Perfect pitch is not perfect enough to, say, chromatically tune and octave's worth of notes and have them all come out in a perfect equal temperament. People with pitch identification capacity are able to identify within a range. If you play an A440, an A425, and A450 they will recognize all of those as A's but may not recognize sharp or flat from a particular reference. That ability probably depends on their musical experience, training, instrument familiarity or other factors. Many people who have perfect pitch aren't necessarily musicians. There's a strong genetic component plus, it seems, a critical window for it to develop. There is an interesting and ongoing study at UCSF (University of California San Francisco) being run be a genetic researcher that I know well. There is nothing written in the genetic code about A440. The ability has to do with the ability to memorize or identify pitch much like most of us identify, say, color. We can all pick out red but many colors will fall under the classification of red that are on both sides of the spectrum. During the historical period when A was lower than 440 people with perfect pitch weren't constantly complaining that the A they were hearing sounded flat. The memorized "A" pitch simply had a different hertz reference. Consider this. Take a singer with a great sense of pitch and have them sing a one octave chromatic scale. Record it. Precisely measure each note and translate that to the tuning of a single octave. See how it sounds. Tuning a piano is a different thing altogether when measured at that level of precision. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Steven Hopp Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:09 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] OT: Perfect pitch and temperaments Hi, This is not an answer but an observation. Locally there is a tuner who claims to have perfect pitch and even informs his clients of this and yet he tunes with an SAT III. Go figure? Steven Hopp Midland, TX. _____ From: KeyKat88 at aol.com Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:25:14 -0400 To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: [pianotech] OT: Perfect pitch and temperaments Greetings, How can anyone have perfect pitch? Yesterday, I tuned for a retired piano tuner, who had tuned his piano about 3 months ago. (I dont know why he hired me) He says he has perfect pitch. Lo and behold, when I examined his work, although 3 months a "worn" tuning, it was pretty much "dead on". Question: Now, if a person "au moderne" (nowdays) says they have perfect pitch, were/are humans' ears built differently than say, in Beethoven's day, where those living at that time who claimed that they had perfect pitch??? I dont get it. Does the human ear get used to what temperaments are in vogue at the time? Julia Reading, PA _____ Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make dinner <http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000001> for $10 or less. _____ Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for HotmailR. See how. <http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=TXT_MSGT X_WL_HM_express_032009#colortheme> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090317/27473808/attachment-0001.html>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC