the queen of prog?

benbell wrote: Sadly, there's not much competition I can think of (in my undoubted ignorance). But I pretty much rule out anyone who's just a piece in the band jigsaw puzzle, no matter how good at their role. For me, regal stature comes with an expectation that they mastermind at least some productions, not just deliver their parts well.

Edited by rogerthat - December 19 2014 at 21:55

I just found my old results from the pitch discrimination test in my email: 

"Thank you for taking our Pitch Discrimination Test at http://musicianbrain.com/pitchtest.
At 500 Hz you can reliably hear pitch differences of 2.25 Hz, which means you did better than approximately 79.3% of people who took our test!"

The email was sent at 12:55 pm on a Friday.

So just to clarify about Annie Haslam - I definitely can hear inconsistencies in her pitch, but it's not way off.  I don't mind if every single pitch isn't perfectly on the ideal frequency for the note it's supposed to be, I'm more interested in expression than perfection.  Here's a weird one - I don't know if any of you have kids, but I do and I've noticed that the singing on a lot of kids' programming appears to be purposefully off.  Random, I know... I find myself wondering if a generation of kids growing up now are going to love off-key singing.

I'm going to post about the pitch test in the "Just for Fun" section of the forum so interested people (including me) don't crowd out this thread with that stuff... so if any of you want to continue that vein of the conversation, may I cordially invite you to that thread instead? It will be "Test Your Pitch Discrimination." The conversation evolved.  I intend not to post on this thread again unless there's something very queen-of-prog-y to talk about.

Trying the pitch test thing now. I got 1.234375 Hz @ 500Hz, on decent headphones but after a couple of glasses of wine. I know even small amounts of wine affect your ability to mix accurately, so it would be interested to see if it affects pitch perception or just frequency response. Particularly if it meant I had to drink another couple of glasses tomorrow for confirmation reasons.

Edit: Definitely something you can practice. Second, third and fourth attempts were 0.75 0.5625, and 0.578125 Hz at 500 Hz; so the results vary a bit even within one sitting. Still interesting.


Edited by benbell - December 19 2014 at 01:51

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: While we are on this topic, though, this is kind of interesting and fun in a weird way:  http://www.musicianbrain.com/pitchtest/ If you go to the link above, wear headphones.  My pitch discrimination compared to their base frequency was 1.1%-ish, if I remember right.  Took it a long time ago.

Thank you for taking our Pitch Discrimination Test at http://musicianbrain.com/pitchtest. At 500 Hz you can reliably hear pitch differences of 3.375 Hz, which means you did better than approximately 66.5% of people who took our test!

Being in the top 33.5% of those who took the test suggest that I am much better than average... 

...and that surprised me a little. I am a non-musician musician (I play and compose music badly and can just about manage to play a scale on a violin). Then we don't know the musical ability of those who took the test, the variance or the total population size. There could be a wide margin of error in these results, and I suspect that there is.

However, 3.375Hz on 500Hz equates to 0.675% accuracy or 11-cents on the semitone and this suggests that the 50% average is probably a lot better than 10% accuracy you cited for non-musicians. It would be cool to see other peoples' results.

I took the test at 9:27 am, it would be interesting to see how different the results are at various times of the day.

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: Dean wrote: Hmm. I'm not sure that I agree with your figures here but don't want to get involved in a public discussion on the subject. I think that 10% is correct at B0 (30.87Hz) but the variation with pitch you speak of puts this at better than 1% at D4 (293.66Hz). If you are willing to share your research PM me. I have a "thing" about Autotune. I think it is blamed for all the ills of the current music "scene" and is often criticised on this board, yet I do not believe it is as widely used as people make out, and probably hardly ever used in Prog Rock. Dean - I will happily try to re-trace my steps.  I can tell you that the book I used this year for my class is Measured Tones: The Interplay Between Physics and Music, 3rd Edition by Ian Johnston.  This is a good one for anyone interested in the physics behind music but not in reading pages and pages of mathematics.  I've read and taken notes on many online sources too, mostly on neuroscience and music and a bunch of articles in scientific journals.  I read, then synthesize into something presentable.  The 10% rule of thumb refers to cents rather than Hz, cents being the weird formal musical thing of dividing every half step into 100 small steps. The value of cents in Hz changes depending on the starting note because the frequency difference between half-steps changes with each note. I know this is one of the many articles I read: http://www.stefan-koelsch.de/papers/Tervaniemi_2005_pitch_discrimination.pdf

Edited by Dean - December 16 2014 at 04:06

Argonaught wrote: Star_Song_Age_Less wrote:  As to autotune, I won't claim to know when a singer is using it vs. when a singer really is truly pitch-perfect dead on.  Maybe singers have just gotten better.  Annie Haslam is not pitch-perfect.  I would say that almost every pop star uses it, along with other "adjustments" and "effects"; I imagine that's why they all sound the same, with perfectly accurate time, pitch and tone.

