Path: utzoo!utgpu!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: Perfect Pitch
Message-ID: <1991Mar27.122408@Think.COM>
Date: 27 Mar 91 18:24:08 GMT
References: <3qaBZ2w164w@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca> <3744@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: kathy@Think.COM (Kathy Viksne)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 51

In article <3744@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>, carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) writes:
|> 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 parents discovered I had perfect pitch when I was three, before I
knew anything about music.  I had sat down at a piano and plunked out
the melody (with a great amount of trial and error...) to "Puff the
Magic Dragon" in the key that it had been in on the radio.  No, at the
time I did not say,"This is in B-flat," as I had no clue about key
signatures.  My only concern was that what I was playing was the correct
melody the way I heard it, which happened to be in B-flat, as opposed to
any other key.  Any other key, to me, would have been wrong.

From this, I conclude that, at least in my case, I did not "develop"
perfect pitch.  I have had it all along.  People who claim that they
have "developed" the "skill" of perfect pitch generally have one or two
notes that they can reference everything else off of.  This happens with
instrumentalists in bands and orchestras who constantly are given the
tuning note, and they become conditioned to hear that note.  I
personally do not consider that perfect pitch, but I don't know what it
*would* be called, since I don't know what "causes" perfect pitch to
begin with, nor how it works.  I just know I have it.

I have encountered non-musicians whom I suspect have perfect pitch. 
When discussing popular songs with them and they sing little exerpts
from the songs, they actually sing them in the key that they are in on
the radio, even when they haven't heard the song for a long time.  

|> 	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.

Here, here!! 


		==>>Kathy