If you're not a trained singer or musician, you can still probably sing a tune just fine whether it's A 440 or A 436 or A 423 tuning without knowing how you do it or even knowing you're doing it at all.
A singing coach could tell you you are a hair, a microtone, off the pitch of a note up or down and you could probably make the adjustment without consciously hearing any difference at all.
There are computer programs available for training singers so that that they can be right on pitch....feedback.
I'll give you an example of "blindsight." As background, I spent the past 12 years in the wine industry, and one of my continuing education deals was a three day session at a major winery's wine education program. One of the lectures was on Pinot Noir, perhapsf my second favorite kind of wine. The woman giving the seminar was a well-known writer and wine educator.
As part of the lecture, we were all given five glasses of Pinot Noir, a different one in each glass. Now, I should say that I have a very good analytical palate, i.e., I can give you a very good idea of the technical parameters of a wine (e.g., alcohol level, pH, presence of brett, cork taint...) but I am absolutely lousy at blind identification (i.e., being able to say "This is a 1989 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle").
Time to sniff the first glass. I did and immediately the thought crossed my mind that this was a Mercurey, a rather small and obscure region in Burgundy. The instructor asked the class, "Any comments on this wine?"
I responded, "It's a Mercurey."
She stared at me, stunned, and stammered, "B-b-but how did you know that?"
I answered with a shrug, and said, "I dunno, it just tastes like a Mercurey." I still can't tell you how I knew that or give you a guide as to how to spot a Mercurey, what sort of flavor or aromatic profile is peculiar to it.
By contrast, the next wine screamed Santa Barbara, and it was clearly one made with Assmanhausen yeast. And that's something I can tell you how to spot.
As part of the lecture, we were all given five glasses of Pinot Noir, a different one in each glass. Now, I should say that I have a very good analytical palate, i.e., I can give you a very good idea of the technical parameters of a wine (e.g., alcohol level, pH, presence of brett, cork taint...) but I am absolutely lousy at blind identification (i.e., being able to say "This is a 1989 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle").
Time to sniff the first glass. I did and immediately the thought crossed my mind that this was a Mercurey, a rather small and obscure region in Burgundy. The instructor asked the class, "Any comments on this wine?"
I responded, "It's a Mercurey."
She stared at me, stunned, and stammered, "B-b-but how did you know that?"
I answered with a shrug, and said, "I dunno, it just tastes like a Mercurey." I still can't tell you how I knew that or give you a guide as to how to spot a Mercurey, what sort of flavor or aromatic profile is peculiar to it.
By contrast, the next wine screamed Santa Barbara, and it was clearly one made with Assmanhausen yeast. And that's something I can tell you how to spot.
SY said:
If you had never tasted a Mercury before would that be double-blindsighted? 🙂 And you certainly know that one can be trained to do that almost every time (MW).
I had tasted Mercureys before, but I certainly don't know Burgundy like I do the Rhône. Yeah, training helps, but some people just seem to have a preternatural ability. My cooking partner, for example, can't do the sort of technical tasting that I can, but at a blind tasting hosted by The Emperor of Wine, he identified country of origin correctly for something like 24 out of 27 wines, and nailed the Jaboulet, a La Landonne, and a Clos de la Roche.
SY said:
A very basic simple example of how we can perform feats without knowing how is when you recognize a familiar face, from a family member, a friend, whatever. Even from a distance, only fleetingly, in half dusk, you KNOW it is such-and-such. Try to explain how you do that.
Jan Didden
SY:
As one who also places Pinot Noir as my second favorite (Cab is #1), I do not claim to be able to pinpoint anything above having a good idea if what I'm drinking is a Cab or Riesling (laughs).
At the same time, would it not be correct to assume that science (chemistry) would be able to emphatically determine the identity of wines, each and every time?
Once given the "database" of acidity, pH, color of each region and year, etc, I would think this would be the case?
As one who also places Pinot Noir as my second favorite (Cab is #1), I do not claim to be able to pinpoint anything above having a good idea if what I'm drinking is a Cab or Riesling (laughs).
At the same time, would it not be correct to assume that science (chemistry) would be able to emphatically determine the identity of wines, each and every time?
Once given the "database" of acidity, pH, color of each region and year, etc, I would think this would be the case?
I have a better example.
I recently borrowed my Pyramid amp I designed a while ago, so after the concert we put it for a cinema theater watching Beethoven-2 movie.
Our dog started barking on the screen when heard some dogs in the movie!
Well, I fixed Marantz 7200 and put it back. Daughter repeated the movie (she likes dogs), but our dog did not bark anymore.
Then Marantz died again, so I put back my old tube amp. The dog started barking!
Both amps sound nice if to compare consciously, but the tube one sounds kind of more real, it is hard to tell consciously what is the difference.
