I was making a kind of analysis of jaw harp spectral tones created by formants/vowels and noticed that when I was listening intensely to the overtone pitch and its vowel (to determine which spectral tone it was) I momentarily had trouble pitching the fundamental tone again. It only happened once, but this is quite odd for me, because I've never had any trouble pitching notes or melodies before. In fact, it probably takes more mental effort to sing out of tune as I'm sure it does for most people.

I wonder then, if people with tone deafness get confused by spectral tones when they are singing because their mind's are concentrating on vowels (and their associated spectral tones) so much. This might explain why they often can't determine if a note is going up or down from the last one, and why they often sing on a drifting monotone or like someone wearing headphones.

I've noticed that tone-deaf people tend to be very language-dominant. If they're more focussed on words (and thus the formants) it could be that abstract pitches confuse them. I've known more engineering*, medical and especially law students that were completely tone-deaf than in any other careers and it rarely seems to occur in people who are good at the arts.

(*Sound engineering, however, usually filters out the tone-deaf people. Joe Meek struggled though, I've heard some tapes of him demostrating melodies with really vague intonation and apparently he didn't realise he was out of tune and at times completely off key!)

(Just a thought. I could be completely wrong.)

Vowels are precise pitches (or formants to be more precise), which suggests that everyone has not just good relative pitch, but actually perfect pitch else we couldn't perceive vowels.

Music is close to language in the sense that those exposed to music at an early age don't just get a head start, it is actually more difficult to learn later, and those who start later may never catch up, because they have missed the developmental window which is available in childhood for musical skills. Musical brains have to be built.

Now if someone is not born into a musical household and then gets little music at primary school and therefore doesn't pursue it as an exam subject, you wonder why they seem to be tone deaf? The answer might be that they never developed good pitch sense, or that they never learned to sing, and certainly that they have not learned to match the two, but it is unlikely to be because they are good at law. There are other more parsimonious reasons such as competition for time which would explain why law students might not be such good musicians.

On the other hand I studied A-level music alongside a very good musician who is now a rather well-known QC, so the two are not mutually exclusive.

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Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

On Radio 4 last week I heard a comment in passing that grabbed my attention, but as so often happens I missed the earlier context and didn't have the time to follow it up.

I caught the end of a discussion that included Perfect Pitch in passing and the comment that grabbed my attention was that we are all born with Perfect Pitch. The point being made was that new born infants (presumably in all species) need Perfect Pitch to enable them to recognise their mother's voice and bond. But most people start losing the ability after about 3 months once sight becomes the dominant sense.

Now, that's all I heard and I don't know enough about the subject, or remember the program I caught the end of, to comment further or defend the view. It's just something I found interesting and mentally filed away for future consideration.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

I have a theory about perfect pitch too: pitch has to mean or signify something important to be recognised.

Here's the thing... when I was a student (about 18), I got into debt and then forgot to pay it by the deadline. I received a letter that the bailiffs were coming round and everytime I heard my door buzzer I felt a bit sick.

From then on, whenever I heard a similar low buzzing on the television or something -I jumped- but only if it was that exact pitch (low G)! I had no doubt at all that it was that same pitch when the timbre was also the same. This particular association has since faded, but I do often become instantly attentive when my mobile phone's exact pitch and timbre occasionally crop up in an advert or something.

This correlates with reports of people learning to recognise pitch but only on one instrument (timbre) and/or in one key (signature). Now, an infant's brain won't have enough awareness of the world to really know what is important to survival, so it can easily learn (or be encouraged) to think a pitch means something important in life.

So, I think it's possible we all have perfect pitch latently, only you might have to be torchered slightly to learn it. Hey, no pain, no gain.

I'll have to read the previous posts in greater depth than my eyes can take right now, but I've read that relative pitch is actually a more sophisticated attribute than perfect pitch -possibly even unique to humans. I suppose it's pretty impressive to transpose so many pitches to any pitch level.

Quote Daniel Davis:

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Vowels are precise pitches (or formants to be more precise), which suggests that everyone has not just good relative pitch, but actually perfect pitch else we couldn't perceive vowels.

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But don't these "precise pitches" change depending on the fundamental pitch? I mean, I can make the same vowels on a smaller jaw harp which would form a different spectrum above this (now) higher fundamental and therefore different pitches for each vowel. If what you are saying were true, surely there would never have been any mystery surrounding perfect pitch?

