I have thoroughly imperfect pitch, and it doesn't worry me much.  There are
some things I can do quite well, and others where I am quite astoundingly
incompetent.

I have a pretty good sense of where A is - probably because for
thirtyfive-odd years of concert-going I've tried to hear that note in my
head before the oboist plays it.  It's hard-wired into my brain by now.
I can reckon simple intervals from that with fair accuracy, but it's by
a laborious step-by-step mental process - definitely not instantaneous
recognition.

I can sing in tune provided I don't think about it.  The moment I
let myself become conscious of "am I on the right note?", I lose it.
Catastrophically, usually.  I attribute this to a traumatic experience with
a very bad music teacher when I was about seven or eight.  I've described
her on this list before, and also the very good one I met later who made me
accept that it was possible to have musical sensitivities without being a
good or accurate singer.

Some time ago, Chris Bonds wrote:

>The issue is also complicated because musical tone almost never exists
>in a pure state.  It's a complex of a fundamental pitch and its overtones
>in various amplitudes.

I think this is an important and much-overlooked point.  I know
that my pitch sense is very easily confused by different tone-colours
(i.e.  different overtones and intensities of them on top of the same
fundamental).  Somewhere along the line, I never properly learned the
trick of isolating the fundamental pitch from all the rest.  As with
singing (vocalising might be a more accurate term in my case), the more
self-aware I become, the worse I get.

>This fact may explain why some people's sense of absolute pitch is
>stronger when listening to an instrument they play (in my case the violin).
>Artificially produced sine tones are very difficult for some people to
>associate with a pitch, particularly very low tones.

Very interesting points.  They would suggest that practical
pitch-recognition is actually not to do with the fundamental as much as
the associated overtones.  Otherwise, pure sine-wave tones would be the
easiest to identify (at any audible frequency).

Ian Crisp
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