Comments

  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    derogatively — Olivier5

    In my defence, I settled on "shiver" in preference to "spasm". For the prosecution, I should have said "neural activity". To switch sides again, I wanted a sortal, and neural "events" or "episodes" sounded medical.

    I can only apologise if my remarks etc.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    a 'mental image' from memory consists of almost exactly the same neural activity as the image in front of you right now. — Isaac

    Sure, if you mean, the neural activity we might figuratively call "mental imaging from memory" is of largely the same character as the neural activity we might figuratively call "mental imaging from visual attention".

    One possible next question, for lovers of clarification, is how this literally involves images, if at all.

    ↪Harry Hindu
    Is this about, how can we be sure of things? I'm not usually into all that, sorry. My bad, if you can explain it.

    Is there a clear difference between literal brain shivers and figurative ones, and if yes, what could it be? — Olivier5

    Not sure what you mean. If it helps, I think there's a clear difference between brain shivers (ok, neural activity) literally and only figuratively consisting of pictures or representations.
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    Day 3, 08.50: Two semitones too high :yikes:

    11.05: Mind alighting onto image, let's test straightaway for the hell of it. Most of a semitone too high.

    11.30: Insufficient intermediate noise, but after some proper concentration... i.e. "playing" an image at different points in a zone, trying to move based on vague intimations of possible too-high-ness or too-low-ness, got a possible intimation of just-right-ness, testing positive. :up:

    11.55: Now, testing an image lingering on... feels a bit low if anything... Ok, half a semitone down, hmm. Drift, maybe? Will Google later on in the process, but any knowledge welcome.

    18.37: ouch, a tone up. Thought I felt the just-right-ness. So much for that.

    21.55: Just noticeably sharp. Played a few candidate locations in the zone, without much preference emerging. Tried a "reality kick", if I can put it like that. Recalling, that is, and trying to anticipate and produce, that feeling of "reveal" which mocks all different predictions. And allowing that anticipation to determine the pitch of the next play of the image. Letting the image start where it (hopefully is beginning to know where it) wants. Repeatedly restarting the image is a feature of the method (as it stands currently) and probably benefits from the target music starting with the target pitch and on a main beat. That could be why I chose the clip, not at all sure.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    Assuming that you trust your speculation shivers and your logic shivers, note that, in order to offer any structure shiver to your memory shivers, a narrative shiver ought to be recorded, even if shiveringly so. — Olivier5

    The organism's ability to repeat and modify behaviours is a kind of a trace of the past. But explaining that doesn't seem to require us to infer the storing of traces or representations. — bongo fury

    Not literally, anyway. It might, of course, be convenient and useful to make the inference in a figurative manner of speaking.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    But isn't our brain in our heads? — Harry Hindu

    It should be.

    Your brain shivers are meaningless. — Harry Hindu

    If you mean they aren't representations, then yes, that's my point.

    Where are the scribbles you are reading now - in your head, in your brain, on the screen? — Harry Hindu

    On the screen.

    Where is the scribbles' meaning - in your head, in your brain or on the screen? — Harry Hindu

    In the game in which we agree to pretend that the scribbles point at or represent things.
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    Day 2, Saturday 21st

    9.40: slightly flat. Half or quarter of a semitone. Variability of this order is probably good enough to count as absolute pitch if translated into the ability to correctly identify notes played.

    (Assuming, that is, that tunings of pianos etc. are concentrated, e.g. as a normal curve, around a stable point, which is the case (A4 = 440Hz), but increasingly compromised by the fashion for authentic performance, with the troublesome consequence mentioned by @SophistiCat.)

    Arriving here from the position of being frequently unsurprised to mistake pitches as much as an octave apart, this degree of precision - falling short as it does of being likely to have an opinion on whether a tuned piano is sharp or flat of some standard - would impress me as a step change from relative to absolute. The analogue, say, of being able to recognise red, though not reliably identify its shades.

    Whatever degree of precision should indeed transpire in this report over the coming days, it'll be another matter to translate it into an ability to identify notes played, especially in a musical context, where I would expect the usual relative pitch skills to interfere too much. But we shall see.


    11.05: Dang, I just spoilt the opportunity for another trial by checking the above link, upon which it played. Still, this raises the question for how long I will feel the absolute sense of the G, and whether the sense if still present is illusory. While writing these words I have lost the (feeling that I have maintained the) sense and then recovered it. So it's moot which of the two questions this will address, but, here goes: yes, dead on, but 10 minutes after accidental exposure to the target.

