I thought you might all find this interesting. I saved this from another newslist several years ago, (I think, Pipe Organs). I didn't save the author's name, forgive me for not being able to attribute it to the rightful author. She has a lot of interesting things to say about perfect pitch. It's well worth the long read. Steven Lewis Ft Worth, TX ------------------ Since this discussion was going on a week ago when I was on vacation, and I was addressing what had been written then when I wrote before, and perhap some people with questions should re-read some of those things that were written last week. The ones about and by people with absolute pitch seemed pretty accurate to me. Andrew Lane asked: When you say you hear "wrong" notes, do you just mean a singer singing the right note slightly off-pitch, or actually singing the wrong note? Indeed, either or both. Wouldn't any alert listener notice a "wrong" note, even without absolute/relative pitch? I would hope so, but they would have to know the music pretty well to determine, right off the bat, whether the "wrong" note is wrong or not, i .e. if it fits in with the chord, it isn't so noticeable, and such. I fear that for you to describe having perfect pitch to me is like describing colour to one born blind, but I'm fascinated by the idea. I can say a few things that would maybe help, because some people on the List have made some observations and asked some questions, but with no real answers forthcoming, and also because it is my belief that most of us with absolute pitch really do not discuss it much, and it really is difficult to discuss, actually, because a lot of people don't understand it. But I'll make a small attempt. I *will* point out that some of these things can be done also by people with much experience or training, but to whom they do *not* come naturally, and it is sometimes really hard for me to draw any line between where natural abilitty ends and training begins. I'll also say that I prefer the term "absolute" pitch, but for no other reason than the word "perfect" bothers me, and I never knew what it meant anyway. I will also say that, in my humble or not-so-humble opinion, people with absolute pitch are not of the same amount of intelligence or ability to adjust, so what "throws" some might not throw others. I discovered that in my theory class in college. Someone on the List was debating whether one was actually born with this ability or is it learned. Of course, one is born with the ability, just as a person with a photographic memory is born with that ability, or a natural athlete is born with extraordinary coordination. While others may be *taught* something that comes close to the same ability, these people are born with ability and so it never has to be learned. That's the way it is with the pitch memory. There are many skilled musicians who, after years of work and experience, may be able to approximate it, but the thought processes in arriving there is not the same, and the person with absolute pitch already knew these things from an early age, without ever having to learn it in the first place. Someone suggested it is learned because you have to know the name of the note to identify it. That is not true, any more than you need to know words in order to think. Being able to label things, of course, is most handy, whether is is language or musical notation. But, a person with absolute pitch *knows* whether a note is a note, whether or not he knows the actual name of it. So, one person remembers a note two minutes later. A person with absolute pitch remembers it twenty years later, or forty, just as you might see an Aardvark once, and twenty years later can still recognize that it's an aardvark. Before I could talk, I could sing. And when I sang (albeit without words), I consistently sang (or hummed as the case may be) *in the same key* as I heard it on the radio or on the recording. This is something my mother noticed. When I began piano lessons at the age of 5, the teacher would play the music for me, and I then knew it from memory, without ever having learned to read the music. I took music lessons for a whole year before it dawned on my parents that I was not reading music. (Needless to say, they were *very* unhappy with the piano teacher.) This is typical of a person with pitch recognition, and it happens more than music teachers would like to admit. Being able to come up with a pitch using tricks (such as knowing the lowest note you can sing and determining other notes from that) is a knowledgeable thing to do, and smart, and if it works, why not; but it is only a *tool* used to be able to help one's self, and others, out. The person with absolute pitch has no tricks. If someone says, "B-flat," the note just pops into your head, like magic, just as if someone says, "hummingbird," and the picture of a hummingbird pops into your head. You don't *guess* the note You don't *determine* the note off of something else. You *know* the note. (Yes, you would know the note even if you don't read music and cannot label it.) Of course, you are most attuned to the tuning you were brought up with as a child (i.e. A440), but you can adjust to most anything. (Some adjust more easily than others.) If you are interested in this and pursue it avidly, and hone it, you can even differentiate (and be able to *label*) between A440 and A450, or whatever. If you don't want to be bothered (like me), you don't bother to go that far, *except* that you know you could do it *if* you felt like bothering to do it. (If you know what I mean.) I am long past the days when I was a child and eager to please and, like a trained monkey, performed these little tricks for people at my father's or teacher's bidding. As soon as I knew the names of notes, I knew what they were *every time* I heard them, and I could sing any note anyone wanted me to, *in a split second,* without having to think about it. Of course, with such "parlor tricks," as you grow older, you become aware that different people's pianos (or whatever instrument) are tuned differently, and your "A" may not be the same as the current instrument