posted
What I object to is the automatic assumption that anyone who doesn't have perfect pitch is somehow an inferior musician. I know plenty of extraordinarily talented musicians who don't have perfect pitch, and I don't think it's as simplistic as Irami is making it out to be.
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I know what he said was probably offensive. However, you're can't counter him by questioning his credentials.
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He just seems to be working with a kind of limited pool. Maybe it's different for piano players. I have experience with a different kind and range of professional musicians. And I know a ton of them. If he only knows piano players, maybe he should state his experience as "piano players I know." Or whatever.
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Also, a perfectly in tune performance is not the same thing as a perfect performance, or even a good performance. Pitch is not the only aspect of music needed to make a good performance.
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*shrug* I don't know if he's wrong or right about what he said. However, I do think it is an informed opinion from someone in the professional classical musician world.
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If his experience is limited to, say, pianists who have played since they were very young, then it isn't a completely informed opinion. Musicians' experiences are so widely ranging that to make such a generalized statement based on such a narrow sample is, in fact, ill-informed.
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Maybe not, but that seems to be the basis for his statement. Like KQ said, it's one thing to state his experiences, and quite another to imply that musicians who don't have perfect pitch are somehow inferior musicians.
And, in case anyone doubts that's what he did...
quote:If you practice long enough, they are going to stick. It's not that big of a deal. Imagine if there were only twelve words in a language, would we be making this hubbub about someone's ability to memorize and recognize all twelve words?
quote:I agree. I was too loose with the term "professional." I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to music practice and I think that most musicians don't listen to themselves when they practice, and this goes for all levels. Of the people who listen to themselves when they practice, for 15 or 20 years of practicing every day, I really haven't met too many who haven't picked up perfect pitch.
I do not have perfect pitch, and yet, somehow, I'm generally considered to be a pretty good musician.
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Oh, yeah, it was horribly arrogant, offensive, and possibly wrong (I sure don't know). It just wasn't said out of inexperience.
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Hey, this started as a friendly thread set up to help me. Yes, it's all about me.
I know Irami is a well trained musician. I know Megan is too. My understanding of perfect pitch is that it was relatively rare and not something that just anybody could learn.
But what do I know, I obviously am not well informed so that's why I came here asking for advice. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I'm sorry, Belle. It's just that Irami's attitude (that those with perfect pitch are automatically superior musicians) is pretty standard for those who have perfect pitch, and it's one that gets under my skin a bit.
Anyway, in my experience, it is relatively rare, and though I know people who have tried to learn it as adults, their success rate has been, in my experience, zero.
Let's carry on with the theoretical fantasy world discussion. That was more fun. Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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And I'm not a musician, but I can understand why his statement would be offensive to those of you that are. I certainly have plenty of respect for all musicians, whether they possess perfect pitch or not.
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Yeah. I really like the idea of lullabyes having real soothing power, singing prayers for the sick with real healing power, work songs that actually help the workers work in tandem, be strengthened, and the job go well, etc., but the power being mild. Also, families with better singers-- better able to hit the right notes-- would have better "luck", happier lives. That might make for an interesting society.
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I associate perfect pitch with superior musicians, too. But that's just because I have terrible pitch. I always have to be started off with the right tone, or I'll jump in in the wrong key. I have excellent relative pitch, but perfect pitch is up there with photographic memory, in my opinion.
Of course, friends of mine think singing takes a special gift, and to me it comes like breathing.
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Maybe it would be better to use the term "absolute pitch". Most musicians in my experience (and there are a lot - from orchestral players to folk singers) do not have absolute pitch. They do have really good relative pitch and various degrees of muscle memory, aural memory etc. that can help them narrow it down pretty fast. I do not have absolute pitch (i'm a singer), but I nearly always stay in tune and I will usually start a song (a capella) in the same key over and over again.
I does work rather like memory. You can be blessed with a good memory; you can work to improve your memory; there are some people with a "photographic" memory, but these are few and far between.
BTW Tone "deafness" is the same way. Very few people are actually "tone deaf". Most are just untrained.
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You're absolutely right about muscle memory and pitch, especially in singing. I don't usually think of vocal muscle memory, because I'm an instrumentalist; thanks for reminding me!
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quote:I will usually start a song (a capella) in the same key over and over again.
I've wanted to test myself on this, but I never have. I know for a fact that there are plenty of times when I start an a cappella song in the "wrong" key, but I think there are a fair number of times when I start it right. I'd like to know just how "good" I am.
Where I do best is when I have an advantage. If two songs follow each other on a CD, I will "know" the interval between them and therefore know where the next song begins. Obviously that is going to be a trait of relative pitch, though, which I think I already have.
