94. Absolute pitch

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Van Ness

I'm at yet another Peet's, sitting at a very nice granite window counter looking out over Van Ness where I just avoided the first fake Buddhist monk I've seen here in months -- I guess they're back for the holiday season. 

I'm doing my Christmas shopping for presents that have to be mailed. A tin of baked goodies from Tartine -- so a delightful lunch there, of course. And then I had a very hard time working a list of five kid's picture books down to just two. I passed on the book I really liked the best because another was just too beautiful to not buy. 

There's actually a Peet's adjacent to that bookstore, but it was too crowded, so I walked about seven blocks toward home until I noticed this cafe, which while smaller, wasn't as crowded. 

In between, I passed the new Tesla store and I don't think it's my imagination that there are now more Teslas cruising Van Ness. I saw two right in front of the store, but I just noticed another while sitting here. For a long time, Van Ness was lined with car dealerships and a number of them remain, though there are now more ex-dealerships that are vacant or converted to another use. Tesla is the only American made automobile represented on the street now.  

Musicophilia - Absolute Pitch

This is so interesting to me that I'm going to have to quote a bit: 

People with absolute pitch can immediately, unthinkingly tell the pitch of any note, without either reflection or comparison with an external standard...

The precision of absolute pitch varies, but it is estimated that most people with it can identify upwards of seventy tones in the middle region of the auditory range, and each of these seventy tones has, for them, a unique and characteristic quality that distinguishes it absolutely from any other note.

..."At five [Sir Frederick Ouseley -- that doesn't sound right does it?] was able to remark, 'Only think, Papa blows his nose in G.' He would say that it thundered in G or that the wind was whistling in D, or that the clock (with a two-note chime) struck in B minor..." For most of us, such an ability... seems uncanny, almost like another sense... such as infrared or X-ray vision; but for those who are born with absolute pitch, it seems perfectly normal.
...

...to those with absolute pitch, every tone, every key seems qualitatively different, each possessing its own "flavor" or "feel," its own character. Those who have absolute pitch often compare it to color -- they "hear" G-sharpness as instantly and automatically as we "see" blue. (Indeed the word "chroma" is sometimes used in musical theory.)

Well that complicates my desire to replace the "chroma" in QCD with music.

...
When people with absolute pitch "hear a familiar piece of music played in the wrong key... they often become agitated and disturbed. . . . To get a sense of what it is like, imagine going to the produce market and finding that... the bananas all appear orange, the lettuce yellow and the apples purple."

Transposing music from one key to another is something which any competent musician can do easily and almost automatically. But for someone with absolute pitch, every key has its own unique character, and the key in which one has always heard a piece is likely to be felt as the only right one. Transposing a piece of music... can be analogous to painting a picture with all the wrong colors.

I skipped the following passage, but want to include it now,

The Finnish entomologist Olavi Sotavalta, an expert on the sounds of insects in flight, was greatly assisted in his studies by having absolute pitch -- for the sound pitch of an insect in flight is produced by the frequency of its wingbeats. Not content with musical notation, Sotavalta was able to estimate very exact frequencies by ear. The pitch made by the moth Plusia gamma approximates a low F-sharp, but Sotavalta could estimate it more precisely as having a frequency of 46 cycles per second. Such an ability... requires not only a remarkable ear, but a knowledge of the scales and frequencies with which pitch can be correlated. 

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