Klarinet Archive - Posting 000418.txt from 2003/08

From: "Joseph H. Fasel" <jhf@-----.gov>
Subj: Re: [kl] Perfect Pitch
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:56:56 -0400

My friend with absolute pitch tells me that her ability to identify
an isolated pitch without reference to anything else is only good
to a quarter-tone or so. She can identify a pitch by name, but not
tell you if it's sharp or flat by a few cents. If I've done the math
right, A=442 is about 5 cents sharp.

On the other hand, there's a story still told around here that when
she was accompanying her high-school choir at contest, the choir
sharped a half step during a long a-capella section and that she
noticed and transposed the rest of the piece. Supposedly, the
choir, the director, and the judges were unaware of the shift.
For a time, she was my organist while I was directing a church
choir here. The priests were, shall we say, not trained singers
and had a tendency to drift or do interesting modulations in the
proper preface between the sursum corda and the sanctus, but when
she was at the organ console, they had the impression that they
had maintained the pitch perfectly.

--Joe

On 2003.08.14 11:46 Ray Montoro wrote:
> I don't have perfect anything, though I have acted the perfect fool on
> occasion.
>
> Mention of people with perfect pitch has noted that they can name a
> note or a simultaneity of notes upon hearing. Apparently they name the
> notes with reference to A=440.
>
> I believe that A=440 is an artificial definition of recent
> construction, so why do people with perfect pitch relate to it? Why not
> some other frequency? What if they grew up with an old piano that had
> to be tuned flat?
>
> Would a European with perfect pitch agree that A=440? Or would she base
> her ability on another definition? Would she go nuts if she came to the
> USA? If my American friend with perfect pitch at A=440 went to Europe
> to play at A=442 would he cringe?
>
> Do we know how perfect pitch appears in an individual? An earlier
> poster said that these individuals use no internal or external
> reference, but I'm not so sure.
>
> Please don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to deny the existence of the
> phenomenon. I had a childhood friend who could name all the notes when
> I just randomly hammered a piano. He didn't know how he did it either.

Joseph H. Fasel, Ph.D. email: jhf@-----.gov
Systems Planning and Analysis phone: +1 505 667 7158
University of California fax: +1 505 667 2960
Los Alamos National Laboratory post: D-2 MS F609; Los Alamos, NM 87545

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