 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Filipe T.
Date: 2001-10-24 00:41
do I have perfect pitch???? Here's something really weird that I once heard my pastor say:
"when a woman is pregnant, and her father/ mother sing a lot to the baby, the baby will like singing," (is this true???) well, it happened to me(i think) . When i was in my mother's stomach, she played the piano a lot, and as it turns out, i love music and i have an easy time with it. But when I was born, my mom payed a lot of attention to me, so she stopped playing the piano. At the same time, my mom got pregnant, again, this time it was my sister. and my mom didn't play the piano, and as it turns out, my sister does not like music, and she has a hard time playing her flute. is this making any sense to you????
Oh, yeah, back to my question;
do I have perfect pitch???? When someone plays a note on the the piano, i can identify it very easily. What I do is I sing "a" on top of that note, and somehow I instantly know what that note is. is that perfect pitch????
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Author: John Gould
Date: 2001-10-24 01:11
If you are referencing the note to an A you can always sing, then it sounds like you might have a variation of relative pitch. The fact that you can sing an A at will implies you likely have undeveloped perfect pitch. Although I'm sure there are many, many definitions of what is perfect pitch, the following is a pretty good description:
The ability to
A) sing a pitch when asked, in tune. (If someone says "Sing an Ab", you immediately sing an Ab.) Related to this is the ability to sight-sing, on pitch.
B) Identify a pitch (or pitches) being played, usually within a wide range (say, a piano's).
C) Identify pitches to within a few cents (hz, etc.) of sharp or flat. That is, if someone plays an A and then someone else plays that same A, you can tell which one is closer to being in tune.
D) Immediately play back a short phrase or line of music, and/or transcribe what you've heard with a minimum of re-hearings. Related to this, is the ability to identify chords, including the inversions, extensions, etc.
People with perfect pitch do this with hardly any hesitation, with dead-on accuracy, and can usually develop what they have towards an even greater ability to hear. Does this mean that the possession of perfect pitch is a requirement for becoming a great musician? No. Does it mean it can help? Yes. Can it be taught?
Don't even go there! (I think it can [to some extent], others would disagree).
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Author: George
Date: 2001-10-24 03:10
I've heard some definitions :
Active Perfect Pitch : You can sing any note, without reference and recognize any note you hear.
Passive Perfect Pitch : You can only recognize the notes you hear, but can't sing a desired note without a previous reference.
I don't have perfect pitch, came from a non-musical family and started my musicalization very late (16 years old). When studying solfegio, I ever used a metal diapason to take the 440Hz "A". After 2 years I developed the capacity of, without the diapason, clearly "hear" the same "A" in my mind, just bringing my hand close to my ear. It's a kind of condicionment that's very useful to me. My ratio of sucess is 95% right "A"s. My girlfriend (pianist) developed the same.
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2001-10-24 07:42
What you've said about babies learning music before they are born is true. Experiments have been done where babies were played a particular tune before they were born, and much later (maybe six months), they were able to identify the tune from similar sounding ones. Zoltan Kodaly, the Hungarian composer and music educator said that a child's music training should begin nine months before they are born. Later he revised this to nine months before the parents are born, to show the enormous importance of parents in a child's musical education. Parents should sing to their children. If the parent is not a good singer, the child will not learn as quickly as if the parent is a good singer, but it is still better than not singing at all.
Perfect pitch is something that you can develop over time. It is a very good memory for the pitch of notes. It is of very little use in the modern world. A good sense of relative pitch is much more important. If someone plays a C, can you sing a perfect G? Can you sing an scale of semitones from C up to C and still be in tune at the end of it. Can you sing one quarter tone sharp when everyone around you is singing flat? These are the important things in music.
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Author: Jim (E)
Date: 2001-10-25 04:47
My wife practiced and performed the entire time she carried our son including singing a concert 48 hours before she went into labor. I suspect though that our son's interest in music comes more from being dragged to rehearsals from the time he was an infant, and there is always a LOT of music in this house. Whatever did it, it worked!
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Author: Anna
Date: 2001-10-25 08:08
Perfect pitch, as John Gould said, is really the ability to sing a note when someone asks you to. Being able to identify a note when it is played, to my mind, is something different, because I'm one of these people that believes in "coloured hearing" - ie each key has a different "colour" which it sounds like - don't ask me to explain that, because I can't. The technical term for this is "synaesthesia" and it's an interesting concept! (If you want to know more, drop me a lineHowever, I've got off track. What I call perfect pitch can theoretically be developed. I know I wasn't born with it, but through years of playing in an orchestra I can now almost always pick an "A" (at 440!) out of thin air. Other notes I can pick because I can hear them in relation to the A I can hear in my head.
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Author: Anna
Date: 2001-10-25 08:08
Perfect pitch, as John Gould said, is really the ability to sing a note when someone asks you to. Being able to identify a note when it is played, to my mind, is something different, because I'm one of these people that believes in "coloured hearing" - ie each key has a different "colour" which it sounds like - don't ask me to explain that, because I can't. The technical term for this is "synaesthesia" and it's an interesting concept! (If you want to know more, drop me a line) However, I've got off track. What I call perfect pitch can theoretically be developed. I know I wasn't born with it, but through years of playing in an orchestra I can now almost always pick an "A" (at 440!) out of thin air. Other notes I can pick because I can hear them in relation to the A I can hear in my head.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-10-25 22:27
From Websters online: Perfect pitch = Absolute pitch
Main Entry: absolute pitch
Function: noun
Date: 1864
1 : the position of a tone in a standard scale independently determined by its rate of vibration
2 : the ability to recognize or sing a given isolated note
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Author: Jennifer Lynn
Date: 2001-10-26 14:20
My question about this whole perfect pitch thing is...perfect pitch in relation to what? A-440 being standard? Many orchestra's tune between A-441 and A-443. So if you are an orchestral player that has perfect pitch, with A matching 440, you are screwed until you adjust. Or so I would assume...
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Author: Emms
Date: 2001-11-06 22:59
Apparently, scientifically, we are all born with perefect pitch, but most of us lose it as we get older. some of us can re-learn certain notes, but transposing instrument players will learn in relation to their instrument, ie concert Bb - clarinetists C.This can be very confusing. Very few people carry perfect pitch into adulthood.
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