I strongly, strongly suspect that what you say is true.

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote:  As to autotune, I won't claim to know when a singer is using it vs. when a singer really is truly pitch-perfect dead on.  Maybe singers have just gotten better.  Annie Haslam is not pitch-perfect.

Dean wrote: Hmm. I'm not sure that I agree with your figures here but don't want to get involved in a public discussion on the subject. I think that 10% is correct at B0 (30.87Hz) but the variation with pitch you speak of puts this at better than 1% at D4 (293.66Hz). If you are willing to share your research PM me. I have a "thing" about Autotune. I think it is blamed for all the ills of the current music "scene" and is often criticised on this board, yet I do not believe it is as widely used as people make out, and probably hardly ever used in Prog Rock.

Dean - I will happily try to re-trace my steps.  I can tell you that the book I used this year for my class is Measured Tones: The Interplay Between Physics and Music, 3rd Edition by Ian Johnston.  This is a good one for anyone interested in the physics behind music but not in reading pages and pages of mathematics.  I've read and taken notes on many online sources too, mostly on neuroscience and music and a bunch of articles in scientific journals.  I read, then synthesize into something presentable.  The 10% rule of thumb refers to cents rather than Hz, cents being the weird formal musical thing of dividing every half step into 100 small steps. The value of cents in Hz changes depending on the starting note because the frequency difference between half-steps changes with each note.

I know this is one of the many articles I read: http://www.stefan-koelsch.de/papers/Tervaniemi_2005_pitch_discrimination.pdf

While we are on this topic, though, this is kind of interesting and fun in a weird way:  http://www.musicianbrain.com/pitchtest/

If you go to the link above, wear headphones.  My pitch discrimination compared to their base frequency was 1.1%-ish, if I remember right.  Took it a long time ago.

I do tend to go on and on.... basically the point of all this blather is that 1% does not mean 1 Hz.  It means 1% of the difference between one note and the next.

As to autotune, I won't claim to know when a singer is using it vs. when a singer really is truly pitch-perfect dead on.  Maybe singers have just gotten better.  Annie Haslam is not pitch-perfect.  But she also isn't "out of tune."  I'd rather hear her sing than hear a computer correct her voice.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.  I guess we hear computers correct guitars, keys, drums, bass, and room sounds all the time and we don't complain about that.

Getting back to the "queen of prog" idea though, I think it takes more than vocal talent to put someone in the running for that lofty title.  As a counter-point, if you were to recommend a "king of prog," who would that be?  So many choices...




Edited by Star_Song_Age_Less - December 15 2014 at 21:46

Dean wrote: I have a "thing" about Autotune. I think it is blamed for all the ills of the current music "scene" and is often criticised on this board, yet I do not believe it is as widely used as people make out, and probably hardly ever used in Prog Rock.

Have you heard King Crimson's The Power to Believe?

Auto tune was used a lot in 2000s rap and r&b but not so much anymore. It has sort of become one of those really dated gimmicks kind of like 80s synth pop.

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: Didn't see this before - but my blood is boiling again!  Yes, it's true that Annie Haslam doesn't have perfect pitch, but she isn't out of tune, either.  I can hear it just like I hear it on many, many releases before the existence of autotune - most singers are off just a wee tiny bit sometimes.  But we're talking way less than the 10% that the average person hears as "off."  A little explanation here - I teach a class in the physics of music, so I actually have to research and learn about some of this stuff - a practiced musician generally can only discern 1% or more difference in the frequency of a tone.  An average person tends to notice something is wrong when it's about 10% off.  This does vary with pitch, but it's a good rule of thumb.  Annie Haslam is not outside that 10%.  And most of the time, she's right around that 1%.