Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?

Subject: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Tony Burns
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 09:07 PM

There is an article at the Straight Dope site regarding perfect pitch (no 'spaw, this has nothing to do with banjos, accordions and dumpsters) that I thought a few Mudders might enjoy. I was going to cut and paste it but the copyright notice discouraged me from that. Here is a blue clicky to get you there.

Take a look and comment if you like.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: sophocleese
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 09:57 PM

A neat article. Seems to agree with what my husband tells me, he has perfect pitch. Its useful when we're in a store or library to put a piece of music in front of him and ask "What does this sound like?" and get something far more accurate than my attempts at sight reading. He's always maintained that everyone is born with the ability but they mostly lose it through not using it when they are children. The kinesthetic ability of singers to sing a note from memory mentioned also rings true for me. I can just do it whenever I've been involved with choir work, but I lose it if I'm not keeping my voice in order and singing from score for any great length of time, short term memory rather than long term I guess, or muscles out of order.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From:
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 10:42 PM

I read an article recently on perfect pitch, that it is more common in regions where languages which are tonal. North European languages are not, so people don't get training in the nuances. In regions, such as the Orient, the languages have a large component of meaning in the tone/pitch of the word sound.

I don't remember where it was I read this.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 10:55 PM

What is perfect pitch and to what tolerance if we are talking frequencies?

Jon

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 11:01 PM

I have a friend who has Asperger's Syndrome and he has truly perfect pitch. he'd listen to songs for me and write in the chords as he went through the first time. Second trip he'd add inversions. And then he'd give me lead lines if i had staff paper. John Bacon is an amazing man and a friend I'd love to reconnect with.

I notice when I start to sing a pop tune I've heard many times i always sing in the key I last heard it in. Rhars why I will start songs i can easily sing in my usual register always too low or high depending on the key it was recorded in. Anyone else experience this?

But when the it all comes down to a close, for me I have found exact change to generally be more useful than perfect pitch.

Don

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 11:53 PM

About twelve years ago my oldest daughter, who was almost 12 at the time, said that she could put her tape of CATS on in her room (she didn't own a Walkman yet) go out to the barn and do chores for horses, come back in "and be singing along with the tape". Of course I didn't believe it till I'd heard her do it, but she could. Then I said well then you have perfect pitch. No I don't, she said-- but when I asked her to sing the first note of Memories and she had it right, I said "remember that that note is C, and from there you can locate any note on the scale." And she could. Don't know where the ability comes from; I can generally name a note to within a half tone (if I am hearing a strange fiddle tune I can identify the key it's being played in more from the sound of the open strings and double stops than by pitch) but my oldest can still get things almost exactly. To answer Jon, she has it at least to within a quarter tone and maybe better.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: WyoWoman
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 12:02 AM

Those of us who generally remember what key a song starts in or what key we were singing it in last have perfect relative pitch, as I understand it.

There is such a thing as perfect pitch, and believe me, it's a vastly mixed blessing. I had a roommate who had perfect pitch and anything less drove her completely nutz. You could sit down on the keyboard and she could tell you exactly what notes your butt was smashing. Like Don's friend, she could hear a vocal melody and write in the chords as you sang it, add inversions, etc... Simply amazing.

but, if anything or anyone was the slightest bit off-pitch, it literally was like scraping fingers down a chalkboard for as long as the tone endured. She simply couldn't go to a lot of public music performances because the loosey-goosey pitches were agonizing for her. And since she was a college music teacher, this was a hardship for her. She finally gave that up because she wanted so much to be patient with her students, but her nerves were frayed by the tonal imperfections.

ww

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 12:31 AM

I seem to be getting some of the idea particulary with relative pitch but I am still a little confused. As far as I understand things, concert pitch is only a relatavely recent thing (my distionary defines "since 1939, 400 cycles per second aat 20 C in the treble register) and the names of frequencies has varied by more than 1 semitone. How would these people have coped, when what we call A now was say Bb?

Jon

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Wincing Devil
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 12:39 AM

My Jr Hi choir teacher told a cute story about a girl he'd taught a few years before. She came up to him after class and asked him why he'd played such and such a sonata in E-flat instead of C. He checked further and determined that this was the real thing, and noted it on the class roster. A few weeks later, one of the substitute teachers came up to him and commented loudly that she wished all teachers would leave as detailed notes about the temperment of students as he did. He had no idea who she was talking about and asked her. She said "You, know, Jane Smith, the absolute B I T C H"!

