don't sound exactly right on the piano because the piano is tuned relative to the other notes, when actually notes in some chords need to be slightly sharper or flatter than the piano.

She could tell when an arrangement was not in the original key it was written in and that bothered her. Because each key had very slightly different pitches to the do, re mi, s etc.

So, she could sing a pitch perfectly, but also recognized all notes perfectly.

She has been gone for a long time. As I learned about my own autism, I looked back and believe now that she was autistic too. Not because of her musical talent, but other things.

I had a jazz piano teacher who could identify all the notes in even complex chords. And when coaching a group, he could be coaching one student and at the same time, yell out that another student was doing something or another. In other words, he could track what all the students were playing in real time. I don't know if he was autistic or not. But it was amazing to watch him work.

 

[Mary Terry]

My mother had perfect pitch. She also told me that chords don't sound exactly right on the piano because the piano is tuned relative to the other notes, when actually notes in some chords need to be slightly sharper or flatter than the piano.

She could tell when an arrangement was not in the original key it was written in and that bothered her. Because each key had very slightly different pitches to the do, re mi, s etc.

So, she could sing a pitch perfectly, but also recognized all notes perfectly.

She has been gone for a long time. As I learned about my own autism, I looked back and believe now that she was autistic too. Not because of her musical talent, but other things.

I had a jazz piano teacher who could identify all the notes in even complex chords. And when coaching a group, he could be coaching one student and at the same time, yell out that another student was doing something or another. In other words, he could track what all the students were playing in real time. I don't know if he was autistic or not. But it was amazing to watch him work.

Happy birthday!

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

Happy birthday!

Thank you!

 

[Rodafina]

Thank you!

@WhitewaterWoman, I hear there’s going to be fireworks just for you later on!

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

@WhitewaterWoman, I hear there’s going to be fireworks just for you later on!

View attachment 93102

This is exactly what my little girl thought when we went to see fireworks on New Year's Eve, which she thought of as my birthday. The fireworks are off Naples Pier. There are hundreds of boats and thousands of people on the beach. She was 4-5 years old at the time and concept of New Year's Eve was not something well understood. Especially as compared to something as exciting as a birthday

This did not become apparent until about three weeks later when her birthday came around; she wanted to know where her fireworks were!

I had some real explaining to do there!

 

[Gerontius]

I'm actually glad I don't have perfect pitch; it'd ruin my enjoyment of music.
I have two instruments, a melodeon predating the American Civil War, and a parlor organ dated to 1892. At the time these were built, concert pitch had not standardized at A440hz. They are in tune with themselves, but they are not in tune with modern musical standards.
Also, the majority of my music collection was recorded prior to 1925 (when they changed over to electrical recording.) This was done using early musical instruments & occasionally slightly lower pitch.
Now I'm VERY picky about music being in tune with itself, but it's ok if the standard used isn't A440hz.

 

[MildredHubble]

I'm actually glad I don't have perfect pitch; it'd ruin my enjoyment of music.
I have two instruments, a melodeon predating the American Civil War, and a parlor organ dated to 1892. At the time these were built, concert pitch had not standardized at A440hz. They are in tune with themselves, but they are not in tune with modern musical standards.
Also, the majority of my music collection was recorded prior to 1925 (when they changed over to electrical recording.) This was done using early musical instruments & occasionally slightly lower pitch.
Now I'm VERY picky about music being in tune with itself, but it's ok if the standard used isn't A440hz.

Concert pitch was developed to make certain pieces "sound right" and more punchy and exciting in orchestral performances. I don't think it was standardized until the late 1920s.

Years ago I wouldn't use a guitar tuner to tune my guitar. I was in a group (same music course I mentioned earlier) I would tune by ear to an E. I would then tune from there. Everyone else used tuners. They kept telling me that my guitar wasn't in tune. When it was referenced to actual notes, it was fine

I found out years later that most guitar tuners of the time weren't calibrated to equal temperament and were just intended to get you close enough to tune up. Essentially just a guide.

I hear guitars played that were clearly tuned using a rubbish tuner, there's a busker in our town that always has a flat G B E. It sounds awful! Only I seem to notice though!

 

[Gerontius]

Concert pitch was developed to make certain pieces "sound right" and more punchy and exciting in orchestral performances. I don't think it was standardized until the late 1920s.

