Does perfect absolute pitch spoil a listener for imperfect music?

December 1, 2006 8:04 AM

Do people with perfect [absolute] pitch find it unpleasant or uncomfortable to listen to music which deviates from standard pitch?

I'm not referring to wrong notes (incorrect notes in the correct key, or dissonant or inharmonious but on-pitch notes), and I'm not referring to individual notes that wander somewhat sharp or flat of their intended pitch. These things bother lots of people, even those of us without strong senses of relative pitch. I'm really asking about other types of deviations from the familiar:

1. Music played in tune, but in tune relative to a non-standard standard (e.g. A=438Hz instead of 440Hz),


2. Known music played in unexpected keys, and


3. Just temperament versus equal temperament.

Does it make a difference whether you are "born with" or develop perfect absolute pitch? Does it make a difference what musical tradition(s) you grew up with?

posted by Songdog to media & arts (14 comments total)

From wiki: absolute ptich

Potential problems

Persons who have absolute pitch may feel irritated when a piece is transposed to a different key or played at a nonstandard pitch.[30] They may fail to develop strong relative pitch when following standard curricula, despite the fact that maintaining absolute strategies can make simple relative tasks more difficult. Inadequately trained absolute pitch possessors can find it quite difficult to play in tune with an orchestra which is not tuned to standard concert pitch A4 = 440 Hertz (442 Hz in some countries), possibly because their comprehension of musical pitch may be categorical rather than spectral.[31]
posted by jon_kill at 8:12 AM on December 1, 2006

That's very interesting. It makes it sound almost like a handicap or a limitation.
posted by spicynuts at 8:39 AM on December 1, 2006

I definitely don't have perfect pitch, but I feel really pained and uncomfortable if something is off-pitch relative to the tones surrounding it, like when the singer of a band is flat or sharp. I guess I have pretty good relative pitch rather than absolute pitch, if there is such a thing.
posted by loiseau at 8:48 AM on December 1, 2006

Known music played in unexpected keys

Yes, it seems that this may be unusually difficult or uncomfortable for those with absolute pitch:

"Gerald Moore, the famous English piano accompanist, described in his book 'Am I too Loud?' that as a young man he had AP and gradually lost it later. This is most remarkable, as the loss happend [sic] in a period of Moore's life in which he still was fully engaged as an accompanist. He pointed out that he regarded the loss of AP as a relief, i.e., with regard to a problem that he frequently had to solve, namely, transposition of pieces on the piano. . . . Moore may unconsciously have himself 'trained off' his AP faculty, as it had made transposition harder to him."
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:06 AM on December 1, 2006

I don't have absolute pitch, but there are certain canonical pieces that I know so deeply that I can tell when they've been transposed to a different key. It used to bother me more, but now it makes me raise an eyebrow.
posted by plinth at 9:14 AM on December 1, 2006

I have perfect pitch only as it related to my instrument (oboe and English Horn) -- I can identify tones based on a combination of the pitch and the timbre of the particular note.

It is very disorienting for me to hear my instrument electronically pitch-shifted. The same applies if the sampling for a synth version is not a true note-for-note sample.

I am not fond of certain transpositions. Just as each note has its own character, so too does each key. I have loads of baroque pieces that were transposed into "band friendly" (ie, flats over sharps) keys by well-meaning editors. I find them horrible to play because they revolve around so many of the weaker notes on the instrument (those that evolved from or still use "forked" fingerings -- forked fingering sound thin and dull).

Without hearing the oboe as a reference, I don't have realy perfect pitch. I can tell when something is in tune and that's about it. For "classic" western music, it will bother me immensely if the musicians are out of tune. But for music more in the folk tradition (for example, I love Taraf de Haidouks), a warbling pitch is part of the character.
posted by Sangre Azul at 9:30 AM on December 1, 2006

I have absolute pitch, and have this argument with others all the time. It stems from my enjoyment of historically-informed performances (HIP). Generally, the older the music, the more likely it is that it was written for an A of other than 440~442. So, when you hear a HIP performance of a Bach violin partita/sonata, it sounds like it's a whole step lower than the key indicated by the program in your hand (because contemporary scholarship points to a kammerton of A415 in the case of solo violin literature).

Inevitably, perfect pitch people complain about how they "can't stand that it's in a different key" than what they've heard on modern recordings, or what key is indicated in the program. The thing is, the violinist isn't actually playing the E Major Prelude in Eb, they're playing it in the E that Bach heard.

