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Re: "Perfect" pitch and Bb/A clarinets

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2018-03-31 21:35

I think "pitch memory" is a better description. I think the ability to associate specific frequencies with specific pitch names is probably inborn (and one poster here fairly recently insisted nearly everyone has it) but, like so many other natural abilities, it's stronger in some than in others. There still needs, I think, to be consistent exposure to a set of "correct" pitches for the learner to develop "perfect pitch," and those pitches *must* be locally determined. I've never met anyone who had "perfect pitch" who didn't grow up in an A440 locale. But I've always been curious about how a person with "perfect pitch" from an area that uses A=435 or A=445, etc. fares when he or she begins playing consistently in a different pitch environment. Does he over time re-calibrate his sense of pitch to the local tuning?

And a biggie (I think) - is "perfect pitch" as modern musicians experience it based on equal temperament, just temperament or something else? Are these musicians bothered when they hear notes tuned outside the temperament they've learned by rote?

I know an oboist who, long ago, played clarinet but gave it up because she couldn't get used to hearing the "wrong" notes when she played clarinet. But she still uses a Korg to check her tuning note when she tunes an orchestra. Is "perfect pitch" not that accurate - just gets the person "in the ballpark?"

Karl

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