KimoOta, Idol Yarutteyo - Vol. 2 Ch. 21 - Disgusting Otaku Has A Sleepover Party

[MangaDex]

 

[BlackwingYu]

Oh, Manaka has perfect pitch?

 

[dokidoki]

FINALLLLLLYYYY ITS BACKKKKKKK, I've been waiting for this to come back for a while, such a good series

 

[Kazekid]

Yay, a new chapter! Thanks TL

 

[Walter_vi_Britannia]

Ahh, I wish I had perfect pitch. I only have relative pitch, but I trained it to such a degree that most people can't tell apart.
And yea, remembering the lyrics are harder than remembering the notes. right?

 

[marcopolonian]

>so that's what they call absolute pitch...
That's relative pitch, isn't it? (Unless her Eb to D example was literal and not just an example.)

@Walter_vi_Britannia
Perfect pitch is very nice to have, don't get me wrong, but it has downsides on non-keyboard instruments. Imagine that, instead of having to make sure the next note you play, G, is a perfect fifth up from the previous note, C, you could just play pitch C followed by pitch G. The C might be a little sharp, the G might be a little flat, but they sound like C and G to you. Musicians with perfect pitch can have surprisingly bad intonation as a result.

 

[Walter_vi_Britannia]

@marcopolonian What? I don't get your logic. If the C is a little sharp or the G is a little flat, they'll notice. Even I notice if a piano is a microtone off tune so why wouldn't they? I have a few violinist friends who have perfect pitch and they don't have bad intonation compared to me at all, it is in fact me who sometimes can't play on the higher positions well because I don't have any markers for which pitch I'm playing.

The thing is that, I don't even understand what you are talking about. Why would they sound like C and G to me if they were slightly sharp or slightly flat? Perfect pitch is a lot more powerful than that. If A is 440 hertz, they could even tell apart if it was 5 hertz off.

 

[cezyou]

I like this chapter for showing that even though Yoko is useless for singing and dancing and talking and being a normal human being, she's not completely musically hopeless and does have her own special talents.

 

[ajddavid452]

IT HAS BEEN REVIIIIIIVED!!!!

 

[marcopolonian]

@Walter_vi_Britannia
The thing about intonation is that it is highly flexible. String players especially should know that, in for instance D Major, the F# and C# can change intonation depending on context. In general, in a melody, wide whole steps and narrow half steps sound good. If you play D E F#, you can make the F# slightly higher (8+ cents higher than a piano). However, in harmony, the opposite needs to happen. If you play a D Major chord, the F# needs to be slightly lower (14 cents lower than a piano) or it'll sound out of tune. The same note can vary by 22 cents (or 1/5 of a semitone) within the same piece, and neither of these F#s are out of tune. That's how there could possibly be a range of acceptable pitches within the range of C.

Perfect pitch just means that someone has the ability to identify pitches without a reference tone. Another way to think about it is that they have a far better memory for pitch than average. In any case it's not superhuman hearing. I'll tell you how it works for me: I have a kind of perfect pitch where I can easily remember what A sounds like, and I can use that to figure out where the other notes are. Sometimes, if I'm not careful, I can discover that my mind's A has slowly detuned, as I've gotten used to my cello's A string (which has slowly detuned).

So imagine perfect pitch as someone with a general map of town. Relative pitch is someone with a list of directions. Someone with perfect pitch will walk to the general spot, thinking "I know G is around this point somewhere". Someone with directions is making sure they follow those direction, because if they don, t they could get very lost.

 

[Walter_vi_Britannia]

@marcopolonian Then that's not perfect pitch. If what you know to be A can change when you've heard a warped enough times...that's not it.
There is a reason why people can't acquire perfect pitch if they didn't start learning before the age of 5. It doesn't get ingrained into your brain if you don't.

I can easily tell G D A E apart. If they're a little bit off I can tell. So far it has not gone awry. It's still as perfect as a tuner. If the string suddenly goes a little flat, I realize that. But you're saying that if your string goes a little flat, you don't? You start thinking that's the correct pitch for that string? That's not perfect pitch chief. It's more like a problem people with relative pitch would have, and I have relative pitch and even I don't face that problem.
Relative pitch is using the knowledge of something else to determine a note's pitch. Like knowing how A sounds through a song that starts with A, or just having heard the A a lot of times, and using that A to find the pitch of other notes is relative pitch. This is what you've got and this one can get detuned. Perfect pitch can NEVER get detuned no matter how much off tune bullshit you hear....that's because those are not truly detuned. Those are still playing notes and still playing certain pitches, it's their ability to determine which pitch it is. Lettering them with A B C D comes after, this is not the big part. My sense for G D A E is much stronger than for other notes because those are the open strings on the violin, and I hear it a lot during tuning. I don't need to relate it to something to figure it out...but it's still not to the level of perfect pitch (you know people with perfect pitch can tell apart each note in a chord they hear).

