The perfect pitch, Article Options

[_articles_]

Comments about:

The perfect pitch

[jescoolman]

I don't really have perfect pitch, but I do have some fun audio tools. The dial tone in America (not sure about other places) may have an A in it, but it's not a pure pitch; it's actually a two sine waves of different pitches superimposed. Sine waves are tricky because they don't have any overtones; a chord of sine waves creates other waves that people with perfect pitch might hear a single note. Psychoacoustics are tricky. Even those with not perfect pitch can hear tones formed by chords. Try playing any two close high sine waves together, and concentrate on hearing a lower note; that note is really there, formed by the interference two waves being out of phase.

In any event, in America, the dial tone is two sine waves; an F and an A above middle C played together. Presto. Dial tone. The numbers being pressed on touch tone phones are also more than one note. If you download a sine wave generator, you can actually recreate all the sounds of a telephone. Here are some links for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_tone
http://hypertextbook.com/physics/waves/beats/