 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2011-10-25 18:55
In another thread I asked
> I've always wondered how people with perfect pitch learn what A
> is in the first place.
>
> You [Rachel] describe being able to produce a 440 Hz A by ear.
> But how did you learn that A=440 Hz?
> When, if you remember, did you learn that A was 440 Hz and that
> a 445 Hz A was sharp? And how far away from 440 Hz does a note
> need to be before it isn't an A anymore?
clarnibass wrote:
>
> I think of it like colours. You learned what e.g. "red" was and
> now you recognize it. You could have called it "blue" and then
> you would just call it blue.
I understand that this would get you in the general area of a pitch. But I have "normal" color vision and I can't associate a given hue with its wavelength. How does a person with perfect pitch learn that 440 Hz (as opposed to 435 or 445) is A or that 330 Hz is middle C and onward through the rest of the audible range of notes? Do people with perfect pitch hear notes as they exist in true temperament or as they've been exposed to them on keyboard instruments tuned to equal temperament? Does someone with perfect pitch in Berlin learn their tuning and someone who grows up in Leningrad or Moscow learn a different tuning? Does each feel discomfort listening to performers who play at different tunings from the ones the person with perfect pitch grew up with?
There must be players on this BB who have perfect pitch and might give some input about this.
Karl
Karl
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2011-10-25 19:15
Some people are born with it. Others (myself included) don't have even a hint.
Nadia Boulanger claimed she could teach it to anyone, and there are training programs marketed on the web.
I've never been bothered by the lack of perfect pitch. If you can play in tune with others, that's what counts. In fact, I know a few people with acute perfect pitch who say it drives them crazy to match with any player not exactly at 440.
Ken Shaw
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2011-10-25 19:50
I've met someone who has astounding perfect pitch. Playing any chord on a piano he could tell you what chord it was, if you added any notes, removed any notes and could tell you within 2 seconds of hearing a chord being played. However he still had a lot to learn as a clarinetist.
I no longer go by perfect pitch. Maybe if they want to tune in the beginning but after that it's not an issue unless you're playing with fixed pitch instruments (keyboard, piano, xylophone, etc)
alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2011-10-25 19:56
I know a composer who grew up in a small village in Norway. The only musical instrument that he heard in his early years was a church organ. The tuning of the organ was lower than A=440. He developed a pitch memory (which is what perfect pitch is) for this low pitch. Now everything he hears in modern pitch sounds sharp to him!
Anyway, I guess that answers kdk's question.
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2011-10-25 20:35
I would imagine that true perfect pitch must actually be a curse.
How long does an orchestra or band's pitch stay exactly at A=440 (or 441/442 whatever) as the temperature changes during a performance.
In a pit situation these changes can be really extreme and it's virtually
impossible to stay on pitch, just keeping relative pitch between wind and strings is enough of a problem.
And how many recordings actually reproduce at exact pitch even assuming they were on pitch to start with?
And if yoy were brought up on 440 could you bear to listen to recordings done by say the Berlin Phil at 444+ ?
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Author: HCR
Date: 2011-10-25 21:05
I was told as a child, by my mother who had it, that I probably had perfect pitch (it was confirmed by testing in college). I'm sure that I learned what the pitches "should" be from PLAYING (not listening to) instruments tuned in equal temperament: from age 4 the family piano, kept scrupulously in tune, and then clarinet in a band that tuned to a StroboCohn. There may be people whose "ear" is so acute that they can pick out 440 Hz without ever having previously learned it from instruments or tuners, but I doubt it. I am certainly not one of them. I learned it from the instruments I played, and while I did play them, I could distinguish fine gradations in sharpness and flatness from A 440. I still can, once I hear A 440 again and tell myself that's what it is as a starting-point.