Do you think my dog knew which amp she was testing and what to expect from it?
I recently borrowed my Pyramid amp I designed a while ago, so after the concert we put it for a cinema theater watching Beethoven-2 movie.
Our dog started barking on the screen when heard some dogs in the movie!
Well, I fixed Marantz 7200 and put it back. Daughter repeated the movie (she likes dogs), but our dog did not bark anymore.
Then Marantz died again, so I put back my old tube amp. The dog started barking!
Both amps sound nice if to compare consciously, but the tube one sounds kind of more real, it is hard to tell consciously what is the difference.
Do you think my dog knew which amp she was testing and what to expect from it?
Ok, one more example.
I was tweaking a pure class A hybrid on a bench when put a CD then went to get some coffee. The waterfall sound scared me! I jumped turning around, then realized that it was the sound from the CD, but no water running in my house!
So, my point is: how well our subconscious mind react on sounds reflects how close to the real sound it is. When somebody says, "Your system sounds nice, like real", it does not mean it is really nice. But when my farther in law asked "Who played piano in your house last evening?", I realized that the system sounds really nice.
I was tweaking a pure class A hybrid on a bench when put a CD then went to get some coffee. The waterfall sound scared me! I jumped turning around, then realized that it was the sound from the CD, but no water running in my house!
So, my point is: how well our subconscious mind react on sounds reflects how close to the real sound it is. When somebody says, "Your system sounds nice, like real", it does not mean it is really nice. But when my farther in law asked "Who played piano in your house last evening?", I realized that the system sounds really nice.
Wavebourn said:
Errr.... Dogs are known to react to hf oscillations...😉 . Dogwhistle?
Jan Didden
Jakob2 said:
A good point. They did say that the loudest listener listened at a level of 100dBSPL and the room noise floor was 19dBSPL. Therefore the room had a best case dynamic range of 81dB so a well implemented CD would have pushed it's artifacts below the masking level of the room noise (assuming said artifacts were non-correlated and not narrowband.)
If you don't know what you're trying to detect, how do you know what the detection threshold is?
zzf, in principle yes, in reality, it's incredibly difficult. There are so many components and so many interacting thresholds that sorting it out is a very complex task. I'd analogize it to music- in principle, one could write a program that would distinguish Monk from Oscar Peterson (and of course their recordings are objectively, measurably different), but as a practical matter, this would be an edge-of-the-art AI programming task. Not because the differences are too subtle, but because they are too great and too complex.
janneman said:
Do you mean the amp oscillates exactly in moments when dogs in the movie were recorded? 😀
It's too smart for the amp, and it does not oscillate at all.
Iain McNeill said:
Detection threshold is much lower than can be understood with conscious attention paid.
To be honest, I am well trained to match waveforms to sounds since 25-30 years ago in Siberia I had a laboratory of electronics music where experimented a lot on synthesis. but sometimes can't say what is wrong when errors are very fine, but I detect them well.
Hmmmm... maybe you can tell me which of the following statements are untrue:
1. When I first moved to Northern California, like many others my wife and I started educating our pallet to discern red wines. Progress was fairly quick (ps. I learned quickly that just like audio, the better stuff came at a significantly higher price). Unfortunately both of us are allergic to tannins, nice wine is not worth a headache, taking pills just so you can drink seems quite silly, so we stopped. I think almost anyone can learn this, probably to somewhat different degree.
2. Dogs can hear up to about 40KHz, most humans roll off near 20KHz. Not all, when my wife was younger she could hear bats, both the navigational bursts and the autoranging when tracking an insect. Once when camping, she asked me what is that chirping noise, I heard nothing. She described a chirp sweep in enough detail that I immediately knew she could hear to 30Khz and probably well beyond, spotting the bats visually at dusk clinched it. She was never able to enter a store that used an ultrasonic motion detector burglar alarm.
3. I believe almost anyone can learn perfect pitch, it's easiest when you're young. Psychologists have long thought most people are born with a photographic memory and western culture destroys the ability through our teaching methods. In the same way most of us probably have perfect pitch as infants, it has little use so the ability is soon forgotten.
All of the above seems to find no need to include blindsight as the answer. (ps. The courts ruled very recently that Wikipedia could not be used as legal source)
I'm not trying to say I'm right and you're wrong, Its simply that I was taught that much simpler answers than another sense can explain these things.
1. When I first moved to Northern California, like many others my wife and I started educating our pallet to discern red wines. Progress was fairly quick (ps. I learned quickly that just like audio, the better stuff came at a significantly higher price). Unfortunately both of us are allergic to tannins, nice wine is not worth a headache, taking pills just so you can drink seems quite silly, so we stopped. I think almost anyone can learn this, probably to somewhat different degree.
