Beauty is in the eye of the Beer holder.
This strikes me as over-wrought.
Anne Murray has perfect pitch. So did Harry Nilsson.
I agree. Technical excellence in the science of execution rather than the result and appreciation for it, is pretty much meaningless to me.
More Cowbell!
There is no such thing as perfect pitch. A perfectly tuned piano is flat on the low end and sharp on the high end and every interval is out of pitch just slightly so that it balances out. Thirds are tuned sharp and they get sharper and sharper as you go up the scale. Fifths are tuned flat. Pianos are tempered so that you can play in every key.
Violins and trombones are capable of playing in perfect pitch but then if any vibrato is applied, (and it always is) then the player is constantly pulling the pitch up and down.
I never heard any of them complain about other people singing out of tune or playing an instrument out of tune. It seemed to me like they were able to effortlessly accommodate out-of-tune sounds.
There seem to me to be different degrees of perfect pitch. Some people who have it can identify individual notes by ear alone, and can always sing in tune with no "gliss" into the note from silence. Others can identify every note in a chord, or even every note in a cacophony (as when you just slam your hands randomly down on a piano keyboard).
One of those with whom I was a close friend once demonstrated to me how she could hear and identify every pitch I uttered while I was talking. I would just say a conversational phrase, like "I'm looking out the window," and she would play every note of my utterance on the piano. That was uncanny.
The other close friend who had P-P had, in addition, the talent of being able to sight-read even quite complex musical scores for piano (jazz, classical music, show tunes), playing them nearly perfectly the first time through, both hands, just as written. He could also instantly translate anything he sight-read into any key he wished, without any noticeable hesitation.
Those two, the ones I knew well, seemed to me at times to be almost super-human. Their musical talents were so far beyond mine as to make me feel truly like a lesser order of human. Either of them could effortlessly leave my most concerted struggles in the dust.
Knowing them was a big part of the reason why I decided not to pursue music as a career; once upon a time, I was quite devoted to music.
When I played guitar a lot I had an easy time picking up on missed notes and tuning issues.
One night I was in a bar in Mannheim with friends and an Irish guy played guitar on stage. I told my friends he was out of tune and they didn’t believe me. He stopped his set early and took out his tuner.
They were surprised I heard the difference; I was surprised they couldn’t.
As with anything involving human abilities, some have gifts and have differing abilities to apply these gifts. Probably the attitude one has towards such things affects the scenarios where the gift(s) come into play. I suffer the (very common) male deficiency of color ‘blindness’ and have frequently wondered if there is such a thing as perfect color vision. Anybody know?
I have relative pitch, but this is as a result of ear training and I believe many people can acquire it should they want it enough to put in the effort.
I’m not that sure having perfect pitch would be all that helpful. The people I have known who have PP somehow found out about it at a very young age (probably from such obsolete neanderthal programs as music in schools) and were far more involved than average in music training from a very young age. So, if they stuck with music from such a young age, they have lots of years of training/exposure under their belts and have developed various abilities to highish levels. Nothing unexpected there.
I am *very* sensitive to pitch; Hearing out of tune music will really bug me. Some Kenny G records drive me completely batty, as he is rather frequently out of tune.
I play guitar, when my strings get too old, they lose upper harmonic content and they will sound flat; for a brief period of time I can’t get them to sound in tune at various points on the neck unless I tune the open string sharp, but that only goes so far, and not very. At that point I have to replace the strings or the overall effect impinges on my ability to “play what I hear”. On a 5-night a week gig, a set of strings will definitely not last a full week. By night 4 I will be in hell. So they have to get swapped end of night 3, and frankly I am happy to see them go because by then, they suck.
After years of playing in bands with the misery of transposing “on the fly”, I now let my roland do it for me. I just play it in C or G, etc, and it comes out in the key I set it too. I know, it’s not purist, but it works for me. I started on trumpet but never learned to read bass clef (left hand) too well, I go by the Nashville numbering system and use fake books a lot. But, I have fun with it!
I wouldn't know myself; though I can more-or-less match pitch in a group, my own tendency is toward a flattish contralto, and I can be strangely annoyed by the odd, pointy twanginess of a piano.
The "scrunched-over" doesn't happen if one simply angles their sheet of paper from the right-handed position at 10 o'clock to the 2 o'clock position. Opposite hand = opposite paper position. Simple. No brainer.
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.
The jury is still out on Alfalfa!
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.....