I found out the hard way, however, that I had to keep playing INSTRUMENTS to keep my pitch-memory up to par: see a note of music, do something conscious with my hands to produce it, and hear the result. [When my ear was fully up to scratch, I'd see a note, hear it, and do the hand-stuff. First attempt on an A clarinet, in 1967, weirded me out.] Church choir singing, which I've done uninterruptedly since age 8, doesn't fully do the job of keeping up my "ear." I gave up piano (wasn't much good at it) and for career reasons quit clarinet for nearly 40 years. By the time 30 years had gone by, I noticed that I was having serious difficulty, before choir rehearsal and for the first half-hour of it, identifying pitches on the organ/piano we sang with: I often found myself transposing my music until I forced my "ear" to adjust. I heard the accompaniment as a half-tone sharp, which means my ear's identifications were always a half-tone flat [hearing a B as a C, etc.; electronic tuner showed organ and rehearsal piano were at A = 441]. Adjusting didn't last, either: I had to do the tuning all over again at every semi-weekly rehearsal. I remember the same thing gradually happened to my mother after she quit playing piano. But when I resumed playing clarinet, my identifications improved. That reassured me that my problem had been one of pitch-memory, rather than one more example of everything sagging with creeping old age.
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Author: HCR
Date: 2011-10-25 21:29
Addendum, responding to sfalexi's post about identifying pitches in chords: there are varying degrees of being able to do it, as you probably know. When I was tested in college, and given dissonant chords to listen to without playing or hearing any music since the day before, my identifications were reliable up through four-note chords, and less so above that. There are undoubtedly better "ears" than mine, but I was told I still qualified as having perfect pitch and/or absolute pitch. By the way, the psych student who was monitoring our session asked me over and over again by what mental mechanism I did those IDs, and when I repeatedly gave him an honest answer ("I dunno, I just do"), he turned puce.
Responding to Norman Swale's post about "true perfect pitch": I can't speak for others, but while I can hear an ensemble going out of tune, it has to reach a half-tone flat or sharp before I even care very much IF I'M A PARTICIPANT. Then I care because I have to start transposing. If I'm listening to others as an audience member, I'm like the rest of you up to a point: I'm fine as long as those others stay in tune with one another, no matter where they wander. But if they aren't, and somebody gets too far off from the others, it sets my teeth on edge and I have to take a hike for a while. And yes, I have wasted some opera tickets . . .
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2011-10-25 22:30
HCR's responses include an idea that I've never heard before, that the pitch memory involved in perfect pitch needs to be maintained, which suggests, if I understand Helen correctly, the capacity (or the educationese word "aptitude") to learn to associate heard frequencies with note names is to some degree inborn and perhaps genetic but the application or ability or skill involved in making the associations is not only learned but later subject to atrophy from disuse.
[HRC wrote]
> I'm fine as long as those others stay in tune with one
> another, no matter where they wander. But if they aren't, and
> somebody gets too far off from the others, it sets my teeth on
> edge and I have to take a hike for a while.
I think that goes for most of us, with or without perfect pitch. I'm interested to read that your tolerance for deviation from the pitches you've learned as being true is so high.
Thanks.
Karl
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Author: annev
Date: 2011-10-25 23:49
My experience is pretty similar to Helen's. I made my comments at the end of the last thread (A clarinet discrimination). It takes playing the instrument to set the pitch associations. Daniel Levithin in his book, "This is your brain on music" has a discussion of the concept of perfect pitch. I read it some time ago but I seem to remember that the studies suggest that perfect pitch is a learned skill, however it involves some genetic predisposition as well since it does seem to run in families. The idea of it being a learned skill would also fit with Helen's comments that it can get rusty without regular use.
Perfect pitch doesn't make some one a good musician. It's just a tool, and pitch is only one of the many facets that are involved in making music. Some people have a great sense of rhythm, some easily create harmonies, some are great sight-readers - our brains are all wired differently.
I play/sing in various community groups. Most of the time, if intonation is an issue, I can park it somewhere else in my mind. It's like having a conversation in a crowded room - I just focus on the tones that are pleasing. Relative pitch is always more important then true pitch. Mostly I appreciate that we are all together to create music and find joy in that - it's a gift.
Post Edited (2011-10-26 02:25)
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Author: Barry Vincent
Date: 2011-10-26 02:41
I've always assumed that those who claim to have 'the sense of perfect pitch' are in the same category as those who claim to have 'the sense of psychic powers' More of an ego thing. And who decided that A440 was perfect anyway.
But I know a number of my fellow musicians who have an excellent 'sense of pitch' in that they have a good ear for intonation and can pre-hear intervals & chord progressions ect. All of them can play by ear any tune after they've heard it once or twice. It is apparently natural to them. This is my take on the so called 'sense of perfect pitch'
As for the rest of us , we just have to train ourselves to listen and over time our 'ear' developes a 'sense of pitch'
But then there are those 'head cold days' when it all goes out the window for a while.