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I noticed one day that our school bell rings just flat of concert B flat.
I have band first thing in the morning, and I noticed this about 2 class periods later. The next day, I played concert B flat just before the bell rang, and sure enough, I was right.
I don't think that's perfect pitch, though. I can't identify the key of a song without playing it first.
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Brinestone: Oooh, yes, perfect pitch is indeed commonly linked with synesthesia.
Regarding the ability to learn perfect pitch: technically unlearnable. However, I played violin for three years and therefore could sing a 440 A out of the blue because I heard it wayyyyy too much. And if you've got an A, and you know your intervals, you've got everything. Ditto for choral songs. There was a song that my high school Madrigal choir sang at least once every time we practiced, and I still start it perfectly on pitch. Which is also useful for working out where other notes are.
Belle: If the prerequisite for getting a spell to work is simply that it must be perfectly in tune, perfect pitch is unecessary. An accurate starting note (from memory, someone who does have perfect pitch, an instrument) is needed. Note that string instruments go out of tune in about two seconds. Perfect pitch would certainly be handy, however. Also, as other people have mentioned, the notion of "in tune" is relative by society and their musical traditions. Scales and number of pitches aren't even agreed on. I don't feel like going off about modes right now (a wee bit boring, in my opinion) but you could poke around online and listen to some weird weird stuff, to a Western ear.
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I think that part of the thing with perfect pitch in her story is that to understand the magic you have to be able to hear the subtle differenes in notes. But I think that some people without perfect pitch but with very good memories and other talents might be able to do it.
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quote: I have yet to meet a professional pianist over twenty without perfect pitch.
My brother's a professional pianist and he's 27. And he doesn't have perfect pitch.
But, then again, most professional musicians I know don't have truly perfect pitch; they have excellent relative pitch, and usually a note or two of reference.
For example, I know that a certain note, when I hum it, is always a low "G" -- square in the middle of that note, in fact. If I drop my jaw in a certain way and move my diaphragm just so, a "G" comes out. From there, since I have very good relative pitch, I can give you pretty much any note you want -- but I have to get that "G" first.
Almost all professional musicians do this, too; they have one or two comfortable notes that they can recognize on some level, and can extrapolate the others using relative pitch.
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My grandmother didn't believe her nephew had perfect pitch for a long time and wouldn't teach him to play piano because she thought he was too young at the time. (He was about 5.) Then one day he told her what key the telephone was in...I bet you can figure out the rest.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: BTW Tone "deafness" is the same way. Very few people are actually "tone deaf". Most are just untrained.
This is true. In fact most "tone deaf" people also speak in a monotone. They simply cannot hear the differences in pitch.
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andi, I got the impression that my instructor's story was similar, that her perfect pitch was apparent very young - she said she started her piano training at age three. When we all made appropriate gasps of astonishment, she said "Well, I have perfect pitch."
That's one reason why I thought of it as something you were born with, not something that anybody could learn as Irami implied.
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Perfect pitch is an inherantly natural talent. You're right, it can't be learned. People who learn it have relative pitch. I have relative pitch. Give me a note and tell me which one it is and I can give you any other notes you're looking for. Because of my years in band I can usually also spit out a 440 "A" without too much effort. I couldn't give you any other notes without having a pitch to start one first.
Perfect pitch is rare. Rare enough that most "superior" musicians don't have it, they have like myself and many others relative pitch and it generally takes years of musical training to develop it. According to Wikipedia only about one in every ten thousand people possess active absolute (or perfect) pitch. These people can identify notes without a note to relate it to, identify the key of a piece (if they've had musical training) and sing a specific note if asked. Wikipedia also implies that it can be learned, or at least that some people think it can be. Realistically no one is certain (which qualifies my above statement). I fall on the side that it is an inborn traight because the one or two people I know who have it, have had it since an extremely early age, when it seems unlikely they would be taught it.
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People who claim to have learned absolute (or perfect) pitch, by taking pitch recognition courses generally haven't, though they are very good at identifying notes. I say this because I do know at least one person (my mother's cousin above) who has true absolute pitch and several who claim to have learned it.
The above cousin ALWAYS knows what note is being played, even old rings on telephones and bland door bells, you know the ones that just play a single or two tones, not the songs. Those I know who claimed to have learned absolute pitch are right MOST of the time, maybe even 95% of the time, but they still make some mistakes from time to time. Impressive, but again, thanks to my experience with someone who does have absolute pitch, it's not the same.
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Granted, I think that most professional musicians are hacks, just as I think most writers are hacks. In other words, just because someone pays you to do it, it doesn't mean that you do it well, that's why I wanted to amend my first statement and take out the word "professional."
quote:Maybe not, but that seems to be the basis for his statement. Like KQ said, it's one thing to state his experiences, and quite another to imply that musicians who don't have perfect pitch are somehow inferior musicians.