in any given room. They could play one note, or a chord, or a conglomeration of notes, and I identified each and every one of them--instantly. The only problem I ever run into is with overtones, e.g. hearing notes that aren't actually being pressed down on the piano because they are overtones of notes that are have been struck. >From the age I learned to read music, I have been able to instantly lift any piece of music from a recording. I first did this in choral parts when I was in junior high (first time I remember doing it, anyway), for our church choir, and I often lifted music from recordings for my high school choir director, because what he wanted was not published. Almost since I remember, I have been able to play by ear. This does not mean piddling around until you find the right note. This does mean that the notes you want come right into your head (as if placed there by God or whoever, goodness knows where they come from) and you play them, automatically, with no thought, accurately the first time, and that's that . I am not really sure, however, that this is something that comes with absolute pitch. There is a young man at our church, who I had in junior choir many years ago, who also has this ability to play by ear (he plays New Age and CCM at our CCM service), and I *know* (from when he was little) that he does not have absolute pitch, although I suspect he has a very highly-developed form of relative pitch. He does not read music and composes music in his head, actually remembering it all, note for note, from start to finish. Whew! I suspect some of you reading this have this ability, but most of us lose it when we learn to read music, just as children lose their great facility to memorize shortly after they began to read the written word. If you have absolute pitch you *never* have to learn to sight-sing using numbers, or names of notes,, or sol-feg, or intervals, or anything else at all. You sight-sing in a completely different way from everyone else. You sight-sing because you instantly know, on sight, what each note will sound like and, hopefully, you can put your voice there. Actually, one might say you sight-sing as if you were playing it on an instrument, and the instrument is inside your head, and if someone has placed the piece in a different key from the one written, then you transpose, just like on an instrument. Having absolute pitch means that you could come in cold, to direct a choir say, look at your first chord, and automatically *know* whether the first notes the choir sings are those notes or not. I mean, the *actual*, exact notes, not just whether it is the correct chord somewhere around on the right notes. These things are why this ability makes learning music so efficient for the people with this ability. They automatically *know* what it takes many people many years to learn. I would suspect that most all of you can look at a piece of music and basically hear it in your head. I can go through, say a hymn to keep a simple example, once, in my head, and recognize the same hymn a week or a month later, having *never heard it at all* and, on top of that, know whether it is in the correct key or not. I can memorize a hymn from the way it sounds without ever actually hearing it. Whether that comes from absolute pitch or not, I have no idea. Where all this overlaps what people without absolute pitch do or are able to do, I have no idea. I have never even discussed pitch with my sister who has the same ability. Somehow, it never needed to be talked about. it is just something you know and do, without thinking, as natural as breathing As for recordings, I have only one thing to say about them. I don't think anything ever runs the right speed. Years ago, I realized that they are mostly off. If, say, I were to "lift" something from a recording, and I couldn't decide what key it was suppposed to be in, I would simply pick a close key to it, label it that, and proceed. No, I don't have to go find a piano to decide what key it's in on the recording, or what it is close to just know by hearing. As for listening to music, I don't ever need to know what key anything is in to be able to listen to and enjoy it, any more than anyone else does. On some level, I suppose I am always *aware* of it, but not on a conscious level. If someone should say to me then, or later, "what key is/was that in?" I could tell them, or at least make an educated guess if it's on a recording; but as for actually thinking about it while listening, I don't . I rarely think about any key anything is in, except say, a high soprano hits an unusually high note, and, out of interest in how high she can sing, I make a mental note of what note it was. That's fun to be able to do that. I pitched the choirs through high school and college, and the madrigal group I was in during each. If my high school choir director wanted the choir to be pitched high because they were flatting, I would think the note in my head and then slightly sharp it when I hummed it for them. (I didn‘t completely sharp it, because then *I* would have had to be transposing in my head to sing it, but the need to transpose doesn't bother me so much anymore as it did when I was young. I adjust, which I couldn't do then.) The only instance I really recall when I was pitching choirs was the time (in concert, of course) when I forgot what piece we were singing next and gave the wrong pitch, and everyone started out singing about a 5th low. Yeek. In answer to some other questions, it takes me perhaps a month to adjust to a different tuning that what I am currently accustomed to. When my home instruments and the church instruments were tuned to two different A's, it really drove me Nutz, because, maybe I'm just a bit lazy, but I don't want to be bothered to sort it out. These days, they're tuned to the same A--easier that way. As a musician, it tends to make anything to do with music theory incredibly easy (except the rhythm). I loved music theory, breezed through it like nothing, and would have liked to take lots more, for it fascinates me.
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