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2011-10-26 03:04
There's also relative pitch, which I feel I have, but it only works on clarinets. I can hear a note, only on a clarinet, and tell you what note it is.
There is no way I could do this with a piano or any other instrument. I think relative pitch is sorta built in from hours and years of practice.
I envy those talented musicians that have perfect pitch. It must be exciting to be able to write music and hear the notes while putting the notes on paper with ink. Perhaps not even using a piano as a crutch.
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2011-10-26 13:23
Bob, I have that "relative" sense of pitch, knowing all of the notes being played on the Clarinet, but it also is on Sax too.
For Clarinet, it's a timberal thing. I wonder how many players have that? I would think a lot, but I know several very good players who don't have it.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2011-10-26 13:39
I have just graduated a kid with perfect pitch who's gone on to study music as a freshman. When he was younger he studied piano a great deal, and then converted to clarinet full time early in high school. In his case he has little difficulty transposing clarinet pitches to concert pitch regardless of clarinet he was playing or what instrument he was hearing, and he can take out a pot or pan, bang it, and tell you what concert pitch it is.
Another current student on mine almost certainly has perfect pitch, but he IS confused by the clarinet note not matching (by name) what he already knows.
Secondhand information, but if accurate then it displays that there are probably multiple shades of understanding within the sphere of "perfect pitch".
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: gsurosey
Date: 2011-10-26 17:54
My ability to hear pitches is (I think) why I can transpose as easily as I can. There are some rehearsals where I end up reading English Horn parts (if the Oboe II player doesn't have it with her or she isn't there). I say this because I see the part and having heard it before, know where the notes are supposed to go (for the longest time, I thought EH was in G when it's actually in F).
I'm actually more apt to mess it up if I try to think about where the written pitches are in relative to concert pitches. It's a little tougher for me with an A clarinet (especially reading, say, Alto Sax parts with the tritone transposition; that makes my brain hurt). I do read what I'm playing while transposing; it's not like I memorize the parts. The first time I ever played an A clarinet was when I was halfway through undergrad, so I hadn't worked with it nearly as much as a Bb clarinet.
As for being heriditary, I don't see it (in my family anyway). No one else in my family can hear/recognize like I can. And whoever said it can be a curse it so right! I'm not saying 440 is the be-all-end-all, but I go to some rehearsals for a group in that there are lots of times where we don't even agree on 440 at the start of rehearsal and it goes downhill from there.
Radio recordings get to me sometimes. I have heard pieces on the radio and wondered if they were re-written in a different key because they sounded so much higher/lower than a live performance (which makes playing along with recordings difficult as well).
----------
Rachel
Clarinet Stash:
Bb/A: Buffet R13
Eb: Bundy
Bass: Royal Global Max
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Author: HCR
Date: 2011-10-26 17:58
Karl, my tolerance of off-pitch-ness [need a noun? invent one] varies with how much I like the music and/or respect the players, something I suspect is in all of us. Like annev's statement, most of us can "switch off" irritation and focus in on what's good -- unless we're the one responsible for an ensemble's sound, or else we're impossible-to-please perfectionists towards everyone (a personality trait, not an auditory ability).
I agree heartily with annev: perfect pitch is a tool and doesn't make anybody a good musician. I tuned up my "ear" DECADES faster than I became even a decent musician on any instrument. There's an entirely different talent for musicianship (by that I mean playing expressively and "grabbing" your audience), and I don't have gobs of it naturally. Even now, I'm more like Tobin's student, who can bang on something and tell you what concert pitch it is. (Useful, when hunting around the house for bells, tin cans, etc. to add percussion to a song on sheet music.) Perhaps that kid is a natural musician, too (wonderful luck, if so)?
I'm almost as good as Barry Vincent's colleagues who can hear music and learn it fast (1-2 times for simple tunes, more times for most classical music). But I long ago concluded that it isn't a single ability: it's a matter of acute "ear" to identify the key the music's in, plus being trained (as I was by my piano teacher) to recognize patterns of chords and memorize them fast. I still find it useful in learning choir music fast and then helping the people next to me (if they ask!). But since I'm not obsessive about loving music (I'm obsessive about loving anthropology, the field I made my career in), quick memorizing makes me get bored with music very quickly, even complicated classical pieces. That's a detriment for a pro. It's also why I bang on things in choir practice while singing my part . . .
