A high frequency experiment with the song I've Had the Time of my Life

This is on investigating the frequency of the brilliant sounding to ear brain high pitch riff notes of the well known song from the movie Dirty Dancing. The song does not use A4=440Hz so the following procedure was used in order to get some hopefully meaningful results.


The brilliant song from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack was played at high quality and low acoustic volume through a low power class A amplifier driving a single top quality full range speaker.
Signal path, setup:


I' ve had the time of my life from CD - Sony portable CD player, line out bridged to mono - Pleiades 2N3053 power amplifier - PHILIPS AD5046N


The low volume ensures correct pitch perception by a listener as pitch depends on intensity.[Stevens]


Then 2 master tunable Casio electronic keyboards were used. An MT-100 and an MT-65 which are similar. Both were set on violin sound with no reverb, no vibrato.


While the song was playing the MT-65 played at the middle and slightly left of its keyboard was adjusted for best intonation to the 2 main chords of the song. E therefore using Bach's notation meaning E with default 1,3,5. Therefore E #G B since the song is written in the key of E major. The next main chord is E 2,4,7 ie E #F A D. This is a brilliant chord sequence similar to California Girls - Beach Boys. It was played together with the song while with the other hand the master tune knob was turned for as close as a perfect result to ear brain.


Then the very beautiful sounding high pitch notes of the song when the chorus singing I've had the time of my life comes were tried to be played along. The notes are high descending B A #G F E. The match is the rightmost part of the keyboard. And although these Casio instruments are intonated with ear brain perception in mind having higher octaves than x2f the song's riff was still flat. Ear brain perception needed more frequency to match the brilliance and happiness of the original production.


So the other Casio, the MT-100 was used playing these very high notes together with the song and the other hand turning the master tuning knob until a close to perfect result was obtained to ear brain.


Then the CD played music was turned off.


A4 was played simultaneously on both keyboards. As expected there was a slow beat, 2-3Hz?. Then when the highest B corresponding to the highest B of the song were played together there was a much faster beat, roughly estimated at 6-8Hz. This is expected too.


Then the same interesting part of the song was played on both keyboards. The left hand playing the chord notes on MT-65 the right hand playing the high riff notes on MT-100. The sound was correct or agreeable to ear brain.


Then keyboards were swapped and it sounded an almost disaster. Still the same song but sounding as the worst cheap production imaginable. All the high notes flat, aenemic, sick, uninteresting, unhappy.


Next some measurements of frequency where done using an online generator.
http://onlinetonegenerator.com


The first note of the E major chord was played on MT-65, ie the E near middle left of the keyboard. By careful comparison for eliminating beats the note was measured as 333Hz.


Next the high B note on the MT-100 was found to be 2003Hz


There are some systematic errors on this experiment due to the human factor in tuning an instrument to a song. It was tried to make it as small as possible by experience and tuning while everything is at low acoustic volume.


Other factor is drift of the electronic instruments. This is especially true for the MT-100 which had batteries near the end of their life.


By multiplying 333Hz by 2 by 2 by 3/2 to find the note B using old school thinking the frequency of B which is 2 octaves up and a fifth has a 1998Hz value. This is the "equal" temperament engineering old school value.


If the experiment was performed correctly the produced song has a high B of 2003Hz ie 5 more Hz. And these few Hz seem to make all the difference to a brilliant and happy high pitch note for ear brain perception.


How could they not. We are having the time of our life.


Reference:


Sound and Hearing - S. S. Stevens - page 77 the Mind's influence - Life science series


Engineering vs ear brain octave - euroelectron


http://www.mmk.ei.tum.de/fileadmin/w00bqn/www/Personen/Terhardt/ter/top/octstretch.html


The Pleiades tuning