You've got something very wrong. People with perfect pitch doesn't have their perfect pitch detuned, then it won't be so perfect anymore. Also, you don't need perfect pitch to understand that you're not harmonizing.

Hilary Hahn once said that to give a piece a more emotional or intense feeling she plays certain notes a bit flat, she has perfect pitch. Her perfect pitch is not telling her "it's wrong! play it right!!", it's allowing her to gauge which exact tone she's playing, how flat she is and how sharp she is. It makes her be able to fine tune her tone through hearing alone.
All the world class musicians out there have perfect pitch, all the world class violinists. The disadvantage you're talking about, it doesn't even exist. You've got the wrong notion that you have perfect pitch for one note, and that note can get warped in your head so you now believe everybody with perfect pitch has this problem. You don't have perfect pitch and you never will, so won't I. No matter how well you can tell apart the notes just by hearing it, you've already lost your chance to gain perfect pitch a long time ago.
You're going by the assumption that the big notes, ABCDEFG and their sharps and flats, those are the only things people with perfect pitch can determine. But no, they can even tell microtones apart. No pitch is a wrong pitch. Every pitch can create music. It's just that those microtones don't have any lettering to indicate them, but people with perfect pitch can tell them apart.

A child of less than 5 can't really name the notes, but they know those notes in their head. I've seen a child with perfect pitch say that "it's a block lower than what you're singing" because she doesn't know the name of the notes. She was trying to say that it's a full tone lower than what he was singing, but she didn't know what note it was. Well, she knew the sound in her head, but she didn't know what it was called. That tone will never get detuned, why? Because a detuned note is not really a detuned note, just a separate note.

Try to read up on perfect pitch a bit more. You're the only person in the world who called it a disadvantage. That should give you an idea that you might not completely know what it is. If you think you've got perfect pitch, you're VERY wrong. As I said, people can train their relative pitch to be indistinguishable from perfect pitch...but why is it still not considered perfect pitch? The answer to that question will tell you why a person with perfect pitch will never have the problem you're mentioning. Perfect pitch is perfect.

 

[marcopolonian]

@Walter_vi_Britannia
Dude, try looking it up yourself before you tell others to.

>If what you know to be A can change when you've heard a warped enough times...that's not it.

A has changed significantly throughout history. A440 is quite a recent phenomenon, and not global. In Germany I believe they use A445. Baroque period performers play at A415, which to me sounds transposed down a half step (perfect pitch makes dealing with that difference when reading sheet music quite difficult, by the way). Has no one ever had perfect pitch before the invention of A440?
Mozart is said to have had perfect pitch. But A440 was first used in 1834, over four decades after his death. The A he recognized would have been different from the A I recognize. In fact, since he toured at a time when A was less standardized, he would have encountered many different As. It might have been difficult to adjust, actually, speaking to his genius.
That reminds me of one anecdote from my childhood. One time I went to play for a competition (just a local Solo and Ensemble). I had practiced and practiced until it was great, but when I got there they told me their piano was tuned lower than normal, so I had to retune my cello to it. That made the pitches much more difficult to hear, and in the end I couldn't play the piece as well as I should have.

>If the string suddenly goes a little flat, I realize that. But you're saying that if your string goes a little flat, you don't?

I'm not talking about the peg slipping or anything dramatic, I mean at a rate of less than a cent per day. You don't notice the growth of your fingernails in a single day, do you?

>People with perfect pitch doesn't have their perfect pitch detuned, then it won't be so perfect anymore.

>Perfect pitch is perfect.

Scientists seem to prefer the term "absolute pitch", and I'm beginning to understand why.

>Also, you don't need perfect pitch to understand that you're not harmonizing.

That's exactly my point. That's called relative pitch, and it is an ability that people with and without perfect pitch both have to develop.

>(you know people with perfect pitch can tell apart each note in a chord they hear).

Well, thank goodness, because that's easy for me. I breezed through my ear training classes.

>But no, they can even tell microtones apart. No pitch is a wrong pitch. Every pitch can create music. It's just that those microtones don't have any lettering to indicate them, but people with perfect pitch can tell them apart.

