# Dogs with Perfect Pitch



## CRaul87 (Mar 28, 2012)

Dogs With A Perfect Pitch Video


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## VBCheeseGrater (Mar 28, 2012)

Bah! their tone is rubbish! must be using one of those solid state amps or something! 

Curious if this is real, pretty impressive if so!


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## Overtone (Mar 28, 2012)

One way it would be easy to fake this is to dub the flute sounds. The dogs could be playing whatever and then you go in and overdub the sound of the flute so that it plays whatever notes the dogs will play next.


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## Grimbold (Mar 28, 2012)

thats just

not fair D:


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## Augminished (Mar 28, 2012)

That;s pretty cool. I have talked with people that have perfect pitch and they say they see and relate colors to the pitches. It would be very interesting if these dogs do the same thing even though they have a limited color spectrum.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 28, 2012)

Honestly? You redirected me to Ebaum's World? 

It looks like the dogs were pre-trained. They only play three notes, and they occasionally hit them before the ocarina player. I don't know how much pitch recognition was involved, although the ocarina would be an ideal instrument for doing such a thing with a dog due to its high register. That cadence at the end is badass. Most human musicians I know have more trouble ending together.


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## Faine (Mar 28, 2012)

Whattttt. Thats amazing! haha HOW. Thats some serious training.


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## JStraitiff (Mar 28, 2012)

Is perfect pitch defined as being able to identify the note by name/reproducing it on an instrument according to name? Or can it be reproduced by voice without identifying the note itself?


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## ArrowHead (Mar 28, 2012)

It's the counting horse gag, folks. Oldest trick in the book.

If you look, it has nothing to do with pitch, or pre-training. She STARES RIGHT AT the correct note and points her entire body at it before she even blows the pitch pipe. The dog doesn't care what the note is, it just knows "step where she points, get a reward".


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## Augminished (Mar 28, 2012)

JStraitiff said:


> Is perfect pitch defined as being able to identify the note by name/reproducing it on an instrument according to name? Or can it be reproduced by voice without identifying the note itself?


 
Perfect pitch is when someone can either identify the note (Example you play a note and they can instantly identify it without using another instrument) or they can re create that note on an instrument. It does not pertain to voice or an instrument. So, it is kind of both...

Edit: You can also train your ear to hear relative pitches (again in context to a song I can here the V chord and then from that find the I chord) but perfect pitch is just a much better version. Haha.


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## Alpenglow (Mar 28, 2012)

That is cool as hell. Still unsure whether it's fake or not though.


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## JStraitiff (Mar 29, 2012)

Augminished said:


> Perfect pitch is when someone can either identify the note (Example you play a note and they can instantly identify it without using another instrument) or they can re create that note on an instrument. It does not pertain to voice or an instrument. So, it is kind of both...
> 
> Edit: You can also train your ear to hear relative pitches (again in context to a song I can here the V chord and then from that find the I chord) but perfect pitch is just a much better version. Haha.



I was wondering because im certain i can recreate a note using my voice but i dont know the name of each note by hearing it lol. Curious if that still constitutes perfect pitch. Im also curious if they have to know if its a B1 or B3 or whatever.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 29, 2012)

JStraitiff said:


> I was wondering because im certain i can recreate a note using my voice but i dont know the name of each note by hearing it lol. Curious if that still constitutes perfect pitch. Im also curious if they have to know if its a B1 or B3 or whatever.


If I told you to sing a G, or blue, or triangle, or whatever, and you can consistently reproduce the same pitch without the need for a reference tone, then that is absolute pitch. If I play a note and you recognize its specific frequency without any external reference, that is also absolute pitch. There are varying degrees of absolute pitch. I occasionally develop pitch for very specific things that I am exposed to or working on: there was a time when you could play an A&#9837;7 to me, and I could say, "That's an A&#9837;7," or an E5, and I would say that it's the open top string of a violin. Some people recognize keys as having a certain color. Some people can hear the Apple startup sound when they hear an F major chord. All of those are different capacities of absolute pitch. I've never found a use for absolute pitch recognition, although I'm sure it's good to have when you're a brass player or a singer. Still, though, I've never had any problem without it. I'm in an ensemble at school in which I sing bass. It's the most disorganized class I've ever been in, and the conductors rarely give singers their pitches, so what I do is look at the hands of the guitarists, mandolinist, pianist, violinists, or cellist while they play the previous song to get a reference pitch, then figure out where my section needs to be in the next song based on whatever interval is between my reference pitch and the note where we're supposed to start. The result is that whenever I say, "Here, this is a G#," people ask if I have perfect pitch, and I have to decline, as I'm using a reference pitch. Neither system is better or worse (that's a lie; relative pitch is better), but you should find some pitch system that works for you as a musician.