Thanks Don Doughty, wherever you are!

Wincing Devil
There is no such thing as an ugly cat (http://www.ILoveMySphynx.com)

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 12:42 AM

Another thought on this perfect pitch thing. I don't claim to understand it but there is more that one way of dividing the octave do make a scale. Does a person with perfect pitch hear 12 TET, just, pythagorian or what?

Jon

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: ddw
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 12:44 AM

maybe the people with perfect pitch back in the good old days before it was standardized could cope by being able to get away from music if they didn't like it. Try that now, when everywhere we go they're piping in some kind of crap.

I feel sorry for those people today, when they have to cope with Muzak in elevators and store, telephones that play tinny versions of Dock on the Bay or Under The Boardwalk — neither of which was any great shakes with good sound — and boom cars on every other corner. It runs me nuts and I don't have perfect pitch.

david

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 01:18 AM

My first intense love affair was with a girl (also 16) who was a classical violinist. There is no doubt in my mind that she had "perfect pitch." If a turntable was turning at other than the proper rpm, the pitch shift of the recorded music would drive her up the wall. As WyoWoman put it: it was like fingernails on a chalkboard to her. Imagine being so musically blessed that music could often be painful, rather than a pleasure!

Sandy

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 01:37 AM

Still confused Sandy, here is an extract from Encarta 95:

"The pitches of organs varied widely, however. Woodwind instrument builders during the late 17th century, using the pitch of Parisian organs, effectively set the standard for the following century at about A = 415, or about a half step below modern pitch. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, wind instruments for use in bands and orchestras were built to increasingly higher pitch specifications, reaching about A = 452 (Old Philharmonic Pitch) by the mid-19th century. Various efforts were made to fix the scale of pitch, the most influential being that of a French commission of musicians and scientists who met in 1858-59. This commission reported in favor of A = 435, the widely used French pitch."

Surely if somebody was so sensitive to listening to music at our accepeted standard of 440hz, in some cases, they would actually hate to hear the music in the pitch as it was when the composer wrote it.

Jon

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: reeebop
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 01:45 AM

i go to purchase college conservitory of music and everymorning i take an eartraining class. and everyday we walk in the professeur demands and pitch say "F" and we all have to sing it with no warm-up...at first it was impossible, but after 2 years we all can do it on just about any note...and he gave us a ton of ear trainning excersizes probably the same type of stuff on the website.

one cute story...when my littlest brother was two and a half, my older brother (the bassist) and i were practicing out ear training one afternoon while we were supposed to be babysitting. I played an A on the piano and the bass-player says C? and just as i'm about to correct him, a little voice from the other room says "no, that's an A!!" we were shocked and quizzed him on all kinds of things, taught him scales and he loves it!!!

i don't know if he inherited it (the rest of us picked it up rather quickly too) or from just being around before he was even born...but it's there--i know it.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 02:07 AM

Well, Jon, she was trained to play music at the currently accepted A-440, I'm sure. If it was sounding at something between that and the A-415 you say is a half-tone lower, it would definitely disturb her. A true (modern) A-flat would probably have been acceptable. It was the in-between stuff that hurt. Or so I was told.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 03:32 AM

They tell me A has now gone up to 441 Hz!!

I've never had perfect pitch, and on the whole, I think I'm better off without it. I'm not sure about the definition of relative pitch: "the ability to sing or play accurately given a starting note". Surely we all do this? What I find is this; when someone gives me a note, I take it as the root of the key, and pitch my starting note accordingly. In other words, give me an A and I'll start on C#; give me a C and I'll start on E - otherwise I have a lot of trouble working back to the key note and starting again. My one-time singing partner Celia used to give us both our starting note - she never remembered! - which meant we'd start most of our unaccompanied songs in different keys. We should have made it part of the act, then it would have been funny instead of embarassing!

Steve

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 08:16 AM

G'day,
Once we were playing a gig & a couple came to see us with their autistic boy, about 10, said he had perfect pitch. Our fiddle player played a G. "That's a G." said the boy. Same with a D. Then he played a flattened C (or maybe it was a sharpened B). The kid was puzzled. "That's not a note!" he said.

