I’ve been the touring lighting director for a band for 23 years now and while perfect pitch is impressive (3 members have it), there’s an oddity with the percussionist who has *_perfect rhythm._* Very often I’ll set a digital metronome to any random bpm and he calls it out instantly... we’ve a lot of time on the tour bus and it never ceases to amaze me... at least these days we have the internet :)
To what precision? Are you saying that they are 100% accurate down to the single BPM? If so that would be incredible and you should definitely post a video of it
I have an electric toothbrush that beeps every 30 seconds during its two minute program. Through repetition, I have become able to subconsciously switch to a different zone of teeth exactly on the beep. I get a strange anticipation sensation just before the beep, & without any rhythmic counting, just seem to know when it is time! I do not otherwise have any time interval estimation skill. The mind is an amazing thing!!! Has anyone else experienced this?
I was the normal kind of hopeless at counting off seconds - I thought I was good, but I wasn't - until I got a job as a cinema projectionist. Back in the day, movies were distributed on 18 minute reels, and a typical feature film would occupy several. We'd splice the reels together into larger show reels, but the show reels could only hold three reels worth, so we had to switch between projectors without the audience noticing. On older movies, you might notice a little circle flashing in the top right corner, and then precisely 8 seconds later, a second circle. That's the cue to switch projectors. I imagine people who train with grenades are also good at counting seconds.
Yeah, I can do this, just about . . . play a metronome and I can tell you the tempo, I'm not super accurate, but I can get it within 3 or 4 bpm . . . and to be fair, most people I know who've worked in music production for decades, are pretty much the same, no one who has been doing this stuff for years would - for example - confuse - 114 with 121bpm.
What ever you want it to be, whatever the ear learnt, most people problably have perfet pitch in the A440Hz Equal temperament tuning because that is the most used in the western world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament
In support of Diana, whenever a video from her catalog is impression to me I'm watching it through and adding comments. Hope you're feeling better soon and I hope others are watching more of your back catalog in support.
@@physicsgirl Hello Physics Girl, I wrote this piece with the octave divided equally into 19 parts, instead of 12. Is she able to identify the notes in this? th-cam.com/video/L8zkQp4egp0/w-d-xo.html
I have perfect pitch as well and the things that bother a lot of people with perfect pitch (choir shifting out of tune, sounds being out of tune in general) are definitely noticeable and quantifiable but don't really bother me. I guess the biggest curse from having perfect pitch is because of it I can get away with so many shortcuts in developing my musicianship that it's hard for me to explain music-related things to others because I never explicitly learned it myself.
things that people who have perfect pitch have said were annoying 1. listening to me play violin 2. getting asked "what note is this" every five seconds
Amazing episode Diana! I have been obsessed with perfect pitch for a long while, thought I knew something about it... turns out speaking with actual "perfect pitchers" reveals so much more. particularly surprised about jeff's difficulty with transposing a song... always thought perfect pitch was the ultimate biological musical advantage but turns out it has its downsides! suddenly I don't feel so bad about my mediocre relative pitch... neither should you! keep up the amazing work :)
@@joetroutt7425 The A the Orchestra tunes to have changed between 435 and 445Hz over the years. Imagine hearing everything is ⅒ note off. Imagine struggling to play or even recognize a time that the singer wants in another key. Being unable to hear that this piece of notes in one song is taken from another song, but in another key. In daily life what you need is to be able to hear intervals: "a fourth, a fifth, a major sixth" etc.
@@LeifNelandDk There are no downsides to having perfect pitch. I've had it since I started learning music. It's great. Also, I didn't start learning notes or playing any instruments until I was 13 (past the 7/9 year old limits they established in the video).
i heard a story about entry exam in conservatory, the piano for dictation (or something else) was well tuned relatively, but slightly out of absolute tune, people without perfect pitch passed easily while everyone with it suffered and failed those audio parts. they were re-examined after that, of course
As a person with Perfect Pitch, It comforts me to know that I'm not the only one for whom certain Timbres can disturb Pitch identification (especially with vocals, in my case). 👍✨
Yes. I have perfect pitch, but never had the childhood musical training that would have taught me the notes. So I can recognize the correct note when tuning an instrument, but I don't know what it is. The only note I can recognize consistently is A, like in a tuning pipe or an American car horn, because I've heard it so much.
Why not? I can start singing a song without hearing the beginning, and still start with the right pitch. But I have no idea what all the notes are called.
True story: I was 14 when I started band class, I was at percussion (cuz i love percussion) and play the xylophone all the time. I have a relative pitch back then, so I started remembering the pitches of different notes everytime I play, I’m 15 now, I can now tell what type of pitch it was depending on the notes, some of my friends and teachers told me that I have perfect pitch, tbh I dont (ever) had experience playing an instrument until i was 12. What I’m saying is, you don’t need ALOT of experience to music and pitches and stuff like that. Anyways ty
I think Diana should have mentioned the tonal memory as well. Because some people (like me) don't have perfect pitch but they have imprinted in their brains a note or two, and can sing them out whenever they like without reference, and it usually is pretty close. If anyone is interested on tonal memory, comment below and I'll try my best to help you develop it too. I personally imprinted in my brain the A, C and G notes with practice, in three months.
I think tonal memory is a doorway to more focused absolute pitch perception. Imagine if you "imprinted" all 12 notes and then did drills to get your identification up to speed? That's what I did here: th-cam.com/video/UxA3OSrtZEw/w-d-xo.html Notice how I'm using a metronome ;)
In truth, my method is less tonal memory and more memory for timbre. I spent almost 2 years learning the precise timbre of each of those notes. But, even that is a doorway to an even deeper perception that goes across all timbres.
I loved this! Thank you, Dianna! 😊 As a musician, the desire to learn the science behind sound is what got me started on this mid-life physics renaissance. (I won't get into how learning about the difference between Pythagorean tuning and equal temperament blew my mind.) I always tell my friends about your videos and how they manage to be both educational and very entertaining. Plus, you always seem to hit that sweet spot where I can watch without having to be an expert in the field, yet I don't feel like you're talking down to me. Thanks again! 😊
I still don't understand what a note is, and why an octave is such an established term for musicians. Why does it repeat after 8 notes? Is that something we as humans have defined, or is physics involved? Aren't sound waves a continuous spectrum? And if they are, is recognizing the note the same as mapping it to the closest note of the 8 we have defined? What happens to people with perfect pitch hearing if you generate a sound wave exactly halfway between two notes? Can they tell or are they wrong 50% of the time? Ahhhh my brain hurts!!
Fiyaaah a note has a specific fundamental frequency. A note is one octive higher if it has double the frequency so there is frequency involved, but you could choose to divide it up in another way. The eight notes aren't evenly spaced as some are different by a tone and some a semi tone as you have 12 semi tones. You could have other arrangements but this one's gives you lots of combinations of notes whose harmonics are pleasing to humans. Sound waves a basically a continuous spectrum (unless you want to go down to the quantum level) so yes people placing sounds in-between are going to be mapping them a bit.
A note is a combination of pitch, duration, volume, and timbre. If we focus directly on pitch, we can look at the western 12-tone system. In this system, we use only a subset of twelve notes in one octave. Those notes are b#/c, c#/d♭, d, d#/e♭, e/f♭, e#/f, f#/g♭, g, g#/a♭, a, a#/b♭, b/c♭, and then we return to b#/c. There are twelve frequencies, although there are multiple names for each frequency (there are also double sharps and double flats, but for the sake of simplicity, they are omitted). Standard music uses a key, which is a further subset of those 12 pitches to create a more specific, desirable sound. The two most common keys are major (also known as Ionian) and minor (also know as Aeolian). A C major key (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) generally has a happy sound, whereas a C minor key (C, D, E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭) will generally have a non-happy sound. Recognize that this is a massive oversimplification. Each key, as you notice, has 7 notes in it. Notes that are not in these sets can still be used without changing the key. After we go past the last note in each of these, we return to C, but it is one octave higher. The western 12-tone system uses equal temperament, which means that an interval (the distance between music) is defined by a specific ratio between the frequencies of the pitches. An interval of a perfect octave has the ratio 1:2. A ratio of a perfect fifth has a ratio of 3:2, etc. Looking at an octave, that 1:2 is super important. It means that if a pitch has a frequency, an octave above that is twice the frequency. So, if we go an octave above a note with a frequency of 100 Hz, then we will reach a note whose frequency is 200 Hz. This is significant from a physics perspective. If you consider a standard, smooth, wave, then it has peaks, troughs, and nodes. The peaks are where the wave is the highest, the trough where the waves are the lowest, and the nodes where the wave is exactly in the middle (or, the amplitude is 0). The nodes are the important part- if we start two frequencies at a node, then the consonance (how pleasant the sound is) is determined by how often the nodes meet up. If the frequencies are exactly the same, they will meet at every node, and are thus perfectly consonant. If the are one octave apart, then the frequency of one pitch is twice that of the other. Thus, the higher frequency will meet every two nodes, and the lower frequency will meet every node. Link for graphical representation. ( tundra.cnx.rice.edu:8888/resources/6347bf784fdbeb47837008e0094e0f22a269aa69/octavewaves.png ) Other than a unison (two notes with the same frequency), the octave is the most consonant sound in music. Other sounds, like the perfect fifth (3:2), have simple ratios where the nodes also meet frequently, whereas the tritone (considered the most dissonant sound in the 12-tone system) has a ratio of 45:32 and nodes meet rarely. The pitches chosen for the twelve tone system are based off those frequency ratios and allow for composers to have access to most forms of consonance, and a significant amount of dissonance. Of course, there are infinitely many frequencies between a note and the note one octave higher. The 12 tone system only uses a set of 12 of those tones. However, the western 12-tone system is not the only system in existence, and many systems are considered 'microtonal,' which means that they give intervals smaller than those given in the 12 tone system. Using those systems gives a much greater amount of diversity, but a much more difficult amount of practicality, as there are no common forms of notation for microtonal music yet. If you were to give a perfect-pitch musician a pitch exactly halfway between two pitches, they would be able to tell. Standard tuning uses defines A at a pitch of 440 Hz. However, there is also 'baroque tuning' which sets the same A at 415 Hz. I've heard many perfect-pitch musicians say this drives them crazy. If you play a pitch which is theoretically exactly halfway between 440 A and A flat, then you would get a pitch of about 417 Hz- which is more than noticeable by a musician with perfect pitch. I hope that answers all your questions!