    13.08: Aware of a clear image of the music lingering mentally from earlier, whilst chasing trains and not thinking to start other images. (If the discussion turns philosophical, I will have to put some of those words in quotes!)

    (I ought to have clarified by now that the youtube clip I use for feedback is also the "line dance" that I imagine performing (hearing), and then assess for feelings of correctness (of absolute pitch)).

    Often, such an immediately present image has tempted me to feel correctness but proved unreliable (e.g. even recently out by a tone or more). However, even though a "reveal" always terminates an opportunity to test a concentration effort, one wants to know if practice has begun to make the less effortful images more reliable. The evidence for that is uncompelling in a case like this one, where the image may be intact from earlier on. Anyway, I succumbed to temptation and the result was dead on.

    15.00: Back of the mind full of different music for a while, then called my attention as it landed on the target music in (probably as a result of the music currently playing) what seemed like a too-high key. This isn't a feeling I can remember having (or hardly ever) before a week ago. Still, it is the feeling I've been trying to find and train. This time I found the too-high feeling quite pronounced, but starting the image a third below was, I wouldn't say definitely too low, but kind of disorienting, and since I got the same (lack of) feeling at only a tone below, I went for a semitone below, "played" it, wasn't sure, but went for that, and it was dead on, or very close.

    I'm not sure the reason but, this morning, I found myself daring myself to "play" extended "images" of the Ravel in wrong keys, but declined, for fear of trashing the ability gained thus far. That could be a later experiment, no doubt.

    22.12: Pleased to say that after an initial judgement (on an initial image) that I was too high, and then the same vague dissatisfaction as earlier upon going down one semitone, I managed to imagine something in between the two, and it came out true :)

    Now my worry is that this will read like the potentially alienating account of an absolute pitcher. If that's what I've nearly become, then I will be sorry for not getting started earlier with the careful reporting. On the other hand, there is more I can explain about the "concentration" process, albeit perhaps in retrospect. Also, I seem to remember that absolute pitch that depends on a particular instrument or recorded sound is recognised as a relatively poor relation that might well stay poor. So there's grounds for pessimism, if needed ;)

    00.35: Roughly a semitone too high.
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    I imagine I am standing in a circular dancehall, drapes around the walls obscuring the whereabouts of doors and other markers; I then direct people (my imaginary friends) to line up with me and dance, facing a particular way; then I judge my degree of satisfaction that I am facing North, maybe adjust my orientation accordingly, dance a little more, etc.... then I consult a pocket compass to evaluate my various adjustments. Progress uncertain... shall update here. Hope others will too. — bongo fury

    I'm pretty sure I can report progress, albeit entirely devoid of scientific significance. I really ought to have done some prior testing to see where we were starting from. I always tended to assume the distribution of my errors was flat over at least an octave: that I was as lacking in absolute pitch sensitivity as possible. But also I never regarded the skill as musically important so never bothered checking how nearly this was actually the case.

    Still, if I can acquire the skill reliably, say to the nearest quarter-tone, then my unreliable memoir of the process might conceivably be worthwhile. Now that I'm hitting in that window as often as not, but with enough fuss and bother (going into a bit of a trance - certainly no hope without silence) that an observer might well judge it hopeless, I'll begin reporting on all of the (usually) handful of trials each day. Data!

    But please feel free to interject with any thoughts at all...

    Day one, Friday 20th Nov: 23.20 (approx 5 weeks in)

    Last of maybe 5 trials today. I think a couple of the others were out by at least a semitone. A couple of hours since the previous one. Plenty of "noise" (earworms etc.) in my head. However, the imaginative process is becoming easier, in ways that I'll try to describe, though probably gradually. It still takes at least half a minute of concentrating, often several. 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.

    On this occasion, dead on. :smile: However, on visiting again after 10 mins of texting here, to get the link address, I was down a semitone :yikes: Because concentrating less, maybe. On the mistaken assumption or hope that less concentration would be needed after only 10 mins. Will try to describe the concentration, when time allows.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Isaac
    Ok, anthropomorphic assumptions, apparently. Thanks for the link. With it's shockingly anthropomorphic illustration! I shall study.

    ... Haha, point taken. Links to fascinating studies answering this too:

    Start with an ape? In what situation might it have the brain shivers that you would describe as having a mental image and I would describe as readying to select among pictures? — bongo fury

    Still, the mental images (whatever we call them or construe them as) aren't traces, or recordings.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    OK - but the basic idea that episodic memory is reconstructed rather than recalled seems uncontroversial. — Banno

    Yes, until one dares to drop the re from reconstructed, and thus challenge the near-universal presumption of an original recording, and hence even of recall of smaller fragments merely subject to rearrangement.

