The Absolute Pitch Simulator

Experience Hearing in Perfect Pitch Today

What is the Absolute Pitch Simulator?

The Absolute Pitch Simulator is an exciting, unique system for learning perfect pitch. The software processes the input from an instrument in real time so that anyone can hear what it is like to have perfect pitch. You may have read that each note possesses a unique quality, or “pitch color”. These allow musicians with perfect pitch to identify the notes being played and add an extra dimension to the experience of listening to music. The Perfect Pitch Simulator exaggerates these qualities so that they can be heard by anyone. Over time, your ear will learn to tune in to the quality of each note. You can reduce the settings at your own pace until you are hearing the normal sound of your instrument in perfect pitch.

The price of the application is only $22.50 and is available HERE. 

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Absolute Pitch Simulator Screen Shot

The Absolute Pitch Simulator is easy to use. The complexity of the system is behind the surface where the actual processing occurs. For the user, simply plug your instrument in to the microphone input of your PC, load the program, get some headphones or speakers plugged in then set your volume levels and start playing. There is also the option to play .wav files through the system. A special folder is set up to store .wav sound files to be played. If multiple files are saved in this folder, the simulator will play them at random, this means you can save sound files of various notes and test your perfect pitch recognition skills.

The product is available as a .zip download and the application format is .exe. This can be downloaded immediately for only £22.50.

Technical requirements: 

• A PC with Windows XP,Vista, or Windows 7
• Available hardware for recording your instrument or voice. You can check if you are able to do this on your PC by opening Windows Sound Recorder and recording a sample. The microphone input of your sound card or motherboard is usually a pink socket. 
• If you plan to use an acoustic instrument, please ensure you have a suitable microphone. For example, you will find that a microphone suited to human voice does not pick up a violin very effectively. 
• Your computer needs to be able to accept a signal from the microphone input and output the signal with minimum delay. A normal computer, even a few years old, with only on-board sound can do this (NVIDIA nForce with Realtek is the most common). There is an ASIO version of the application included for use with the ASIO4All driver, which bypasses the latencies caused by Windows. 

Range

The Simulator will exaggerate the “pitch colors” of notes from E2 to F#5 (the range of a guitar).

So What do You Get?

When you purchase the Simulator, you become part of our community of musicians. You will have access to all kinds of forthcoming materials:

• Free updates and ugrades to the Simulator from now on
• The mini-course introduction to learning perfect pitch (if you do not already have the course)
• Further lessons continuing from the mini-course about covering all note characteristics from E2 to F#5
• Tutorials on advancing your skills, such as learning how to recall pitches
• News and advice coming from the Bryce Alexander community
• Special perfect-pitch recordings where entire musical pieces are given the harmonic boost treatment
• Discounts on future Bryce Alexander products

The Bryce Alexander Theory of Perfect Pitch

The important question is not so much that of “what?” but the question of “how?”. We all know what perfect pitch is, but how do this minority of people recognize these supposed elusive “qualities” of the notes? How does perfect pitch actually work and what are these qualities? Some of the world's most accomplished musicians do not have perfect pitch, however, most of us exhibit amazing skills of aural recognition every day. For example, we can easily recognize our mother's voice amongst hundreds of other voices and sounds, so why can't we hear the tone qualities between different notes?

To answer these questions, we need to understand a few basic acoustic principles. Firstly, every tonal sound from an instrument, voice, or any other source contains a fundamental frequency and several harmonics. Harmonics are sometimes referred to as overtones and are always present. Even if a single sine wave tone is generated and output to a speaker, there will be harmonics in the sound. This is because of the physical nature of waves to create other waves. The harmonics of a tone are multiples of the fundamental frequency. When you play an A440 on your instrument, the sound you hear is made up from 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz, 2200 Hz, and so on. Usually the fundamental (440 Hz) has the most energy, the second harmonic (880 Hz) has less, and the general trend is a decrease in volume as you count up the harmonics, although some instruments do take exception to this. Incidentally, the second harmonic is the same as the “first overtone”. This can get confusing so I am keeping with the terminology of harmonics.