Fiyaaah As previously stated in another reply, an octave occurs every time the frequency doubles. The pitch mathematically in the middle of this is what's known as a "perfect fifth", (A=440, E=660, A=880), that's why those notes blend together so well to the human ear. Also, the concept of the octave is based on the seven tone diatonic (11 chromatic) Western system of music - other cultures can use different subdivisions, 18 for example in some Eastern music. Hope that helped at least a little! 😊
Ironically the actual & mathematical middle/center of an octave is extremely dissonant sounding..... & known as a tri-tone. for example c-f#........the "pleasing" center is the ratio of 3:2 ...it was these "simple" ratios that defined the intervals/harmonies that we use...it goes at least all the way back to Pythagoras......When a musical instrument is tuned using a just intonation tuning system, the size of the main intervals can be expressed by small-integer ratios, such as 1:1 (unison), 2:1 (octave), 3:2 (perfect fifth), 4:3 (perfect fourth), 5:4 (major third), 6:5 (minor third).
Realcygnus brings up a good point- technically, the tritone is the center of an octave. If you were start at a pitch, and go up one tritone, and then go up one more tritone, you would have gone a total distance of one octave. The distance from c-f# and the distance from the same f# to c an octave higher is the same. In that regard, there is something else to be mentioned- I stated that a tritone has the frequency ratio of 45:32, however this is a very rough approximation, and actually produces a frequency under what is desired. We can show this easily; Start with a pitch of 100 Hz, multiply it by 45, and divide it by 32. This will give you the frequency of a pitch one tritone above 100 Hz, 140.625 Hz. If we then multiply it by 45 and divide it by 32 again, thus going up another tritone, we should reach exactly 200 Hz, since two tritones makes one octave. However, our result is 197.753906 Hz. What is the actual frequency ratio of a tritone, then? It's an easy problem: Start with a frequency x. We want to find something that, when multiplied twice with x, it becomes 2 x. So, we have t^2*x=2x (where t is the frequency factor of a tritone). Of course, we can simplify this by dividing by x such that t^2=2 , and then, t is the square root of two. Therefore, the actual ratio of tritones is 1:sqrt(2). However, the square root of 2 is irrational, which means, interestingly, that the nodes for the waves of two frequencies one tritone apart will never meet. This is why the tritone is so dissonant.
Right? Me too? I've beel like „Wait…I'm not subscribing to any C# oriented channel. So…who did video on C#? It doesn't seems like any of my…OK, computerphile might, but…“ And then „Ohhhh, I see.“ But it was kinda dissapointement.
Mikeyguy94 And that doesn't change the fact that you asked why and I provided you a reason. Some of us are interested in both subjects enough to think it was somehow related to the programming language instead of the musical note.
When youtube provides your feed, the thumbnails are much larger than the channel names... so when I glanced at my list of new videos, C#?? stood out much more prominently than "Physics Girl", so my first thought was "Oh, cool... somebody has a video about C# (programming language)" Your inability to comprehend "Why" would make sense when looking at Physics Girl's video list... but in my multi-topic home page, the channel name is lost in a glance.
The most interesting part of this whole video is that final clip. The fact that someone with perfect pitch is unable to recreate a song in their mind in a different key is the first time ive seen a draw back to it. This makes me feel empowered to have relative pitch. Give me a start note, ill sing or play it back to you in any key! Srsly though, i feel that is a really interesting matter to have tested with the other perfect pitch friends you had in the video!!
It's a fairly common issue for people with perfect pitch from what I here. For example Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater expressed having issues playing songs from their album Images and Words on their most recent tour because the band decided to play everything a half-step flat in order to aid the vocals.
Yeah, it’s a common issue for people have perfect pitch. Luckily for me though, I am perfectly fine with key shifting and can switch to another key in a second and start playing. I really appreciate this ability over other perfect pitch people who can’t switch keys.
I was told I had perfect pitch from my guitar lessons instructor in college during the fall semester of 2017 when I couldn't tell him the name of a chord, but I could tell him all of the names of the notes in the chord he strummed. Then he tested it out by hitting random notes on a piano and I named them all. He then told another music teacher at the school who plays saxophone and when I walked into the band hall after another lesson he told me to name a note from his saxophone and I named it. Then other students got exited and asked me to name notes from their instruments, which I did. Then every so often they'd hit random piano keys and wait until I named them. Another music teacher at the school figured out I had perfect pitch when I was the only one naming keys. The way I did it was by being bored one day in the spring of 2016. Being in my school's Jazz Ensemble for the first time because the professor needed a guitarist and he recognized me from the school's music club. Sometime after the first day I was intimidated, so I went home and hit all notes on the keyboard at home and said the name of the note (sharps and flats also) then went upstairs and strummed all of the notes on my guitar and named them. Then I did it a second time on the guitar, except during the second time, with each note, I thought of the first word that came to mind with each note. So whenever I hear a note, I hear the word I associated it with and then I name the note. And that's how I learned perfect pitch.
One of the things I love about science is it ability to transcend different concepts. I work as an electrician and we have an issue in our career called Harmonics. It is a distortion of an electrical sin wave caused by higher frequency loads. This video just showed me a completely different way to explain it to my workers and I love that. Thank you for the awesome videos and I cant wait to see more.
Depends how high/low the note is: the higher the note, the less 1 Hz actually matters. For instance, an A played at 879 Hz (instead of 880 Hz) probably won't bother most of them, but an A played at 109 Hz (instead of 110 Hz) might have them cringing in pain.
Thank you so much . It cleared my age old doubt on what timbre is and what it depends on . Gave me an excellent insight into the physics behind music I always wanted to know
What a fantastic video Diana! Thank you for the links of the description, I've been searching for an app like phyphox for years. I would like tha yoy make more videos about the physics of the sounds and music. Thank you!!!
Hey Dianna, Keep doing what you are doing! Your videos are an excellent start to many of my International Baccalaureate physics classes. You are inspiring young ladies and gentlemen everywhere and showing through action that physics is beyond cool, exciting and the fabric of life!
Any chance you're an astronomer? I had a little bit of fun trying to figure out whether a vague blur was a digital effect or optical. I landed on optical, too.
Yes perfect pitch can be learned. Had a class in college and acquiring perfect pitch was the whole point of that class. Could, at the end, hear a car horn and ID the notes.
I have perfect pitch and I would describe it a bit like a 'photographic memory for sound'. I also recognise individual complex sounds that I've heard before for example stock sound effects in films and tv. I've even noticed them using these same sound effects in news reports / documentaries for things like doors opening and closing or animal noises.
Fun fact about pitch... the dial tone of a land line telephone (in North America at least) is the A below middle C at concert pitch. That's right, you can tune your guitar to the A-440Hz that you hear when you pick up the phone. If you have a cell phone, you cannot do this, but you can download a guitar tuner app instead.
Trying to play with a transposed piano would be similar to trying to type with a different keyboard (e.g. Dvorak instead of Qwerty). I can touch-type so I know where all the Qwerty keys are without looking, and I can type very quickly. But if someone gave me a Dvorak keyboard I would need to go back to hunt and peck, because the keys wouldn't actually type the letters that I 'know' they should. Same with a piano that doesn't play the note you have learned it should.