    What is corporate memory? Anything to do with Dennett's multiple drafts? Which I may have had in mind when claiming there is an "opposite view" (to that which assumes a recording).



    Far more reasonable than what you usually say. If they can dream, they can imagine and recall scenes. — Olivier5

    off-line thoughts [dreams] don't (whereas at least some of the on-line ones do) have to be "about" the ongoing scenery and the organism's path through it. On the other hand, nothing is to stop them from replicating (if only partially and incoherently) previous on-line thoughts of that kind. The question is whether this, if it is roughly what happens, implicates mental images, as we tend to assume it does... — bongo fury



    Sounds suspiciously like a zombie! — Marchesk

    If I'm wrong, and the appropriately confused machine might still be unconscious, I need alerting towards features of my own conscious thoughts that I am leaving out of consideration. — bongo fury



    But is it reasonable to expect that any animals without language ever "recall a scene to mind"?
    — bongo fury

    What would possess you to have such a doubt?     — Isaac

    Anthropomorphic assumptions, possibly. Like, that recalling a particular scene (e.g. the mouse nearly caught half and hour ago) involves recognising a time and place within a narrative (however primitive) of the day's events. Without that narrative, you only have a dream, possibly a day dream. Less plausibly recall of a scene. The neuro-muscular shiver relates no more specifically to the scene in question than does the shiver that happens more visibly when the cat claws at a toy.

    Or, as I say, persuade me otherwise, by better describing a typical occasion on which an animal recalls a scene to mind.

    @Olivier5 I speculate that human recall is based on such non-specific shivers, connected into a narrative; not on a recording, however distorted or fragmented.



    how are brain shiver events about events — Harry Hindu

    Thoughts are "about" things in that they are the brain so shivering its neurons as to adjust its readiness to act on those things. Conscious thoughts, in particular, adjust its readiness to select among symbols for pointing at those things. This kind of thought is thus (whether online or off) thought "in" symbols, and consequently prone to making us think (mistakenly, though often harmlessly) that the symbols are in our heads. — bongo fury
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Marchesk
    I doubt that we ourselves do it before we grasp the reference of words and pictures.

    I'm open to persuasion though. Start with an ape? In what situation might it have the brain shivers that you would describe as having a mental image and I would describe as readying to select among pictures?
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Banno
    Ok, I may be exaggerating. Apparently it's only Bartlett and I that see the absurdity of the trace theories and memory-bank theories of memory. (Or google isn't my friend tonight.) [Edit: added Frankish link above.] But do share...

    But is it reasonable to expect that any animals without language ever "recall a scene to mind"? Except whilst asleep and dreaming, of course...
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    If you can remember events from the past, you must have some way to record them. — Olivier5

    That's one view, which people have widely held, even before the invention of the camera. (E.g. Hippocrates. Can't locate the source. "Soul receive images by day, recalls them by night", roughly.)

    The opposite view is that "recalling a scene to mind" is a uniquely human skill of rehearsing and maintaining a narrative, ideally a highly flexible but consistent one. (E.g. Bartlett, Frankish.)

    Having a narrative in the head is like having a song in the head. It's not literally there. (See above.)
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    Neural events. But not words or pictures.

    Because I meant memories in the sense of rememberings.

    In the sense of the scenes remembered, I could have said either the scenery itself or the words or pictures readied for use, or both. (None of which are, as neural events are, in the head.)
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Olivier5


    As brain shivers that reset my readiness to choose appropriate words and pictures.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    If it's neither, then you haven't said anything useful. — Harry Hindu

    So you reject the premise that I said. Ok.

    How are songs different than apples. — Harry Hindu

    Songs are sound events. Having them "in your head" is practicing brain (and general neural and muscular) shivers that refine your readiness to engage with and participate in the sound events.

    Personally, i think the use of the terms, "direct" and "indirect" are the cause of the problem. — Harry Hindu

    To me, they do sometimes indicate a common commitment to internal representations. Hence my efforts here.

    Sounds like you have person-sees-fruit events in your head — Harry Hindu

    No, I experience, undergo, participate in them.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    So, now that you think about it, it probably is all to do with storing traces in a memory.
    So, you probably reject the premise. Ok.
    — bongo fury

    I beg to differ. Your premise says nothing about storing traces or not storing traces.     — Olivier5

    Well, it says no representations in the brain. Storable units corresponding to (representing) external events are excluded by implication. (Was my reasoning.)

