Posted on 11/16/2014 7:51:18 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
I knew a man with perfect pitch who was so handicapped by it, he couldn't play anything if it he was hearing the music sung in a different key.
I learned to sight-read while transposing on the fly into a different key. It used a certain neurological pathway; it got to be difficult to play in the written key—the customary neurological pathway was different, "too simple".
What is perfect pitch? Neuroscientist Diana Deutsch at UC San Diego found that people whose native language is tonal—Chinese—have a higher propensity to have perfect pitch. Also people with mixed-hand preference, the form of left-handedness that makes them write "scrunched-over", have abnormally high communication between brain hemispheres through the corpus callosum, the dividing membrane that's deliberately injured in lobotomy. People in non-literate societies have a much higher incidence of perfect pitch, as do children before kindergarten. It's an ability that's lost when undergoing the neurological transition to the world of spatial, technical object use.
What's it like having perfect pitch? The ususal "trick" is that, in music class, one geeky, teacher's pet "can tell you what key is being played on the piano". That's not the lifelong reality.
The reality is like Jason in The Giver, being able to see colors while everyone else in his society is color blind.
It can still be a disability: Listening to someone who sings flat, is like eating a piece of sour, unripe fruit. That poor person who wasted a life in thousands of hours of practice, only to run up against a glass ceiling of achievement, should have been evaluated while first being triaged in elementary school music class: "Hmm, Suzie, maybe you'd better take percussion."
Still, when transported into ecstasy listening to Jascha Heifets or Midori playing violin, it's worth the pain. Not so with Anne-Sophie Mutter or Yo-Yo Ma—they have other gifts, of phrasing, or dynamics, or expressiveness—but they very distinctly "do not have perfect pitch".
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.
Michael McDonald has it, as does Stevie Wonder.
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.
Right! So I've heard.
Yesterday, I had to do a lot of driving. As a change, I decided to listen to one of the local "all hit music" stations.
I was aware that today's teenagers listen to music that is "dumbed down" compared to what I grew up listening to, but I really had no idea of the extent to which this is true until I listened to today's tunes for an hour or so.
Much of it is a sort of slightly disguised rap, with no melody at all. Just repeated electronic rhythm sounds, maybe with a saxophone phrase - sampled - and repeated over and over again.
Those few that actually have a melody are extremely simple, utterly repetitive. Almost like a sort of Pavlovian stimulus that's designed to be an ear-worm, with no other redeeming qualities at all.
Pretty much every song was about sex. Not love, no feelings at all except for sexual desire and sexual performance. The only other feeling I heard expressed was jealousy.
Really quite depressing and horrid.
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?
Perfect pitch is a great advantage, but many very successful musicians don’t have it. Developing good relative pitch can make for a successful time in music, and most players you think of as great don’t have perfect pitch.
I have good relative pitch, but I’m lousy at reading notation. I used to be a session player, and would learn commercial jingles in the studio by ear quickly enough to get by in the studio with reading notation, which I can work out slowly if needed. I am a bass player which helps as I don’t deal in polyphony much.
Right on.
Plastic, lifeless, soulless, pseudo-music for a generation that has been stripped of its God-centered morality and humanity.
I’m guessing Roseanne Barr does not...
I don’t know much technically about music, but I know what I like and don’t like, the music I hear today I do not like, most of my exposure comes in the form of background for TV and movies I can’t stand it if it is modern; it just sounds empty somehow, it also has an adverse effect visually on the quality of whatever it is I’m watching, making everything seen and heard just noise.
I keep hoping something will come along and shake up the industry, but I've been waiting a long time.
MGD is not ambidextrous, but "multi-dextrous". He writes and golfs right handed, but does most other things left handed. He also has relative pitch, which for him, causes a bit of pain when listening to groups where some are out of tune.
Thankfully, our one daughter who is a musician (a very fine tubist), is now in college and her Wind Ensemble is spectacular. He's enjoying her concerts immensely.
Yes, I agree.
The male individual I described earlier - the one with the amazing sight-reading skills - went on to a successful musical career. He's an "A-list" composer and arranger in Hollywood, who's name can be seen in the credits of a number of successful motion pictures of recent years.
The other one - the female - is not famous.
I know a few other professional musicians well. One of these has played with the "group" from which I take my screen name. None of them has absolute pitch, but they are all far better musicians than am I.
I once talked to a music industry professional. This person had worked with Karen Carpenter, among others.
She told me that Karen Carpenter had "perfect dynamics."
She said that Ms. Carpenter could sing precisely to a fader preset. She said that the engineers loved her, because they could set her mike once and then they didn't have to touch anything. She would put the V-U meter needle right on the zero-db line on every note, just like she had a mix board in her head.
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