Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!llenroc!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!ssc-vax!carroll
From: carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch
Message-ID: <3722@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 91 18:48:27 GMT
References: <1991Mar18.104444.29128@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1991Mar18.214745.6496@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu>
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Reply-To: carroll@ssc-vax.UUCP (Jeff Carroll)
Organization: Boeing Aerospace & Electronics
Lines: 48

In article <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu> jsc@riddler.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) writes:
>
>I've found it occasionally useful in identifying keys of pieces and tuning 
>instruments. Other than that, it can actually be quite an annoying ability 
>to have. For one thing, it is much easier to transpose while taking dictation
> if you have relative pitch, 
>it's just like taking dictation without transposing; you can't really tell 

	Transposing is very difficult. I used to have a miserable time playing
B-flat trumpet in high school, and embarrassed myself on a number of 
occasions by misidentifying the pitch of a tone that sounded "brassy".
(Once people find out that you have perfect pitch, you become something of
a sideshow, whether you want to or not.)

>the difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are 
>recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This is 
>supposed to give the music a '
>
(I assume he typed 'brighter' here, and his text editor chopped the line.)
>
>er' tone. I think this is really ridiculous because a) if you don't have 
>perfect pitch, how can you tell? and b) if you do have perfect pitch and 
>you know the piece, it's annoying to listen to something being played a
>semitone higher than it's supposed to be.

	I believe that this does serious violence to the composer's music.
Though I have no training in psychoacoustics, I do have strong emotional
reactions to as little as a half-step shift in key, and I believe that
people who haven't developed perfect pitch do as well (in varying degrees).
There's a *lot* of difference between, for example, the key of E-flat and
the key of E, and to arbitrarily transpose a piece without compelling
technical reasons is extremely insensitive.

	Although I haven't heard this in broadcasts of classical music, I
*have* heard it on both classical and popular recordings. I have also heard
cases in which popular songs with which I was familiar were played by local
radio stations at a *lower* pitch than the recording released to the public 
 - clearly a case of a slow turntable or tape deck. On one occasion I called
a station to complain, and the engineer dismissed me as a crackpot.

	I lead a group of folk musicians with limited instrumental skills.
I have not yet succeeded in convincing most of them that there is any value
to the use of a guitar capo as opposed to simply transposing the music into
a key more accessible to beginning guitarists. This may turn into meaningful
research into ear trainability before I'm done...
-- 
Jeff Carroll
carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com