    If all organisms and even plants can learn, they can link past and present events, in the present. How do you explain that if no trace of the past is left in the organism? — Olivier5

    The organism's ability to repeat and modify behaviours is a kind of a trace of the past. But explaining that doesn't seem to require us to infer the storing of traces or representations.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Olivier5


    Cool. And?
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    That an organism can learn is beyond dispute. — Olivier5

    Not disputed.

    Even organisms without neurones display an ability to learn. — Olivier5

    :cool:

    This ability must logically be... — Olivier5

    Ah, so not your view as a biologist as such...

    supported by some biological mechanisms to store some information, usually regrouped under the term 'memory'. — Olivier5

    So, now that you think about it, it probably is all to do with storing traces in a memory.

    So, you probably reject the premise. Ok.

    I'll sulk if you didn't read the linked post, though.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    If there's no trace left of the experience in the person, then that person will have no way to connect new experiences with past ones. — Olivier5

    Is that your view as a biologist? That an organism learns by storing and comparing traces?
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    I'm aware the correct answer is 'practice'. But to recognize an apple, one needs to have some clue about how apples look like. — Olivier5

    Are you quite sure you are sticking with the premise?...

    Premise: it's neither

    real apples in our brains — Harry Hindu

    nor

    representations of them in our brains — Harry Hindu

    If so (if you are sticking with the premise), and "how apples look like" doesn't mean their matching representations in my brain, then I'm surprised the objection would arise.

    How apples look like is how they participate in person-sees-fruit events, which are illumination events, which we learn to differentiate among through practice: active participation in such events.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Olivier5


    :rofl:
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    ↪Olivier5


    How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    When there are two full octaves there are three distinct tonic notes, just like there are two tonic notes in one octave. This provides the composer with more opportunity for the approach to the resolving note. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Interesting theory.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    If it's neither then how do you know that what you experience has anything to do with apples at all? — Harry Hindu

    Are you quite sure you are sticking with the premise?...

    Premise: it's neither

    real apples in our brains — Harry Hindu

    nor

    representations of them in our brains — Harry Hindu

    If so (if you are sticking with the premise), and "what you experience" doesn't mean representations in my brain, then I'm surprised the question would arise.

    What I experience are person-sees-apple events, person-reaches-for-apple events and person-eats-apple events: which are all pretty clearly to do with apples.
  • Cryptocurrency
    converted a sizable percentage of my modest savings to bitcoin at the end of last month. Crypto's notoriously volatile and I know not to make too much of a sharp valuation-shift in a short time-window but the rapid appreciation of the investment was still dizzying enough for someone who has never made money on anything to lead me, effervescent, to try to talk some old friends into getting some. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    In any case, D is the only key that I can get two full octaves, and this is why I like it. — Metaphysician Undercover

    I can't agree there. Your two-octave vocal range is between one D and another D, yes. (Let's suppose.) But a melody spanning all or most of this range is no more likely to be in the key of D than in any other one of the 12 available keys. It might be, for example, Danny Boy, which (if I recall it accurately) you could sing only in G (starting on your low D) or in Ab or A or Bb. But not D. So your vocal range can't determine a preferred key or keys, without reference to a particular melody. You can't say, in general, "the key of D is best suited to my range".

    But yes, this song would (because its span is approaching two octaves) be a particularly good example of a melody that you must be careful to begin at a suitable pitch. I remember a David Stafford piece wittily referring to the later highest note as "your money note". If you tried the song in D, you would need to start on an A and later on lurch from the A above it, all the way up to the F# just outside your range.

    In fact, later trouble can arise from an unsuitable starting note whatever the span of the melody, so this,

    This is where perfect pitch and knowing your vocal range, is very helpful. to make the quick decision required of what pitch to start the song on. It's convenient for Christmas carolers to have someone with perfect pitch for the lead in. — Metaphysician Undercover

    is always true.

    :ok:
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    Do we have real apples in our brains or representations of them in our brains? — Harry Hindu

    Or is it neither?
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    I see the apple as distinct from my seeing already. [...]
    — unenlightened

    Okay so you conceive of your "seeing of an apple" as different from the real apple. That's all there is to it. That's what the debate is about.     — Olivier5

    Noooooo! ... "my seeing" nooooht a mental image (internal picture etc.). Just a person-sees-apple event.

