Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!think.com!Think.COM!kathy
From: kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Re: Perfect Pitch
Message-ID: <1991Mar26.121135@Think.COM>
Date: 26 Mar 91 18:11:35 GMT
References: <3123@esquire.dpw.com> <7180012@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> <3137@esquire.dpw.com> <18972@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Mar26.111429.27568@athena.mit.edu>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 53

In article <1991Mar26.111429.27568@athena.mit.edu>, jsc@kingtut.MIT.EDU
(Jin S Choi) writes:
|> In article <18972@milton.u.washington.edu>,
allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) writes:
|> |> 
|> |> A question: long ago back in high school when I was singing
regularly, I could
|> |> always very precisely sing a D, since so many of our pieces
happened to start
|> |> there.  But it wasn't so much the pitch I was remembering, as the
kinesthetic
|> |> memory of the throat muscles knowing what to do.  When doing your
pitch
|> |> exercises, do you tend to sing or hum along, even subvocally?  And
could that
|> |> be an aid?  Is your pitch recognition as good for notes well
outside of your
|> |> singing range as for notes within it? 
|> 
|> I think kinesthetic memory definitely helps a lot with pitch memory.
As I've said,
|> for me perfect pitch started with my having to think about where on
the 
|> fingerboard I would play a note that I heard. The same would be true
for singers,
|> except that I imagine they have a much rougher time of it since they
don't have
|> such an absolute frame of reference...

I have found that these "references" have little to do with my perfect
pitch.
I sing regularly, as well as play violin, piano and other instruments,
but I
have known that I have perfect pitch since I was at least three years
old, before 
I knew how to play these instruments.  

I know of several people who use these references, and thus claim that
they
have "learned" perfect pitch.  I personally don't consider this perfect
pitch, 
but rather a memory device.  But then comes the arguement, what is
perfect
pitch in the first place?  

The times I do use "subvocal" humming are generally when I'm trying to 
single out a note from a cluster of notes or a phrase, to bring it out
in front of the rest of the notes.  I don't use my voice as a
reference,
but rather as a pointer in my mind, when the note is obscured by other 
notes.

		==>>Kathy