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## troyguitar (Mar 29, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> Neither system is better or worse (that's a lie; relative pitch is better)


 
I still don't understand that sentiment. If you have perfect pitch, you have relative pitch. It's not an either/or type of thing.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 29, 2012)

troyguitar said:


> If you have perfect pitch, you have relative pitch.



Not really. Absolute pitch states that A is A and B is B and G# is not G. Of course that's true, but it's a rather vacuous concept that can exist entirely separate from musical relationships. Absolute pitch supposes that there is a fundamental difference between an E major triad and an F# major triad, because they contain different pitches. The thing is, music doesn't operate on absolutes in any part of the world. Analytically, those are both major triads. Relative pitch recognizes that similarity and assigns a common principal between them. If you were born with the gift of absolute pitch, you might hear a line that goes A D B E C# F# D G#, and you will know every single pitch there. With a small amount of acquired relative pitch, you will hear a bunch of ascending diatonic fourths. To me, the latter seems like a much more encompassing descriptor of the actual sequence. As you point out, though, the two aren't mutually exclusive: if you recognize both the ascending fourths sequence as well as an A major tonic, then you're done and not much more can be said about the music, barring any further context. If my pockets of perfect pitch would persist, I'd surely have an advantage. However, I see it more as a toy than a tool; if I need to know what note somebody's playing, all I have to do is grab an instrument.

Understand also that I tend to exaggerate when it comes to certain topics. There are people in the world that regard musicmaking as some magical craft that is bestowed upon the chosen ones by the gods. These people think that absolute pitch is a prerequisite for being a musician, as if we could all tell what notes we hear 100% of the time. Obviously, this is not the reality, so I make an effort to dispel such myths and extensions thereof. I badmouth perfect pitch because I want musicians to get beyond it. It's a useful tool for sure, and it deserves more credit than I give on this board, but investing your time in learning perfect pitch instead of relative pitch and theory is like working twenty hours for $20 instead of maybe one or two hours. The payoff is simply not commensurate with the effort, and I think that you pick up pitch recognition as you go when you learn theory, train your ear, and practice and perform.


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## Augminished (Mar 29, 2012)

^ Much better way of explaining it. I have taken classes in Ear Training and see what you are talking about. I would still love to be able to hear a pitch and instantly know that its a B. But as you said why train it when it is more of a toy than a tool. With my training I have learned how to find pitches which is just as useful if not more in the context.

Edit: so with perfect pitch will someone know the name of the note the and the quality? Or will they just know the note name? I can if some one plays a V7 chord and then goes to a Imaj7 determine what those notes are.


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## Trespass (Mar 29, 2012)

To elaborate on SchectorWhore's post:

People hear relationships. A melody is a melodic sentence created by the relationship from one pitch to the next. If I transpose Mozart melody into another key, it's not as if that piece is suddenly not Mozart because it's not the exact pitches he chose.

This is true of a language as well. Being able to pick out each word in a sentence doesn't have much meaning to it. It loses it's context; it's relationship to the other words.

It's the story/context the words create together that contains meaning.

In any given sentence, we might have action, the kind of action, then result, the reason or explanation behind the action - all communicated by relationships. Adverb to verb - describing action, "because" - a transitional device that allows one to convey reason/motivation/explanation.


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## troyguitar (Mar 29, 2012)

My thinking was more along the lines of: If you know A and you know B, then by definition you know the M2 interval. If you know every note, then you know every interval. Not that I have either, I'm practically tonedeaf


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## Augminished (Mar 29, 2012)

troyguitar said:


> My thinking was more along the lines of: If you know A and you know B, then by definition you know the M2 interval. If you know every note, then you know every interval. Not that I have either, I'm practically tonedeaf



See I am thinking it's based more on a single note or chord not so much a progression. Hmmm


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## steve1 (Mar 29, 2012)

Considering sometimes the dogs hit the notes before she plays them, I think bullshit is quite easily called. I would like to see them playing a duet though, preferably something in a boogie woogie style.


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## ArrowHead (Mar 29, 2012)

steve1 said:


> Considering sometimes the dogs hit the notes before she plays them, I think bullshit is quite easily called.



I explained - she points at the right note with her head before she even plays it while looking directly at the dog. It's an old old trick, same as the old "counting horse" bit. All visual cues, no memorizing, no perfect pitch, no magical training required. Just point, press, reward. Simple behavior training.

