Day 8, 10.35: Difficult - to get intimations of too-low and -high - but got there, and pretty dead on.

15.45: Nearly a semitone too sharp.

17.20: Cool.

19.05: Cool, tested first image, too. Not sure any interference since 17.20, though.

19.25: D'oh, tried same, semitone down.

20.30: Tried imaging a sustained (e.g. synth) note instead of several restarts of the piano tone with its definite focus on one momentary event. Wondering if this might be more conducive to microtonal repositionings. At the expense of reference to specifically the target image, probably. With its musical context. Various issues getting confused here quite probably. Anyway, just noticeably flat.

23.15: Semitone flat. A bit hurried.

Day 9, 09.50: Was worried it might be too hurried, but hoping the play-feel-move-play cycle is speeding up. True or lucky.

15.20: Took more trouble... effective or lucky.

16.35: Thought I was reaching certainty, then found myself "playing" up about a semitone and preferring that, rather refuting the feels just felt to be certain. Anyway the repositioning turned out valid.

17.11: Couldn't get sure. Just noticeably flat.

19.55: Probably fanciful, but... maybe the increasingly fluent repositionings are delivering a sense of the recent past, in that way you get when you notice a generally present but hitherto unnoticed smell? Ew. Anyway, on target.

22.55: A tad sharp.

Day 10, 10.00: Half a semitone sharp.

12.40: Whole semitone sharp. Resolution: no more reprospective accounts.

16.05: First image very vivid, so test... Yeah good.

17.15: Barely noticeably sharp.

20.35 No idea. Let's try this one... Good.

21.35: Quick one, was whole tone sharp.

Day 11, 11.15: Noticeably flat.

15.35: Typical uncertainty after possibly completely spurious adjustments within a semitone. Let's see... Phew! Not necessarily spurious.

19.35: True.

Day 12, 07.05: Good.

13.15: Good.

16.15: Semitone sharp.

18.00: Good.

22.05: More than a semitone flat.



Day 13, 10.55: Most of a semitone flat.

15.15: Just noticeably sharp.

16.00: Good.

19.00: Good.

21.00: Goodish, maybe sharp.



Day 14, 07.50: Good.

12.40: Semitone flat.

16.05: Good.

17.30: Good.

22.20: Maybe sharp.

Sorely tempted to detect that a quickening vividness of the piano g4 is correlating with an unexpected vividness of tactile imagery of fingering the piano note. It's not that the tactile imagery were ever difficult to produce, although it's a couple of years since I touched a keyboard. More that the connections to 'neighbouring' images (e.g. of the neighbouring F# or A) seem to promise absolute rather than relative information. So possibly an intimation of a forthcoming expansion and consolidation of the skill out and about from g4. Haha. Obviously it's much more likely to be just embellishment of an already dubious inference.



Day 15, 12.45: Most of a semitone flat.

19.20: Good.

20.05:Good.

21.55: Good.



Day 16, oops, 23.05: Lot of doubt... but good.



Day 17, 09.55: Good.

14.45: Good.

18.10: Sharp.

19.50: Tiny sharp.

22.35: Good.



Day 18, 10.20: Tiny sharp.

16.05: Good.

22.50: Semitone flat.

So, perfection?
Maybe it's one of those things, like learning a language, easy when you're a child, but difficult when you're older.

So, perfection? — Metaphysician Undercover

Hopefully completing stage one. Have started to try and produce a (piano) g4 image in the midst of other music. With the obvious difficulties caused by having cultivated that image with a full musical context (the Ravel).

Maybe it's one of those things, like learning a language, easy when you're a child, but difficult when you're older. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, undoubtedly, that is well established. I gather there is plenty of research into the nature and location of a developmental window. As previously mentioned, I am deferring a proper review of that myself, but any discussion is welcome.



Day 19, 08.10: Slightly flat after last-second flattening.

16.00: Semitone flat.

20.50: Good.