    I hope...
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    I would think that perfect pitch could be acquired by exercising the extremes of your vocal range — Metaphysician Undercover

    Yes! This was an option I early considered, because a stimulus for the mission was being asked my vocal range by the leader of a choir I was enquiring about joining, and this reminding me that I had no idea, and this suggesting the possible connection that you mention. But then I realised that the extremes of my physical range are not only very fuzzy points on the line - which by itself not at all disqualifies them as an improvement on my even fuzzier mental notions - but would likely also quickly shift outwards by dint of the exercise itself. Maybe if and when I have absolute pitch and choirs are allowed to sing again, and I thereby get a more reliable gauge of my range, I might usefully connect the two.

    Meantime, I'll try to describe my method (such as it is, outlined broadly above) in more detail, soon. Still, interested to hear of any attempts at this method that you mention.

    I have an affinity for songs in a key of D, and can often recognize them as playing at the extent of my vocal range. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Ah but this very common claim of singers has always bemused me. Is there an assumption that melodies are generally bounded above and below by a key (or "home") note? (E.g. that the lowest and highest notes of a melody in D are probably a D and a higher D?) Or by some other particular step in the scale, a certain distance from home? Otherwise, how on earth is the choice of key supposed to determine how comfortably your range will contain both of the (and any) melody's bounds? :chin:

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

    Yep. My working hypothesis is that early and continued learning of the second skill usually trashes any early learning of the first. If I can, in my own case, rekindle the first, it'll be interesting to try and assess the degree and kinds of mutual support or interference between the two.

    Playing by ear does not really require perfect pitch because the same tune can be played by ear in any pitch. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Absolutely, hence @SophistiCat's example of Scriabin, and my chiding him for looking past that model to Mozart's, when it comes to ear training.



    Super contributions, thanks all :cool:
  • Nothing to do with Dennett's "Quining Qualia"
    The good news is that there are sound events and illumination events as they are commonly theorised and intuited: the sound of this instrument played on by this finger like this on that occasion, the colour of this dress played on by this light on that other occasion. And there is matching and non-matching of such events, and equally intuitive ordering comparisons, and hence equivalence classes (more or less culturally stable) and hence pitches and colours, in a perfectly adequate construal of ordinary aesthetic talk. :smile:
  • Nothing to do with Dennett's "Quining Qualia"
    (1) There are no qualia as they are commonly theorised or intuited.
    (2) People do not have minds, sensations, feelings.

    (1) does not imply (2), but (2) does imply (1).     — fdrake

    Trouble is,

    (3) There are no minds, sensations, feelings as they are commonly theorised or intuited..
  • Nothing to do with Dennett's "Quining Qualia"
    Events, dear boys etc., events.

    Are what we order into colours, pitches and timbres. Objects, only derivatively and more roughly speaking.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    simply to explain what seeing is. — unenlightened

    ... Namely, an ordering or classification of illumination events. Which isn't something specially suggestive of either direct nor indirect... which are more germane to internal-picture philosophies.
  • How does a naive realist theory of colour explain darkness?
    I say 'more or less' because Mummy always insisted on taking more important things, like clothes, to a window before she bought them, to check how they looked in daylight, shop lighting being somewhat deceptive. — unenlightened

    :ok:

    You have to play on a violin to see what sounds it makes. And you have to let the light play on a dress to see what colours it makes.

    A musical pitch is an equivalence class of sound events.

    A visual colour is an equivalence class of illumination events.
  • Nothing to do with Dennett's "Quining Qualia"
    A musical pitch is an equivalence class of sound events.

    A visual colour is an equivalence class of illumination events.

    (Duh.)
  • Are shamans glorified faith healers?
    Well, I'll be. So shaman doesn't derive from and quite transparently mean sham??

    Not even the other way around?? (No, sham is from shame.)

    :gasp:
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    Intervals have a distinctive sound to them that has to do with the size of the interval rather than the pitch — SophistiCat

    Amen to that. And they, not the absolute pitches, define the patterns. At least for most people, notably young children learning to identify musical patterns.

    (that is with modern equal temperament). — SophistiCat

    But not without? Perhaps you just mean: a relatively unbewildering range of distinct intervals (with equal temperament)?

    Once you learn what each interval is called (minor third, perfect fifth, etc.), you can learn to identify them by hearing, regardless of the pitch. — SophistiCat

    Yes, although very much not regardless of the context if you are a relative-pitcher. In other words some combinations of intervals are much more easily navigable than others. Whether this is true also for absolute-pitchers I don't recall. Although I vaguely recall the question having been asked.

