Re: Perception as memory ...

[Diana Deutsch <ddeutsch@xxxxxxxx>]

Dear Kevin,

You can't be serious in saying that people with absolute pitch don't  
'hear' chords.  It's true that we can pick out the names of notes  
within a chord in addition to hearing it, but of course we perceive  
pitch relationships at the same time.

I quote from Arthur Rubenstein's autobiography: 'My young years', in  
which he describes an interview  he had with the great Professor  
Joachim when he was about four years old:

'First he asked me to call out the notes of many tricky chords he  
struck on the piano, and then I had to prove my perfect ear in other  
ways. And finally, I remember, he made me play back the beautiful  
second theme of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony after he had hummed it.  
I had to find the right harmonies, and later transpose the tune into  
another tonality'.

Cheers,

Diana



Professor Diana Deutsch
Department of Psychology
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr. #0109
La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA

858-453-1558 (tel)
858-453-4763 (fax)

http://deutsch.ucsd.edu
http://www.philomel.com


On Aug 24, 2009, at 7:05 AM, Kevin Austin wrote:

> Thanks for the reply.
>
> My experience is that perception is unique and individual --  
> statistical in nature.
>
> The training example is interesting. What I didn't mention is that  
> in three cases I 'tested', synesthetes, all three with absolute  
> pitch and absolute color, they did not have the sensation of  
> integration of the 10-note chord. They simple named the 10 notes in  
> ascending order on hearing the sound for under a second. My  
> experience with some others with absolute pitch has been that they  
> don't "hear" chords. One person told me that she did tonal harmonic  
> analysis not by hearing the chord and its function, but by hearing  
> the notes and doing a rapid [reverse engineering] analysis. All  
> three chose to be in the visual arts and keep music as a hobby.
>
> One of the three prepared a 10 meter-long score of the first  
> movement of the Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, in  
> graph form, by ear. Each pitch class was represented by a different  
> color (her color <-> pitch-class mapping). She reported difficulty  
> in only one place, in the lead-up to the central (octave) unison,  
> where certain inner voices appeared in the wrong octave. I think  
> this had to do with the quality of the recording she was working  
> from, and the (low) quality headphones she used. She did this all  
> with relative ease and I realized (again) how dwarfish my own  
> hearing is in such an environment.
>
> At some point in this on-going discussion, there may be a topic on  
> continuous and quantized time. Another time maybe.
>
>
> Best
>
> Kevin