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From: ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec)
Subject: PITCH and COLOUR
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.035714.10375@dgbt.doc.ca>
Sender: ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec)
Organization: The Communications Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 03:57:14 GMT

Dan Barrett <7952@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> writes:
>In article <1991Apr10.031342.27656@dgbt.doc.ca> ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec)
>writes:
>>I doubt if Monet, or anyone could do it.
>[That is, have "perfect color" the way some people have "perfect pitch".]
>
>	I know of one person who does indeed (it is claimed) have "perfect
>color".  But this is hearsay; I have not seen it demonstrated itself.  But
>I have no reason to disbelieve it exists.
>
>>If you present a given colour, rigidly specified by wavelength, in one
>>colour context (e.g. surrounded by a light shade of gray), and the identical
>>wavelength in a different colour context (e.g. surrounded by a dark shade of
>>gray), the two "identical" colours look quite different, even if the colours
>>surrounded by these contexts are presented for simultaneous viewing,
>>'side-by-side.
>
>	Similar tricks can be played with sound.  Read on.
>
>>By contrast, a person with perfect pitch will identify the pitch of
>>a given note no matter what very different chords that pitched note is
>>presented in.
>
>	No, the ear can EASILY be fooled.  When several pitches are played
>at exactly the same time, the ear perceives them as a single sound.  It
>might sound like a single pitch, or even be pitchless.  I refer you to the
>work of Stephen McAdams in this area.  Or just listen to a pipe organ.
>
>	BTW, I have perfect pitch.
>                                                        Dan


I don't have perfect pitch. But "several pitches played at exactly the same
time" is, of course, a chord.  I can analyze the constituent notes of a chord
quite easily and presume that most musically literate listeners can do this
without much trouble too. People with perfect pitch can, in addition, also
hang precise identifying names on these constituent notes. I presume you are
not talking about a fundamental and its overtones which is, of course, what
produces differential timbre or tone color and that is beyond what most
listeners can analytically decompose. I'm not denying that someone can be
fooled by playing around with, for example, relative intensities, and so on. 
I'm referring to the "normal" musical situation, not to the kind of
intensity manipulation that McAdams and Bregman played with.

"Perfect color" would mean that a person can hang an arbitrary label on a
precisely defined color, (say, 480 millimicrons) and tell you if another color,
seen later, is or is not the absolutely identical color as seen previously
(within, of course, his or her discrimination capacity). That would be
analogous to someone saying "A", or 440 herz. I doubt if anyone can do this
based on the psychophysiological evidence as I understand it.

Having perfect pitch, by the way, can be quite independent of discriminability,
so that a person can have perfect pitch yet not be able to make pitch
discriminations as finely as another person who may not have perfect pitch.
I know one person who has perfect pitch AND very fine pitch discrimination but
who is markedly unmusical. His sense of time and rhythm, and his musical
memory are all well below average. He can tell you what notes are in a melody
while listening to it, but he can't repeat the melody immediately after hearing
it without gross errors. And, not surprising, he's not much fond of music.
Not only is perfect pitch generally rare, it is rare too among musicians.

The best take on the "musical mind" seems to be that it's one where relatively
independent capacities (pitch, time, timbre, memory, duration, rhythm etc.)
happen to come together to a high degree within a single person. Since
"musicality" does not seem to be related to survival in any obvious way, nor
to normal social interactions, the "musical profiles" of individuals are not
usually apparent unless the person is explicitly tested. Quite unlike reading
deficiencies, or some visual ones, the world rarely finds out and it doesn't
disable a person to have music related deficiencies.

Ted
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