Fair dinkum, it happened.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: flattop
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 08:47 AM

Clearly mudbull or bullmud:

Hey, I could usually guess a note within a half dozen semi-tones, plus or minus, but nobody ever mistook me for a musical genius.

Sandy, I'm confused too. After reading of your torrid love affair was with a sixteen year old, tunable, girl, I'm still not sure if you're a man or a woman. Is Sandy short for Sandra or Alexandria?

Jon (or yawn as we spell it in Canada), you have a good point. In a perfect world, the even-tempered scale should irritate any reasonably neurotic person with perfect pitch. If you're going to get picky, you probably should become more scientific. According to the ideas of polish count, Alfred Korzybski, which he presented in a paper at the University of Toronto around 1934, which he later turned into an enormously convoluted book, Science and Sanity, which became the foundational work of the field of General Semantics, … according to Korzybski, Einstein and Newton's works suggest that we should not put too much faith in absolutes. It would be more scientific to recognize that the strings vary imperfectly over tiny fragments of time. The note even varies and changes (however imperceptibly) as it travel through air molecules within tiny time chunks (which can never be chunked exactly), the air molecules themselves dancing around in time at different speeds and temperatures, transmitting the sound variably, changing your 440 to a 440.0013 and then back to a 439.0091 before you know it. Tell that to your neurotically sexy, violinists.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Sourdough
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 09:09 AM

My college roommate decided that if he wasn't born with perfect pitch, he was at least going to develop the closest thing to it. He was studying with Paul Hindemith at the time so he was a very serious musician.

He spent more than a year walking around with an A-440 tuning fork in his hand, twanging it against his thigh and holding the post to his head until the vibrations of the fork and his skull were intimately acquainted. Eventually, he could reproduce the A with great accuracy and from there would develop the scale so he could identify or create any note.

What did he do with this skill? He became one of the Mothers of Invention and a terrific keyboardist, too.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: flattop
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 10:28 AM

So I guess he caused some serious brain damage with that fork, Sourdough.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Pelrad
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 11:21 AM

My goodness, flattop! You have given me my first laugh of the day, gender-confusing the great Sandy Paton. Sandy is a man, to be sure. :-)

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 11:33 AM

Flattop, here's the scoop on Sandy and the lovely Caroline.

I can hear relative pitch pretty well - well enough to know when I don't quite land on the note I was aiming for even though it's too late to do anything about it. As far as "perfect" pitch, I think it's something that has to be learned, and may only be best learned at certain ages. It also stands to reason if a child grows up hearing all music in a certain scale, the notes in that scale will be the pitches learned. I suppose if a child heard all sorts of different types of music, they may not be driven up the wall later in life by different temperaments.

The ability to hear and/or recognize pitch depends on the capability of the human ear. I doubt anyone's ear can pick out variations as tiny as a thousandth of a hertz. (Does anyone know?) This is determined by physiology, not education, talent, understanding, or anything within one's control.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 11:42 AM

There is a fellow within the folk community in NYC credited with having perfect pitch. He has proved to be accurate every time someone has asked him for a note and another person with an electronically tuned instrument has reached for it also. I have never asked him but I suspect that he can find at least one note (let's say C) consistently and, because he is a good musician, he runs up or down a scale in his mind to find the note actually requested.

Many people who sing a lot and mostly in 1 or 2 keys can get pretty close to those tonics most of the time. The people who are best at this can do it somewhere between 99 and 100% of the time. Finding the other notes is a matter of practiced musicianship.

All the best, Dan Milner

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: lamarca
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 11:46 AM

I have a very good sense of relative pitch, and tone matching is fairly easy for me. This becomes a distinct disadvantage when trying to tune a stringed instrument, though - I hear even minor differences in tones and it takes me twice as much time to make an instrument "in tune" to my ears. Maybe that's why I gave up on my hammered dulcimer...

