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From: wuketich@bernina.ethz.ch (Johann Wuketich)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.133646.6659@bernina.ethz.ch>
Date: 19 Mar 91 13:36:46 GMT
References: <3123@esquire.dpw.com> <1991Mar18.104444.29128@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1991Mar18.215252.21611@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: wuketich@bernina.UUCP (Johann Wuketich)
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zuerich
Lines: 71

In article <1991Mar18.215252.21611@athena.mit.edu> jsc@athena.mit.edu (Jin S Choi) writes:
>I've also managed to 'burn in', as someone said, perfect pitch. In my case, it 
>comes from having played the violin for fifteen years and tuning it to a 440 A 
>just about every day. You kind of get to know what an A sounds like, and not 
>only that, playing an instrument, you also start to remember what pitch sounds 
>when you play certain notes. I used to have to think about what note I would 
>play in order to produce a given pitch in order to identify notes. 
>Now, I can identify pitches in a second or so, a little longer if a pitch 
>is between semitones and I have to make up my mind which one it's closer to.
>
>I've found that a lot of my musician friends have the same ability, 
>and I really do think perfect pitch can be learned. It's more a matter of 
>remembering sounds than any mystic inborn ability. I think the reason a lot of 
>non-musicians and singers don't develop it is that they don't have to deal 
>very often in absolute pitches. If you really want to develop it, 
>try holding a tuning fork to your ear for a few hours a day. 
>After a few months, you're probably going to remember what it sounds like.
>
>--
>Jin Choi
>jsc@athena.mit.edu
>617-232-3257


I agree fully with you.

I have had similar experiences like you, when I played guitar some time
ago (I did it for over 10 years very intensive but now I don`t have the
time for practicing every day).
I could tune my instrument to an accuracy within one halftone or so without
*hearing* any reference tone (but *remembering* one).
I could NOT recognize every halftone an an 88 key piano, because i never
did play (or tune) pianos at all. But I`m very sure that I (and all of
us) *could* do, if training long enough (like Mozart did, for example).

But as you can learn something (or `burn in`) you can forget it in
a much shorter time if don`t continue practicing.

So, my abilities are maybe far away from `perfect pitch`, in the sense
other people use this term, but close enough to think about.
Maybe we need a better definition or we are talking about different things.

I don`t know, if this has been proved by anyone in a scientific
experiment, but imagine the following:
You pick up the phone and and the frequency you hear is
some Hertz apart from the one you heard for so many times before. I can
imagine that *everyone* (not only musicians) would at least recognize
(maybe not realize) some difference.

Simple self-experiment:
Try to remember the tone first - then pick up the phone. Got it ?

My opinion is, that `perfect pitch` is `inherited` the in the same way like
most of us inherit the ability to see, hear, walk etc.
The point is that to do it, you have to learn it.
Everyone can ride a bike, some can earn money by doing it better.

Since our ability to remember or recognize *things* (patterns) is supposed
to base on some kind of (frequency) resonance in our neurons (this is only
*one* theory I heard), `perfect pitch` seems to be a
very natural ability to me and in no way mystic or exclusive to a few of
us.

	Hans.


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|   Hans Wuketich           wuketich@bs.id.ethz.ch        |
|   Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zuerich         |
|	"if you can't beat 'em - boot 'em!"               |
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