"I would assume even a non-western scale has to be made up of a note vibrating at a constant freq. That would be the pitch right?"
Yup, but I've never met anybody from another culture with pitch. The point really was that p.p. is not present from birth, but learned. It's just that some people _are_ born with some faculties that make memorizing pitches essentially automatic.
The concept of a 'scale' is very different in some cultures - but that vague statement is about the limit of my ethnomusicology understanding. In middle eastern music, what you might call scales are really more like culturally-standardized jazz riffs. They also use quarter tones - half sharp, half flat, that kind of thing.
Oh yeah, one more question - do all people with pitch use A = 440hz as their standard? Can they calibrate their sense to 442, 438, etc?
Perfect example; the Blues pentatonic scale. The old guys flatted the third and seventh to get an approximation of African scales. But I am not sure perfect pitch is dependant on a particular ethnic musical scale. I think it is something different. If you decide to make all your music in the mixolidean mode that shouldn't mean someone with perfect pitch no longer could distinquish notes. Then again I don't have perfect pitch so I really can't say. Ask a good piano tuner.
Yeah, with perfect pitch, a person associates a certain frequency with a certain note name. Most used example: A above middle C is 440 cycles per second.
Modes, scales with intervals larger than a second, etc. don't matter - but quarter tones would.
colinhester Messages: 1349 Registered: May 2009 Location: NE Arkansas
Illuminati (3rd Degree)
I think the Maggies I owned may be an exception. Out of the box they sounded like crap. They were as bad as I've ever heard. It was a week or two of constant playing before I could even sit down and listen for more than a few minutes. When they finally settled down, they were very nice.
I really wanted to send them back after the initial listen (and well before the free trial period expired) but I'm glad I kept them. I really don't believe there was any psychoacoustics involved.....C
Posting Rules
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Get a T-Shirt!
In middle eastern music, what you might call scales are really more like culturally-standardized jazz riffs. They also use quarter tones - half sharp, half flat, that kind of thing.