I'm a perfect-pitched piano player, and this is definitely my experience. It's a nightmare! It feels like you're constantly making errors. The concentration needed is tremendous.
not really if you only rely on muscle memory. using muscle memory on qwerty to a dvorak make a no sequence on the computer but transposing a song still makes a lot of sense.
I think this is a bad analogy, because if you type in a different keyboard without looking, the output is incomprehensible, as opposed to playing a transposed keyboard without hearing, which produces the desired result.
I have perfect pitch, although I'm out of practice now. I learned music on organ and piano. Both instruments are "tuned" in the key of C (meaning that A=440 Hz). Several years later, I took up the French horn in school. French horns are "transposing" insturments that are tuned either in E or B-flat. So when the musical score denotes a C for a french horn, the note that come out of the instrument is not the C that would come out of a piano. This was horribly confusing for me and as a result, I never got very proficient at the French horn! What about other musicians with perfect pitch? Do they also have trouble when playing a different instrument? I think it would be a severe drawback for a composer or conductor to have perfect pitch (which may - or may not - explain why I am neither a composer nor a conductor)!
Very Cool and Very Interesting. I'm also glad you gave us the bonus material because it was good to see your musician friends smile and laugh. Thank you and Stay Awesome : )
I have perfect pitch and this video is so relatable hahaha people ask me to identify random melodies and sounds ALL THE TIME too and they're always surprised I answer almost immediately. I also use the colors' example to try explaining a little what perfect pitch feels to me
They very well can, its just giving another name to the note. If they were taught to identify the notes not by letters (A, A#, B...), but, for example, by names (George, George#, Austin...) then when they would hear what you would call an A, they would call it a George. Same thing with Hz. Instead of identifying the notes by letters, identifying the notes by numerical value
This is a really good video. I would love to see you do a segment on psychoacoustics about the affects of the brain's perception to hearing physical sounds
People tell me I have perfect pitch but I can't actually identify the letters of the note. I can however remember the absolute pitch of songs and fish around on a keyboard until i find the right note.
Is it also possible that it is harder on piano because a piano is never actually in perfect tune - it's various roots of 2 so not all perfect ratios just close enough to sound fine
A ratio only makes sense when comparing two numbers to each-other. The other term for 'perfect pitch' is 'absolute pitch'. So if they're going off of just the absolute value of the frequency of a single note, then the ratios don't matter.
I suppose, but notes on a piano would still be out of tune individually wouldn't they? I seem to remember one person saying a very high c however so I guess if anything they would just recognise it
All our instruments are like that these days not just a piano, you are talking about *equal temperament* . it doesn't make it harder, it's what people have learnt
If you haven't yet, read the book "This is your brain on music" by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. He writes about how most people, when replaying a favorite song in their head, 'hear' the song in the correct pitch and tempo in their mind. Fascinating book about humans, their brains, and music. Thanks for this video @Physics Girl !
that tone language paper was super cool, thanks for linking it! also: interesting relevant story from my old piano teacher. she once told me that she had a student who had perfect pitch. except that he told her that he didn't recognize the black notes on the piano, just the white ones. she was like, well i'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. and she spent some time essentially playing random black keys and "training" him to recognize them. and it worked! he was actually able to pick it up pretty quickly. obvs this is just anecdotal evidence, but it does support that perfect pitch is learned to some degree.
Pitch has only been standardised very recently so that A is 440hz etc. When I tried to work out how to play Rock this Town by The Stray Cats, using the original recording as a reference, I had to de-tune the guitar down a quarter step (between 2 notes) to make sense of it. The deviation in pitch of the original recording was probably due to the musicians tuning their instruments (guitar and double-bass) with each other rather than using a fixed pitch reference such as a piano or tuner. People with perfect pitch are able to distinguish such deviations in pitch quite naturally. Those with good relative pitch are only able to tune the instrument to itself using a particular string as a reference. Fascinating subject, thanks Diana!
You may have neglected to mention: those other tones that contribute to the timbre are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. But getting back to perfect pitch, I have an elusive version of it. I generally can’t identify a tone. But I find that when I go about humming a tune, without reference to a known pitch, I’m often doing it it’s proper/customary key.
I'm actually doing my undergrad independent capstone on this subject. I'm researching as to what factors in a material give it it's specific overtones, or timbre, it's a fascinating world because when you get down to it all things are waves, and it can explain alot of different phenomenon in life
Being a member of a music group, you learn to listen to different instruments around you like a cello (which is similar to a violin), piano keyboard, clarinet, flute, trumpet. A piece like Beethoven Romance Op.40 with a violin solo and the Trumpeter's Lullaby with a trumpet solo are in the same key F (with 1 flat). 2 different solo instruments, 2 different timbre effects. Suppose you play a violin and listened to a Mozart flute sonata on a recording or somebody playing it. You may try to reproduce what you hear on a violin and come up with the correct key of the piece by trying to match the notes you hear. A lot of times the title of a piece would give away the key it is in: "Canon in D", "Minuet in G", "Bach Keyboard Concerto #1 in D minor", "Romance in F", etc.
When you talk about the confusion that comes from playing a transposed keyboard, it reminds me of when I tried playing the clarinet after I started playing keyboard. The clarinet refers to pitches a whole step higher than on keyboard, so when you play a G on a clarinet, it sounds like an F. That was reason that I gave up clarinet.
Teaching perfect pitch is usually pretty easy. The point about 'intensive' early musical training is overkill, and the vast majority of people got plenty. It just isn't connected to the rest of their musical skill set. Almost everybody learned to sing 'happy birthday' before then so almost everybody sings it in G. Most people already have near perfect pitch when it comes to the opening note of happy birthday. While it is slightly involved, you can get any note once you are able to relate notes to that one reference note, and over time with practice the process becomes unconscious. The key to learning is 'fire together, wire together'. Naive learning of perfect pitch is impossible, because most of the time the neurons responsible for absolute pitch are not doing anything at all. The concept of "C" doesn't get associated with the neurons that are related to absolute pitch because they are not firing at all, so no firing together. You need some sort of opening to get that part of your brain to turn on, and thinking "I want that part of my brain to turn on" does not work. You need to find some neurological state where it is turned on, and induce this state as part of the training. The opening note of happy birthday uses it, so thinking about that works for the majority of people.
Okay well I know some people do in fact have perfect pitch, but does this mean they also have perfect timing? For example, middle A is 440hz - they can recognize this. Do these people also have perfect timing?... or does anyone? Just curious :P
Training in pitch recognition is like training in timing accuracy in that they both require a ton of time & repetition (a structured setting is NOT, necessarily) to master, but they aren't the same skill. There are people who can tell you whether a particular tempo is happening at 60 beats per minute (bpm), or 90 bpm, or 132 bpm, &c., but they aren't necessarily the same ones who can tell you by ear alone whether you're playing/singing an E-flat or an F-sharp.
From a mathematical standpoint I suppose. From a practical standpoint, it seems very different to me to be able to tell that a group is playing the "National Emblem" march at 90 bpm vs. 108 bpm (speed/tempo), versus telling me they're playing it in the key of B-flat major vs. A major (frequency/pitch). ^_^
I remember reading a study that some people, even non-musicians, can remember the key of their favorite songs, even if they don't have perfect pitch. I'm extremely confident that I have this. I'd imagine it would be easy to fake perfect pitch by learning the name of the keys of the songs I can recall most easily and then use relative pitch from there.
Your relative pitch is really good! You nailed that tritone (B down to F). Yes, timbre is a big part of it. I don't have perfect pitch (and my relative pitch isn't even as good as yours) but I can recognize an E, A and D (notes and chords) on guitar. They are open strings which ring out a little more than fretted notes. The open D chord is especially easy to identify because the F# is on top and the bottom note isn't very low because a guitar in standard tuning can't play a low D. But, then again, some guitar players tune their whole guitar down to Eb and that would probably trick me.
IT WAS SO FUN WATCHING THIS WHEN THEY WERE FIGURING OUT THE NOTES OF EVERY DAY OBJECTS!! I have perfect pitch too so ill just find myself randomly doing this a lot.
5:57 I’m 16 and I developed perfect pitch in less than a month. I had no musical background at all and learned by associating every pitch with a note from a song or piece.
I have two further questions: 1) How do people with perfect pitch feel about temperaments? Does the difference between a solo singer, choir or violinist (just intonation) and a piano (equal temperament) sound really strange and jarring? 2) How do they feel about different tunings? It's not uncommon for different 440As to be used, and baroque ensembles often tune to a wildly different 415A, so a more regular 440 A sounds more like a Bb.