Different instruments have different harmonic spectra. The following diagram shows the spectrum for a clarinet.

The general trend is a decrease in loudness from increasing harmonics but, also, the odd harmonics are louder than the even ones. Below, is the spectrum for a guitar.

As you can see, it is different to that of the clarinet.

Obviously, the harmonic spectra are different. The instruments do not sound alike at all. It is the levels of the harmonics of tonal sound, which (along with components of noise) give the particular timbre to the sound. We can easily tell the difference between a flute and a saxophone because they have very different harmonic spectra.

In summary, the unique “quality” or timbre of a tonal sound is always determined by its harmonic levels.

Getting back to the subject of perfect pitch, we know that musicians who have perfect pitch hear differences in “quality”, we might even say timbre, between the notes. We know a composer might choose the key of E flat for a sorrowful piece and F sharp for something more jubilant. So how does this fit in with the harmonic spectra of the notes when we know this to be determined by the instrument?

Well, the shocking, but obvious truth is that there is no physical difference in “quality” between the different notes. In fact, if there were, we would have measured it decades ago and there would be no mystery surrounding perfect pitch. The perceived difference between the notes is due to the frequency response and resonant frequencies of the human ear.

Like a microphone, the human ear can hear some frequencies better than others and contains certain parts, which are able to resonate strongly at particular frequencies. Any tonal sound entering the ear involves a wide range of harmonic frequencies, which set the whole machine in motion. The result is that we perceive some frequencies as much louder than others when, in fact, they have the same physical loudness.

The above graph (source:Wikipedia) shows the equal loudness response for the human ear, which is much the same for all people. Look at the bottom red line, it shows how loud the sound needed to be so that it could be heard by the test subjects. The sound at 20 Hz had to be played at over 70 dB SPL to be heard, while a sound of 1000 Hz could be heard at around 3 dB. The ear is most sensitive at 4000 Hz and a sound at 30 Hz has to be almost one million times as powerful as one at 4 kHz to be perceived the same.

The dips in the graph show the resonances of the ear, which are a result of the combination of resonating parts. For example, the auditory canal has a resonance at about 3 kHz. Other considerations are the vibration of the eardrum, the bones in the middle ear, and the complex behavior of the cochlea.

Of course, the equal loudness response of the ear is only part of the story of human hearing. There are many other phenomena going on when the ear is subjected to multiple frequencies, which is just about all the time. For example, the extent to which one frequency is masked by another depends greatly on the pitch of these frequencies.

You may have heard that F# possesses a bright and twangy quality. In the case of F#3, this is because there is a strong perception of the 5th harmonic (925 Hz) in the sound of that note. Here is a normal recording of a guitar:

When you play the guitar through the Absolute Pitch Simulator, set on quite a high setting, it sounds like the following sample. Press play to hear it.

Now listen to the first recording. Can you hear the 925 Hz harmonic within the sound? I hope so! If not, listen to the Simulator again to remind yourself what you are listening for. When you find your mind tuning into the 5th harmonic as you listen to the normal recording, you've got it! That's what the Bryce Alexander method is all about, listening to the full width of the sound, not just the fundamental tone.

In conclusion, perfect pitch is about the perceived spectra of the harmonics of the notes. On the one hand, there is the physical harmonic spectrum of a tonal sound. On the other, there is an internal spectrum from the response of the ear. The complexity of the human brain is second to none and those who have perfect pitch are simply able to tune in to the spectrum of the sound resulting from the resonances of the ear and can distinguish this from the physical spectrum created by the instrument. The main reason that perfect pitch is so rare is that we tend to fixate on the fundamental pitch of the notes and, as musicians, the harmonics are not regarded with as much importance. To hear with perfect pitch, you need to be able to listen to the harmonics, which is a skill like any other and can be learned. Learn it until it is second nature and you will have the ear of a master. The Absolute Pitch Simulator is the only tool of its kind in the world and can help you on the way to hearing those harmonics and achieving the musical ear you have always wanted.