Response to Bob Bernardo: it would be "exciting" to be able to write (or write down) music without an instrument nearby if I had acquired the ability suddenly. But it's been business-as-usual for me pretty much all along. I began imitating symphony clarinetist solos on the record player at age 13, after playing clarinet a year. I can't remember ever wondering how Beethoven could continue writing music after going deaf; of COURSE the pitches would still be in his mind. The ability really paid off for me in undergraduate days, though, at a small college where I was saddled in my last 3 years with classmates who couldn't keep up with me technically (or wouldn't try to, with a girl). I found I could transcribe baroque trumpet music from records onto paper and keep my interest in the clarinet alive. After that, no recording was safe. Still isn't: last year after buying the music to "Il Baccio," I transcribed the Spike Jones addition to make it "Ill Barkio" (duet for soprano and dog), because I wanted to sing/howl the dog's part in a talent show. The dog is ultimately expected to howl on pitch up to a high B. And yipe higher, when kicked offstage. I did. Now, for me, THAT was excitement.
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Author: TianL
Date: 2011-10-26 18:24
Karl,
I have perfect pitch and I'll try to answer some of you questions. (More precisely, I have "relative perfect pitch", that is, out of nowhere if someone plays me one note, I can tell what it is; however, if out of nowhere someone asks me to sing a concert pitch, I cannot do it). I believe that there exists an "absolute perfect pitch" in which they can just sing any note.
Note that "relative perfect pitch" is different from "relative pitch". Most musicians would have the latter.
First of all, I would like to say that from my experience, (relative) perfect pitched is learned -- not born with. At least for me, it's learned. I can't say this about absolute perfect pitch though. That might or might not be born with.
Secondly, I didn't start clarinet until 8th grade and before that, I played a concert-pitched instrument for about eight years. That's when I learned the perfect pitch. Now, I believe that if I started playing clarinet when I was 4 (let's just assume it), then I'll also have perfect pitch, just that my "perfect pitch" will be in clarinet pitch (Bb).
Now, this explains why the fact that not many clarinetists (or any wind instruments players) have perfect pitch, because most of them start too late and have already lost this learning ability. On the other hand, many more string and piano players have perfect pitch. Just like learning languages, it's easy for kids to pick it up, but not easy for adults.
Thirdly, I will describe "how" I can tell what note it is when I hear it. All the notes sound "different" to me, even if they are played from the same instrument, they just sound different. I'm not exactly sure what's different though, but they just sound different.
Something interesting is that, if someone gives me a note that is off-tuned, then I will not be able to tell what it is. For instance, when someone sings (without accompaniment), it's often impossible for me to tell the pitch. If something is between an A and a G, I cannot tell it's between A and G. It has to either be an A or a G for me to be able to tell.
I think my above description answers some of your questions:
1. It's not that I learned the concert A first. I kinda just learned them all at the same time. Each note sounds different to me. It's not that I already have the A in my brain and then when I hear the first note, I try to figure out what it is. When I hear a note, I immediately know what it is.
2. When I started clarinet, obviously now that it's in the different pitch from what I'm used to. But this gave me no problem. Whenever I pick it up and start playing, my brain quickly switch to the pitch of Bb (thus the relative pitch dominates over the perfect pitch). If I play an open G on clarinet for example, it would sound like G to me immediately after I play the first note on clarinet.
3. Each time I play clarinet, I (subconsciously of course) tell myself what a note sounds like. Like when I play a G, I hear it, and I subconsciously tell myself that's a G. This has REDUCED by perfect pitch ability. I still have it, but I tend to get more confused now than before I started playing clarinet. This again proves that (relative) perfect pitch is a learned skill.
4. As a kid, I never "tried" to learn perfect pitch. At some point I just gained it. Just like when someone is young, he or she doesn't try to learn a language, but at some point he or she just picks it up.
Hope this helps.
Post Edited (2011-10-26 18:27)
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Author: Dick
Date: 2011-10-26 18:37
It seems to me that pitch ID ability (hear a note and name it) must be different from pitch sensititivity (which would apply primarily with regard to intervals - chords, or unison notes, or music as it moves along). Do those with good pitch ID have the same skill at various octaves? Pianos are generally tuned so that only the mid range is really in "perfect" tune - the intervals are stretched as the keyboard goes right and left. Does that cause difficulties with pitch ID?
