Klarinet Archive - Posting 000060.txt from 1999/02

From: chr <chr@-----.de>
Subj: RE: [kl] Perfect Pitch
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 07:48:09 -0500

Perfect pitch seems to come in various gradients. I knew of two girls
who were identical twins, who studied music at the Detmold academy who
could nail the frequency of a played tone to an accuracy of 1 hertz.
(i.e. if someone played a sharp a' at 446 hertz they would name this
frequency.)

I have been told I have perfect pitch. When in the 2nd grade, my piano
teacher was fascinated that she could cover the keyboard and play notes
and I could name them. I never understood what the big deal was. The
person who compared it to color recognition is right - except these
colors are not seen, they are heard. In high school in a church youth
choir, the accompanist didn't like certain keys such as E maj. and
transposed to F maj or Eb maj. I found this extremely annoying. When I
got my first A clarinet it took some getting used to the half step
"surprise".

At university, the theory and ear training prof (who was also my clarinet
teacher, David Randall) found out I was doing melody dictation by hearing
the notes and not intervals, so he would play an E on the piano and tell
everyone it was C and finish the dictation this way. I used a mix of
transposition and interval hearing then to get through. I was very
annoyed at the time, but now I am quite thankful he did this so as to
force me to start hearing functionally.

When I hear clarinets play, I identify immediately to their written
pitch, whether Bb, A, C or Eb and also for basset horn in F. This is
because the familiarity of the timbre of a specific clarinet is so close
from playing for so long. When I hear trumpets and French horns,
however, I always hear these in concert pitch.

My "little" brother has more developed perfect pitch. He can identify
the pitch(es) of a coin dropped on the ground or a window breaking. I
can only do this when the sound is "musical" enough that it sounds close
to pitched instrument.

As far as tiny 1 or 2 hertz differences are concerned, I cannot
positively identify these except as a discomfort. For example when we
came to Germany and started playing German clarinets, they were tuned to
443/444. It took getting used to. Now we have been playing RC Buffet
the past 3 weeks and they feel flat still, since they tune only to 442.
When we go to the USA the pitch seems a bit "dead" at 440. But these
impressions disappear after some time.

Don Christensen

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