*shrugs* Perfect pitch doesn't make one a good musician, careful attention to the musical line makes one a good musician, and careful attention to the musicial line very often requires years of thoughtful slow practice, and I'm saying that perfect pitch is an amoral by-product of those years of thoughtful slow practicing and the aural dispostion that comes from those years of slow practice.
There is a fine analogy to be made with English grammar. As in, I imagine that most great American writers know all of the correct uses of a semicolon. The vast majority of Americans do not. And there is a healthy percentage of horrible writers who can enumerate the correct uses of a semicolon. But since they can't write, they are relegated to being grammar Nazies. They are the perfect pitched kids of the writing world.
Somehow, someway, the great writers picked up the uses of a semicolon, either through careful reading, an errant style guide, or just good schooling. However they got it, they picked it up, and it's not that big of a deal to them. I'm sure that some even argue that they came forth from the womb with perfect punctuation knowledge blessed from the everlasting gods.
I think that perfect pitch works the same way.
You can say the same about being able to name ten framers of the Constitution. Most Americans can't. I imagine the percentage who can goes up significantly if you poll Congressmen, but I don't think that it's a 100 percent, and you certainly don't need to know ten framers to be an effective Congressmen. But if we poll, among the Congressmen, people who consider themselves constitutional scholars, even though they might not have studied each framer individual, I imagine that those constitutional scholars somehow, someway, can find it in their power to name those framers, and moreover, they probably don't think that it's a big deal.
I worry that my analogies to writing and grammar are unfit and convoluted. There is a similar analogy to spelling, but it's similar such that if you understood the first two analogies, fitting spelling as a third example should be easy.
As an aside, if I sat down in the Chicago Symphony, in full-dress, right before a concert, and the concertmaster stood up, looked at me and nodded, and I, with full breath, played a perfect B-flat, I'm pretty sure that sure that nearly everybody on stage would know about it without having to think too hard.
______
Another tangent:
People love the idea of being born with talents. It's super convenient. It even has the convenience of sometimes being true. It feeds the ego of the person with the talent, while allowing the person who is not disposed off of the hook.
I personally think that perfect pitch is a matter of disposition, not genetics. But that changing ones disposition, especially as one gets older, is darn difficult, that's why it's easier to lump it off as being genetic.
quote: Granted, I think that most professional musicians are hacks, just as I think most writers are hacks. In other words, just because someone pays you to do it, it doesn't mean that you do it well, that's why I wanted to amend my first statement and take out the word "professional." ... *shrugs* Perfect pitch doesn't make one a good musician, careful attention to the musical line makes one a good musician.
So are they good musicians, or are they hacks?
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quote: As an aside, if I sat down in the Chicago Symphony, in full-dress, right before a concert, and the concertmaster stood up, looked at me and nodded, and I, with full breath, played a perfect B-flat, I'm pretty sure that sure that nearly everybody on stage would know about it without having to think too hard.
Another tangent:
People love the idea of being born with talents. It's super convenient. It even has the convenience of sometimes being true. It feeds the ego of the person with the talent, while allowing the person who is not disposed off of the hook.
I personally think that perfect pitch is a matter of disposition, not genetics. But that changing ones disposition, especially as one gets older, is darn difficult, that's why it's easier to lump it off as being genetic.
Acutally, they would probably assume that you were playing a 440 "A" since that's the most common tuning pitch and it's only half a step away from that B-flat. Unless of course you were talking about a concert B-flat which may, on your instrument, be a 440 A, I don't know what instrument you play. Most musicians can tell a 440 A when they hear it from years of practice. They may even know one or two other notes, but the majority of people in that orchestra would be perfectly willing to tell you that they don't have absolute pitch but relative pitch, which is what you've described in your posts when you speak of "learning" absolute pitch.
To respond to your later tangent, there are people who are born with musical talent. You are correct in that being born with a talent does not make you a musician in and of itself. Practice and a whole host of other things are what make a musician.
For an (anecdotal) example. My father is a well respected trumpet player. He was principal trumpet in the Washington DC based Air Force band for most of my life. He has some natural musical talent but mostly he had to work for his abilities by several hours of practice every day. He wanted to be good at what he does and he worked hard to be so.
My brother and I both have more "natural" (for lack of a better word) musical talent. I haven't practiced my flute in over a year but I could pick it up tomorrow and play several grade six pieces and make them sound musical and technically correct with little difficulty. It might take a few days of practice to make it sound polished, but it would be technically correct and there would be musicality present. I never chose to go professional (and flute is no longer my primary instrument, I am a classically trained vocalist) my father did. Just because he got paid for his efforts doesn't make him any less a musician. Frankly, because he worked for his abilities and mine came more naturally, I consider him the better musician.
