 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jeff
Date: 2000-07-01 18:43
Ok, could someone explain to me what perfect pitch is? Also, I have heard that you have to be born with it-is it possible to develop it?
Jeff
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Author: Dave Goss
Date: 2000-07-01 18:57
Generally perfect pitch is when you can hear a tone and know what note it is. Is can also be the ability to sing a note without a reference pitch.
There is also relative pitch which is when you are given a reference pitch and can sing a P5, Aug6, etc. away from that. Or given an interval and can identify it.
Just from doing so much music stuff as a music major, I've been able to develop what I call "very good pitch" Some notes like Bb, A, Eb, G I can just sing. I'm also pretty good at identifying pitches, but I need to sing them first. I pretty much know the range of my voice, so I use that as a guide. I've also gotten good at identifying what pitches a given instrument is playing, based on knowing the range of that instrument.
I've never had any formal courses to teach perfect pitch. I've taken Aural Skills which relative pitch plays a role in.
The most amazing thing I've ever seen/heard was the begining of this semester. Our band director, Dr. Mary Ann Craig, was talking about A=440 and how that reference has changed over the years and around the world. She said something to the effect of... Here's A=440 (She sang the pitch) now here's A=438 (Then sang that) now here's A=442 (And sang that.) Someone next to me had a turner and she was right on with each pitch. Now that's what I call PERFECT pitch.
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Author: Al
Date: 2000-07-01 21:30
No matter what anyone tells you, you have to be born with TRUE perfect pitch, especially the kind mentioned in the previous post.
Al
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Author: Ginny
Date: 2000-07-01 22:48
First, perfect pitch must be developed. There are degrees of it. I cannot site the stats, but children given very early training in music (by age 3) have an astonishing percent with perfect pitch. My recollection is that it approaches 40%. Tonal language speakers (like Chinese) also have a higher percent with perfect pitch, than non tonal language speakers.
My older son has perfect pitch on the white keys. He spent much of a year playing with an electric keyboard at age 2. He cannot tell as few cents as two. He can get(occasionaly) confused if the tonality changes, its almost funny, when he does. He cannot image in that I cannot tell what note he plays! To him it is as if I cannot tell red from green.
My younger son may have perfect pitch. If he thinks really hard he can sing or identify notes, he's a very cautious person. I think he fears being wrong. He can just play along with computer games, as there's a keyboard next to the computer. He's had eartraining since birth or before as I taught a eurhythmics/eartraining class for kids during his infancy and before.
My ear is pretty bad, for a masters in music. Highly imperfect. No one else in the family has perfect pitch, unless they decide to toss a banjo in the bay ;-) I'm fairly well convinced that people with early training bring out the skill, a first language thing. I also know a music prof who taught himself to have perfect pitch as an adult, or perhaps he learned to develop what he had.
Room for study, I would not conclude that its simply inborn from my experiences. I think the basis is much more common, and that music training should be as a first language.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-07-02 01:45
Al wrote:
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No matter what anyone tells you, you have to be born with TRUE perfect pitch, especially the kind mentioned in the previous post.
Al
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Please provide references to the controlled and documented scientific studies that prove your sweeping statement.
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Author: Fred
Date: 2000-07-02 02:04
Al wrote:
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No matter what anyone tells you, you have to be born with TRUE perfect pitch, especially the kind mentioned in the previous post.
Al
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Dee wrote:
Please provide references to the controlled and documented scientific studies that prove your sweeping statement.
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Or conversely, does anyone know any instances of that type of perfect pitch being taught or learned?
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-07-02 02:42
Fred wrote:
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Or conversely, does anyone know any instances of that type of perfect pitch being taught or learned?
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I have about 120 citations showing that perfect pitch can be learned. They are listed at the end of the article "Absolute Pitch" by W. Dixon Ward, Hearing Research Laboratory, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The article is in "The Psychology of Music", second edition, edited by Diana Deutsch, Academic Press Series in Cognition and Perception, ISBN 0-12-213565-2
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Author: Jim
Date: 2000-07-02 06:03
As a music student and musician, I always looked upon someone with true "perfect pitch" with a mixture of envy and disgust but... Years of tuning to A 440 (B on the clarinet of course) have left me with the ability to both recognize it and to reproduce it vocally with reasonable accuracy. As a chorus singer (baritone) I learned to sing by reproducing intervals. Thanks to all the years of G clef clarinet reading, I cannot "read" ie. readily name the notes in the bass clef in which my part is written, but I have no problem sight singing it.
I am however convinced that there some folks who naturally have some such abilities without training. In college I was riding with my best friend's girlfriend in her Checker station wagon (the cab maker actually sold some to individuals!) without a radio. She was singing some of the popular songs of the late sixties (this was 1971) but they sounded strange to me. Many miles later, I realized she was transposing them into minor keys. When I asked her about it, she said that, yes, she was aware she did it only because she had been told so by others, no, she had no musical training at all (she was a bio major)and yes, it did drive her roommate, a violin major, absolutely nuts!
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2000-07-03 01:33
People tell me that I have perfect pitch. I can not specify perfect pitch myself and I don't care. I have never had any practical use of it as an orchestra musician. I discovered this during a summer music camp at the age of 12. During interval training I was thinking the notes instead of the interval. I can usually catch any note on any instrument. However, if I sing a note with no reference I'm always a little bit flat, like A=438. Is there a name for this?
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Author: Meredith H
Date: 2000-07-03 04:42
I had a friend in high school who had perfect pitch. He assured us there was no need to envy him and that he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. He could tell if a record player was playing to fast or slow and I think it meant he never really enjoyed listening to live orchestras because someone was always slightly out of tune.
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Author: DLE
Date: 2000-07-04 08:43
I have perfect pitch, and can tell you that it is not all good news, especially with the clarinet when you're transposing. It can make life extremely difficult when my pefect pitch is to a C instrument, and I'm told to identify a note on a B-flat clarinet. When a clarinet player plays a C for example, I hear a B-flat. Making Sense?
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-07-04 12:18
DLE wrote:
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I have perfect pitch, and can tell you that it is not all good news, especially with the clarinet when you're transposing. It can make life extremely difficult when my pefect pitch is to a C instrument, and I'm told to identify a note on a B-flat clarinet. When a clarinet player plays a C for example, I hear a B-flat. Making Sense?
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Yes it makes perfect sense. You should hear a concert Bb when a clarinetist on a Bb clarinet plays C. If they are using an A clarinet, you would hear a concert A and so on.
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