Those who are so rigid about this, I think, are just complaining in order to brag to people that they have absolute pitch. Although I'm always aware of the key of the music, unless an orchestra is out of tune with itself, I don't feel any discomfort about what I'm hearing if it's in a different key from what I've heard before... Often I don't like their selection of the key, or their tuning (435 v 442, for example) but that's really a matter of taste.

The question of temperament enters a different realm. If you play a D major piece if F Major, the fractional relationships of the melodic and harmonic intervals remain the same. Once you change the termperament, though, you change the distance between the notes in the scale, and that will cause greater dissonance in some cases, and greater consonance in others. I think anyone with any ear whatsoever can hear a marked difference between a piece played in equal temperament, and the same one played using a pythagorean tuning. Even if they can't quantify what the difference is, it's palpable.

Temperamental (is that even a word?) differences become more subtle when you use a "more equally" tempered tuning scheme, such as Valotti & Young, Werckmeister III, Kirnberger, et al... But really, the objection in my ear arises from the more starkly pronounced dissonances than the more rapturous consonances.

That can be explained by empirical evidence from an oscilloscope. Imperfect dissonances have a greater number of beats per second (or any other time unit) colliding with each other than consonances. The more imperfect the dissonance, the more the waves' nodes and anti-nodes don't line up, and this is uncomfortable to the ear.

So, basically, what I'm saying is that there's not "one" way to tune things... Each note in the piano's scale is sharp or flat a little bit, WRT a pure major scale, but I don't hear any pianists with absolute pitch complain about playing the piano because it uses equal temperament. People who complain about things tuned to different keys are just whining to show off the fact that they have absolute pitch.
posted by stewiethegreat at 10:14 AM on December 1, 2006 [3 favorites]

Music performed in an old tuning, like A-415, just sounds like it's in a different key to me. It's not annoying unless I'm trying to follow along with the score.
posted by dfan at 10:42 AM on December 1, 2006

Oh, and I once tried to play a piano that was a half-step out of tune, and couldn't do it at all. I would play in C major, hear it in B major, and my fingers would automatically shift to B major, at which point I started hearing things in Bb major...
posted by dfan at 10:45 AM on December 1, 2006

This probably does not answer your question, but I heard an episode of The Infinite Mind on NPR a few weeks ago that discussed perfect pitch. You might want to check it out if for no other reason than entertainment: http://www.lcmedia.com/mind451.htm.
posted by carlitos at 12:14 PM on December 1, 2006 [1 favorite]

I have much more of a problem with temperaments than pitches (I don't have perfect/absolute pitch). Even-tempered instruments sound more-or-less out of tune to me.
posted by unSane at 2:19 PM on December 1, 2006

When I was taking a college music theory class, I specifically avoided telling the instructor I had perfect pitch so she wouldn't use it against me. One day she played a passage and forgot to give a starting key, and I slipped up and transcribed it anyway. She called me over to the desk after class and asked if I had perfect pitch. I grudgingly admitted it. She said she wouldn't tell anyone. And indeed, she didn't. The next day she sat down for transcriptions, played an A flat on the piano, and said, "That's your C." Then she grinned evilly at me. She played a simple melody in A flat. Every other student in the class transcribed it perfectly in C. I was sweating profusely, unable to hear the intervals or the passage, transposed it in my head from A flat to C, and barely got it written down in time. She did it every day after that, and it made my life miserable.

So... yeah, it can be a disadvantage in places where transposition is common, like choral music or college ear training classes.
posted by cacophony at 3:46 PM on December 1, 2006

Cacophony, I read your story and smiled as that's exactly what I did to my students today in class. It's mean but I have perfect pitch too, so when I write things up on the board but have to sing them in a different key (as I've just played it to them in that key) I get screwed too...
posted by ob at 5:42 PM on December 1, 2006

I really think it's helped me in transposition... if I look at a C and know that it should sound like an Ab, I play/hear an Ab. Transposition is something that my church required of me (simply because it was the reality of the choir and soloists) from when I was 11 years old though, so perhaps I just got used to working with transpositions. Many fellow students told me that the first time they encountered transposition was in college theory, which would make it really difficult to learn so late...

Still, perfect pitch and relative pitch are two separate mechanisms, and both are useful. Relative pitch is like a black and white TV, where you get the structure of everything, the lines and shapes, the sizes and distances, but absolute pitch gives you the color. So both are important, but every musician needs to be able to recognize intervals for their distances, not just for the pitches that are sounding. For those with inborn absolute pitch, knowing what a major third sounds like is at least as important as what a Db sounds like. Otherwise, it is color without structure (at least, it was for me, before I took piano lessons and was taught relative pitch).
posted by stewiethegreat at 5:59 PM on December 1, 2006