Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!hawks
From: hawks@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Harvey H. Hawks Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: perfect pitch
Keywords: perfect pitch, ear training
Message-ID: <20438@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 89 20:08:16 GMT
References: <18807@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu: <365@bbxsda.UUCP> <3289@husc6.harvard.edu> <48907@bbn.COM> <3327@husc6.harvard.edu> <372@quad.uucp>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: hawks@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Harvey H. Hawks Jr.)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <372@quad.uucp> dts@quad.uucp (David T. Sandberg) writes:
>
>I wonder if having perfect pitch can prove a liability if one
>realizes too early that one has it, as one could come to rely on
>it rather than train the ear to hear all facets of music.  Rather
>like a fictional child with magical ability who never learns the
>things they would need to survive without their magic...

My 2 cents:
I have perfect pitch, and have had it for as long as I can remember, but up 
until age 13 or so, I didn't identify this ability as anything special.  I
thought everyone, or at least all musicians (I had 5 years of piano including
theory and a couple years of trumpet), could identify pitches if they heard
them.  Since I didn't realize I had a gift, I didn't use it to avoid learning
about harmony, identifying intervals, etc.  Eventually, I gained relative
pitch.  For me, relative pitch (identifying harmonic relations) and absolute
pitch are not separable.

What is interesting, and something I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else,
is that	I have perfect pitch in two keys.  Since I play both trumpet (in Bb)
and guitar (in C), I have two ideas of, say, what an F is.  This makes
transposition into other keys a bit easier, although if I know a song in
one key, I can't immediately transpose it while playing (if that makes
sense).

As you were.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harvey H. Hawks Jr.					hawks@cory.berkeley.edu
University o' Cal				          "Coyotes and time as	
Berkeley					               an abstract."