Absolute Pitch Education

The way I would test for AP is like this. I'd create a MIDI file of a reasonably long piece of music, say in A major. The music would be 2 minutes in length, and would stay in A major throughout. Then I'd modify the MIDI file to create two new MIDI files. 1. The original MIDI file altered so that th...

I think people without AP still hear pitches, still hear chroma. So, everything still has a pitch, from people laughing outside to the sound of a saucepan being put down on the oven top. I can hear the sound of the saucepan, and go to my piano, and play a few notes and find the one that matches. If ...

I tried the colour test, and scored a zero. I was surprised, because the difference between the colours is so subtle. When I was doing the test, I didn't worry about it so much, but kind of tried to relax my eyes and scan across the bars of colour for a square that looked out of place. If I found an...

I listened to wav file 4, and it sounds to me like the same note except that the third note is an octave lower. The seventh note does not sound an octave higher to me; it sounds like a brass player playing the other notes with a mute closed, then opening the mute for the 7th note.

The language Python is a good computer language to start learning how to program. There are lots of books and guides, and the language itself is available as a free download. If you have an Apple computer, it is on that computer already. There's a tutorial here. http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ If y...

Sam, the thing is, writing even a simple computer game is a very complicated thing that builds on a lot of different basic skills. It's a bit like someone saying "I have no musical training, and I can't play any instruments or sing, but I want to write a piano concerto. Just a simple one will d...

There are lots of ways of describing a particular chord. All the chords that share the same notes have the same colour tiles in Chordhopper. One way to name the first nine chords is like this: C major root position F major second inversion G major first inversion F major first inversion G major seco...

I just completed the superfly level on Chordhopper so that now I get a lipstick chord (g c e) at the end of the level. I'm finding it easier to hear the individual tones of the chord ringing out when I listen with headphones just with my left ear. How apparent the tones are depends how alert I'm fee...

I saw this news report about a British man, who is himself dyslexic, who has a novel theory about how dyslexia works. http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/stoke/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8411000/8411493.stm http://dyslexiavisualldeafauditoryblind.com He was inspired to think about this noticing that his wi...

I'm playing piano in an impro theatre show later tonight. Most of the music is improvised, inspired by what the actors are doing and the mood of the scene. There will be some improvised songs with unplanned words and music. There is also one set piece that I haven't played before, so I've just been ...

This is from Chris' phase 17. In short, I find it unlikely that color or pitch categories are formed by perceptual discrimination and differentiation alone. The general effects of language labels on categorical perception make me suspect that this is an issue of concept formation. What's traditional...

I found this short paper from Harvard Medical School an interesting read. http://www.musicianbrain.com/papers/Hamilton_APinBlinds.pdf They found many blind people who have absolute pitch, who became blind after being born sighted, and who started their musical training when older than five years, so...

Thinking more about timbre and chroma and height... it ought to be possible to program a musical keyboard so that an octave is stretched to two octaves while each note is its usual chroma. So, comparing this keyboard to a piano, say, C3 would sound as C3 on the piano, and C4 on the keyboard would so...

I was just reading Chris' phase 13, about ways to think about sound in terms of having independent height and chroma. The sound of keeping the chroma the same but altering the height gradually makes me think of the sounds you can get out of an electric guitar by using a wah-wah pedal, an e-bow, a ta...

Something weird, and rather wonderful just happened while I was playing Chordhopper. I'm on the "ticket" level, so I get seven different chords by the end of a session. I've been able to progress this far easily because I clearly hear the inversion and type of chord within the key signatur...