I grew up with a terrible ear, and had a friend who had perfect pitch since childhood. I ended up taking a CD course on perfect pitch, and have been able to develop absolute pitch at least on piano, and it's slowly growing. I just hope no one gives up thinking it's impossible!
absolute nonsense , you mean. Utter codswallop, total bollocks. It's genetic. if you haven't got it you never will have. You are either lying or deluded.
I've always been told I had perfect pitch, which evidently is correct as I can identify notes correctly. But it takes me a little longer than most of the people in the video (the 1st lady was really fast). I know C and I figure all other notes from their distance from C. So it usually takes me a few seconds. And, it's easier w 'pure tones' that you get from a tuned instrument or electronic device than from things like glasses or bells which may have "in between" pitches or overtones. I havent watched the entire video yet but I've read that it can be learned. But I'm not sure how important perfect pitch is for a musician; I tend to think it's not essential at all, altho of course it can help.
if you are using a reference note , like C, then you are using relative pitch not AP. However it's odd that you claim you know C without listening to it . people with relative pitch don't have a 'pure' memory for notes without a reference , it's an AP trait so it's also unlikely that you really _do_ know C as you would be mixing the two abilities AP and RP.
it's not called AP hard core...just AP will do. What you are talking about is called relative pitch. You don't have to try and memorise anything, . You just have to put in practice listening to intervals so you can recognise them. the more work you put in the better you become and a very common technique when you are starting out is to think of a song that has that interval . For example the first two notes of the Star Wars theme is a perfect fifth. Or Greensleeves, which is a minor third. Here is an ear training site www.teoria.com/en/exercises/ and here is a list of interval songs www.earmaster.com/products/free-tools/interval-song-chart-generator.html
This "Perfect Pitch" can most likely be taught. Yes it might take a while [The longest I see is roughly 2-3 years?] and that will include going over every pitch until you get it right every single time. There is a way where you could do this at home [If you had a piano, keyboard, etc.] just by learning the different pitches by playing and identifying them. No there are no/will never be any schools for learning "Perfect Pitch" sadly, but I wish you the best of luck with learning it if you do.
I don't think it would be That easy for a child to learn all the pitches and get them correct every time with the attention span most children tend to have.
Children (generally) learn by doing, rather than by rote instruction, which is why immersing them in a language allows them to learn it over time even if they can't yet read a textbook. In the same way, play the same notes often enough & they will learn the sound of those notes; tell them in passing at some point "This particular note is middle C" & it's likely they'll remember that just as they do any other sound... like "Mom" or "pet" or "snack." =)
+Jaewon Shin I will agree wholeheartedly that the latent capability for language & music exists in most of us at birth, but unless it is specifically taught an individual will not possess it. For instance, I may have had the latent ability to _learn_ Korean at birth (or English, or Thai, &c.), but I did not have the ability to speak/understand it. Perfect pitch is similar: if it's not learned, it's something you don't acquire, not something you 'lose'.
Perfect pitch is mostly a parlor trick. It has very few practical uses for a musician, and can even be detrimental in some cases (as violinist with perfect pitch might tell you when they have to play in Baroque tuning.) And yes, it's actually difficult to recognize a song/piece when someone hums it in the wrong key. Sometimes it's fun to play with that, like how they transposed the keyboard at the end of the video. I've done that for fun just to hear a piece of music in a new key, which makes it feel like a completely different piece to me. It can make a song feel fresh, like you're hearing it for the first time all over again. I experienced this when I heard Michael MacDonald perform What A Fool Believes in recent years, and he had to sing it in a lower key; all the modulations became unpredictable to me, and it was so exciting!
4:41 - Indeed, however, the qualities of the “attack transient” are often even more distinctive to particular instruments than their harmonic structures.
For wind instruments, like voice, the timbre are defined by fives different wavelengths created by the vocal tracks. The higher, the brighter. Called the formants or the harmonic in opera music.
It's relative perfect pitch as A-440 become common music pitch used and now I tune my piano to A-432 and some tune up to C- 528~ which is A-444! I've tuned about 24,000 pianos and I have tuned an F to F temperament for all of them and I listen to only BEATS and NEVER PITCH!
Almost all of us experienced the moment of realization that the noises grown ups make have meaning, but as far as I know, none of us remembers that realization. Kind of mind blowing to think about.
I have good relative pitch. I can guess notes with fair accuracy. What I do mentally is I imagine myself playing that note on my violin which helps me visuallize what finger I am using to depress which string which translates into a note name.
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I’ve been the touring lighting director for a band for 23 years now and while perfect pitch is impressive (3 members have it), there’s an oddity with the percussionist who has *_perfect rhythm._* Very often I’ll set a digital metronome to any random bpm and he calls it out instantly... we’ve a lot of time on the tour bus and it never ceases to amaze me... at least these days we have the internet :)
To what precision? Are you saying that they are 100% accurate down to the single BPM? If so that would be incredible and you should definitely post a video of it
I have an electric toothbrush that beeps every 30 seconds during its two minute program. Through repetition, I have become able to subconsciously switch to a different zone of teeth exactly on the beep. I get a strange anticipation sensation just before the beep, & without any rhythmic counting, just seem to know when it is time! I do not otherwise have any time interval estimation skill. The mind is an amazing thing!!!
Has anyone else experienced this?
I was the normal kind of hopeless at counting off seconds - I thought I was good, but I wasn't - until I got a job as a cinema projectionist.
Back in the day, movies were distributed on 18 minute reels, and a typical feature film would occupy several. We'd splice the reels together into larger show reels, but the show reels could only hold three reels worth, so we had to switch between projectors without the audience noticing. On older movies, you might notice a little circle flashing in the top right corner, and then precisely 8 seconds later, a second circle. That's the cue to switch projectors.
I imagine people who train with grenades are also good at counting seconds.
Sounds fake
Yeah, I can do this, just about . . . play a metronome and I can tell you the tempo, I'm not super accurate, but I can get it within 3 or 4 bpm . . . and to be fair, most people I know who've worked in music production for decades, are pretty much the same, no one who has been doing this stuff for years would - for example - confuse - 114 with 121bpm.
Interesting note: it has been shown that blind people can be found to use the visual cortex to hear music.
Interesting note ic what u did there
Yeah right... you use the auditory cortex, which has nothing to deal with blindness
Wait...what?! I love the human brain.
“What is a note, though?”
*Vsauce music starts*
+
What ever you want it to be, whatever the ear learnt, most people problably have perfet pitch in the A440Hz Equal temperament tuning because that is the most used in the western world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament
What is "is"?
But what is "What is 'is'"?
But what is "what"?
In support of Diana, whenever a video from her catalog is impression to me I'm watching it through and adding comments. Hope you're feeling better soon and I hope others are watching more of your back catalog in support.
Wow, it's so great to see our app being used in one of your videos! Thanks a lot! Hope, there will be other occasions to use our tools :)
Phyphox is an amazing app. So many different and useful tools in a single location. I highly recommend it for... well, just about anybody.
A physics teacher in New Zealand recently showed me your app and it's AMAZING! I would love to feature it in more videos!
phyphox wow awesome app. Downloaded in no time. Thanks for all
phyphox it sounds so interesting I'm downloading from the play store
@@physicsgirl Hello Physics Girl, I wrote this piece with the octave divided equally into 19 parts, instead of 12. Is she able to identify the notes in this?
th-cam.com/video/L8zkQp4egp0/w-d-xo.html
When you said you were doing a video about perfect pitch I expected something about Nolan Ryan's fastball but this is much better
I see what u did there
Nice
Ummmm ok
I have perfect pitch but it can sometimes be a curse.
Oh my gosh I know right. It’s really hard for me to enjoy music because I can’t help but pick up everything “off” about it.
Want to trade? I would fricking trade most things for perfect pitch :(
I have perfect pitch as well and the things that bother a lot of people with perfect pitch (choir shifting out of tune, sounds being out of tune in general) are definitely noticeable and quantifiable but don't really bother me. I guess the biggest curse from having perfect pitch is because of it I can get away with so many shortcuts in developing my musicianship that it's hard for me to explain music-related things to others because I never explicitly learned it myself.
things that people who have perfect pitch have said were annoying
1. listening to me play violin
2. getting asked "what note is this" every five seconds
true though I like music I dont know how to play any musical instrument . I am bad at it but I love songs😥😥😃
Great content, always been curious about people with perfect pitch.
I miss your videos my favourite was the brain cube in the jar, hope you are doing well
Amazing episode Diana! I have been obsessed with perfect pitch for a long while, thought I knew something about it... turns out speaking with actual "perfect pitchers" reveals so much more. particularly surprised about jeff's difficulty with transposing a song... always thought perfect pitch was the ultimate biological musical advantage but turns out it has its downsides! suddenly I don't feel so bad about my mediocre relative pitch... neither should you! keep up the amazing work :)
It's funny seeing Ray Chen attempt to play pieces in different keys. Man has perfect pitch and it even stumps a violin Ling Ling
So what are the downsides of having perfect pitch? I'm having a hard time thinking what is so bad about it.