About the causes of tone deafness, wikipedia seems to sum up the current thinking pretty well.

Vowel Formants

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Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

To think about singing and spacetime at the same time must be hard - on a brain. Poor Einstein! Best not to think about it. Unless your a scientist with a clarinet. and even then the observation disrupts the experiment, of course.
I dont believe in tone deaf.

RE: Daniel Davis

My understanding of vowels and timbres is still not complete, but isn't it to do with the presence and relative strength of spectra within the tone that produces the vowel or timbre? So, a clarinet produces (mostly) odd overtones 1:3:5,7, etc whatever the pitch. Similarly, if I were to sing an "Ah" vowel, surely it involves a similar envelope of harmonics when sung at different pitches?

If an instrument might produce a slightly different vowel/timbre for each note (that is also unique to that instrument) this could explain how people are able to recognise notes. But there is some seemingly contradictory information on this ability of perfect pitch...

Wikipedia: "Absolute pitch is an act of cognition, needing memory of the frequency, a label for the frequency (such as "B-flat"), and exposure to the range of sound encompassed by that categorical label."

Wikipedia: "Absolute pitch does not depend upon a refined ability to perceive and discriminate gradations of sound frequencies, but upon detecting and categorizing a subjective perceptual quality typically referred to as 'chroma'."

If it is an 'act of cognition', this suggests it's label is (quickly) 'worked out' from the spectral content of a given tone. But they are also stating that it requires memory of the frequency associated with a label. These seem to me to be two entirely different methods. You either know the pitch as a memory with a label, or you 'work out' the pitch from it's spectral (vowel) content. And why does recognition of an instrument tone require a "subjective perceptual quality" if it is something within the spectra of the tone?

I'm a little confused, but I'm very interested in this so any clarifications would be welcome.

Thanks.

Personally I think there has been way too much written about perfect pitch as if it is some immensely complicated phenomena. I mean, no-one makes the similar judgement concerning the fact that you can see and remember colour, or smell.

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Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

Quote:

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...no-one makes the similar judgement concerning the fact that you can see and remember colour, or smell.

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I've never really thought of this ability to be equivalent to colour recognition. For one, colours are provided by nature, whereas our common scales and tonal system is only abstracted from nature. I think of timbre recognition as being more equivalent. Still, if the two abilities are linked then perhaps it's just a more developed sense.

I agree that we probably all have it to some degree. I can certainly recall a piece of music easier with it's original key in mind, and I can tune my guitar correctly without a tuning reference (as I'm sure most guitar players can).

But I couldn't name or sing any pitch on demand. Less than 1 in 10000 people have developed the skill to this extent. Probably even fewer could recognise tones from any instrument in and in any octave. It apparently declines with age too -even if you use it! Some people even experience the perceived pitches to be sharper after middle age, so instruments seem to be playing the wrong note. What a nightmare!

With that in mind, I'm not going to any great lengths to acquire it, I've got solfege anyway. I'm not sure how useful it would be to the music I do today, because I compose with different tonal systems now. (I've heard people with the ability struggle with alternative intonations and tend to have an overly 'digital' (scale-step) approach to music.)

Still, you'd think people would be able to acquire it by analysing the spectrum of their own instrument tones with a filter.

What I'm still not clear on is, if I twang a "Ah" vowel on my jaw harp (for instance) how can the pitches in the spectrum be absolutely fixed for this vowel? I mean, how can an "Ah" on a smaller harp produce the same exact (fixed) pitches, because it's a different spectrum coming from each jaw harp? Also, what happens if you re-pitch a jaw harp recording? Shouldn't we hear different vowels? Is there really an exact set of frequencies that enables us to recognise each vowel. I always thought they were just relative to any fundamental.

I don't know if I've got a mental block, but something isn't right. Can any acoustics experts shed any light on this please?

I've got it now. The frequency bands that determine perceived vowel formants are so high in the harmonic spectrum that they cross the spectrums of all fundamental tones (within a certain range) regardless of the fundamental note.

Technically (I'd say) these are not really 'precise pitches' (unless you're talking about a single note fundamental) but very narrow frequency ranges (within the 'just noticeable difference' of pitch discrimination) that encompass very similar frequencies from different spectrums of different notes.

Thanks.