I've worked with and experimented with alternate tuning systems myself quite a bit. It's not something you can just hear. No, try as I might, I hear a note halfway between B and Bb and I think "is that B? No, that sounds like Bb. No, it's..." In fact, I tuned an electronic piece of mine to that specific note because it had such a disorienting effect on me.
17EDO is my personal favorite because, unlike even 19EDO which keyboardists seem to favor, 17EDO is compatible with my string player ear, with its wide whole steps and narrow half steps. But when I'm fooling with it I have to be on my instrument, because if I'm trying to think in 17EDO my mind will be 'helpful' and convert an A# into a Bb for me (Bb is a semitone lower than A# in 17EDO). This is a big issue for me, but it's also something my ear couldn't do without perfect pitch.

>Try to read up on perfect pitch a bit more. You're the only person in the world who called it a disadvantage. That should give you an idea that you might not completely know what it is.

Levitin, D.J. (2008). "Absolute pitch: Both a curse and a blessing". In Clockars, M.; Peltomaa, M. (eds.). Music Meets Medicine, Proceedings of the Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation. Helsinki, Finland: Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation. pp. 124–132.
(I'm citing this one for the name.)

Miyazaki, Ken'ichi (June 2004). "How well do we understand absolute pitch?" (PDF). Acoustical Science and Technology. 25 (6): 270–282. doi:10.1250/ast.25.426. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-08-16.
(https://web.archive.org/web/20070816070421/http://psyche.ge.niigata-u.ac.jp/Psyche/Miyazaki/Papers/Miyazaki2004.pdf)
"Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability based on the fixed association between musical pitch and its verbal label. Experiments on AP identification demonstrated extreme accuracy of AP listeners in identifying pitch, influences of timbre and pitch range, and difference in accuracy between white-key notes and black-key notes. However, contrary to the common belief that AP is a component of musical ability, it was found that AP listeners have difficulty in perceiving pitch relations in different pitch contexts, and in recognizing transposed melodies, as compared to listeners having no AP."

 

[Walter_vi_Britannia]

@marcopolonian There is a youtube channel called The Crosbys and the little girl there has perfect pitch. They made two videos on her perfect pitch, in the first video she didn't know which one was A or which one was B, she just knew all the pitches by ear. In the next video her father taught her that, basically, he divided all the pitches to the tones and halftones and taught her the names for those. If he let her listen to 440hz and said that was A, she would learn that as A. If he showed her 445hz, that would be her A. If she was told 440hz is A and 445hz is B, that would've been the case for her too. She knows the tones by memory, but only particular tones are named to her. The rest that are inbetween are the microtones to the respective tone it is closest to.

So, doesn't matter if you change the hz. Tell someone with perfect pitch that 440hz is not A anymore, it's 442hz...their whole world won't be turned upside down by this. It'll take them longer to get used to it because they're already used to another thing, but this not because of their perfect pitch, but because of the names for the tones they were taught. Now, if every single hz had a letter or name assigned to it they won't have that problem anymore...unless you're still changing the names for it. I mean, the hz for A gets changed cause they want it to be 440hz instead of what it was originally...if there was a way to represent that tone originally, this change wouldn't have been required.

Their perfect pitch is not what's causing them a disadvantage. If they never assigned letters to them in the first place, they wouldn't have this problem, right? If like that girl in that youtube video someone had perfect pitch but didn't know what the notes were called, they wouldn't be having this problem, but they'd still have perfect pitch. Hence, the problem lies elsewhere.

Also, yea, I'm also talking about that gradual slipping of strings, I realize when I'm off-tune even when it's that gradual slipping. If you've played long enough you start being able to tell them apart. Though it does get harder to tell apart the more deeper the tone is.
You play cello? Maybe that's why you find it more difficult to tell apart when it's slipping.

"Also, you don't need perfect pitch to understand that you're not harmonizing."
That's exactly my point. That's called relative pitch, and it is an ability that people with and without perfect pitch both have to develop.

No, not talking about that. Well, I get your confusion. That was completely separate from the topic we were conversing about. I was talking about how you can tell when two notes are not harmonizing. It's like they clash, makes "wob wob wob wob" fluctuation. You don't need perfect pitch or even relative pitch for that matter to know when that happens. It'll sound like shit. When notes harmonize, you can literally feel it, their coexistance, like vibrations that match each other's pace. While the opposite of that sounds like one it trying to destroy the other. You know, like thirds...play thirds and they harmonize like angels singing. Then play two notes adjacent to each other, which would be like, seconds? lol. Play those and even non-musicians will be able to tell that that's not music. (Well, some composers like Debussy and Beethoven can make even those sound good in some fucking way. I don't know how, they probably sold their souls to the devil. If that is not witchcraft then I don't know what is.)


