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Re: Perfect Pitch Gene and Clarinetist "perfect pitch from tonal timbre"

Author: Paumartin
Date: 2007-08-29 04:09

I posted this question at a piano forum:
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I don't know much about music. I cannot play any instrument. So please bear with me.

I have a son who is 15 years old and a sophomore in high school.

I down loaded a free ear training software about two yars ago and asked my son to try it. He was able to identify notes without the cadences. So I wrote the software author who said that my son probably had perfect pitch. This was confirmed by a subsequent test from a university doing research on perfect pitch.

I told this a local high school music director who discussed this with another music director and he said they came to the conclusion that perfect pitch is a liability because it makes it the player have difficulty following out of tune band members.

I researched the internet. I found that considering how rare it is, there are more professional concert players with perfect pitch (ratio of performers with PP vs without) than what you would expect in the general population.

In the general population few (only 3% or even as low as one to 10,000) has perfect pitch however in professional player the occurrence is much higher than that. Some people have argued that people with perfect pitch are probably more interested in music and that is why they discovered they have perfect pitch or have developed it.

I had the opportunity to speak to a piano professor who teaches graduate students and he said that there are two kinds of perfect pitches. One where the subject can not only identify the pitch but also how many cents higher or lower the pitch is. Another is where the subject can only identify the the pitch. This professor says that he has also the second kind (i.e. he can identify the pitch but cannot say how many cents off it is). He thinks having the second kind is good but having the first can lead to problems.

My son meanwhile has won several honors/awards for his saxophone playing. He is currently learning the piano because his saxophone teacher has told him to get piano lessons because to get to graduate a good music school, piano proficiency is necessary. My son's piano teacher says my son is at intermediate level that is after about 8 months or studying the piano.

Is having perfect pitch a liability or an asset? How can you maximize the benefit and lessen the liability. My son really would love to pursue music as a career.

Thank you so much for your help and input

Peter
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I posted this 6 months ago. My son is now a junior in high school. Now he is learning the clarinet in order to double (pun intended) his chances of going to a good music school...

I hope this contributes to the discussion of this interesting topic.

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