Hopefully completing stage one. Have started to try and produce a (piano) g4 image in the midst of other music. — bongo fury

I haven't completely grasped your use of "image" in this thread. Surely you are talking about an aural image rather than a visual image, but what method would you use to distinguish one pitch from another, within the image? Is it just a matter of trying to perfectly remember and repeat the exact sound, or is there a technique you could employ to distinguish one pitch from another by features inherent within the sound?

It seems like you've been trying to locate your image by relating it to other tones. But this would be like ungrounded logic, you could have a complete scale in your mind, with nothing to connect it to reality. perhaps you could relate it to an image from another sense, like a visual image for example, so that when you produce the designated visual image it would automatically recall the correct pitch through association. You might even cheat, and use a real sensible object to create the association. A hit of smelling salts, quickly followed by g4 on the piano, for instance. Repeat a few hundred or thousand times, and according to Pavlov, a hit of smelling salts, followed by g4 in the mind without the need for the piano.

but what method would you use to distinguish one pitch from another, within the image? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't quite understand. If you mean relative pitch comparisons within an image then, as you say,

Once you can produce a specific note on demand, the rest is a matter of learning the intervals, musical training. — Metaphysician Undercover

But this would be like ungrounded logic, you could have a complete scale in your mind, with nothing to connect it to reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

You get that the grounding is through feedback against a target specimen?

The actual "pocket compass" I'm using is youtube on my phone, specifically G4 as announced in the first chord here: https://youtu.be/PuFwt66Vr6U. — bongo fury

You get that the grounding is through feedback against a target specimen? — bongo fury

But the goal is to produce the pitch without the specimen or feedback. Do you have a strategy toward this end?

But the goal is to produce the pitch without the specimen or feedback. Do you have a strategy toward this end? — Metaphysician Undercover

The obvious answer would be "training". But that would depend on your question being a bit silly. I've probably misunderstood.

Say you read the same paragraph over and over again. Reading it won't necessarily cause you to remember it. You need a strategy and put effort into adhering to the strategy.

"Training" implies a method. If you repeat the same thing over and over again, and you always have an error which you must adjust for, then you cannot just continue forever adjusting for the error, you need to change your method if your desire is to prevent the error.

I wonder if this has to do with the perfect/absolute misnomering.

Plenty of truth (overdue for discussion) in the cross-modal association speculation. Will return to that soon.



Day 20, 08.35: Semitone flat.

11.40: Noticeably flat.

12.10: Maybe sharp.

15.15: Good.

21.35: Noticeably sharp.



Day 21: 07.15: Interesting to see whether this clear and convincing first choice image is caused by @Banno's "pain and pleasure" or is determining the pitch at which the latter is crashing the Cartesian concert hall... Turns out the image is half a semitone sharp of the target (the Ravel). But likewise also midway between semitone scale steps (I failed to register which steps i.e. whether the pattern had drifted far) of the other. So, more likely the second alternative.

17.25: Tempted again to test a first image on account of its vividness, but also aware it felt too low. Compared a semitone up, compromised, tested, was good.

20.20: Couldn't get sure at all. Over a semitone flat.

21.35: Good.

I read quite a lot about this topic recently but I have a poor memory and don't remember much of what I read. This is interesting though:

A new study concludes that young musicians who speak Mandarin Chinese can learn to identify isolated musical notes much better than English speakers can. Fewer than one American in 10,000 has absolute pitch, which means they can identify or produce a note without reference to any other note. Also called perfect pitch, this skill requires distinguishing sounds that differ by just 6 percent in frequency.

Five years ago researchers led by Diana Deutsch of the University of California at San Diego found that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese frequently match this level of precision during ordinary speech. In these so-called tonal languages, changing pitch can completely alter the meaning of words. For example, the Mandarin word "ma" means "mother" when the vowel is a constant high pitch, but means "hemp" when pronounced with a rising pitch. Until now, it was not known whether this precision in linguistic pitch transferred to musical tones. — Don Monroe

I play jazz on sax and piano, and Irish traditional music on the fiddle. I play sax completely by ear, I don't know the names of the notes. I use chord charts when I play piano, but melodies I do by ear.