Dick
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Author: davetrow
Date: 2011-10-26 19:00
FWIW, native tone language (e.g., Mandarin) speakers are almost nine times more likely to have perfect pitch than speakers of non-tonal languages, which seems to fit in with the need for practice noted above.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041114235846.htm
Dave Trowbridge
Boulder Creek, CA
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Author: HCR
Date: 2011-10-26 20:45
TianL, part of the test I took in college was to sing a note the prof. told me to sing, without an instrument to guide me. I could (and can). One more indication that Tobin is right: there are multiple kinds of “perfect pitch.” If my kind is “absolute perfect pitch,” then my kind is learned, too, but with a genetic advantage. I don’t remember, though, having any difficulty in switching to clarinet-named notes, as opposed to concert-named notes. My piano and clarinet years overlapped, and I unthinkingly went back and forth between the two. It means I absorbed ‘em both. When I got bored with the junior high band music and began fiddling with flute and oboe, I listened and then muttered, “same pitch as the piano,” and adjusted my expectations accordingly. Alto sax and French horn (fiddling in college) were harder, because I was older and/or they were built in pitches farther from C. But if I’d had occasion to keep at them – I didn’t – I probably could have learned instant identifications for them, too. Instead, when I hear others play them, I identify the pitch and then mentally transpose it before naming it (“concert C, sax’s G”).
TianL, I fear I have to disagree with you about most clarinet players starting too late to learn “perfect pitch.” For one thing, many kids are introduced to simpler instruments in grade school and go on to clarinet later as a “serious” instrument, so exposure to pitches and intervals comes early. For another, I’m successfully relearning to tune my ear, and I’m a senior citizen. For yet another, take note of Dave’s comment, based on the ScienceDaily article, about speakers of tonal languages having a leg-up on perfect pitch; it would be because of learning to speak their languages “properly,” regardless of genetic predisposition: again, a learning process. It may come a bit harder later in life, as it does with languages, but we can still do that learning. The brain of Dear Old Homo Sap is capable of such feats.
Dick, I’ve never noticed any difficulty in identifying piano notes except in the lowest and highest octaves. I don’t have more difficulty, moving outward from Middle C; only difficulty in those two octaves.
One last response to TianL: like you, I learned the pitches all at once, and they “always” sounded different to me. Not only that, but in my mind they have different colors [e.g., D = yellow] and different personalities [e.g., Bb minor is not only serious but portentious]. I suspect that I picked up these impressions because of the key choices of the classical composers I grew up hearing. So that leads me to a question for the ClarinetBB at large: do you suppose that the composers themselves “saw” pitches and keys as quite different from one another, which in turn influenced their choices in writing music? Does anybody know of historical evidence about it? I’ve wanted to know the answer to that one for a long, long time.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2011-10-26 21:01
Many music theorists have written about the characteristics of different keys, and some composers have deliberately followed these descriptions. Another thing to consider is that this was in the time before equal temperament, so different keys also had different tunings, which must also have added to their individual character, even for listeners without perfect pitch. One of the most famous descriptions is by Christian Schubart. Here's a link:
http://www.wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html
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Author: William
Date: 2011-10-26 21:08
Most people that I know to have "perfect pitch" were born with it and did not develop it. One orchestral clarinetist with perfect pitch told me that she has spent her entire life transposing to compensate for the written/sounding differences. Many other "legit" players also consider PP a liability, especially those that play transposing instruments--horn, trumpet, sax, etc. The only players that liked their PP were the jazzers--those that play a lot "by ear". Also, arrangers and composers who can pretty much write down what they hear in their minds or in their environment. Me, I'm glad I do not have the PP curse and am quite happy with a good case of relative pitch.
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Author: HCR
Date: 2011-10-28 16:18
I wasn't able to pull up the Science Daily article that Dave listed, but I found what he may have been referring to in a 2009 article on that site:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172202.htm
Makes me want to read the original report, technical as it may be.
