Perfect pitch & memory

[monkeyyy]

Hey! I'm curious: I'm wondering how someone without perfect pitch "hears" his pieces in his mind (pieces he/she already knows). do you hear every time, every song with a different 'random' tonica or do all pieces have the same tonica in your mind, or.. something else?

[ted]

That's actually a pretty interesting question. I suppose that the position with respect to hearing is analogous to "visualising" and actually "seeing". Most of us develop, more or less, the ability to visualise a familiar scene, say the interior of a room known to us, or to construct an imaginary scene. However, this is not the same as "actually" seeing things, as we do in reality or in dreams.

Just as some people are able to generate the actual visual qualia in their minds, photographic memory for example, I assume some people generate actual aural sensations at will, as opposed to merely "auralising". Obviously I don't know this is the case, and neither do I see that such an ability would imply perfect pitch anyway. Presumably the possibility exists that someone without perfect pitch could "actually" hear a piece of music playing in his mind but, as in his reality, would not know the key. 

As observers, we can only assess external results of specific tests. Person A can do such and such and person B cannot.  It gives us no clue about the internal qualia of A and B.

I think this is a much more complicated question than it seems. 

[nightingale11]

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[da jake]

It's great to have perfect pitch, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee a better memory.

I have high relative pitch, and a strong memory. This girl I know (who happens to have perfect pitch), always complains to me how difficult it is for her to play from memory. (Small pieces like Chopin Mazurkas!)

Meh. I think perfect pitch is a bit overrated.

[ted]

I assumed that the questioner did not ask about perfect pitch as such in terms of verifiably possessing it, but rather asked about how it related to the internal qualia of aurally perceiving music. There is no reason to suppose that any relation exists between these properties. In fact the more I think about it the more involved it gets.
Or have I missed something obvious ?

[da jake]

I have no clue what you said. But I used an empirical example from my day to day interactions to prove that perfect pitch and a good memory do not NECESSARILY go hand in hand.

[sjskb]

to me, there are two different types of perfect pitch....

1. the ability to recognise when u hear the note...basically i play any note on the piano, you could tell me the pitch (and hopefully the correct octave) in a split second.

2. the ability to sing out (produce) whatever note that is asked for, again in a split second without any pitch adjustment....basically you are a walking tuning fork!!

i do possess perfect pitch, but only the first type and not the second. of course if i sing out a note to myself, i could immediately know if it's right or wrong and do the necessary adjusting. (but that's again using the first skill)

to answer monkeyyy's question, i 'hear' the same tonica everytime a tune pops up in my head. I believe that having perfect pitch DEFINTELY helps a lot in memorising pieces...at least it works for me.... i memorise by remembering the sound, not the notes on the score. that's the biggest advantage of having perfect pitch...

[nightingale11]

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[martha argerrrrrich]

Hey! I'm curious: I'm wondering how someone without perfect pitch "hears" his pieces in his mind (pieces he/she already knows). do you hear every time, every song with a different 'random' tonica or do all pieces have the same tonica in your mind, or.. something else?

Very interesting question indeed....and let me answer the question/questioner!
Yes, People without perfect pitch do hear every song, every time in a random pitch, some times it does happen that particular pitch happens to be the right pitch of the original piece, but thats just a coincidence. Also by random I dont mean there is no explanation behind why we chose to hear these pieces in our head every time in a different key its just that its too complicated as Ted pointed out to rationally put forth a theory that explains why we hear certain piece when we go thru in our head in a certain key at a certain time. There are many factors that might affect this. So its safe to say its random.

[bella musica]

I have perfect pitch and I always hear a piece in my head, in the key that it is written in.  Kind of like if I see a picture of a white house, I don't see it in my head later on as a blue house.

[monkeyyy]

Very interesting question indeed....and let me answer the question/questioner!
Yes, People without perfect pitch do hear every song, every time in a random pitch, some times it does happen that particular pitch happens to be the right pitch of the original piece, but thats just a coincidence. Also by random I dont mean there is no explanation behind why we chose to hear these pieces in our head every time in a different key its just that its too complicated as Ted pointed out to rationally put forth a theory that explains why we hear certain piece when we go thru in our head in a certain key at a certain time. There are many factors that might affect this. So its safe to say its random.