@@joetroutt7425
The A the Orchestra tunes to have changed between 435 and 445Hz over the years. Imagine hearing everything is ⅒ note off.
Imagine struggling to play or even recognize a time that the singer wants in another key.
Being unable to hear that this piece of notes in one song is taken from another song, but in another key.
In daily life what you need is to be able to hear intervals: "a fourth, a fifth, a major sixth" etc.
@@LeifNelandDk There are no downsides to having perfect pitch. I've had it since I started learning music. It's great. Also, I didn't start learning notes or playing any instruments until I was 13 (past the 7/9 year old limits they established in the video).
I had no idea she could sing and play. It makes her even more awesome.
Great video - if only everyone delivered on the promise of their videos like this - enjoyable and informative - thanks !
3:33 *Vsauce music starts playing* xD
Ibakon Ferba makes sense😀
😁😁
in slightly shifted key
brbrmensch That would be evil to people with perfect Pitch xD
i heard a story about entry exam in conservatory, the piano for dictation (or something else) was well tuned relatively, but slightly out of absolute tune, people without perfect pitch passed easily while everyone with it suffered and failed those audio parts. they were re-examined after that, of course
As a person with Perfect Pitch, It comforts me to know that I'm not the only one for whom certain Timbres can disturb Pitch identification (especially with vocals, in my case). 👍✨
One thing must be said: while perfect pitch surely helps, many musicians don't have it and still can play (and compose) incredibly great music.
So cool!
Can you have perfect pitch if you don't know the notes ?
I think it is like seeing colors, but don't know their name.
Yes. I have perfect pitch, but never had the childhood musical training that would have taught me the notes. So I can recognize the correct note when tuning an instrument, but I don't know what it is. The only note I can recognize consistently is A, like in a tuning pipe or an American car horn, because I've heard it so much.
In theory yes, but in practice no, because outside of music there is no need for such skill.
Why not? I can start singing a song without hearing the beginning, and still start with the right pitch. But I have no idea what all the notes are called.
Clorox Bleach I believe they answered that "relative pitch"
True story:
I was 14 when I started band class, I was at percussion (cuz i love percussion) and play the xylophone all the time. I have a relative pitch back then, so I started remembering the pitches of different notes everytime I play, I’m 15 now, I can now tell what type of pitch it was depending on the notes, some of my friends and teachers told me that I have perfect pitch, tbh I dont (ever) had experience playing an instrument until i was 12. What I’m saying is, you don’t need ALOT of experience to music and pitches and stuff like that.
Anyways ty
I think Diana should have mentioned the tonal memory as well. Because some people (like me) don't have perfect pitch but they have imprinted in their brains a note or two, and can sing them out whenever they like without reference, and it usually is pretty close. If anyone is interested on tonal memory, comment below and I'll try my best to help you develop it too. I personally imprinted in my brain the A, C and G notes with practice, in three months.
Tonal memory especially would make sense in a choir setting
Esther Norton indeed
I think tonal memory is a doorway to more focused absolute pitch perception. Imagine if you "imprinted" all 12 notes and then did drills to get your identification up to speed?
That's what I did here: th-cam.com/video/UxA3OSrtZEw/w-d-xo.html
Notice how I'm using a metronome ;)
In truth, my method is less tonal memory and more memory for timbre. I spent almost 2 years learning the precise timbre of each of those notes. But, even that is a doorway to an even deeper perception that goes across all timbres.
+KIBanshee9 Interesting. But what that changed in your everyday musical perception? Can you spot pitches while hearing piano music for example?
I loved this! Thank you, Dianna! 😊 As a musician, the desire to learn the science behind sound is what got me started on this mid-life physics renaissance. (I won't get into how learning about the difference between Pythagorean tuning and equal temperament blew my mind.) I always tell my friends about your videos and how they manage to be both educational and very entertaining. Plus, you always seem to hit that sweet spot where I can watch without having to be an expert in the field, yet I don't feel like you're talking down to me. Thanks again! 😊
I still don't understand what a note is, and why an octave is such an established term for musicians.
Why does it repeat after 8 notes? Is that something we as humans have defined, or is physics involved? Aren't sound waves a continuous spectrum? And if they are, is recognizing the note the same as mapping it to the closest note of the 8 we have defined? What happens to people with perfect pitch hearing if you generate a sound wave exactly halfway between two notes? Can they tell or are they wrong 50% of the time?
Ahhhh my brain hurts!!
Fiyaaah a note has a specific fundamental frequency. A note is one octive higher if it has double the frequency so there is frequency involved, but you could choose to divide it up in another way. The eight notes aren't evenly spaced as some are different by a tone and some a semi tone as you have 12 semi tones. You could have other arrangements but this one's gives you lots of combinations of notes whose harmonics are pleasing to humans.
Sound waves a basically a continuous spectrum (unless you want to go down to the quantum level) so yes people placing sounds in-between are going to be mapping them a bit.
A note is a combination of pitch, duration, volume, and timbre.
If we focus directly on pitch, we can look at the western 12-tone system. In this system, we use only a subset of twelve notes in one octave. Those notes are b#/c, c#/d♭, d, d#/e♭, e/f♭, e#/f, f#/g♭, g, g#/a♭, a, a#/b♭, b/c♭, and then we return to b#/c. There are twelve frequencies, although there are multiple names for each frequency (there are also double sharps and double flats, but for the sake of simplicity, they are omitted). Standard music uses a key, which is a further subset of those 12 pitches to create a more specific, desirable sound. The two most common keys are major (also known as Ionian) and minor (also know as Aeolian). A C major key (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) generally has a happy sound, whereas a C minor key (C, D, E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭) will generally have a non-happy sound. Recognize that this is a massive oversimplification. Each key, as you notice, has 7 notes in it. Notes that are not in these sets can still be used without changing the key. After we go past the last note in each of these, we return to C, but it is one octave higher.
The western 12-tone system uses equal temperament, which means that an interval (the distance between music) is defined by a specific ratio between the frequencies of the pitches. An interval of a perfect octave has the ratio 1:2. A ratio of a perfect fifth has a ratio of 3:2, etc. Looking at an octave, that 1:2 is super important. It means that if a pitch has a frequency, an octave above that is twice the frequency. So, if we go an octave above a note with a frequency of 100 Hz, then we will reach a note whose frequency is 200 Hz. This is significant from a physics perspective.
If you consider a standard, smooth, wave, then it has peaks, troughs, and nodes. The peaks are where the wave is the highest, the trough where the waves are the lowest, and the nodes where the wave is exactly in the middle (or, the amplitude is 0). The nodes are the important part- if we start two frequencies at a node, then the consonance (how pleasant the sound is) is determined by how often the nodes meet up. If the frequencies are exactly the same, they will meet at every node, and are thus perfectly consonant. If the are one octave apart, then the frequency of one pitch is twice that of the other. Thus, the higher frequency will meet every two nodes, and the lower frequency will meet every node. Link for graphical representation. ( tundra.cnx.rice.edu:8888/resources/6347bf784fdbeb47837008e0094e0f22a269aa69/octavewaves.png ) Other than a unison (two notes with the same frequency), the octave is the most consonant sound in music. Other sounds, like the perfect fifth (3:2), have simple ratios where the nodes also meet frequently, whereas the tritone (considered the most dissonant sound in the 12-tone system) has a ratio of 45:32 and nodes meet rarely.
The pitches chosen for the twelve tone system are based off those frequency ratios and allow for composers to have access to most forms of consonance, and a significant amount of dissonance. Of course, there are infinitely many frequencies between a note and the note one octave higher. The 12 tone system only uses a set of 12 of those tones. However, the western 12-tone system is not the only system in existence, and many systems are considered 'microtonal,' which means that they give intervals smaller than those given in the 12 tone system. Using those systems gives a much greater amount of diversity, but a much more difficult amount of practicality, as there are no common forms of notation for microtonal music yet.
If you were to give a perfect-pitch musician a pitch exactly halfway between two pitches, they would be able to tell. Standard tuning uses defines A at a pitch of 440 Hz. However, there is also 'baroque tuning' which sets the same A at 415 Hz. I've heard many perfect-pitch musicians say this drives them crazy. If you play a pitch which is theoretically exactly halfway between 440 A and A flat, then you would get a pitch of about 417 Hz- which is more than noticeable by a musician with perfect pitch.
I hope that answers all your questions!
