After years of participating in audio and musicians’ forums, I (along with many) suspect there’s something in the genes that causes some to hear relatively small fluctuations in pitch while others don’t. I think it’s probably similar, though not concurrent with, “perfect pitch” in which someone can produce a specified note on demand without a prior reference point. As with that phenomenon, the susceptibility to pitch fluctuation appears to be:
A) Unlearned and (fundamentally, at least) unlearnable
B) Present in a small minority of people
C) Unrelated to musical skill or experience
D) Unrelated to one’s subjective enjoyment of music
A recent example in the audio world is the Blue Note 80/Tone Poet vinyl release series in which there appears to have been a problem in the mastering process that introduced pitch variations into those pressings. Given the same pressing, some hear wild “wow” effects that are instantly identifiable and practically unlistenable, while the majority hear nothing unusual at all.
In the musicians’ world, there’s the typical case of the highly skilled guitarist who’s often slightly out of tune but doesn’t hear it, or the virtuoso classical pianist who has to be told by his lowly record producer that his instrument needs a tuneup. It’s primarily an issue with fixed-pitch instruments like piano and guitar, likely because vocalists and wind instrumentalists who don’t hear these small fluctuations probably don’t stick with music very long.
Technology has mooted a lot of this, as digital audio doesn’t fluctuate and the cheap availability of electronic tuning keeps most guitarists and keyboardists in fine tune whether they know it or not (whether that’s always a good thing is a subject for another discussion).
Is there any hard data on this subject, say an old AES paper from the analog days?
A) Unlearned and (fundamentally, at least) unlearnable
B) Present in a small minority of people
C) Unrelated to musical skill or experience
D) Unrelated to one’s subjective enjoyment of music
A recent example in the audio world is the Blue Note 80/Tone Poet vinyl release series in which there appears to have been a problem in the mastering process that introduced pitch variations into those pressings. Given the same pressing, some hear wild “wow” effects that are instantly identifiable and practically unlistenable, while the majority hear nothing unusual at all.
In the musicians’ world, there’s the typical case of the highly skilled guitarist who’s often slightly out of tune but doesn’t hear it, or the virtuoso classical pianist who has to be told by his lowly record producer that his instrument needs a tuneup. It’s primarily an issue with fixed-pitch instruments like piano and guitar, likely because vocalists and wind instrumentalists who don’t hear these small fluctuations probably don’t stick with music very long.
Technology has mooted a lot of this, as digital audio doesn’t fluctuate and the cheap availability of electronic tuning keeps most guitarists and keyboardists in fine tune whether they know it or not (whether that’s always a good thing is a subject for another discussion).
Is there any hard data on this subject, say an old AES paper from the analog days?