I think I'm gradually developing absolute pitch, only because when I think of a recording and then listen to it I often get the key right. I haven't done any testing and I don't think I will. Absolute pitch is no use to me anyway. Being able to identify and immediately play intervals is what I need. I knew a musician with perfect pitch who said it is a bit of a curse, a lot of music sounds out of tune. He said the piano with its tempered tuning irritates him.

I think if I did want to improve my absolute pitch, I would use recordings of tunes or songs.

He said the piano with its tempered tuning irritates him. — Daemon

Nice going, crack open a whole new can of worms. Do you think it would be easier for a person to develop absolute pitch if the person was trained in tones of just intonation?

No, I don't think so. The evidence with the tone languages suggests that it's the use of pitch per se that encourages the development of absolute pitch

Yes, I think discussion of this or a similar report a couple of years ago helped kindle my current intrigue.

60 per cent is high, but I was surprised by 14 for the westerners, too. But my surprise is irrelevant. I should go to Wikipedia. Soon...

Another curiosity: their example of,

means "mother" when the vowel is a constant high pitch, but means "hemp" when pronounced with a rising pitch. — Don Monroe

hardly implies an absolute rather than relative sensitivity. (Except in respect of a very broad and fuzzy division into high-class and low-class, which is not to be discounted altogether). Which I would assume was crucial. Unless...

it's the use of pitch per se — Daemon

So relative as well as absolute? Maybe not what you meant.

I don't know anything (or like you I've forgotten) about tonal languages but I would assume until corrected that their chief distinction from other languages like ours were in their marshalling of pitch intonation towards lexical as well as (as also for us) pragmatic distinctions (e.g. question vs statement). And then some of them would marshall absolute pitch and some of them (as do we for our merely pragmatic distinctions) only relative pitch. And I would have expected that a tonal language implicated in the acquisition of absolute pitch would be of the absolute rather than relative kind. Hence my curiosity about their example and your comment.

I think I'm gradually developing absolute pitch, only because when I think of a recording and then listen to it I often get the key right. — Daemon

So to the extent that you are bothering to compare the two absolute pitches (of the thinking of and the listening to) rather than looking straight past that, to the matching of step 1 to step 1, step 2 to step 2 etc., i.e. to the matching according to relative pitch, you are indeed striving to acquire. To the extent that you proceed as a proud relative pitcher, ignoring absolute in favour of relative, your progress refutes my hypothesis (OP) that the one (relative) is at the expense of the other (absolute).

Absolute pitch is no use to me anyway. Being able to identify and immediately play intervals is what I need. — Daemon

Was always my view too. The can't beat them so might as well join them comes partly from knowing (or failing to remedy) my limitations. Which are, mainly, losing track around modulations, some more than others obviously.

I knew a musician with perfect pitch who said it is a bit of a curse, a lot of music sounds out of tune. He said the piano with its tempered tuning irritates him. — Daemon

Sure, and then some that are happy with tempered are unsettled by the historical drift in standard, as related by @SophistiCat.

I think if I did want to improve my absolute pitch, I would use recordings of tunes or songs. — Daemon

Yes. Fingers crossed.

a whole new can of worms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Haha, no kidding.

I think that person is probably hearing music in fewer different keys, at least if a keyboard is involved. That could reduce the amount of equating of transpositions. And that could aid acquisition according to my hypothesis (OP).

I tested my Perfect Pitch just now. https://audiomack.com/lune-en-papier/song/perfect-pitch

Cool stuff :smile:



Day 22, 10.50: Good. ... D'oh! Of course, turns out you were in G for yours. Although not for the subsequent jam. Although I replayed the test. And then some more jam. (Before my own test.) No telling, of course. (Whether there was influence.)

13.15: Good.