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Author: stevesklar
Date: 2011-10-30 17:08
I was claimed to have perfect pitch in high school (a few years ago). I could tune from a player just playing. I could hear the tuning pitch as they play through and continue hearing it in my head and tune to it (whether the other player was playing or not) or just tune without any reference.
For me, the key always was hearing the specific tone in my head and duplicating it on the instrument. This also allowed me to "ghost" play someone playing music without knowing the music nor seeing them play.
nowadays it really helps in tuning pianos. I can "hum" all the semitones in my head and compare it to the note I'm tuning. But I still use a tuner with me just in case .. the extreme higher and lower notes on a piano confuse my brain.
==========
Stephen Sklar
My YouTube Channel of Clarinet Information
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Author: Elkwoman46
Date: 2011-11-01 14:20
I am observing from what has been written here and what I observed around me, is that children's foundation in music is very important...I see that children who are exposed to parents/teachers that teach correctly on pitch, really do have the advantage. I also perceive that people can be blessed with a voice that can sing what they hear too, while others can't sing and thereby, have the disadvantage of not making their voice cooperate to play in tune perfectly. Furthermore, I think this causes others to believe they can't hear at all and have a tin ear. And even more, I think some people in shyness or excitement, lose some of their ability to hear because there might be more of a roaring in the ear because of personal reasons when in public. I really believe that some people have to overcome a lot of setbacks in this way to perform publicly.
But I do believe that some people who start off wrong, like I did playing something out of tune, can learn to play and hear in tune by hearing correctly and making the effort to play an instrument absolutely in tune every time. I believe also that chromatic tuners have helped people beyond, beyond, to get better and "see" things more clearly, what their instrument is doing and what they are doing. Once hearing correctly, the world changes, for the sounds really begin to change and their is an amazing pitch that begins to be heard...it is just wonderful to hear it when one gets to that place. To be in that route of playing, hearing just gets better and better.
I know that through the years, I have only gotten better at hearing properly. I should say, I also grew up in a family where music playing was discouraged in various ways for some reason. Many years later I found out that I had a grandfather that played instruments "and" had a great ear. I say all that because I see that beginnings can be like kind of a joke, but why would God give a person a desire in their heart, and not complete it with the talent or ability? I think He does.
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2011-11-02 12:00
A couple things about the OP-
People with "perfect pitch" cannot necessarily tell the difference between 440 and 445, except in comparison, of course.
If a person with perfect pitch walked in your house and you sat down at the piano and played a note, they might say that it is a C, but not "It's a C, but 3 cents flat."
I don't have perfect pitch, but I know a few people that do, and all of them had a variance as to how accurate their perception was. With one person, for example, he could literally tell you all the notes of any chord or cluster you played- Mozart or Xenakis, he always knew what notes were being played. However, when you asked him to sing a note, say Eb, he would usually be on the sharp side in the morning and on the flat side at night. It was still a very accurate Eb sung at any time of day in any context, but his pitch changed a little throughout the day. Another person I knew was the opposite, flat in the morning, sharp at night.
And his (the former example) pitch playing- OMG! He was a concert master, but his pitch when he was playing something the first few times was ghastly!! He took care of it, and after a few hours everything sounded fine, but never on the first reading.
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Author: oboesax
Date: 2011-11-02 20:33
Interesting thread. My daughter, 16, seems to have "relative perfect pitch" as described above. She learned sax, oboe and clarinet all in 3rd-4th grade. She can hit 440 pitch right on every time on oboe, and can also play every other note on each of her instruments in tune (although she's not as exact when playing fast notes). When playing in ensembles or pit orchestras, she automatically adjusts her pitch to match the others, even though they are the ones slightly off-pitch (since they tuned to the oboe A at 440 initially). One musical director recently noticed this about her in the pit. She says she does begin to lose this ability if she takes time off from practicing her scales with the tuner. It does bother her though to hear some top sax players (classical) perform as some of them tune their saxes very sharp.
Although I'm not a professional musician, I did play flute throughout college. One day I got tired of the graduate flute students always blaming the piccolo player (me) for intonation problems. I checked out the old huge "strobo-tuner" and learned to play every note in tune on piccolo every time. It felt good to be vindicated in wind ensemble.
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Author: SarahC
Date: 2016-07-19 14:19
Skygardener.. I'm searching online regarding perfect pitch and teaching clarinet and came across this thread.