Fiyaaah As previously stated in another reply, an octave occurs every time the frequency doubles. The pitch mathematically in the middle of this is what's known as a "perfect fifth", (A=440, E=660, A=880), that's why those notes blend together so well to the human ear. Also, the concept of the octave is based on the seven tone diatonic (11 chromatic) Western system of music - other cultures can use different subdivisions, 18 for example in some Eastern music. Hope that helped at least a little! 😊
Ironically the actual & mathematical middle/center of an octave is extremely dissonant sounding..... & known as a tri-tone. for example c-f#........the "pleasing" center is the ratio of 3:2 ...it was these "simple" ratios that defined the intervals/harmonies that we use...it goes at least all the way back to Pythagoras......When a musical instrument is tuned using a just intonation tuning system, the size of the main intervals can be expressed by small-integer ratios, such as 1:1 (unison), 2:1 (octave), 3:2 (perfect fifth), 4:3 (perfect fourth), 5:4 (major third), 6:5 (minor third).
Realcygnus brings up a good point- technically, the tritone is the center of an octave. If you were start at a pitch, and go up one tritone, and then go up one more tritone, you would have gone a total distance of one octave. The distance from c-f# and the distance from the same f# to c an octave higher is the same.
In that regard, there is something else to be mentioned- I stated that a tritone has the frequency ratio of 45:32, however this is a very rough approximation, and actually produces a frequency under what is desired. We can show this easily; Start with a pitch of 100 Hz, multiply it by 45, and divide it by 32. This will give you the frequency of a pitch one tritone above 100 Hz, 140.625 Hz. If we then multiply it by 45 and divide it by 32 again, thus going up another tritone, we should reach exactly 200 Hz, since two tritones makes one octave. However, our result is 197.753906 Hz.
What is the actual frequency ratio of a tritone, then? It's an easy problem:
Start with a frequency x. We want to find something that, when multiplied twice with x, it becomes 2 x. So, we have t^2*x=2x (where t is the frequency factor of a tritone). Of course, we can simplify this by dividing by x such that t^2=2 , and then, t is the square root of two. Therefore, the actual ratio of tritones is 1:sqrt(2).
However, the square root of 2 is irrational, which means, interestingly, that the nodes for the waves of two frequencies one tritone apart will never meet. This is why the tritone is so dissonant.
Thought this was about C sharp programming language from the thumbnail.
Same here! :D
Mikeyguy94 Because some of us are interested on both subjects. :)
Right? Me too? I've beel like „Wait…I'm not subscribing to any C# oriented channel. So…who did video on C#? It doesn't seems like any of my…OK, computerphile might, but…“ And then „Ohhhh, I see.“
But it was kinda dissapointement.
Mikeyguy94 And that doesn't change the fact that you asked why and I provided you a reason. Some of us are interested in both subjects enough to think it was somehow related to the programming language instead of the musical note.
When youtube provides your feed, the thumbnails are much larger than the channel names... so when I glanced at my list of new videos, C#?? stood out much more prominently than "Physics Girl", so my first thought was "Oh, cool... somebody has a video about C# (programming language)"
Your inability to comprehend "Why" would make sense when looking at Physics Girl's video list... but in my multi-topic home page, the channel name is lost in a glance.
The most interesting part of this whole video is that final clip. The fact that someone with perfect pitch is unable to recreate a song in their mind in a different key is the first time ive seen a draw back to it. This makes me feel empowered to have relative pitch. Give me a start note, ill sing or play it back to you in any key!
Srsly though, i feel that is a really interesting matter to have tested with the other perfect pitch friends you had in the video!!
It's a fairly common issue for people with perfect pitch from what I here. For example Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater expressed having issues playing songs from their album Images and Words on their most recent tour because the band decided to play everything a half-step flat in order to aid the vocals.
Yeah, it’s a common issue for people have perfect pitch. Luckily for me though, I am perfectly fine with key shifting and can switch to another key in a second and start playing. I really appreciate this ability over other perfect pitch people who can’t switch keys.
I was told I had perfect pitch from my guitar lessons instructor in college during the fall semester of 2017 when I couldn't tell him the name of a chord, but I could tell him all of the names of the notes in the chord he strummed. Then he tested it out by hitting random notes on a piano and I named them all. He then told another music teacher at the school who plays saxophone and when I walked into the band hall after another lesson he told me to name a note from his saxophone and I named it. Then other students got exited and asked me to name notes from their instruments, which I did. Then every so often they'd hit random piano keys and wait until I named them. Another music teacher at the school figured out I had perfect pitch when I was the only one naming keys. The way I did it was by being bored one day in the spring of 2016. Being in my school's Jazz Ensemble for the first time because the professor needed a guitarist and he recognized me from the school's music club. Sometime after the first day I was intimidated, so I went home and hit all notes on the keyboard at home and said the name of the note (sharps and flats also) then went upstairs and strummed all of the notes on my guitar and named them. Then I did it a second time on the guitar, except during the second time, with each note, I thought of the first word that came to mind with each note. So whenever I hear a note, I hear the word I associated it with and then I name the note. And that's how I learned perfect pitch.
One of the things I love about science is it ability to transcend different concepts. I work as an electrician and we have an issue in our career called Harmonics. It is a distortion of an electrical sin wave caused by higher frequency loads. This video just showed me a completely different way to explain it to my workers and I love that. Thank you for the awesome videos and I cant wait to see more.
How accurate are they? If the note is off by 1 Hz or less, can they hear it?
I wonder if that tolerance of notes is less than the tolerance of average human hearing
Gotbread no they won't be able to, their perfect pitch is based off of the standard tuning we have in the modern world
Depends how high/low the note is: the higher the note, the less 1 Hz actually matters. For instance, an A played at 879 Hz (instead of 880 Hz) probably won't bother most of them, but an A played at 109 Hz (instead of 110 Hz) might have them cringing in pain.
Two of my friends are able to differentiate the 440Hz A [electronique keyboard] of a 442Hz [violin], so I would say, it's totally possible.
That sounds more like timbre than pitch
Thank you so much . It cleared my age old doubt on what timbre is and what it depends on . Gave me an excellent insight into the physics behind music I always wanted to know
What a fantastic video Diana! Thank you for the links of the description, I've been searching for an app like phyphox for years. I would like tha yoy make more videos about the physics of the sounds and music. Thank you!!!
You are correct, absolute pitch really is fascinating. Thank you for making this video, so we could all have a better understanding of how this works.
Wishing you health and fast recovery.
Great video as always, but please clean your camera lens. I'm going mad with all the specs of dust I see....
Thank you!
lol, I was cleaning my screen thinking "Damn! I cleaned this yesterday!"
It's actually the camera sensor that's dirty. But I agree, the fact that the dust spec was right on Diana's face was distracting. Great video tough.
ikr... thought it was my screen
Yes! And focus! (Don't you get cameras that focus on faces automatically these days?)
Hey Dianna,
Keep doing what you are doing! Your videos are an excellent start to many of my International Baccalaureate physics classes. You are inspiring young ladies and gentlemen everywhere and showing through action that physics is beyond cool, exciting and the fabric of life!
I'm happy to see the TH-cam algorythm finds your old videos for my feed. I send my hopes toward your recovery. We miss you.
Just did this as a lesson for a job interview two days ago... I got the job.
You went to a job interview that required perfect pitch?!
haha, no. I taught a lesson on what pitch and timbre was.
Anyone noticed that dust in their camera
Any chance you're an astronomer?
I had a little bit of fun trying to figure out whether a vague blur was a digital effect or optical. I landed on optical, too.
You mean that spec that I thought was on my own screen and tried to brush off??
yeah, been trying to get rid of it for 4 minutes
She called them "programs" - I love her. Funnily enough I don't find the different timbres make the note any more difficult to recognise.
Yes perfect pitch can be learned. Had a class in college and acquiring perfect pitch was the whole point of that class. Could, at the end, hear a car horn and ID the notes.
I have perfect pitch and I would describe it a bit like a 'photographic memory for sound'. I also recognise individual complex sounds that I've heard before for example stock sound effects in films and tv. I've even noticed them using these same sound effects in news reports / documentaries for things like doors opening and closing or animal noises.
So... phonographic memory?
Can you do a video on what color a mirror is?
Fun fact about pitch... the dial tone of a land line telephone (in North America at least) is the A below middle C at concert pitch. That's right, you can tune your guitar to the A-440Hz that you hear when you pick up the phone. If you have a cell phone, you cannot do this, but you can download a guitar tuner app instead.
This is a great gem. She really woke me up on some stuff with this video which is a blessing
Trying to play with a transposed piano would be similar to trying to type with a different keyboard (e.g. Dvorak instead of Qwerty). I can touch-type so I know where all the Qwerty keys are without looking, and I can type very quickly. But if someone gave me a Dvorak keyboard I would need to go back to hunt and peck, because the keys wouldn't actually type the letters that I 'know' they should. Same with a piano that doesn't play the note you have learned it should.