15.15: Just noticed at the last moment that my choice of pitch was undeniably influenced by the tone (an octave or two down) of the washing machine, which I didn't register as a potential musical context, but which immediately showed its influence when I tried to bring the image a semitone or two flatter. Which was doable, but very hard to get "feels" (of too high or too low) for. Lost track now, but I'll try my best against the backdrop... Haha, tried roughly a semitone down, but the washing machine had it after all.

21.35: Good

24.00: Semitone flat.

Can I ask you to explain straightforwardly what your procedure is?

Sure. Pretty much as you did there. Just never thought of whistling. So it's generally an internal "image", which I then check against the target here:

https://youtu.be/PuFwt66Vr6U. — bongo fury

(Sorry that important point was burried several posts in.)

I've found myself humming, but noticed that that may or may not be massively distracting, since I'm an octave down from the piano tone targeted. Another can of worms!

Not to brag, but while you were pissing around trying to obtain the perfect pitch, I obtained the perfect smell. It was a cross between unicorn, marshmallow, and sweaty sex, with just a hint of keylime pie.

Day 23, 11.05: Silly amount of time waiting for high-low feels in (as it were) "response" to "images". But eventually reasonably sure, and tested positive.

13.40: Good.

17.20: Good.

20.26: Good.

00.05: Good.

Now I think you need to employ that perfect smell to trigger the image of the perfect pitch, as I described here:

It seems like you've been trying to locate your image by relating it to other tones. But this would be like ungrounded logic, you could have a complete scale in your mind, with nothing to connect it to reality. perhaps you could relate it to an image from another sense, like a visual image for example, so that when you produce the designated visual image it would automatically recall the correct pitch through association. You might even cheat, and use a real sensible object to create the association. A hit of smelling salts, quickly followed by g4 on the piano, for instance. Repeat a few hundred or thousand times, and according to Pavlov, a hit of smelling salts, followed by g4 in the mind without the need for the piano. — Metaphysician Undercover

Day 23, 10.35: Slightly sharp.

14.45: Good.

16.40: Good.

18.55: Semitone sharp.

20.30: Good.

Day 23, 10.35: Slightly sharp. — bongo fury

Be one with the flatness

Haha, it's almost that mystical. Still. Need to speed it up. But wrong when I do.

You can't speed up mysticism.

Day 24, 13.50: Slightly flat.

Yikes, 22.05: Good.



Day 25, 07.45: Slightly flat.

13.05: Semitone sharp.

21.00: Good.



Day 26, 08.30: Good.

11.25: Good.

18.35: Sharp, about half a semitone. Hurried.

20.55: Flat this time. Too hurried again. (Plausibly.)



Day 27, 07.05: Good.

12.50: Good.

15.20: Good.

20.20: Sharp.

21.35: Good.



Day 28, 09.50: Good, maybe slightly sharp, was aware it might be; couldn't (gave up on it) get the image a fraction (rather than the whole) of a semitone flatter. Which happens sometimes. Probably never achieve anything more precise than a flattening or sharpening by some entirely uncertain fraction.

14.40: Same again.

17.20: Slightly flat. (Hurried.)

20.15: Good.



Day 29, 08.05: Good.

12.10: Good.

14.10: Semitone sharp.

15.30: Tad sharp.

22.00: Good.



Day 30, 08.35: Semitone sharp.

11.05: Good.

17.20: Bit flat.

21.55: Good.



Day 31, 15.15: Good.

17.45: Bit sharp.

23.45: Good.



Day 32, 11.25: Good.

17.45: Bit flat.

19.00: Semitone flat.

20.45: Slightly flat.

00.27: Slightly flat.



Day 33, 08.55: Good.

22.10: Semitone flat.



Xmas Eve, 16.20: Half a semitone sharp.

21.30: Good.



Xmas Day, 12.30: Slightly sharp.

15.40: Good.

19.25: Good.

22.35: Good.

00.20: Good.

Synesthesia
Of the five senses no two people are exactly the same.
Overlapping of senses and sensory training is bizarre
Oliver Sacks (the author) makes some sense of it