Unfortunately, Steve, good relative pitch isn't all that common, even in regularly performing musicians. I frequently flinch listening to concerts or recordings by good musicians who stray off key while singing. It is not uncommon to hear unaccompanied singers start off in one key, miss a given interval by "just a little" repeatedly through a song and wind up in a completely different key by the end. Singers who accompany themselves on fretted or keyed instruments tend to stay on pitch better, but even that isn't a given in our local folk society. One reason I stopped going to our local Open Sing was that it was literally getting to be physically painful listening to people who were "tonally challenged". They still enjoy and have great fun singing, but I couldn't have fun listening, so rather than be rude, I stopped going.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 01:40 PM

Jon's question about pitch memory has often occurred to me. As I read the article that is linked to the top of this thread, your memory takes your early tonal environment as its standard. So if you spent your early childhood hearing pythagorean instruments at A=415, that's your internal standard. If you are born among 12-equal pianos, that's your internal standard. And, as the article says, alas for those whose mothers' pianos were out of tune!

T.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Bryant
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 01:47 PM

Another disadvantage to having perfect pitch . . .

When I was in college I took a Early Music Ensemble class (medeival and Rennaissance choral music). A couple of the people in the class had what I'd call perfect pitch -- the ability to sing or identify a note on demand. Problem was, there were a few occasions when we needed to transpose a piece to a higher key (the basses couldn't get the low notes) and the perfect pitchers could not make the adjustment -- look at the sheet music, pretend the first note was a pitch or two higher and carry on. I think they had to actually rewrite the music in the new key in order to sing it.

I found that kind of funny since I really couldn't read vocal music -- I just kind of learned the pieces through repetition. And here were these hot-shot vocalists who could sing like angels, but only so long as they had the music in front of them. I don't think they went to song circles. :)

B.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 01:54 PM

Then there is vibrato which by definition is a means of de-tuning or mushing the pitch. In certain musical contexts it's a lovely ornament; in others, its a nuisance.

T.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: peg
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 02:00 PM

i think there are two dfferent sorts of perfect pitch:

one, for those who know music theory very well, where if you ask them to sing an A flat, they can do it...as well as any other note.

the other, applies to folk like me and others who have posted tot his thread, who have more of an uncanny sense of "pitch memory" in terms of their kinesthetic ability to pull a note out out of the air that matches exactly something they have either sung, played or listened to A LOT...and may or may not be able to pull a perfect A flat out of the air in terms of knowing it is absolutely an A flat...but the ability is an uncanny one nontheless...I also played instruments "by ear" as a child before I learned to read music, so no doubt there is some connection there...

being a singer, I do not know if other musical types (i.e. instrumentalists) experience this phenomenon the same way...singing, because it involves actual manipulation of vocal chord muscles which may then result in certain notes being recognizable by placement or "feel," is the most dramatic manifestation of this, IMHO...

peg

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 02:07 PM

In my Scottish family (and standard, I believe, in the auld countrie), Sandy is the diminutive of Alexander. Hence all the Sandy MacTavish jokes. I'm the eighth generation "Sandy" swinging from my father's family tree. My son makes nine, and his son makes ten. Seemed like a nice tradition to carry on.

However, Flattop, you are not alone. Often, when Caroline and I show up for a gig, a few people seem to be surprised to discover that we are not a sister act.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 02:25 PM

I've had lots of friends with perfect pitch.

There was one housemate in New Haven who had perfect pitch. She had an exam in a music class, during which she was going to have to identify various classical pieces. BUT--the teacher transposed all of them, playing Bach's two-part invention in F in the key of C, and so forth. She noted the keys that the pieces were played in, rather than the keys the tunes were supposed to be played in--and flummoxed the test.

Another friend of mine with perfect pitch conducted a chorus I sang in . He never needed to rely on a tuning fork or pitchpipe. Once, we sang an arrangement of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture which beings with our chorus singing the opening hymn a cappella for 29 bars, after which the orchestra comes in. We HAD to be on pitch when we finished the 29 bars, or the orchestra would sound horrible. Guy kept us on pitch, and fine tuned us as neccesary.

Yet another group I'm in had three people (of 15) with perfect absolute pitch. But we sang Caucasian songs using microtones, so when the two tenors with perfect pitch sang slightly different notes (and I had to blend with at least one of them), I knew it was a disagreement as to which tuning scale (Pythagorean or mean-tuned) we were to sing in, rather than just people going off-pitch.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: flattop
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 02:30 PM

Thanks for the information Pelard and Jerri. Jerri? To be sure, we can never be too sure, especially on the internet, but Sandy looks good in those sunglasses. What is a Pelard? Please excuse my cherished ignorance.