I'm a perfect-pitched piano player, and this is definitely my experience. It's a nightmare! It feels like you're constantly making errors. The concentration needed is tremendous.
not really if you only rely on muscle memory. using muscle memory on qwerty to a dvorak make a no sequence on the computer but transposing a song still makes a lot of sense.
I type with a dvorak, and it's the same, except I can't use other people's computers.
I think this is a bad analogy, because if you type in a different keyboard without looking, the output is incomprehensible, as opposed to playing a transposed keyboard without hearing, which produces the desired result.
+Fabrício Lara you are right. A transposed piano (or any other instrument) is not the same thing as a different typing keyboard layout.
I have perfect pitch, although I'm out of practice now. I learned music on organ and piano. Both instruments are "tuned" in the key of C (meaning that A=440 Hz). Several years later, I took up the French horn in school. French horns are "transposing" insturments that are tuned either in E or B-flat. So when the musical score denotes a C for a french horn, the note that come out of the instrument is not the C that would come out of a piano. This was horribly confusing for me and as a result, I never got very proficient at the French horn! What about other musicians with perfect pitch? Do they also have trouble when playing a different instrument? I think it would be a severe drawback for a composer or conductor to have perfect pitch (which may - or may not - explain why I am neither a composer nor a conductor)!
Very Cool and Very Interesting. I'm also glad you gave us the bonus material because it was good to see your musician friends smile and laugh. Thank you and Stay Awesome : )
I have perfect pitch and this video is so relatable hahaha people ask me to identify random melodies and sounds ALL THE TIME too and they're always surprised I answer almost immediately. I also use the colors' example to try explaining a little what perfect pitch feels to me
I would find it more impressive if they could tell me the frequency in Hz. straight from a sine wave generator. (I'm just jealous) :)
They could, if they knew the math.
They very well can, its just giving another name to the note. If they were taught to identify the notes not by letters (A, A#, B...), but, for example, by names (George, George#, Austin...) then when they would hear what you would call an A, they would call it a George. Same thing with Hz. Instead of identifying the notes by letters, identifying the notes by numerical value
I'd call it George Jr. - and B flat would be Bizarro Austin.
Absolutely. And because making music is older than physics theory we use the historical names for the pitches. @@eitanweiss7026
i got here early on accident and i don't know what to say but physics girl is my life
Gah, that's two of us. Exhausting, right? All these TH-cam commenters.
omg savage
This is a really good video. I would love to see you do a segment on psychoacoustics about the affects of the brain's perception to hearing physical sounds
People tell me I have perfect pitch but I can't actually identify the letters of the note. I can however remember the absolute pitch of songs and fish around on a keyboard until i find the right note.
Is it also possible that it is harder on piano because a piano is never actually in perfect tune - it's various roots of 2 so not all perfect ratios just close enough to sound fine
A ratio only makes sense when comparing two numbers to each-other. The other term for 'perfect pitch' is 'absolute pitch'. So if they're going off of just the absolute value of the frequency of a single note, then the ratios don't matter.
I suppose, but notes on a piano would still be out of tune individually wouldn't they? I seem to remember one person saying a very high c however so I guess if anything they would just recognise it
All our instruments are like that these days not just a piano, you are talking about *equal temperament* . it doesn't make it harder, it's what people have learnt
If you haven't yet, read the book "This is your brain on music" by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. He writes about how most people, when replaying a favorite song in their head, 'hear' the song in the correct pitch and tempo in their mind. Fascinating book about humans, their brains, and music. Thanks for this video @Physics Girl !
that tone language paper was super cool, thanks for linking it!
also: interesting relevant story from my old piano teacher. she once told me that she had a student who had perfect pitch. except that he told her that he didn't recognize the black notes on the piano, just the white ones. she was like, well i'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. and she spent some time essentially playing random black keys and "training" him to recognize them. and it worked! he was actually able to pick it up pretty quickly. obvs this is just anecdotal evidence, but it does support that perfect pitch is learned to some degree.
The superposition of different waveforms on a dominant frequency (timbres) is so much clearer in Fourier space.
"It's a song from Xenogears" gave me goosebumps!
Pitch has only been standardised very recently so that A is 440hz etc. When I tried to work out how to play Rock this Town by The Stray Cats, using the original recording as a reference, I had to de-tune the guitar down a quarter step (between 2 notes) to make sense of it. The deviation in pitch of the original recording was probably due to the musicians tuning their instruments (guitar and double-bass) with each other rather than using a fixed pitch reference such as a piano or tuner. People with perfect pitch are able to distinguish such deviations in pitch quite naturally. Those with good relative pitch are only able to tune the instrument to itself using a particular string as a reference. Fascinating subject, thanks Diana!
I really liked the website. Thanks for listing it in the description.
You may have neglected to mention: those other tones that contribute to the timbre are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency.
But getting back to perfect pitch, I have an elusive version of it. I generally can’t identify a tone. But I find that when I go about humming a tune, without reference to a known pitch, I’m often doing it it’s proper/customary key.
If you want your minds blown, watch any June Lee interview with Jacob Collier.
But how much do notes...
...weigh?
I'm actually doing my undergrad independent capstone on this subject. I'm researching as to what factors in a material give it it's specific overtones, or timbre, it's a fascinating world because when you get down to it all things are waves, and it can explain alot of different phenomenon in life
Being a member of a music group, you learn to listen to different instruments around you like a cello (which is similar to a violin), piano keyboard, clarinet, flute, trumpet. A piece like Beethoven Romance Op.40 with a violin solo and the Trumpeter's Lullaby with a trumpet solo are in the same key F (with 1 flat). 2 different solo instruments, 2 different timbre effects. Suppose you play a violin and listened to a Mozart flute sonata on a recording or somebody playing it. You may try to reproduce what you hear on a violin and come up with the correct key of the piece by trying to match the notes you hear.
A lot of times the title of a piece would give away the key it is in: "Canon in D", "Minuet in G", "Bach Keyboard Concerto #1 in D minor", "Romance in F", etc.
6:43 - That is not a Banjo. That is a Ukulele.
And the keyboard isn't a pipe organ either. I assumed Dianna was being facetious ;) .
whooosh
Don't you just love when the reply to a comment has more likes than the comment in question? Haha... wooosh... indeed. Well said Ath and Iniobong!
Ahhhh that Xenogears song was nostalgic
I wondered if someone else recognized it :) But yeah the song at 7:50 is Ship of Regret and Sleep from Xenogears. Good taste.
When you talk about the confusion that comes from playing a transposed keyboard, it reminds me of when I tried playing the clarinet after I started playing keyboard. The clarinet refers to pitches a whole step higher than on keyboard, so when you play a G on a clarinet, it sounds like an F. That was reason that I gave up clarinet.
Teaching perfect pitch is usually pretty easy. The point about 'intensive' early musical training is overkill, and the vast majority of people got plenty. It just isn't connected to the rest of their musical skill set. Almost everybody learned to sing 'happy birthday' before then so almost everybody sings it in G. Most people already have near perfect pitch when it comes to the opening note of happy birthday. While it is slightly involved, you can get any note once you are able to relate notes to that one reference note, and over time with practice the process becomes unconscious.
The key to learning is 'fire together, wire together'. Naive learning of perfect pitch is impossible, because most of the time the neurons responsible for absolute pitch are not doing anything at all. The concept of "C" doesn't get associated with the neurons that are related to absolute pitch because they are not firing at all, so no firing together. You need some sort of opening to get that part of your brain to turn on, and thinking "I want that part of my brain to turn on" does not work. You need to find some neurological state where it is turned on, and induce this state as part of the training. The opening note of happy birthday uses it, so thinking about that works for the majority of people.
Diana, believe in power you had!🙏🌞👶
Wake up Diana ,,,it's time to manifest dreams.✨
Okay well I know some people do in fact have perfect pitch, but does this mean they also have perfect timing? For example, middle A is 440hz - they can recognize this. Do these people also have perfect timing?... or does anyone? Just curious :P
Training in pitch recognition is like training in timing accuracy in that they both require a ton of time & repetition (a structured setting is NOT, necessarily) to master, but they aren't the same skill. There are people who can tell you whether a particular tempo is happening at 60 beats per minute (bpm), or 90 bpm, or 132 bpm, &c., but they aren't necessarily the same ones who can tell you by ear alone whether you're playing/singing an E-flat or an F-sharp.
Okay good answer - thanks. So there are people who can tell you BPM. I guess it's kinda the same since they are both based on timing. Cheers :)
From a mathematical standpoint I suppose. From a practical standpoint, it seems very different to me to be able to tell that a group is playing the "National Emblem" march at 90 bpm vs. 108 bpm (speed/tempo), versus telling me they're playing it in the key of B-flat major vs. A major (frequency/pitch). ^_^
:O But timing is a frequency. 90 beats per minute = 1.5Hz. And 440Hz = 26400 reciprocal minutes. It's all connected! Illuminati!
