I have no musical knowledge so bear with me.
How can people hear a note played or a word sung and this to themselves “oh that’s an A flat” or something along those lines. Or how can they identify that they are not singing the right note and know how to modify it to get to the correct one?
What about tuning instruments. How can someone do that by ear and just know that it’s in tune?
The mind boggles!
In: 10
Training and practice: https://xkcd.com/2173/ Specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_training and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_recognition
Here’s old ELI5s on Orchestra tuning: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22usqp/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_an_orchestra/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5dfdd/eli5_prior_to_playing_musicians_tune_their/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44vjbf/eli5_why_do_orchestras_sound_all_weird_at_the/
The short version is that one player (the oboe) plays a standard A, and the various sections tune to that. The strings have an A that matches, and then they can tune each of their strings to be the correct interval (a fifth) off of that A (for example the violin would tune the E and D off of the A, and then the G off of the D).
Whatever your interest is, someone else could easily wonder how you see or hear something and make sense of it. Or languages.
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