2. Dogs can hear up to about 40KHz, most humans roll off near 20KHz. Not all, when my wife was younger she could hear bats, both the navigational bursts and the autoranging when tracking an insect. Once when camping, she asked me what is that chirping noise, I heard nothing. She described a chirp sweep in enough detail that I immediately knew she could hear to 30Khz and probably well beyond, spotting the bats visually at dusk clinched it. She was never able to enter a store that used an ultrasonic motion detector burglar alarm.
3. I believe almost anyone can learn perfect pitch, it's easiest when you're young. Psychologists have long thought most people are born with a photographic memory and western culture destroys the ability through our teaching methods. In the same way most of us probably have perfect pitch as infants, it has little use so the ability is soon forgotten.
All of the above seems to find no need to include blindsight as the answer. (ps. The courts ruled very recently that Wikipedia could not be used as legal source)
I'm not trying to say I'm right and you're wrong, Its simply that I was taught that much simpler answers than another sense can explain these things.
Whoever said otherwise?
Magic is a huge PIA.
Some folk do things and they don't know how they do it, that's all.
Eventually, they, or somebody else, figures out how it's done.
hermanv said:
Herman,
If you delve into the scientific side of this, most scientists believe that those capabilities (and a bunch of others) are indeed present at a very yound age, but are lost later, not because of 'western culture' but simply because they serve no usefull purpose. In neurology, you lose it if you don't use it.
I agree to your other points as well.
Jan Didden
Jan;
if scientists believe that abilities to hear are lost forever they can't explain why people tell the difference between real and recorded sounds. But when scientists believe that what lost is possibility to pay attention on details we hear subconsciously that explains everything.
There is a tribe in Russia, living close to North Pole, they have 40 names for a snow! They can tell the difference. They can tell the difference consciously! But that does not mean that somebody from African tribe can't understand that kinds of a snow are different...
In 2004 I attended DHE (Design Human Engineering) seminar with Dr. Richard Bandler and John La Valle. Among other things we were trained to calibrate our sensory perception. For example, to see in darkness. The trick was simple: stop expecting to see colors and you will see in darkness!
Stop expecting to see what's written on the money and you will know it's value by touch! And so on.
Funny case happened after one German guy calibrated his ability to tell the distance, an American ultrasound device was used to measure the distance. Smocking outside during the break he laughed: "Now, what I will do with your foots and inches?!"
So, what spoils result, is expectation
We "don't see" and "don't hear" what we don't expect to see or hear. But actually we see and hear, but ignore.
There are 3 major things our conscious mind does in order to be able to navigate in ever changing environment: Distortion, Deletion, Generalization. Thanks to this 3 things we can tell the difference between say apples and tennis balls, and we can tell that all apples we see are apples, regardless of shapes, colors, sizes.
if scientists believe that abilities to hear are lost forever they can't explain why people tell the difference between real and recorded sounds. But when scientists believe that what lost is possibility to pay attention on details we hear subconsciously that explains everything.
There is a tribe in Russia, living close to North Pole, they have 40 names for a snow! They can tell the difference. They can tell the difference consciously! But that does not mean that somebody from African tribe can't understand that kinds of a snow are different...
In 2004 I attended DHE (Design Human Engineering) seminar with Dr. Richard Bandler and John La Valle. Among other things we were trained to calibrate our sensory perception. For example, to see in darkness. The trick was simple: stop expecting to see colors and you will see in darkness!
Stop expecting to see what's written on the money and you will know it's value by touch! And so on.
Funny case happened after one German guy calibrated his ability to tell the distance, an American ultrasound device was used to measure the distance. Smocking outside during the break he laughed: "Now, what I will do with your foots and inches?!"
So, what spoils result, is expectation
We "don't see" and "don't hear" what we don't expect to see or hear. But actually we see and hear, but ignore.
There are 3 major things our conscious mind does in order to be able to navigate in ever changing environment: Distortion, Deletion, Generalization. Thanks to this 3 things we can tell the difference between say apples and tennis balls, and we can tell that all apples we see are apples, regardless of shapes, colors, sizes.
its the front fusiform area (FFA) of the brain - prewired for face recognition. interestingly, it doesn't work if the face is upside down. we should never have come down from the trees ...
DRC said:
So, you wouldn't recognize a picture of your mother if I held the picture upside down?
I just tried it. I can. I can also read upside down (slower), and tell time from my watch when it is upside down.
Maybe you were raised in down under?😉
Jan Didden
Reading upside down is a very useful skill in sales situations. Not everyone can do it well, which is why sales guys used to love taking me on key-customer visits; I'd have read everything visible on their desks in the first two or three minutes.
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