>> I doubt anyone's ear can pick out variations as tiny as a thousandth of a hertz. (Does anyone know?)

You may be getting closer to an Korzybskian theory of relative pitch here, Jerri. I don't know but I know that there are studies that show that women hear sounds more acutely than men. studies also show that both sexes can listen longer to and enjoy music on a sound system set to emphasize midrange rather bass or treble. I also don't know why, too often, a deaf male who can't hear the bass distorting is diddling the sound board.

I'm surprised, lamarca, that on a site that favours traditions, you took such a brave stand against folks singing of relative pitch. What could be more traditional than mangled music?

Okiebird, I don't know about tonal imprints, but I once heard a story about an ingenious psychologist. Wanting to see if language ability was genetic or learned, he had a baby raised by a group of shepherds who didn't say a lot. The first word the baby uttered was 'baa.'

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 02:37 PM

That sounds like an urban-legendary update of the ancient story of the king who wanted to learn the first language of mankind by having a child raised in a language-less environment and having his nurses write down the first sound he made that wasn't just baby-talk. It was identified as a word in the Phrygian language, so the king decided that the oldest language was Phrygian.

T.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Michael K.
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 03:07 PM

When I was a little kid, (around 3 years old) my parents discovered that when I sang tunes from cartoon shows on tv, I would always be singing them in the original keys that they were recorded in.

To this day, I hear all (commercial) music in my head, in the exact keys they were recorded in.

I can tune a guitar precisely to A440 as the relative reference point, without the need of any external tuners.

You can blindfold me, and have me stand half way across a room, and hit any note on a piano, and I'll tell you which one it was in a second. Same applies to any chords. (Came in very handy in doing spot-on lifts of popular tunes when I had my band.)

Yet, I cannot sing or carry a tune if it had handles on it.....but I can detect the slightest inaccuracies in pitch of any music or vocalist I listen to. It used to drive me insane. These days I just ignore it or laugh and think ''amateurs'' to myself.

But my vocal chords just don't want to cooperate. It's a piss off....but is probably why I tend to focus on creating instrumental music most of the time.

Go figure.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Bert
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 03:25 PM

"tonally challenged", oops! That's me LaMarca. Still, I'm taking guitar lessons so I'm improving slowly. At least, more often than not, I can tell now when I'm blowing it.

Never mind, it won't stop me from singing.

How do those people in The Middle East manage? Some of their music has quarter tones in it. I've seen a Santur player in Iran adjust a couple of bridges for his next tune. All by ear, just slides the bridge over and plucks the string without referring to an adjacent string. Bloody impossible!!!

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: shayes
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 03:32 PM

Bob Shane of the Kingston Trio, who is a shameless borrower of stories, says that perfect pitch is when you can throw a banjo down a mine shaft without hitting any of the accordions. I admire anyone who can hear something once or even just fall into a tune and follow where it's going without thinking about it. I personally find it nearly impossible to stay on pitch without accompaniment or other voices to lien on. It's a real gift, but it is something I think that has to be kept polished.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: lamarca
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 04:19 PM

NPR, the font of all my trivial knowledge, had a neat story on perfect pitch and tonal languages back in November (Tuesday, November 09,1999 All Things Considered) - here's the RAM file.

Bert, you're one up on me - I'm "instrumentally challenged" - my voice is the only instrument I have any sort of control over! Singing should be done for the fun we get out of it, no matter what our talent (just don't ask me to listen for several hours if your nearest "relative pitch" is a 4th cousin once removed from the tone it's supposed to be...)

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 04:45 PM

Michael K, I think people who have problems singing on pitch although they can hear they're off may just have not learned how to physically sing the notes. I mentioned I don't always land on the note I wanted to - if it lasts long enough, I can adjust. The ideal thing would be if I could adjust fast enough that no one noticed.