The whole "hit the notes before she plays them" - are people really believing a dog can memorize and play a melody? It's nothing that complex. They're just following the visual cues while you're all worrying about the pitch pipe.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 29, 2012)

Augminished said:


> Edit: so with perfect pitch will someone know the name of the note the and the quality? Or will they just know the note name? I can if some one plays a V7 chord and then goes to a Imaj7 determine what those notes are.





troyguitar said:


> My thinking was more along the lines of: If you know A and you know B, then by definition you know the M2 interval. If you know every note, then you know every interval. Not that I have either, I'm practically tonedeaf



Nuh-uh, perfect pitch has nothing to do with ear training or music theory. All it is, is your brain telling you, "this is F#, this is C#, this is D," in the same manner that you look at things and can tell what color they are. Relative pitch is training your ear to make a connection to things that your brain knows or is learning, in the same way that art students learn about color theory.







The perfect pitch equivalent of someone looking at this painting is "I see some red, some blue, and some purple". Relative pitch is "I see two primary colors on the left and on the right interacting to create a secondary color". That tells you that you could do very much the same thing with red and yellow, or blue and yellow, or even with secondary colors. There are implications beyond "this is red and blue".






For this one, again, you can tell what the individual colors are without any doubt and without any further thinking, but a color analysis tells us that there is a dissonance in the composition because the orange and the blue at the top of the painting are at opposite ends of the color wheel, just as we find two notes a tritone apart when we go from one location on the circle of fifths to its opposite. It supposes the same relationship between red and green as blue to orange. It's an intellectual process as opposed to a sensory experience. There was a thread on a perfect pitch course recently. With my art analogy, that program is basically you paying $200 for someone to tell you what red is. If I were an artist, I'd rather have some tools that would help me to analyze and formulate compositions.



Trespass said:


> To elaborate on SchectorWhore's post:
> 
> People hear relationships. A melody is a melodic sentence created by the relationship from one pitch to the next. If I transpose Mozart melody into another key, it's not as if that piece is suddenly not Mozart because it's not the exact pitches he chose.
> 
> ...



Thanks for bringing this up. I had these points (transposition, language and meaning) written up, but then I hit the back button and my browser wiped my beautiful explanation.


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## ArrowHead (Mar 29, 2012)

Perfect pitch is hearing your vacuum, and realizing it's the same note as your dial tone. Or that the school bell is the same pitch as your alarm clock. Doesn't mean you know what note it is, or any musical knowledge at all, you're just able to hear and identify different musical tones. In fact, many people with perfect pitch do NOT lead musical lives, as they find the tiny out of tune bits of music to be annoying and hard to ignore.

Relative pitch is hearing a tone, and being able to sing or identify another tone relative to it. So if I tell you that your school bell is an A, and ask you to sing me a C, you can hear the A and count a third to C in order to sing it. 

So yes, a person with perfect pitch can definitely not have relative pitch. And relative pitch is much more useful in a musical context.


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## makeitreign (Mar 29, 2012)

ArrowHead said:


> I explained - she points at the right note with her head before she even plays it while looking directly at the dog. It's an old old trick, same as the old "counting horse" bit. All visual cues, no memorizing, no perfect pitch, no magical training required. Just point, press, reward. Simple behavior training.
> 
> The whole "hit the notes before she plays them" - are people really believing a dog can memorize and play a melody? It's nothing that complex. They're just following the visual cues while you're all worrying about the pitch pipe.



What makes you think dogs can't memorize the order in which to press the keys?

When people train their dogs, they usually go through 3 or 4 tricks in the same order every time. (Ex: sit, shake, lay down, roll over) The dogs get so used to it, they think of it as a routine. When I ask the owner to tell the dog to just sit, it sits, then tries to shake. They didn't command it to shake, but it did because the routine was started with the "sit" command.

It's quite easy to make a dog do whatever you want when you start to understand the way they think.

I do agree that it's not perfect pitch, by any means, nor is it any kind of pitch recognition. They just know to press this key, and this key, and then this one. If you had enough time, or dogs, or whatever, you could train a dog to play Fur Elise. It would be the most off-beat reproduction ever, but technically, they would play the notes.


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## ArrowHead (Mar 29, 2012)

makeitreign said:


> What makes you think dogs can't memorize the order in which to press the keys?



Because I'm very familiar with this trick. And it's damned difficult to train a dog the way you suggest, while this woman's trick is pretty easy and works with most trainable animals. 

The girl in the box isn't really being sawed in half either, and no one really turns into a tiger. Also, there's a bird hidden in that dudes hat.


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## ArrowHead (Mar 29, 2012)

makeitreign said:


> It's quite easy to make a dog do whatever you want when you start to understand the way they think.
> 
> . If you had enough time, or dogs, or whatever, you could train a dog to play Fur Elise.



Not really the dog training forum, so I won't get into it, but it doesn't work like that. Dogs cannot remember anything that complex. Most dog training is responses to simple actions and commands, much like your sit/stand/shake example. 

Again, don't over complicate it, just look at the video and it's pretty clear she points out the notes specifically each time.


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## StratoJazz (Apr 6, 2012)

Cool though


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