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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The Clarinet BBoard
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