If you are still reading this.. both my 9 year old and 7 year old son can hear a note and say "that is a tiny bit flat of middle C".. they wouldn't be able to tell how many cents, but they both know. I ingrained pitch into them very young It was a conscious decision to teach them pitch.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-07-19 17:39
SarahC wrote:
> .. both my 9 year old and 7 year
> old son can hear a note and say "that is a tiny bit flat of
> middle C".. they wouldn't be able to tell how many cents, but
> they both know. I ingrained pitch into them very young It
> was a conscious decision to teach them pitch.
It's interesting that you ran across this thread, which I started in 2011, since I asked the same question then that I asked you in your recent thread about teaching (and to which I still haven't read a really clear answer).
Granted that discrete hundredths of a semitone (cents) would be hard for any human ear to discriminate. I'm still fascinated by the idea that someone with perfect pitch would call 440 Hz an in tune A and 450 Hz (a little over a quarter of a semitone) as "a tiny bit sharper than A." Does someone in (from what I've always read) Berlin hear 440 Hz as "a little flat of A?" Do Americans and Russians (where, again as I've read, the standard A is around 435 Hz) experience unremitting discomfort when they hear music played in Berlin? Or even when they listen to the Berlin Philharmonic on recordings?
Without wanting to make too dramatic or reactionary a point about this, I can't see how deliberately learning (or teaching) that a particular set of frequencies is "right" and all others that deviate from them are "a tiny bit flat [sharp]" - i.e. "wrong" - can be a benefit. Simply being able to reproduce melodies or harmonic structures by ear (or perform them accurately from notation) doesn't depend on absolute pitch if relative pitch is strongly developed - you just need to know the starting note.
I can't shake the feeling that the inconveniences and discomforts, including but not limited to the problem of playing transposing instruments that generated your more recent thread, of being bound to a specific frequency as the "correct" rendering of a given pitch outweigh whatever benefit I've read about. Nature doesn't define A4 or "middle" C.
In my humble opinion, which is probably not shared very widely and which you will probably find anathema, is that little of practical use is gained by learning absolute pitch and a great deal of difficulty can result from it that requires a lot of accommodation to resolve conflicts that needn't exist.
But then, I'm obviously prejudiced - I don't have perfect pitch so I can't know what I'm missing.
Karl
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2016-07-19 18:34
I studied Piano Tuning - that gives an amazing sense of pitch without having perfect pitch.
Though there also is the ability to know each note being played on the Clarinet by ear, regardless of speed. Many (pro) players have that - timbral differences give each note away.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Wes
Date: 2016-07-19 22:58
Often, I hear a note and know what it is because it is the same note that a known phrase starts on. For example, C# because that is the first note of the flute solo of "Afternoon of a Fawn". Or E because that is the first solo note of the Mozart Concerto. Sometimes, a note can be identified because of it's character not because of it's pitch, such as the low D on a flute, as Mr. Blumberg indicated with reference to the clarinet.
A is a memory note because I've played it so often on the oboe for tuning and I can sing it with no reference if I am actively playing in an orchestra, although I could not sing an Eb with no reference.
When I studied some with the late Warne Marsh, one of his exercises was to learn to identify by ear the various triads, major, minor, augmented, diminished, and their inversions when someone else played them on the piano. That turned out to be easier than one would think.
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Author: JonTheReeds
Date: 2016-07-20 02:14
My teacher has perfect pitch, in that she can name a note and say whether it is flat or sharp relative to A=440 tuning. BUT she says that this only lasts a day or so and needs 'topping up'. Her husband on the other hand has constant perfect pitch and can always name notes (he is a pianist)
I think this (totally unscientific) example indicates that perfect pitch may just be an incredible memory for pitch. There is no reason that A=440, or even Western note intervals, are special in any way
But a combination of pitch memory and interval judgement would give perfect pitch
Perfect pitch stories
1. I knew a pianist at school whose party piece was for people to play random chords on a piano (up to 10 notes) and he would name them all
2. Another pianist I know with perfect pitch who sang in a choir as a child was not rated as a musician because they thought he couldn't sing in tune, whereas in reality he couldn't sing out of tune. He said he relaxed more as he got older and started to sing in tune with others. He said that different tunings were like different hues of a colour, but still preferred A=440
--------------------------------------
The older I get, the better I was
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-07-20 07:19
Wes wrote:
> Often, I hear a note and know what it is because it is the same
> note that a known phrase starts on. For example, C# because
> that is the first note of the flute solo of "Afternoon of a
> Fawn". Or E because that is the first solo note of the Mozart
> Concerto.
