What is perfect pitch? To be able to recognize or recreate a musical note at will, you must possess perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch. Some musicians are particularly good at singing any pitch at will, others are great at transcribing anything they hear or tuning an instrument to concert pitch using perfect pitch. Recognizing and recreating musical notes are slightly different skills but many people who have perfect pitch are good at both. More information can be found here: perfect pitch software.
Perfect Pitch Theory
The important question, which was never given enough attention until now, is not that of “what?” but the question of “how?”. How is it that a small proportion of people are able to notice a supposed elusive “quality” of each note, which most of us cannot? What are these differences and how does perfect pitch really work? Some musicians do extremely well without the ability and, at the same time, we all show amazing hearing abilities, such as the skill of recognizing familiar voices from a crowd. So, how is it that we cannot all hear these note differences?
We need to be aware of some of the basics of acoustics before we can answer these questions. To start with, tonal sounds from any source contain fundamental frequencies of the notes being played as well as harmonics of those frequencies. Harmonics are also called overtones and all tonal sounds contain them. Even if a single sine wave tone is generated and output to a speaker, there will be harmonics in the sound. This is because of the physical nature of waves to create other waves. The harmonics of a tone are multiples of the fundamental frequency. The sound you hear when a single A440 note is played is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz, 2200 Hz, and so on. Usually the fundamental (440 Hz) has the most energy, the second harmonic (880 Hz) has less, and the general trend is a decrease in volume as you count up the harmonics, although some instruments do take exception to this. The second harmonic as also called the “first overtone”. This can get confusing so I am keeping with the terminology of harmonics.
Each instrument has its own harmonic levels, or “spectrum”. For example, a clarinet has a strong fundamental with stronger odd harmonics than the even ones. 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. It is the levels of the harmonics of tonal sound, which (along with components of noise) give the particular timbre to the sound. The reason we can easily distinguish between instruments is that they have varying harmonic spectra. Click here for more info: perfect pitch training.
To summarize, the distinguished “quality” or timbre of tonal sounds are created from their harmonic make-up.
When it comes to perfect pitch, we can say that there are “qualities” that distinguish the notes and musicians recognize these differences in timbre to tell the notes apart. A composer may write a piece in F sharp if it is to be uplifting but will possibly choose E flat for a more sorrowful 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 “quality” between the different notes. In fact, if there were, we would have measured it decades ago and there would be no mystery surrounding perfect pitch. It is the human ear, which is responsible for perfect pitch, and the differences between notes are only perceived because of the resonances and frequency response of the ear.
Just like a microphone, the ear is better at hearing some frequencies than others and has moving parts, which have resonances. Any tonal sound entering the ear involves a wide range of harmonic frequencies, which set the whole machine in motion. We hear some frequency components as louder than others when they actually have the same loudness.
The response of the ear is seen on an Equal Loudness curve and is the same for everyone with good hearing. A sound of 30 Hz needs to have nearly one million times as much physical power to be perceived the same as a sound of 4000 Hz.
The ear has resonances because of certain resonating parts. For example, the auditory canal has a resonance at about 3 kHz. 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. There are many other phenomena going on when the ear is subjected to multiple frequencies, which is just about all the time. One example is masking, when one frequency interacts with another, which is dependent on the values of the 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. On the one hand, there is the physical harmonic spectrum of a tonal sound. Additionally, the ear creates another internal harmonic spectrum. 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. You can read more about this at: what is perfect pitch?
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