Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!husc6!osgood!elkies
From: elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: What is perfect pitch?
Message-ID: <3328@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 89 01:02:28 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> <1989Nov30.014942.3772@agate.berkeley.edu> <389@bbxsda.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Organization: Harvard Math Department
Lines: 32

In article <389@bbxsda.UUCP> scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) writes:
:In article <1989Nov30.014942.3772@agate.berkeley.edu> ladasky@codon4.berkeley.edu.UUCP (John Ladasky) writes:
:>	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.
:
:This is something I wonder about from time to time.  Sometimes the band
:I play in will have to transpose a song for vocals.  I found that
:transposing a mere whole step can sometimes *ruin* a song.  It just
:feels different.  Also, why is it that keys requiring a lot of
:black keys on the piano sound "richer"?  Sometimes I think it's
:psychological since I *know* I'm hitting a high ratio of black keys
:to white keys, but I've heard other musicians acknowledge it also.

I've read that many piano tuners intentionally deviate from equal temperament
to favor the easier keys, making their basic intervals purer at the expense
of the tonalities distant from C; this could have the effect of making
a piece in something like G major sound "richer" in A-flat.  I do not know
whether this has been objectively tested; it may also be hard to separate
objective discrepancies in tuning from the subjective response of the pianist
to different keys (conditioned by past experience with music in those keys and
the different technical problems posed by the transposition).

Of course anything like a piano quintet involving string instruments may sound
very different up a whole step, because the interaction with the instruments'
resonances completely changes.

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
  Department of Mathematics, Harvard Univ.


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com