Theremin and Irish Jig

I don't even know if I have PP. I doubt it. All I know is if I am on the note or not. I know if I am a nano sharp or flat, but i dont know if what someone is playing is a G or an F. I don't read music, but when I make music, I do know if it sounds good or is discordant.

Amey, if all you know is whether or not you are on the note then you have "relative pitch". If you had PP you would know the name of note you were on.

PP is not really an advantage, and it can be a disadvantage.

The only thing I have in common with PP are the initials.

P.P.

Peter ~

So basically, "Relative Pitch" is "Perfect Pitch" without a college degree?

A couple of interesting blog posts regarding a paper on absolute ("perfect") pitch (the paper itself is unfortunately behind a pay wall - any bets the research was publicly funded?):

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/2013/06/24/how-perfect-is-perfect-pitch/

http://inkfish.fieldofscience.com/2013/06/how-to-detune-someone-with-perfect-pitch.html

I wonder if the ubiquitous 50/60Hz hum emanating from various appliances is ever employed as an unconscious reference? 

When I was younger I would tune my guitar low E string to the lowest note I could sing, a practice which generally got it within a semitone or so of concert pitch.  But that's the closest claim to AP fame that I can make.

Peter ~

So basically, "Relative Pitch" is "Perfect Pitch" without a college degree?

It's not related to knowing music theory or not.

If I'm not mistaken, if you can sing a song without any external reference (i.e. without accompaniment, or without hearing a reference note first) in such a way that you always sing exactly the same notes, you have perfect pitch. If you need an external reference to get you started, you don't.

If you have perfect pitch *and* you know some music theory, you can name any note that you hear (you would probably play a song on your head and say "hey, this note is exactly the same as the first note in this song which is a C, so it is a C as well" - or I guess that's what they do, I don't have perfect pitch myself). If you don't have perfect pitch, no matter how much you study, you cannot name the note if you don't have a reference. It's like trying to measure how high you are with respect to sea level, when you don't see the sea or know where it is: you can have a really precise ruler (good relative pitch) but it won't help you do that! The perfect pitch guys have an altimeter instead of a ruler.

I can sing a given song in the right key, right away... I must have a relatively perfect pitch ;)

"So basically, "Relative Pitch" is "Perfect Pitch" without a college degree?" - Amey

LOL ;-) ... Thats how it sounded to me! ;-)

I am interested in this idea of remembering a tune and being able to use this as a "reference"- also interested in other possible references we may not be aware of - 50 / 60Hz for example being an audio background we are all too often saturated in..

But there are other natural references - "Schumann resonances are the principal background in the electromagnetic spectrum beginning at 3 Hz and extend to 60 Hz, and appear as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies (ELF) around 7.8 (fundamental), 13.7, 19.6, 25.5, 31.4, 37.3 and 43.2 Hz." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances

How or if these low frequencies could influence us musically, I do not know - But I do not think it impossible for some form of neurological frequency multiplier to be operating in us - and  the  Schumann fundamental does seem to corrolate quite closely to the frequency of Alpha waves in the brain.. I would be really interested is seeing whether perfect pitch related to the stability of Alpha waves - whether these people are perhaps phase locked to the Schumann fundamental... or something like that ;-)

One thing I have noticed while studying recordings of the dawn chorus I took at my home on several occasions is that many of the singers appear to have near perfect pitch from one day to the next (but this might just be due to physiology rather than to them having a 'mental' perfect pitch) .. For me, listening to the dawn chorus is an essential prerequisite to being "in tune" during the day - It is my hypothesis that we developed our music as a result of evolving with the continuous background of music provided by the birds.. But in winter listening to human music or recorded bird song is ok - In fact, recorded bird song in the winter often brings me down.. :-(

No disrespect, but something seeming to correlate closely doesn't mean it's actually related.

It's like those books where someone talks about how Stonehenge's alignments means the ancients set it up to related to all kinds of things... and then you see a painting done way back when, and the blocks are strewn all over the place. Then you find out there's even photographic documentation of workmen just setting the stones up fairly recently, in a way which wasn't meant to be anything accept an example of how Stonehenge "could have looked." All those lovely correlations in the books, evidence of the ancients doing so by calculation... except the ancients didn't set those stones in their present positions....

Every degree of pitch recognition exists from "tone deafness" (amusia) to "perfect pitch".

There is also something called "tonal memory", which is the ability to accurately recall a particular note. If you have a favorite piece of music and are able to hear it in your musical imagination sung or played in the key in which it was originally performed when you first heard the piece, then you have "tonal memory" (sometimes called "aural recall").

That does not mean that if a truck honks its horn in the street you will instantly know that it honked 35 cents flat of 'G'. To do that you need perfect pitch.

For years I have believed that the theremin attracts a disproportionate number of enthusiasts with a below average sense of pitch. These people play waaaaay off key but still get a great deal of personal satisfaction from the instrument because to them their intonation sounds just fine. They are often encouraged by the approval of audiences who are entertained by the novelty of the instrument even though the playing is terrible.

One of the first of these was thereminist Lucie Bigelow Rosen. Her playing was a musical joke in her day, but she toured successfully all over the world because of the public interest in this new thing called "space control". Of course, it also helps to have pots of money you can use to subsidize your career.....which she did.

It's important for thereminists with musical aspirations to remember that the standing ovation you got may not have been for your glorious theremin playing. I have given theremin performances that have been greeted with wild applause, when I know perfectly well I would have been booed off the stage and tossed into the back alley if I had played just as badly on a traditional instrument.

"One of the first of these was thereminist Lucie Bigelow Rosen. Her playing was a musical joke in her day..."  - coalport

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKUXn3WI2E

The piece seems quite challenging, I'm not familiar with it, and it is a practice session, but her pitch does seem to go out of control here and there.

Born in Bernardsville, NJ - my wife jokes that everything that ever happened happened in NJ - the Hindenburg flamed out here!

[EDIT] From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSKu_CM-2ac "However, this session had Lucie Bigelow Rosen operating the clumsy instrument and the results were less than satisfactory. It whimpered around the oboe and bassoon in the ballad background. Numerous takes were made but the final product was still out of tune."

Ouch!