Years ago I wouldn't use a guitar tuner to tune my guitar. I was in a group (same music course I mentioned earlier) I would tune by ear to an E. I would then tune from there. Everyone else used tuners. They kept telling me that my guitar wasn't in tune. When it was referenced to actual notes, it was fine

I found out years later that most guitar tuners of the time weren't calibrated to equal temperament and were just intended to get you close enough to tune up. Essentially just a guide.

I hear guitars played that were clearly tuned using a rubbish tuner, there's a busker in our town that always has a flat G B E. It sounds awful! Only I seem to notice though!

Very interesting bit that, with the tuner. Was it electrical or a pitch pipe?

 

[MildredHubble]

Very interesting bit that, with the tuner. Was it electrical or a pitch pipe?

Electric. I was poor so I had to make do with a pitch pipe. They were a perfectly adequate method to tune. The trick is to not blow in to them too hard, just a gentle exhale.

But my schoolmates all had some sort of electrical tuner. One had an analogue meter and you stepped through each pitch with a slider and when the needle was in the middle, you were theoretically at the right pitch.

One of the less pretentious kids (the one who had the analogue style tuner) agreed with me that the guitar wasn't properly in tune when using it. So our solution was to both tune the first E string using the tuner and tune all the strings using harmonics. This meant the guitar was in tune with "itself" and both our guitars would "agree" with eachother.

Other kids had tuners that would use LEDs or LCD to indicate when you were at pitch. But any guitar tuned using them wouldn't be in agreement with the piano. While fiddling around with one such tuner, I found a calibration mode. The idea was that you would use a tuning fork to set the reference to A. But I didn't really understand this at the time and it's likely that kids discovering that mode would probably mess with it and throw off the calibration anyway.

It wasn't until I was at university and a very skilled and knowledgeable lecturer was talking about guitar tuners and I asked him why guitar tuners seemed to often result in flat strings particularly on the higher register strings. He told me that most guitar tuners are only there as a reference and need to be regularly calibrated to a known reference eg. A at concert pitch (the magical 440Hz). He also told me that the technology at the time took shortcuts so the higher the pitch, the less likely it was to be accurate eg using exact divisions rather than equal temperament. So once you had it more or less pitched, you would dial it in by ear.

My method is to tune to a known reference in the E string and tune from there. Then I fret a DMaj and make adjustments until it's in perfect harmony. Then I will fret a DMaj above the 12th fret. If it's out of tune then it's likely the guitar has got intonation problems.

It may be that tuners are much better these days but I don't really use them.

 

[GypsyMoth]

Perfect pitch means that you can hum any key (in your range) accurately before hearing it played (on a piano, pitch-pipe, etc.).
Relative pitch means you can stay on key after you have heard a starter note.

I was in church, school & military choirs + musical theater growing up, but now my preferred churches have bands. I still cannot read music, though.

Hey, thanks Crossbreed! I was wondering about that!

In choir, as a kid, we were taught to hum middle c to the tune of Mary had a little lamb. ‘Mary’ sits on middle c. It’s pretty spot on.

So, does that mean I have perfect pitch middle c?

 

[Crossbreed]

So, does that mean I have perfect pitch middle c?

If you can correctly hum middle C every time without hearing it played first.
IIRC, people with perfect pitch have a harder time singing in a different key than those with relative pitch.

 

[GypsyMoth]

If you can correctly hum middle C every time without hearing it played first.
IIRC, people with perfect pitch have a harder time singing in a different key than those with relative pitch.

LOL! I suspect not. Maybe someday I'll put it to the test? (Using, of course, the only note I 'know' to hum?)

I never 'know' where to sing. I just pick a spot that sounds good and start from there. I don't always land in the right spot right away, so it's more probable that I have relative pitch. (I was complimented on it again this morning, so I must be doing something right.)

 

[Crossbreed]

Using, of course, the only note I 'know' to hum?

If your middle C is on, the rest of the scale should be, too.

 

[GypsyMoth]

If your middle C is on, the rest of the scale should be, too.

So, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do has some value to it outside of second grade chorus?

Maybe I'll sit down at the piano tomorrow and try it out. (I read lines and spaces & can play a recognizable tune that way, but really, it's like typing with one finger. There's a lot of hunting & pecking going on. Playing an instrument is one of the many things I always thought I'd learn to do but haven't. It's on my bucket list.)

 

[Crossbreed]

So, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do has some value to it outside of second grade chorus?

Yes, vocal exercises or warm-ups work in similar fashion.