Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!ssc-vax!carroll
From: carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch -- the Burge way
Message-ID: <3744@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: 25 Mar 91 02:41:30 GMT
References: <3qaBZ2w164w@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca>
Sender: news@ssc-vax.UUCP
Reply-To: carroll@ssc-vax.UUCP (Jeff Carroll)
Organization: Boeing Aerospace & Electronics
Lines: 26

In article <3qaBZ2w164w@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca> quayster@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca (Tony Chung) writes:
> 
>I would like to know what instruments those with perfect pitch learned 
>on.  The people I know who have developed this skill so far have been 
>piano players, violinists, and trumpeters.  I have yet to see a drummer
>with perfect pitch; which indicates that some sense of pitch training 
>early on is important -- one does not emerge from the womb saying, "that 
>doctor's scissors cut at an Eb!"
>

	My first instrument was piano (at age 4), followed by trumpet, organ, 
and guitar. I think that perfect pitch probably correlates with early musical
training more than anything else.

	My pitch sense is mental pitch memory. I can remember the F I sang
this morning, and I can remember the A-flat I sang every morning when I was
in high school. No humming, or thinking of colors, or any of that garbage.

	Thanks to the psychologist at Marconi who took the trouble to post
the definition in his reference. That should put a lot of the old wives' tales
about heredity to rest.


-- 
Jeff Carroll
carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com