SPinner
06-09-2000, 07:20 AM
Dear Cecil,
I am a musician from Massachusetts with “perfect pitch”, and I would like to share some experience with you that may be of interest to you and your readers on this subject.
First off, the reason why I put the phrase “perfect pitch” in quotes is that I believe no such thing exists. I have participated in an experiment that may help explain why. When I was in college, I had a roommate who was not only musically inclined, but also your standard computer programming geek. (His girlfriend and now wife also had “perfect pitch, and was very useful in her job at McDonald’s because she knew which machine timers were going off based on the pitches they produced. Isn’t it great when these people find each other?) He had a midi setup in which a synthesizer was connected to his computer for the purpose of recording music. Well, he wrote a program in which the computer randomly selected a note. Your job was to guess the note it played, and play it on the keyboard. If you played the correct note, the computer randomly selected another pitch. If you played an incorrect note, the computer played the same pitch until you found the correct one. Once you completed a series of notes, the computer then produced a series of calculations including: the average number of attempts for each pitch, the average time for each pitch, the average time it took you to find each interval, etc. Well, guess what, everyone who tried this out produced better times with more attempts. From this I am concluding that for musicians, the pitches are learned over time. The person that sings a note almost instantly upon being asked for it does not have “perfect pitch”, but rather relative pitch really, really fast.
Now, having really, really, fast relative pitch, as you suggested with “perfect pitch”, is not always a good thing. I sing in my church choir at Boston University, and yes, I am often used as a pitch pipe. Last month, we performed Bach’s “St. John Passion.” – with Baroque instruments – the ones that were used in Bach’s day 300 years ago. Guess what? Baroque instruments are a half step lower in pitch than what we are used to. So what we know as a “F#” sounded like an “G” back then. This created a nightmare for me, because I had to transpose the entire 2 ½ hour piece down a half step in my mind!” There were occasions in rehearsals when I was throwing off my entire section by singing the notes slightly too high.
So while it’s cool to be able to spit out a note when asked, I’d prefer to just carry a pitch pipe around. Unfortunately, while I believe relative pitch can be learned, I don’t believe it is something that can be unlearned.
Steve Pinner
I am a musician from Massachusetts with “perfect pitch”, and I would like to share some experience with you that may be of interest to you and your readers on this subject.
First off, the reason why I put the phrase “perfect pitch” in quotes is that I believe no such thing exists. I have participated in an experiment that may help explain why. When I was in college, I had a roommate who was not only musically inclined, but also your standard computer programming geek. (His girlfriend and now wife also had “perfect pitch, and was very useful in her job at McDonald’s because she knew which machine timers were going off based on the pitches they produced. Isn’t it great when these people find each other?) He had a midi setup in which a synthesizer was connected to his computer for the purpose of recording music. Well, he wrote a program in which the computer randomly selected a note. Your job was to guess the note it played, and play it on the keyboard. If you played the correct note, the computer randomly selected another pitch. If you played an incorrect note, the computer played the same pitch until you found the correct one. Once you completed a series of notes, the computer then produced a series of calculations including: the average number of attempts for each pitch, the average time for each pitch, the average time it took you to find each interval, etc. Well, guess what, everyone who tried this out produced better times with more attempts. From this I am concluding that for musicians, the pitches are learned over time. The person that sings a note almost instantly upon being asked for it does not have “perfect pitch”, but rather relative pitch really, really fast.
Now, having really, really, fast relative pitch, as you suggested with “perfect pitch”, is not always a good thing. I sing in my church choir at Boston University, and yes, I am often used as a pitch pipe. Last month, we performed Bach’s “St. John Passion.” – with Baroque instruments – the ones that were used in Bach’s day 300 years ago. Guess what? Baroque instruments are a half step lower in pitch than what we are used to. So what we know as a “F#” sounded like an “G” back then. This created a nightmare for me, because I had to transpose the entire 2 ½ hour piece down a half step in my mind!” There were occasions in rehearsals when I was throwing off my entire section by singing the notes slightly too high.
So while it’s cool to be able to spit out a note when asked, I’d prefer to just carry a pitch pipe around. Unfortunately, while I believe relative pitch can be learned, I don’t believe it is something that can be unlearned.
Steve Pinner