perfect pitch

[Bruce Browning - The Piano Tuner]

Leslie,
Where is the logic to stretch octaves in a choir?
Surely in a piano this is for a purely "physical" reason.
Bruce browning
The Piano Tuner.


 Bartlett
> I  wrote one of my clients, known as "the pitch Nazi" throughout a
> couple of school districts, to ask her comments on pitch.  It follows:
> les bartlett
>
>
> --- On Sun, 8/31/08,
>> Date: Sunday, August 31, 2008, 4:34 PM
>> when i was in high school, the band director tested my
>> tuning against his
>> electronic tuner (i know you know this but the science
>> behind tuning makes
>> me feel like i'm crazy).  i was blind to the display;
>> he hid the tuner
>> behind his cabinet and checked every change i indicated.
>> Even to fine
>> degrees my ear agreed with his tuner - his own ear, after
>> years of blaring
>> trumpets, was no longer good for tuning.  after double
>> checking me for a
>> long time, on many different days, he turned the electronic
>> tuner off and
>> did not use it again.  Not a single discrepancy ever
>> occurred between the
>> electronic tuner and my ear (but why should my ear agree
>> with an electronic
>> tuner?  There was no calibration).  i was terribly
>> embarrassed and scared,
>> as every student in the room looked from him to me with
>> each note during
>> those unusual tests.  i have absolutely no idea why he
>> singled me out in the
>> first place, except by reputation of my sister (i was just
>> a freshman...).
>> Yet from then on i tuned each instrument in the band before
>> concerts and
>> contests (standing on the podium, pointing down the row to
>> one student at a
>> time).  i ponder sometimes, why or how i even managed to do
>> that, without an
>> accurate pitch given to start - but after three or four or
>> five trumpets
>> gave their individual versions of the same pitch, i just
>> knew which one fell
>> in line to my inner self.  It's like the center of the
>> pitch sets up a
>> vibration through my whole body, gentle but certain.  As
>> soon as one of them
>> hit exactly what felt right to me inside, i would go back
>> and clean up the
>> previous players, then continue through the trumpet section
>> with the
>> selected base pitch.  moving through the whole band, at the
>> end the first
>> trumpet was checked against first clarinet, first chair
>> flute against
>> saxophone, and they always matched.  But it seems like it
>> had to be my
>> arbitrary choice of the pitch i liked over the other ones -
>> yet, that was
>> the very pitch his electronic tuner chose as well.  i
>> didn't know a thing
>> about tuning, or "440."  i only knew the director
>> expected me to make the
>> band cohesive, as pleasing as possible to the judges.  i
>> have wondered so
>> many times why 440 feels right - but it does.  We must be
>> trained somewhere
>> to want that frequency.  The elusive thing is, if a whole
>> concert performed
>> by virtuosos was given, with things tuned to another
>> frequency, everything
>> might match up within the ensemble, but something would
>> feel uncomfortably
>> unhappy to my inner self.  Perhaps i would not be able to
>> identify why i was
>> not ecstatic with a concert over which everyone else raved.
>>  likely i
>> wouldn't say anything or even know why my inner soul
>> felt somewhat unhappy
>> and disturbed.  It is very much lg who hears, deeply
>> inside.
>>
>> i am aware of the gradual stretching in upper octaves, and
>> prefer it.  It's
>> not so much that things sound "flat" to me when
>> there is no stretching, it's
>> that i just don't like the whole sound of lower vs.
>> upper, without some
>> stretch in the upper.  The piano doesn't fit together
>> to me.  i don't know
>> if this explanation is even feasible or rational, in your
>> tuning world.  All
>> things are relative... and i know my own feelings are just
>> my own feelings,
>> nothing more.  When i get to choose, a higher note needs to
>> be stretched a
>> little to compliment a lower note, otherwise the vibrations
>> get in the way
>> of each other, and the higher note has to compensate.  i am
>> aware that i
>> tune a choir this way, with a tee weensy stretch in the
>> higher voices.  They
>> don't know it, though, unless we get into discussion.
>> It's funny, after
>> weeks and weeks of stretching just a tiny bit, they get
>> used to adjusted
>> sound, and just do it.
>>
>> This will sound even stranger - i think one of the reasons
>> i dismissed so
>> many piano tuners is perhaps because they did not raise the
>> pitch to 440
>> when it needed to be done (?).  that is purely speculative.
>>  but, it would
>> explain a lot of why a piano can be tuned yet leave me
>> unhappy.  This is
>> such an inner thing, buried somewhere in subconscious, and
>> it might take me
>> days or weeks to know that i don't like the tuning.
>> for awhile i thought it
>> was me, or something degenerative with the piano...  many
>> other things
>> "play" into it, of course, like my own playing,
>> and that takes first blame.
>> But as the weeks and months roll along, i just find myself
>> not calling that
>> tuner back... so we come to you, who always gives extra,
>> your work being the
>> very best.  Thank you for making me happy with the sound,
>> making my piano
>> right, when others had not.  What "right" is,
>> only you know.
>>
>> Such a long answer, i am sorry, >
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: leslie bartlett [mailto:lesbartlett2000 at yahoo.com]
>> Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 11:04 PM
>> To: vicki at dooman.net
>> Subject: pianotech post
>>
>> > You're the "Pitch Nazi"- what do you say
>> to
>> > this?=A0 Can you hear "stretch"=
>> >  in octaves, and differentiate from non-stretched
>> > instruments?=A0 How do yo=
>> > u experience this, and how do you cope with it, or
>> whatever
>> > might be the ri=
>> > ght word?=A0 Interesting.
>> > lb
>>
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