Anyway, you can tell apart chords? That's cool. I think I can too if I try, but my brain hurts from thinking too much so I don't bother. Since I only have relative pitch and I play violin, an instrument where you don't often play chords(if ever), I need to do a lot of calculations to figure out the chord. If I played the guitar or piano I think I'd be able to tell apart more chords through instinct alone. So far I think I can only instantly recognize a C chord. The rest I need to do a bit of a calculation. I need to hear the notes separately first, then determine which arpeggio are those notes a part of, then I'll figure out the chord...but this is a completely backwards method. lol
What you need to do is listen to the chord and understand which chord is that, then determine which notes are in that chord through that note's arpeggios. But I can't bother to learn either one of those cause I'm a violinist, and I'm lazy.

Anyway, I'll check out that article, but I'm still sticking to my words. I'm certain the disadvantage you're talking about doesn't stem from having perfect pitch, but it's something common in people with perfect pitch cause they are more proficient in remembering the pitch of certain things as an effect of them having the ability to judge which pitch that is.
If you don't know what pitch that is, you'll not remember its pitch in the first place. But if you do know what pitch that is, you are more likely to remember it. That's simple fact. And remembering something makes you more inflexible to changing what you know. So while you are GAINING new knowledge, they are ALTERING their's. And you should know which one is harder.
Now I remember the open strings GDAE because I have so much interaction with those. So even though I don't have perfect pitch, I WILL have the problem you're describing because those 4 notes are ingrained into me. But I'm more flexible with other notes apart from those, that's because those are not in my memory. I can change their determined hertz anytime and I won't even be able to tell the difference.

 

[marcopolonian]

@Walter_vi_Britannia
Haha, I got the Can You Feel The Love Tonight one right. (The other tunes I was unfamiliar with.) I wasn't sure since it goes up a whole step later in the song if I remember it right.
Got the one from Little Mermaid right too.

As long as we're recommending Youtube videos, look up the Violinmasterclass channel and their videos on intonation. Those videos are very good.

So, doesn't matter if you change the hz. Tell someone with perfect pitch that 440hz is not A anymore, it's 442hz...their whole world won't be turned upside down by this. It'll take them longer to get used to it because they're already used to another thing, but this not because of their perfect pitch, but because of the names for the tones they were taught.

Their perfect pitch is not what's causing them a disadvantage. If they never assigned letters to them in the first place, they wouldn't have this problem, right?

Without names for the frequencies, perfect pitch may as well not exist, though. Historically, like in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, one monastery's A (or actually, they used G as the base, and built the A minor scale above it) would differ from the next. They were a lot like solfege is today (in English-speaking countries). We only discovered the existence of perfect pitch when the frequencies of these pitches became standardized (that is, when the frequency 440hz became assigned the letter A). If the problem is the names for the tones they were taught, then that means the problem is their perfect pitch.

Anyways, this is exactly what I'm talking about with the gradual slippage of pitch. If I don't play with an ensemble in a while and am only playing solo (which has been happening for at least a month now, as you probably know), one day my cello (as you guessed) will be 220Hz, the next day 219.95Hz, the next day 219.9Hz, the next day... And in a few weeks time, I will have gotten used to playing at 218Hz until I finally use a tuner, or notice how Baroque I've been sounding lately. The reason I don't notice is that the G# below that A220 is 207.65Hz. 219.95Hz sounds exactly like 220Hz in a melody, and I can always retune the other strings if they don't sound perfect, so I just get used to A219.95 for that day, to A219.9 for the next, etc.

No, not talking about that. Well, I get your confusion. That was completely separate from the topic we were conversing about. I was talking about how you can tell when two notes are not harmonizing. It's like they clash, makes "wob wob wob wob" fluctuation. You don't need perfect pitch or even relative pitch for that matter to know when that happens. It'll sound like shit.

Your ears are much more developed than you realize. Try to teach kids or untrained adults music and you'll be shocked to find that they can't hear this sort of thing. (I mean, they can tell if you're playing an interval 30 or 50 cents narrower or wider than normal, but not 5 cents.) You can hear it, the harmony of the intervals, but they cannot. Or rather, they don't notice it until they are taught to.
People with relative pitch are trained to hear intervals at such fine level in a way that those with perfect pitch don't need to hear at (because they know where the pitches are, so they don't need to make sure the intervals are right). As a result, students with perfect pitch tend to have sloppier intervals than students without perfect pitch. Or to put it another way: perfect pitch is like a crutch, and people with it tend to let their sense of interval atrophy as a result.