+JNCressey LOL, you win. =D
I remember reading a study that some people, even non-musicians, can remember the key of their favorite songs, even if they don't have perfect pitch. I'm extremely confident that I have this.
I'd imagine it would be easy to fake perfect pitch by learning the name of the keys of the songs I can recall most easily and then use relative pitch from there.
Your relative pitch is really good! You nailed that tritone (B down to F).
Yes, timbre is a big part of it. I don't have perfect pitch (and my relative pitch isn't even as good as yours) but I can recognize an E, A and D (notes and chords) on guitar. They are open strings which ring out a little more than fretted notes. The open D chord is especially easy to identify because the F# is on top and the bottom note isn't very low because a guitar in standard tuning can't play a low D. But, then again, some guitar players tune their whole guitar down to Eb and that would probably trick me.
tbf the asian dude prolly learnt perfect pitch last night
Too bad that's not a banjo at the end 😄
Not a pipe organ either 😄
I knew it, you are a ROCKSTAR!!! Well done. I said a prayer asking for you to have a small victory today. 🙏🏻❤️
IT WAS SO FUN WATCHING THIS WHEN THEY WERE FIGURING OUT THE NOTES OF EVERY DAY OBJECTS!! I have perfect pitch too so ill just find myself randomly doing this a lot.
You're cool
I also have perfect pitch! I was born with it. I learned to play piano without knowing how to read notes
You weren't born with it.
5:57 I’m 16 and I developed perfect pitch in less than a month. I had no musical background at all and learned by associating every pitch with a note from a song or piece.
F to Bb is easy regardless of Perfect pitch since you can hear the interval.
I could only Identify VSauce's Music
Or could I?
Fine until they have to play a transposing instrument aha.
What?
what, like a guitar?
I have two further questions:
1) How do people with perfect pitch feel about temperaments? Does the difference between a solo singer, choir or violinist (just intonation) and a piano (equal temperament) sound really strange and jarring?
2) How do they feel about different tunings? It's not uncommon for different 440As to be used, and baroque ensembles often tune to a wildly different 415A, so a more regular 440 A sounds more like a Bb.
I can't believe the algorithm didn't suggest this to me until after I saw the short on it. It's been out for 5 years!
Are you sure it's a banjo ? It's a ukulele ;D
+James Targhet no it's a banjo. Sure as the other instrument is a pipe organ.
Physics Girl They see me trollin'. They hatin'. 😎
When I saw the thumbnail I said to myself, "oh cool, she plays a uke too" and then she called it....a banjo? Why Physics Girl, why?!?!
Hey Tim! Colour me surprised to see you comment on a physics video about perfect pitch… ;)
Google seems to be mistaken on what a banjo looks like then
Nonsense! "Perfect pitch" is what it's called when you toss a banjo in the trash and it hits an accordion.
I think I had Perfect Pitch all my life, but only at 17 years old (when I first heard about) I tried to learn notes (and I successfully got it ✅✨).
I grew up with a terrible ear, and had a friend who had perfect pitch since childhood. I ended up taking a CD course on perfect pitch, and have been able to develop absolute pitch at least on piano, and it's slowly growing. I just hope no one gives up thinking it's impossible!
absolute nonsense , you mean. Utter codswallop, total bollocks. It's genetic. if you haven't got it you never will have. You are either lying or deluded.
I've always been told I had perfect pitch, which evidently is correct as I can identify notes correctly. But it takes me a little longer than most of the people in the video (the 1st lady was really fast). I know C and I figure all other notes from their distance from C. So it usually takes me a few seconds. And, it's easier w 'pure tones' that you get from a tuned instrument or electronic device than from things like glasses or bells which may have "in between" pitches or overtones. I havent watched the entire video yet but I've read that it can be learned. But I'm not sure how important perfect pitch is for a musician; I tend to think it's not essential at all, altho of course it can help.
jazznik2 'I know C and I figure all the other notes from C' You have relative pitch. Not perfect pitch.
But perfect pitch is not important for a musician. Relative pitch is.
if you are using a reference note , like C, then you are using relative pitch not AP. However it's odd that you claim you know C without listening to it . people with relative pitch don't have a 'pure' memory for notes without a reference , it's an AP trait so it's also unlikely that you really _do_ know C as you would be mixing the two abilities AP and RP.
Some people without AP hard core memorise a certain note tune and guess other notes from there.
it's not called AP hard core...just AP will do. What you are talking about is called relative pitch.
You don't have to try and memorise anything, . You just have to put in practice listening to intervals so you can recognise them.
the more work you put in the better you become and a very common technique when you are starting out is to think of a song that has that interval . For example the first two notes of the Star Wars theme is a perfect fifth. Or Greensleeves, which is a minor third.
Here is an ear training site www.teoria.com/en/exercises/
and here is a list of interval songs www.earmaster.com/products/free-tools/interval-song-chart-generator.html
This "Perfect Pitch" can most likely be taught. Yes it might take a while [The longest I see is roughly 2-3 years?] and that will include going over every pitch until you get it right every single time. There is a way where you could do this at home [If you had a piano, keyboard, etc.] just by learning the different pitches by playing and identifying them. No there are no/will never be any schools for learning "Perfect Pitch" sadly, but I wish you the best of luck with learning it if you do.
Quatrefoil it's kinda like learning a language. Really hard as an adult, easy as a child.
I don't think it would be That easy for a child to learn all the pitches and get them correct every time with the attention span most children tend to have.
Children (generally) learn by doing, rather than by rote instruction, which is why immersing them in a language allows them to learn it over time even if they can't yet read a textbook. In the same way, play the same notes often enough & they will learn the sound of those notes; tell them in passing at some point "This particular note is middle C" & it's likely they'll remember that just as they do any other sound... like "Mom" or "pet" or "snack." =)
+Jaewon Shin I will agree wholeheartedly that the latent capability for language & music exists in most of us at birth, but unless it is specifically taught an individual will not possess it. For instance, I may have had the latent ability to _learn_ Korean at birth (or English, or Thai, &c.), but I did not have the ability to speak/understand it. Perfect pitch is similar: if it's not learned, it's something you don't acquire, not something you 'lose'.
That's what I did to achieve this: th-cam.com/video/UxA3OSrtZEw/w-d-xo.html Daily sessions for almost 2 years.
Perfect pitch is mostly a parlor trick. It has very few practical uses for a musician, and can even be detrimental in some cases (as violinist with perfect pitch might tell you when they have to play in Baroque tuning.)
And yes, it's actually difficult to recognize a song/piece when someone hums it in the wrong key. Sometimes it's fun to play with that, like how they transposed the keyboard at the end of the video. I've done that for fun just to hear a piece of music in a new key, which makes it feel like a completely different piece to me. It can make a song feel fresh, like you're hearing it for the first time all over again. I experienced this when I heard Michael MacDonald perform What A Fool Believes in recent years, and he had to sing it in a lower key; all the modulations became unpredictable to me, and it was so exciting!
4:41 - Indeed, however, the qualities of the “attack transient” are often even more distinctive to particular instruments than their harmonic structures.
So I could develop a perfect pitch If I'm 7
Cool I'm just 10 years late, I'll catch up on that ;P
Same!
Chaitanya Singh it's similar to language, you are more likely to develop it if you start early, but the brain is amazing, it's never too late!
only if you can Singh the note
Chaitanya Singh LOL same
only if you had the genes
1 St comment finally
ankit raj well done
nope
Great job!
For wind instruments, like voice, the timbre are defined by fives different wavelengths created by the vocal tracks. The higher, the brighter. Called the formants or the harmonic in opera music.
It's relative perfect pitch as A-440 become common music pitch used and now I tune my piano to A-432 and some tune up to C- 528~ which is A-444! I've tuned about 24,000 pianos and I have tuned an F to F temperament for all of them and I listen to only BEATS and NEVER PITCH!
for more on timber and how we hear sounds, Vihart has a few stellar videos.
Thanks, great video as always. But an extra big thanks for the Phyphox tip. How much fun to be had with this!!!
It's awesome.. And it's sometimes annoying. Imagine a song popping into your head, and not knowing if it's playing on a radio somewhere or not..
Almost all of us experienced the moment of realization that the noises grown ups make have meaning, but as far as I know, none of us remembers that realization. Kind of mind blowing to think about.
I have good relative pitch. I can guess notes with fair accuracy. What I do mentally is I imagine myself playing that note on my violin which helps me visuallize what finger I am using to depress which string which translates into a note name.
I always enjoy Physica Girl vids. Get well soon Dianna!
05:13 A piano is a stringed instrument.
Man I hope Diana gets better ASAP!!