Thanks! Also to Ted & the rest of you How do you know? (interesting books? )

[arbisley]

I suppose that every time I think of a piece, it is in a different key, but sometimes when I think of one all day it is actually in the key of the original. As to what I actually remember, it is often in sequence so that I sometimes get it muddled up and stick on the same bits again and again!
learning a piece on the piano is a mixed thing: I do have very good aural memory, but until recently found it difficult to reproduce what I could "hear" by playing it. On the other hand, I also do it mostly by looking at the direction of my fingers, a habit I'm gradually getiing rid of I hope!
I think that it is very variable for each individual, and that unmusical people certainly must remember pieces extremely inacurrately and differently every time, well I wouldn't really know! Since you're asking this on a piano forum, you wouldn't get many of those....

[timothy42b]

Very interesting question indeed....and let me answer the question/questioner!
Yes, People without perfect pitch do hear every song, every time in a random pitch, some times it does happen that particular pitch happens to be the right pitch of the original piece, but thats just a coincidence. Also by random I dont mean there is no explanation behind why we chose to hear these pieces in our head every time in a different key its just that its too complicated as Ted pointed out to rationally put forth a theory that explains why we hear certain piece when we go thru in our head in a certain key at a certain time. There are many factors that might affect this. So its safe to say its random.

Let me disagree.

Neither my wife nor myself have perfect pitch.  Yet if we call to mind a piece, particularly a well known standard or popular song, we normally do so in the original key.  My wife especially is very good at this, but she certainly does not have perfect pitch and (though I wouldn't tell her) sometimes even makes mistakes on relative pitch.  I am not as good as her at singing a song in the original key, but I'm always close. 

I think there are so many memory associations that link to a well known song that the pitch comes along by accident.  I have also noticed my ability to do this has faded a bit over the years, along with my short term memory, and I suspect the aging process interferes.  But if I asked my wife to sing a Beatles song she hadn't heard in ten years, I'd be willing to bet she'd be right on pitch, and I'd be within a second, maybe a minor third on a bad day.  This is not coincidence or luck, it is the way memory works.  (See Harry Lorayne and The Memory Book) 

This of course suggests another method for acquiring some type of perfect pitch:  the link to well known  material. 

[bella musica]

Yeah, sometimes people can get pretty close to an A by imagining how an orchestra sounds as the musicians tune up.

[timothy42b]

Yeah, sometimes people can get pretty close to an A by imagining how an orchestra sounds as the musicians tune up.

I tried the experiment yesterday. 

I tried to recall in my head, as vividly as possible, the Mendelsohn E minor violin concerto.  Went to the piano, oops, D.  (of course, I'm remembering an old LP, so who knows?)

Repeated the experiment with the Rimsky-Korsakov Trombone Concerto.  Nailed it, dead on in Bb. 

[bella musica]

Speaking of perfect pitch, has anyone else noticed that Baroque orchestras often tune their instruments a half-step lower than standard concert pitch?  I guess because it's historically more accurate, but it's kind of weird to hear the dj announce 'So-and-so's concerto grosso in D major' and then hear the musicians start playing in C# major!

[brewtality]

Speaking of perfect pitch, has anyone else noticed that Baroque orchestras often tune their instruments a half-step lower than standard concert pitch?  I guess because it's historically more accurate, but it's kind of weird to hear the dj announce 'So-and-so's concerto grosso in D major' and then hear the musicians start playing in C# major!

It is all part of that HIP thing. Also in classical guitar it is not uncommon to hear things tuned up or down. Sometimes historicial transfers are pitched incorrectly, which is bloody annoying.

[arbisley]

From what I know, it is a general consensus that pitch has risen by about a semitone since the baroque.

I wonder wether perfect pitch nowadays is different from how people used to hear it? I think it's likely people used to "hear" differently from how they used to, and that maybe baroque musicians try to "tune in" to baroque pitching. It seems rather silly that musicians try to sink into an atmosphere and expression from the past, because how will people be able to understand the music in that way? Keeping up traditions I suppose, which only a select company has the pleasure of enjoying.

[nanabush]

Speaking of perfect pitch, has anyone else noticed that Baroque orchestras often tune their instruments a half-step lower than standard concert pitch?  I guess because it's historically more accurate, but it's kind of weird to hear the dj announce 'So-and-so's concerto grosso in D major' and then hear the musicians start playing in C# major!

YA! That p*sses me off so much!