David Runnion wrote:

>You know what? I wouldn't bother.  Lots of better ways to spend your time.
>I am a perfect-pitch skeptic, myself.  I don't have it and don't miss it.
>I think it is a parlor trick that has very little useful or practical
>application, and while Mr. Burge claims he can teach it, I sincerely doubt
>that; I think it is something you are born with, you have it or you don't,
>like double-jointedness.  The only possible usefulness is possibly for a
>choral conductor to give pitches to his group in rehearsal without the aid
>of a piano.

I can't believe it's you who wrote this note, after all that's been written
about it.  I guess you didn't read it.  HARDLY TRUE, Dave.

It's no accident that most successful conductors have it - it does not
hurt them nor do they use it for giving pitches.  And I don't at all think
you're "born with" it -- I think it's experience matching sounds to places
on an instrumnent and to tones named for you.

But with this, anyone with good musical training AND perfect pitch can play
back most things they play EASILY with the correct chords, etc., and can
play pieces they know in their heads, in almost any key you want (including
accompanying notes).

Conductors will use it to hear new scores in their heads with absolute
certainty -- while you can do it with relative pitch to whatever extent
you do, the certainty is the thing.  I've sung next to people with
excellent relative pitch who had difficulty being sure what the next note
or interval really should be when the piece was in 5 flats or sharps and
the accidentals came on heavy.  And that is not uncommon.  Those of us
with perfect pitch and good musical training can sing a modern piece 100%
accurately and probably in very good pitch.  What's important there is to
be "born with" a voice someone wants to hear, but it's a VERY good quality
for a chorus singer who has to learn many new pieces.  When I rejoined the
SF Symphony Chorus we had to do 9 performance weeks and most of it was
music new to us.

>I have indeed heard from colleagues who are perfect-pitched that it can be
>a hindrance or inconvenience.  In this out-of-tune real world, I have even
>been told it is painful or extremely uncomfortable to hear music with
>slight intonation variances if you have perfect pitch.

That is VERY LIMITED perfect pitch.  Those "colleagues" of many in the
music world not pained or uncomfortable and who managed to get through
musical life in spite of the great disadvantage of it were Bernstein,
Ozawa, Previn Mehta, Kahane, and these are only names given from someone
who knew them.  I did talk with Bernstein and Previn and Kahane about
theirs.  I hardly think it's a problem.

I like being able to look at a score and know right away how the piece
sounds.  I am also useful in chamber groups when a middle instrument is
playing the wrong note and no one else knows what happened.  For those of
us with that sense of pitch it's clear and there's no question or tooling
around with relative pitch.

>Relative pitch, now, that is a different story.  That is the ability
>to recognize intervals.  It is more important to hear that an F# is
>out-of-tune in relation to the A you just played, than to know that it is
>simply out of tune.

Another misconception.  I *never* think of an "A" as only falling into one
mini-frequency.  I was taught A=440 and then in early music I "learned"
that A=415.  I adjusted.  I was then taught that for many French types in
the baroque, A=392.  I Adjusted once more.  That's the limit of my ability.
However, I am painfully attune to pitches relative to other notes, not in
the absolute sense someone has of where an A should be.  In the 17th and
18th C, the sense of any pitch varied according to the church organ used.
It wasn't that absolute.

Today it varies according to the many out of tune pianos around.  And to
Concert Pitch A=442 often.

There are also niceties such as Perfect Thirds that sound a lot better in
certain key signatures and where a well-tempered one can be jangly.

>If you have good relative pitch (which, unlike perfect
>pitch IMHO *can* be learned) your music-making will indeed be easier.

This generalization is silly.  I'm surprised at you.  It's thought actually
via the Seashore studies of the 50s and much study at Stanford U that
Perfect Pitch is also 'learned' or 'developed' but primarily if you started
learning at ages 5-6 -- it seems to 'set' better if you start younger.

>useful and practical in reality.  I think Mr. Burge's success is due to
>the aura of the "phenomenon" of perfect pitch rather than it's usefulness.
>Additionally, I would take strong exception to some of his claims on
>eartraining.com, to wit:

I would agree with you that if he is selling perfect 'pitch' as a note that
is exactly a certain frequency then it's just a meaningless trick.

>Horsetwaddle.  Perfect pitch bestows an ability to identify an isolated
>pitch.  Nothing else.

