Perfect Pitch Training Analogies
Published: 24/01/2010 by Alexander Bryce
The subject of how perfect pitch is developed is a controversial one. For example, it is not known for sure if one is born with the ability or learns it when very young. Most people think it is likely to be part of early development in infancy. Many people believe it is a skill, which can be acquired while others disagree, even when presented with evidence to the contrary. More info at perfect pitch training.
The experience of perfect pitch attracts various analogies, which might help understand how to go about training for the ability. The most common is the color analogy. The experience of listening to the notes differs for people with perfect pitch. Each note has a quality of its own, separate from its pitch, which gives it its own character. Each note is able to be recalled or identified due to this unique character. As the range of light that we see is split into colors, the color analogy for sound suggests that the range of sound is divided into “pitch colors”. To describe the experience of perfect pitch, this works quite well. There is a slight flaw, though, when it comes to taking this analogy any further. The retina of the eye features three types of cone, which are used to see color. Red light is measured by one type of cone, green by another, and total intensity by the third. The brain interprets the signals. It determines blue from the red and green subtracted from the total. The biology of the eye clearly has color built into it and we can all see color to some extent. Color blindness occurs when the cones are not as accurate as they should be. We have receptors for frequency in the ear, however, there are not twelve of them for the different notes. The ear does not contain any such biological system and so the analogy does not hold up. More info at perfect pitch software.
Some people compare learning perfect pitch to the learning of the phonemes of language. Phonemes are the short sounds, which make up words. For example, the sound of one letter in a word. One could say that these are like the notes in the melody of a sentence. However, phonemes can only exist within a time-frame. It takes a certain length of time and variance of sound over that time for a phoneme to take shape. Time is not relied upon for perfect pitch. Simply, there is no time dimension in perfect pitch recognition. No matter the length the note is played, it is recognized as such.
Perfect pitch recognition is rather like harmonic spectrum recognition. The frequency dimensions of the sound are used, as oppose to time. One analogy would be the ability to recognize a particular instrument. Each instrument creates a different harmonic spectrum. Also, we are all able to recognize a person by hearing their voice alone. A person's voice is always instantly recognized, no matter what they say. The timbre of the voice is recognized easily without thinking. If one considers this ability, it is actually quite amazing. There are some other character traits within the sounds, though, which is the one flaw with the analogy. Extra cues come in the form of the way a person speaks or the noises an instrument makes as well as the tonal aspect.These cam aid the listener to identify the sound. Nevertheless, it is still the most accurate analogy.
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