I'm certain the disadvantage you're talking about doesn't stem from having perfect pitch, but it's something common in people with perfect pitch cause they are more proficient in remembering the pitch of certain things as an effect of them having the ability to judge which pitch that is.

I mean, I think here, you're arguing semantics. The disadvantage certainly correlates with one having perfect pitch, and you've just explained why having perfect pitch would cause one to have such a disadvantage. So I think it's reasonable to say that it stems from one having perfect pitch.

 

[Walter_vi_Britannia]

@marcopolonian Yes, but I still don't like how you're putting all the blame on that. It's an indirect cause to the problem. It's the inflexible nature of human beings. Changing your beliefs is harder than gaining new beliefs. That's basically like religion in a nutshell.
...ok, I'm getting off topic again. Sorry.

Like, imagine this. Read everything that I wrote, but pronounce every letter as if it's actually the letter that comes after that in the alphabet. So A turns into B, B turns into C...X turns into Y, Y turns into Z. It's quite hard and annoying. But imagine learning new symbols in place of the alphabet, symbols that aren't ingrained into your brain already.
After some practice you'll be able to read in the second method much easier than the first method where you'll find yourself making mistakes a lot. You'll accidentally start pronouncing those letters how you used to pronounce them.

So, that's what I meant. Exchanging what you know like this confuses your brain a bit. Learning new stuff is harder and takes more effort, but it'll be less confusing.

Without names for the frequencies, perfect pitch may as well not exist, though.

So do you mean that the girl in the first video DIDN'T have perfect pitch? Even though she knew all the tones by memory?
Is it like a Schrodinger's Pitch or something?
I think perfect pitch is just the ability to not mix up one sound for another. And without naming the pitches, the only way to prove your ability is through the reliance of your memory of some piece you've heard previously.

A kind of a far fetched comparison of this would be, imagine you've been shown 14 faces, all different. All of them are people you know. You won't be mixing up their faces. But if someone who doesn't know those people are shown those faces? I'm sure they'll mix some of them up. They'll mix up the first person they were shown for another person maybe. Are their faces the same? No, they're different. But you can tell them apart, even though you don't have a way to prove it. But the other person can't tell them apart.

If those people were given numbers instead of names for you to remember, you might mix up the numbers given to each person unless you take the effort to memorize it...but you won't mix up the faces. You know which face is which, in your head. But the other person will both mix up their faces and the numbers. It's hard to tell if you're mixing up the faces or the numbers, since both mistakes are observed in the same way. But you'll NEVER get the faces mixed up, you know those faces.

So perfect pitch without the names of the pitch is kinda like that. They can tell apart, but no way to show it.

 

[marcopolonian]

Man, imagine someone coming here, thinking "oh boy, what silly flame war is in the comments this time?" and finding all this music talk.

Like, imagine this. Read everything that I wrote, but pronounce every letter as if it's actually the letter that comes after that in the alphabet. So A turns into B, B turns into C...X turns into Y, Y turns into Z. It's quite hard and annoying. But imagine learning new symbols in place of the alphabet, symbols that aren't ingrained into your brain already.
After some practice you'll be able to read in the second method much easier than the first method where you'll find yourself making mistakes a lot. You'll accidentally start pronouncing those letters how you used to pronounce them.

So, that's what I meant. Exchanging what you know like this confuses your brain a bit. Learning new stuff is harder and takes more effort, but it'll be less confusing.

Yes, this is exactly the sorts of issues that perfect pitch comes with. Actually, this is exactly what I'm saying. I'll have to steal that comparison for future use - what you describe is essentially Caesar's cipher. The Roman emperor would use it to encrypt sensitive communication.

So do you mean that the girl in the first video DIDN'T have perfect pitch? Even though she knew all the tones by memory?

No, no. She clearly has perfect pitch, but it doesn't matter whether she has it or not. It doesn't matter until the pitches she recalls have names, so it's names (or standardization, rather) which give perfect pitch its significance.
If this were the middle ages, sure, she could say "this monastery's Agnus Dei is a block below the last monastery's Agnus Dei was" but that wouldn't hold much significance until standardization begins.

 

[FieryKathy]

And then there's me, the editor of this series who, just like Yoko, had to google it because I don't know anything about music.