Not to isolate it -- but more dynamically, if you are musically trained,
to hear sounds (and I mean multiple sounds at one time) and instantly find
them on your instrument, without thinking, without any kind of calculation)
- the sounds -are- there and there but you don't "think" this, your hands
just go to the right keys because of the wedding of sound to instrumental
keying.  Same with voice.

>In classical times, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin - and most all
>the musical greats - had Perfect Pitch.
>
>Is this really true? LvB had perfect pitch?? Anyone can confirm this? What
>other "musical greats" were thus blessed?

It's been THOUGHT that Mozart and Beethoven had it, but I don't think
there's proof.  It's just that they both tended to write at a furious pace
without need for an instrument thought they might use one for this or that.

>Eric Johnson, Tommy Mars, Bela Bartok, Jascha Heifetz, Paul Shaffer,
>Yo-Yo Ma, Yanni - the list goes on and on.

Yo Yo Ma and Jeff Kahane are two fantastic musical artists no matter
whether you agree with their style in this or that or find them catering
to this or that crowd.  Perfect pitch has not hindered either one of them.
And I think it's a bit startling to read your ideas of perfect pitch while
seeing that so many who are musical and musically successful have this.

>Fun seeing Yanni in the same list as Sinatra and Heifitz.

For you!

>In the general population, Perfect Pitch is rare.  But the further up
>the musical ladder you climb, the more commonplace the ability becomes.
>For example, at the Julliard School of Music you'll find about 10% of
>the students with Perfect Pitch.

And in my San Francisco Symphony Chorus the 2nd year (when they had someone
who was focused on pitch), 1/3 of the chorus had it and 1/2 of the chorus
had led their own choirs or choruses.  Somehow it did not hinder them
either.

>Wait a minute!  I'm a professional, and I would disagree with that.  First
>of all, note that he says in this case "A good sense of pitch" instead of
>"Perfect Pitch" So that much, perhaps is true, but to say that even a good
>sense of pitch is the "most valuable element" of being a musician is,
>again, horsetwaddle.  (Thanks to Mimi Ezust for introducing me to that
>lovely term)

With a pianist it doesn't matter, does it.  Might contribute to a good
singing line if one has an excellent sense of pitch.   But it's not needed,
unless you enjoy playing almost anything you hear.

>You don't need perfect pitch for that!  If their eyes are bugging out, it's
>a high C.

:-)

>or when an ensemble has drifted flat
>
>Actually, isn't it better not to know?

When an ensemble has drifted flat it means they have drifted flat relative
to the previous pitch.  Anyone who thinks of an absolute pitch there is
rigid.  Besides there are so many tuning possibilities, that 'flat' or
'sharp' is a rather fluid thing, though not as fluid as some string players
would have us believe:-)

>Glancing at a page of sheet music, others may see only black dots.
>But with Perfect Pitch, you can mentally hear how each pitch sounds.
>
>With relative pitch too.  With a year of elementary eartraining too.

Not nearly as fast though.   And not nearly as certain.

>Listening to music, you can hear that a piece is in the key of G
>major,
>
>So what? Does that increase your enjoyment? Look at the key signature or
>read the program notes you know as much.

It doesn't increase my sense of pleasure at all.  And now that I spent
12 years playing early music at A=415 such things cannot begin to matter.

>When you know each pitch by ear, musical tones become yours to
>command.    For example, if you want to play by ear, your ear does
>the work for   you - instead of searching for desired tones by hand.
>
>Again, true but absolutely nothing to do in the least with Perfect Pitch.

You overgeneralize again.  I improvise with many people who like to do
that.  People using relative pitch are just not going to be as sure on
certain intervals.  This is not to say people with PP are any better, but
to counter your incredibly incorrect generalizations here.

>>   Perfect Pitch (known in scholarly circles as "absolute pitch") also
>>   adds a higher aesthetic appreciation.  Acoustical psychologist A.
>>   Bachem found that "particular characteristics of certain keys, e.g.,
>>   the brilliancy of A major, the softness of D flat major, can only be
>>   appreciated fully through absolute pitch."

Hogwash, yes.  And that's being polite.  When so many writing in "keys"
used a lower pitch where does this leave Bachem.  Besides, it's not true.

This richness of sound

>So Jeremy, my advice to you would be to skip the course, work like crazy
>on your eartraining and interval work, perfect your more important skills
>of musicianship like "intensity discrimination" (isn't that illegal?)
>and focus more on other intellectual and aesthetic aspects of music than
>Perfect Pitch.

Why not try anything that might help? I sense some sour-grapes on this one.

Andrys in Berkeley
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