By the way, just to enhance my above point, having grown up around dozens of musicians I can tell you that most would not say that they have learned absolute (or perfect) pitch. If you don't believe me, head to your nearest school of music and poll the professors. Most (maybe not all) but most will tell you that you can't learn absolute pitch.
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A similar but different avenue for you to look at.
If you look at a scale on a piano there are 12 notes, each meant to be a semi tone apart. C, C+, D, D+, E, F, F+, G, G+, A, A+, B. Then they repeat.
A physisist would expect to be able to measure the frequency of two C's one octave apart and place the other 12 as twelths between this .... however this isn't the case ... they are slightly off ... which is why playing the same piece is a different key changes the sound / mood as the reletive spaces between notes change.
On a piano this is futher complicated as each piano note has 3 strings ... which are all tuned slightly differently as this gives the individual note more depth. Learning how to tune a piano is magic / art and perhaps finding one to accompany for the day would help with the research for the book.
Let me know if you want more details or clarification!
quote:Acutally, they would probably assume that you were playing a 440 "A" since that's the most common tuning pitch and it's only half a step away from that B-flat.
This is just something we'll have to disagree on. I think that they would know immediately and offer a polite cough or laugh, or a similar reaction that OSC has when he sees a misspelled word in a published text.
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quote:I think that they would know immediately and offer a polite cough or laugh, or a similar reaction that OSC has when he sees a misspelled word in a published text.
I asked my brother this question, and his response was "Probably the pianists and the horns would notice, and certainly the saxophones. But that has nothing to do with having perfect pitch, but rather the limitations of their instruments. If you played a B-flat doorbell, out of context, they wouldn't be able to tell you what note it was, and that's what absolute pitch is."
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Irami, my parents discovered I had perfect pitch when I was under the age of five. I had had only minimal musical training--enough to know the names of the notes and play "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
And firebird, I had no idea, but I'd often wondered! Thanks for sharing that!
<-- does not claim to be a good musician
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I've learned how to identify piano notes. I can call out the right names, name the key, etc.I can not do this for violin. I can not do this for drums, etc. If the doorbell rings I have an idea of the approx. note, but nothing more. For me it's memory. I have played piano enough to -know- how the different piano notes sound.
My cousin, however, has always been gifted at vocal and music. Before he learned to talk he already started mimicking bird calls perfectly. It was identical. He did this for over two years- it didn't matter if he hadn't heard a bird for months. (He didn't do this just for birds, he did this for everything that made noise). He has perfect pitch. He started piano and violin at a young age (3 or 4?) and once he knew the names of notes he went through an annoying stage of labeling any noise with its note. Luckily he's long grown out of that stage.
I disagree with Irami's comparisons to grammar. In my opinion most anybody can memorize rules. Just as most anybody can memorize how something sounds. That isn’t a good comparison at all. Perhaps athletics- no matter how much I may train I will never be a fast runner. I just wasn’t born with the right combination of traits, etc. I can practice everyday, all day and I’d never come close. Some people just are born with certain traits that lead to certain talents. (I just have to look at my cousin- I, once again, can’t and have never been able to reproduce bird noises. He has –always- been able to).
----- I should add I do not consider myself to be a musician. I am a person who plays piano because I enjoy it and am decently good at it. I do, however, have my Royal Conservatory (Piano) Teachers Papers if that means anything to anybody (I’m not sure if RC is international or only Canadian).
I still think that it's a matter of disposition, priorities, and listening habits, and maybe even it functions the same way as some learning disabilities.
But I still believe that after twenty years of slow practice on one hand and memorzing concerto after concerto on the other, it's going to come.
Brinestone,
And I'm going to say it, and it's controversial but it matches my intuitions and my experience, I believe that you lucked into the right disposition for perfect pitch. Heck, had your house had more or less racket in it or your parents yelled more or less or I don't even know, notes may be fuzzier to you than they are.
I can't enumerate the exact variables that go along with it, but I've seen too many suspect cases of perfect pitch to jump on the "Born with it," bandwagon. It seems to work like spelling well. I imagine that some people are born good spellers, but I think that these people just have a felicitous disposition towards the written word, anyone who can obtain that disposition, whether at 5 or 60, will be able to reap the fruits.
Like I said before, "born with it" is easy. In only three words, you can explain the entire sum of skills and talents, and even the distribution of rewards flowing from those skills and talents. I'm saying that people seem to me to be more similar than different in these areas and, to a large extent, attitude, disposition, and attention-- conscious and unconscious-- explain the differences.
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