    And by learning to identify intervals, you learn to identify musical patterns at different pitches as the same pattern. (If they are the same pattern of intervals.)

    (And perhaps, by learning to identify musical patterns at different pitches as the same pattern, you learn to identify intervals.)

    Such basic music theory and ear training are part of a classical musician's training. — SophistiCat

    Indeed, and the question arises, whether the aim is to develop the ability, ideally like Scriabin's, to play by ear based on recognition of intervals, or whether progress is generally to be measured rather against the standard of absolute pitch, ideally like Mozart's:

    She could recognize notes pretty well, but only after hearing a reference note or chord. She never acquired an absolute pitch. — SophistiCat



    I wouldn't overstate the importance of pitch recognition. I don't know if it's much more than a minor convenience for a musician or a party trick. — SophistiCat

    But you wouldn't want to understate the importance (for composing and improvising, at least) of developing the ability to play by ear, would you? Isn't that what the ear training is for?

    :up:
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    I had* an absolute pitch as a kid, before any musical training. I don't remember how my first music teacher diagnosed it (since of course I didn't know notes and couldn't yet play any instrument at five), but there must be some standard tests. — SophistiCat

    I suppose piano teachers, especially, are always aware of the issue when engaging a young child. Because it may be the critical stage of development. But also because a keyboard is discussed as a diagram of the pitch dimension?

    When she was practicing for a college entrance exam, she even had me drill her on identifying notes, intervals and chords. She could recognize notes pretty well, but only after hearing a reference note or chord. She never acquired an absolute pitch. — SophistiCat

    Haha well here's where my admiration for absolute-pitchers gets distinctly tainted: by envy or musical insight, possibly both...

    identifying notes, intervals and chords. — SophistiCat

    Why intervals? Just to help find the notes? Or is it the other way round?

    Is music about notes or about the intervals between them? ... is obviously a silly question, I appreciate that. But in that case, why the "only" in,

    She could recognize notes pretty well, but only after hearing a reference note or chord. — SophistiCat

    Funny how "absolute" still doggedly associates with "perfect", as in,

    She never acquired an absolute pitch. — SophistiCat

    ... as though that was the ultimate aim?

    Ok, maybe the plain fact is that note recognition facilitates interval recognition more efficiently than vice versa. Perhaps I will soon find out. :grin:

    But in time I may retain the memory of the melody, while forgetting the original pitch. — SophistiCat

    Ah! The relative-pitcher feels distinctly less envious at hearing this, an apparent admission of inertia in grasping the interval information. :wink:

    Fascinating observations, thanks :smile:
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    He said he could stack them up to around 3 hours after which his accuracy would fall off. — frank

    Was it about enduring a daily grind? Punctuating the passage of time with commercial breaks, maybe? Or how did he need not to rely on a clock?

    I become immersed in a fake world and my emotions signify that part of me believes in what's happening. — frank

    Yeah, I learned that other people see the plot twists coming a mile off. Sometimes you're meant to, as well, but I'm just not watching in that way. D'oh.
  • Attempting to acquire absolute pitch
    I have next to no sense of time. I was blown away when I found out that other people do. — frank

    They do?? I too was unaware. At the scale of whole minutes, at any rate. I've known someone claim to have "absolute tempo", presumably involving measurement of time intervals of up to a second or two. I always guessed (without as yet researching it) that his level of precision in such a skill couldn't be radically better than most people's, but could only be, merely, even better. An absolute sense of tempo (however imperfect) seems fairly normal.

    Such a state of affairs would seem to fit with my (makeshift and hopefully unoriginal) theory of Early Unlearning: we don't lose a nascent sensitivity to absolute tempo, because we aren't encouraged to completely ignore differences between slower and faster renditions of a pattern. (Whereas we are, with rare exceptions, encouraged to completely ignore differences between higher and lower renditions. We wouldn't criticise - nor praise - anyone's performance of a vocal solo on the grounds it was in an unusual key, even if we noticed.)

    As for a sense of minutes-long duration, I suppose I would have guessed that at least half of a typical person's estimations of a ten- or twenty-minute interval would be out by at least a quarter, but it might be shown that they could probably train themselves to improve considerably. I'm not sure I can think of any situations at all where thus not needing to consult a clock would pay benefits. What are they? I think my emotional reaction to the training program would be like yours: intense aversion! Are there enthusiasts?
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