What is Perfect Pitch?
What is perfect pitch? You may already know that perfect pitch, or absolute pitch is the ability to identify a particular musical note without using a reference tone. It is sometimes also called absolute pitch. The ability allows a musician to perform many skills, including tuning an instrument, singing any note at will, or transcribing very quickly and in the correct key. Recognizing and recreating musical notes are slightly different skills but many people who have perfect pitch are good at both. For more info, click: perfect pitch software.
The Theory of Perfect Pitch
The important question, which was never given enough attention until now, is not that of “what?” but the question of “how?”. We all know what perfect pitch is, but how do this minority of people recognize these supposed elusive “qualities” of the notes? What are these differences and how does perfect pitch really work? Most people can perform quite amazing feats of aural recognition, such as recognizing the characteristics of many different friends’ voices and some great musicians do not have perfect pitch. What is it about these elusive differences that makes it so we cannot all hear them?
To answer these questions, we need to understand a few basic acoustic principles. Firstly, every tonal sound from an instrument, voice, or any other source contains a fundamental frequency and several harmonics. Harmonics are also called overtones and all tonal sounds contain them. Even the simplest sound wave will generate harmonics. This is because of the physical nature of waves to create other waves. Harmonics of a single note frequency are multiples of that frequency. When you play an A440 on your instrument, the sound you hear is made up from 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz, 2200 Hz, and so on. The energy of the fundamental (440 Hz) is often the highest and the energy of each increasing harmonic decreases, as a general rule, but not with all instruments. The second harmonic as also called the “first overtone”. To avoid the confusion about this, I will use the harmonic terminology only.
Different instruments have different harmonic levels (“spectra”). A clarinet has weak even harmonics, for example, with stronger odd ones and a strong fundamental. Examining the spectrum of a particular guitar, however, reveals that its 6th and 7th harmonics are louder than the 3rd, 4th and 5th.
Of course the spectra of different instruments differs. Otherwise, the instruments would sound the same. The harmonic spectrum of a tonal sound is what gives it its own timbre, as well as noise components. The variance in harmonic spectra allows us to easily tell the difference between instruments. For more info, click: perfect pitch training.
To summarize, the distinguished “quality” or timbre of tonal sounds are created from their harmonic make-up.
Getting back to the subject of perfect pitch, we know that musicians who have perfect pitch hear differences in “quality”, we might even say timbre, between the notes. We know that composers with perfect pitch may choose a certain key for its characteristics, depending on the mood of the piece. However, we know that the instrument determines the harmonic spectra of the notes so how does this fit in with perfect pitch? Well, the shocking, but obvious truth is that there is no physical difference in ”timbre” between the different notes. If there were, there would be no mystery to perfect pitch and the differences would have been physically measured already. The perceived difference between the notes is due to the frequency response and resonant frequencies of the human ear.
Like a microphone, the human ear can hear some frequencies better than others and contains certain parts, which are able to resonate strongly at particular frequencies. Any tonal sound entering the ear involves a wide range of harmonic frequencies, which set the whole machine in motion. Some frequencies will be heard to be of different volumes when they have the same physical loudness.
An Equal Loudness curve shows the frequency response of the ear, which is much the same for everyone. The ear is most sensitive at 4000 Hz and a sound at 30 Hz has to be almost one million times as powerful as one at 4 kHz to be perceived the same.
The ear has resonances because of certain resonating parts. There is a resonance at about 3000 Hz due to the auditory canal. Resonances also come from the eardrum vibration, bones of the middle ear, and the complicated movements of the cochlea.
The equal loudness curve is just one example of the non-linear frequency response of the ear. The complicated range of different effects going on in the ear as it is constantly exposed to multiple frequencies is a field of study on its own. For example, when one frequency masks another and how this depends greatly on the values of these frequencies.
So What is Perfect Pitch?
To conclude, perfect pitch is all about the perception of the harmonic spectra of different notes on the scale. First, there exists the actual harmonic levels of the sound. On the other, there is an internal spectrum from the response of the ear. The brain is extremely sophisticated and, in those who have perfect pitch, can detect the spectrum caused by the ear and distinguish it from that of the instrument. The main reason that perfect pitch is so rare is that we tend to fixate on the fundamental pitch of the notes and, as musicians, the harmonics are not regarded with as much importance. Learning the skill of perfect pitch is about learning to listen to the harmonics of tonal sounds, which is certainly achievable. More information can be found here: what is perfect pitch?
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