Re the relative pitch thing - I've sung a song and found a good key, run to sing the tonic into an electronic gizmo to see what key I was singing in, and often found it to be something like C#-and-a-quarter, or B flatter. I can change keys (like when I start a song too high, which I do on a regular basis) like crazy but can't identify what key it is without an instrument or tuner.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Michael K.
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 05:03 PM

Jeri, Thanks for your comments. I think with me, the pitch thing and singing, is the fact that I never liked the sound of my recorded voice, even when I was forced to contribute harmony's in bands through out the years....Good singing to me, is an inate God-given talent just like playing an instrument and either you've got it or you don't - talking raw fundamental talent here - and I definitely don't have it, when it comes to singing and I'm frank and honest enough to admit it...and I'm convinced that if I don't like the sound of my voice, no one else will either. ...(mind you I've been told I have a great telephone voice, so if music and entertainment don't work out for me in the long term, perhaps I'd have a future at one of the 976 tele-personals operators or something.)

Nothing worse, than people who think they have vocal talent (because their Mommmies and Daddies and families have encouraged them - because they too were all tone deaf) perpetuating their aural distortions on the rest of us, thinking we might agree with their families. Course it does make me wonder if half of the A&R guys at record companies are into some serious drugs, when you hear some of the artists they sign --sorry middle aged sensibilities creeping in here....

You should hear some of the tapes I get from vocalists in bands, and how truly awful some of them are. Unfortunately no one has ever been honest enough with these people, in telling it like it is to them. It's like you can't tell someone they suck or have no talent, without it being interpretted as a complete character assassination of their entire psyche and personality. But like Don and Michael Corleone are fond of saying ''It's business. It's not personal.'' (grin)

Fortunately I've have some half way decent musical talent to compensate, otherwise I'd be completely shattered. 8^)

Take care, Jeri. (Sorry I missed you when you were in Toronto.)

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 09:12 PM

G'day,
How do some of you people with perfect pitch manage listening to a CD which wasn't recorded in concert pitch? I never notice until I try to play along with it & find I have to retune the guitar to the CD track.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 06:32 AM

I guess most of you know how the ear perceives sound, but here's a quick biology lesson anyway. The cochlea of the inner ear is filled with a fluid which is made to vibrate by the eardrum, the same as the sound vibrations falling on it. Sticking up into the fluid are lots (millions? billions?) of little bundles of tiny, tiny fibres, each bundle being a little shorter than the next. Each bundle resonates at a specific frequency, and has a nerve attached: when the fluid vibrates at that frequency, the fibre bundle is 'tweaked', and stimulates the nerve. The total of all these nerve signals is turned by the brain into what we hear.

Still with me? Good! The smallest difference in pitch we can discriminate depends on how accurate and how close to each other (in pitch) these bundles are. As we get older, those at the extremes, especially the high end, stop working so well (or altogether), and this reduces the range of frequencies we can hear. They can be damaged by loud nise - don't stand so close to the p.a., and turn down your headphones!

They are pretty good at discriminating between two pitches, which is why you can hear wow and flutter in your hi-fi, unless it's very hi; and it lets you hear vibrato, where the pitch of a note is 'warbled' up and down ever so slightly by the singer or musician.

It should be possible to train yourself to identify different frequencies with a good degree of accuracy - not just notes on the (any) scale, although it sounds pretty boring to me. Any research physiologists out there care to comment on any of this?

Steve

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Easy Rider
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 11:26 AM

Michael K:

You would cringe, if you heard me sing! I consider myself tonally challenged, but, the more I play and practice singing, in the 18 months I've been doing it again, the better I'm getting. People say so! I'm not as self concious as I was, when I was a kid. I tune my guitar with an electronic tuner (why struggle?), and I have fun playing and singing, as best I can, anyway. My ear and my voice are getting better slowly, just from practice.

Have you considered voice lessons? People tell me that even a few can have a significant effect. I woud do it, if I had the time.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Michael K.
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 11:51 AM

Hi Easy Rider.

Well in order to do voice lessons the desire has to be there. And for me it's just not there nor has it ever been.

I'll stick to being an instrumentalist and accompanying others who's vocal talents vastly outshine my own, and aren't likely to to create an onset of rigor mortis to the listener.

Subject: RE: Perfect Pitch. Myth or reality?
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 12:47 PM

Then there was Gary, a friend of mine with perfect pitch. He was having car problems; as he drove along on the highway one day, his car started to make a horrible noise. The mechanic asked him, "Can you describe the noise?" Gary said, "Sure--it's a high b-flat, an actave above middle C."

His absolute pitch abilities made him center on the pitch as the distinguishing feature of the noise, rather than, say timbre.

--Charlie Baum