But what C# or E do you hear? If you listen carefully (or even not so carefully) to recordings of those pieces, they will not all be exactly the same C# or E - different orchestras tune to different standards.
> Sometimes, a note can be identified because of it's
> character not because of it's pitch, such as the low D on a
> flute, as Mr. Blumberg indicated with reference to the
> clarinet.
>
Again, different instruments will produce different pitch variants of those notes - especially if you're using your memory of an extreme note of an instrument's compass. Low E on a clarinet or a low D on a flute will be slightly flat to the rest of the instrument unless the player is deliberately compensating. Sure, I can probably recognize a low E by its timbre if a clarinet is playing it - but it may be either a concert E, D or C# (I probably couldn't recognize a note played on an Eb clarinet - it's too different in timbre from the soprano clarinets).
> A is a memory note because I've played it so often on the oboe
> for tuning and I can sing it with no reference if I am actively
> playing in an orchestra, although I could not sing an Eb with
> no reference.
>
This puzzles me - if you know what an A sounds like, Eb is a diminished fifth higher, which is an interval that can be learned even without perfect pitch.
And, yet again (I know I sound like a broken record), what A are you able to sing? 440? 442? The tuning note you play that becomes so familiar is not necessarily the same one an oboist in another part of the world learns to accept as A.
> When I studied some with the late Warne Marsh, one of his
> exercises was to learn to identify by ear the various triads,
> major, minor, augmented, diminished, and their inversions when
> someone else played them on the piano. That turned out to be
> easier than one would think.
Assuming you mean accurately naming the absolute pitches, I've always regarded this as something of a parlor trick. I'm not sure what it's useful for that isn't equally well served by a strong sense of relative pitch. And in what practical music setting do you need to be able to identify randomly selected pitches or chords by their absolute pitches?
Karl
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Author: maxopf
Date: 2016-07-20 08:47
I think everyone's perfect pitch is a little different. I have it, but I can identify notes in different pitch standards, within a reasonable range. I can tell when an orchestra is tuning higher or lower, but A is still A to me in any of the common pitch standards (440, 442, 443, etc), and when adjusting for just intonation.
Baroque pitch strays far enough that A definitely sounds like a G#, but I can adapt my perfect pitch for different tuning standards or transpositions (unfamiliar ones, like baroque pitch, require more thinking though). Playing Bb, A, Eb clarinet isn't an issue, since I can think about the written pitch and the concert pitch independently.
I've always played at 440, but I'm at Idyllwild now and we're tuning to 442. It's definitely higher than I'm used to, but it doesn't really bother me much. Some people get really thrown off by other pitch standards though.
As far as the practicality of perfect pitch goes — it makes playing things by ear much easier, it's helped a lot with musical dictations in theory class, it helps you quickly identify who's playing what notes in an ensemble context, etc. I wouldn't call it completely worthless.
I agree that perfect pitch is not of much use without good relative pitch though.
Post Edited (2016-07-20 08:50)
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Author: Wes
Date: 2016-07-20 23:48
In regard to being able to sing the A tuning note without a reference, it is the same as the 440 note, not a 442 note, as the 442 note was not practiced frequently. Playing at A440 is common practice where I live, not A442. While I've made thousands of A440 reeds, I have never successfully made a A442 reed, since the fairly new Loree and Laubin oboes I have were built to ring at A440 and don't like to play at A442 without pinching the reed while playing.
While clarinet players find playing at A442 not such a big deal, oboe players find it a big deal. In the recent past, there were significant problems with a major New York orchestra that started because of this and even resulted in a lawsuit. The orchestra had bought A442 percussion instruments that the oboist did not find comfortable to play with.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-07-21 04:23
Wes wrote:
> The orchestra had bought A442 percussion instruments that the
> oboist did not find comfortable to play with.
Well, yes, that's another problem with becoming accustomed to identifying 440 Hz as A and 442 Hz as not A (or "a bit sharp of A" as it was put earlier). An orchestra really needs to commit to a pitch, but that commitment may be different in different places.
Karl
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