Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!genbank!agate!codon4.berkeley.edu!ladasky
From: ladasky@codon4.berkeley.edu (John Ladasky;1021 Solano No. 2;528-8666)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: What is perfect pitch?
Message-ID: <1989Nov30.014942.3772@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 89 01:49:42 GMT
References: <18807@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <365@bbxsda.UUCP> <1989Nov27.212927.3253@agate.berkeley.edu> <7051@portia.Stanford.EDU> <357@quad.uucp> <25742AAA.56CC@rpi.edu>
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In article <25742AAA.56CC@rpi.edu> mketch@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael D. Ketchen) writes:
>Actually, perfect pitch can be a hindrance.  I have a friend here at school
>with perfect pitch, and when he hears a recording in our Music Analysis class
>that's in a different key than the score he's trying to follow along with, he
>can't do it.  (Or at least it takes a lot of work.)  He als has a lot of

	The solution, of course, is to cultivate BOTH ways of listening, not
just one.  I don't think that a sense of absolute pitch is in any way a hin-
drance, as long as you don't lose your motivation to also cultivate relative-
pitch listening.

>I also have a cousin who is a concert pianist, and if she hears a piece she
>knows in a different key than she knows it in, she has to leave or it will
>drive her crazy.

	Actually, this is really interesting.  I just finished a piano quintet
this month and noticed that I had accidentally written a low B into the cello
part.  So I transposed the sequence of the piece up a half-step and played it
back.  You have no idea how different it sounded!  I had gotten so accustomed
to listening into the piece in one key that, when I transposed it, I seemed 
to rediscover all of the voice leading and chord changes.

T CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CR
_______________________________________________________________________________
"Do unto others as you would like		       - John J. Ladasky ("ii")
 to do unto them. " Richard Bach		  (ladasky@enzyme.berkeley.edu)


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