Posted on 11/16/2014 7:51:18 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
I knew a man with perfect pitch who was so handicapped by it, he couldn't play anything if it he was hearing the music sung in a different key.
I learned to sight-read while transposing on the fly into a different key. It used a certain neurological pathway; it got to be difficult to play in the written key—the customary neurological pathway was different, "too simple".
What is perfect pitch? Neuroscientist Diana Deutsch at UC San Diego found that people whose native language is tonal—Chinese—have a higher propensity to have perfect pitch. Also people with mixed-hand preference, the form of left-handedness that makes them write "scrunched-over", have abnormally high communication between brain hemispheres through the corpus callosum, the dividing membrane that's deliberately injured in lobotomy. People in non-literate societies have a much higher incidence of perfect pitch, as do children before kindergarten. It's an ability that's lost when undergoing the neurological transition to the world of spatial, technical object use.
What's it like having perfect pitch? The ususal "trick" is that, in music class, one geeky, teacher's pet "can tell you what key is being played on the piano". That's not the lifelong reality.
The reality is like Jason in The Giver, being able to see colors while everyone else in his society is color blind.
It can still be a disability: Listening to someone who sings flat, is like eating a piece of sour, unripe fruit. That poor person who wasted a life in thousands of hours of practice, only to run up against a glass ceiling of achievement, should have been evaluated while first being triaged in elementary school music class: "Hmm, Suzie, maybe you'd better take percussion."
Still, when transported into ecstasy listening to Jascha Heifets or Midori playing violin, it's worth the pain. Not so with Anne-Sophie Mutter or Yo-Yo Ma—they have other gifts, of phrasing, or dynamics, or expressiveness—but they very distinctly "do not have perfect pitch".
I was fortunate to have been able to hear and experience Wayne Newton in Las Vegas, just a few months before he retired.
Mr. Newton, whom I have always respected and admired, was definitely not at his best, sad to say.
But...
His band was absolutely smokin'.
And among his band, the bassist was totally kick ass.
The bassist was the hottest thing in that band, and that's really saying something. The bassist was so good, he seemed to make the whole performance. Just off the wall, dynamite good.
Perfect pitch is when you throw the accordion into the dumpster and it lands right on the banjo. :-)
You hear every wrong note...it just ruins a lot of concerts you would like to enjoy.
“Beauty is in the eye of the Beer holder.”
Thanks! That is CLASSIC!
The jury is still out on Alfalfa!
Well ‘90s for sure.
Yeah, I was rooting for the Royals too.
As did Sandy Koufax.
>> Bass is ultimately the confidence of the band. <<
You got it right. In other words, bass = base!
“Anne Murray has perfect pitch. So did Harry Nilsson.”
Karen Carpenter too, IIRC.
Ahh, well. I pretty much stopped following pop music in the early '90s, so no one comes to mind. The only female singers I can even think of from the 90s are Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, and Mariah Carey. They're not very good, but they sing in tune at least as far as I'm aware.
Back in 1976 I had the outrageous good fortune to fall into a situation where I was jammin’ with Mike Clark and Paul Jackson for a few months. Paul was the bass player on Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters record and on Thrust, Mike Clark on Thrust. Those were flat out my favorite records at the time and those two were my favorite bass/drums. Blam, suddenly I am playing with them. They were straight out Oakland hangout musicians at the time.
The saying about bass “Bass is the confidence of the band” was from PJ, and it struck me as not only so fundamentally true, but also stated in a way that was very much like Paul played. Good times. They were of course way over my level, ability wise, but I don’t say that like it’s a bad thing.
The author obviously doesn’t know what perfect pitch is. He confuses perfect (or “absolute”) pitch with relative pitch, with the ability to identify chords and keys, and with what is simply a “good musical ear.”
Strictly speaking, “perfect” or “absolute” pitch is just the ability to identify or recreate a specific note in isolation. No more, no less. For example, if I strike the C-note on my piano, and nothing else, a musician with PP with know it’s a C. Or if I ask him to vocalize a Db, he can do so right away without having heard any “reference” tone.
Now if a person with perfect pitch has a modicum of musical education, he or she will almost always also (a) have relative pitch, (b) will be able to identify keys by ear, and (c) will know right away when a performer plays or sings a note that’s out of tune.
But the converse isn’t necessarily true, neither for (a), for (b) nor for (c). For example, and personally speaking, I cringe when a performer is sharp or flat, or when a guitarist or pianist plays a wrong chord. In my opinion, I have a decent musical ear. But I certainly don’t have perfect pitch. No way!
Moreover, I don’t even have good relative pitch, and I can’t tell if a song meant to be played in Db is actually being performed in the key of C. I’m sure this description will fit many other amateur musicians like me.
I am not sure if I have “perfect pitch” or not. But I started taking violin lessons at school when I was in the 4th grade. My music teacher was amazed that I could tune it by ear. Not using a pitch pipe or anything.
At first he didn’t believe me and thought my mother had been tuning it for me at home. She had played the piano and studied classical voice and when she was younger, she sang at church and on several local radio programs in her late teens and at even got an invitation to audition with the Metropolitan Opera, but never went through with it and soon married my dad.
So to test to see if I could really do it, he un-tuned it and handed it back to me. I started with the A string and then the others and sure enough it was perfectly in tune.
That’s not to say I ever learned to play the violin particularly well, I was good enough to get a seat on the all city high school orchestra, but was in the second row, not nearly good enough for 1st, 2nd or 3rd chair. But I did know when I (and others) missed notes. Unfortunately unlike my late mother, I can’t sing my way out of a wet paper bag and I know it.
I have perfect pitch. In fact it runs in my family. Another sibling has it and two of my nieces...
I approached it as a mechanical task, no feeling whatsoever. Did not help that I had that whitemans' disease of no sense of rhythm either.....
>> I am not sure if I have “perfect pitch” or not. But I started taking violin lessons at school when I was in the 4th grade. My music teacher was amazed that I could tune it by ear. Not using a pitch pipe or anything. <<
Yep, you’ve got perfect pitch — or at least, you certainly had it “back in the day.”
Don't look to the industry. They pump crap. They turned the Beatles (a guitar group) into a boy band (who happened to break away from the mold that was being forced on them). Several major labels (Decca, MGM, VeeJay) didn't know what to do with them.
There exists a whole music business that is not the major label (Sony, WEA, Capitol, Columbia) conglomerates. They don't get on the covers of the Time-Warner published magazines, or hyped by Viacom or Clear Channel/LiveNation but they exist for decades producing new albums and touring.
One of the best trumpeters I’ve ever heard is Brian Casserly, the co-bandleader of Cornet Chop Suey, a jazz band from St Louis.
I’ve seen every performance they’ve ever done at the Medford Jazz Jubilee over the last 13 years, and he is incredible, always blows everyone away!
He often plays single-handedly, and it’s a wonder to watch.
My sister watched Maynard Ferguson play live once, and she was astounded, I wish I’d’a been able to go to the performance with her, he was an amazing trumpeter.
Ed
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