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From: jsc@kingtut.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch as a Birth Defect....
Message-ID: <1991Apr11.105556.2576@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 91 10:55:56 GMT
References: <3123@esquire.dpw.com> <1991Mar19.134336.23909@ircam.fr> <4123.27fb5354@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> <4124.27fb558b@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> <346@heurikon.heurikon.com>
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In article <346@heurikon.heurikon.com>, gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor) writes:
|> In article <4124.27fb558b@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> joelson@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes:
|> >Perfect pitch is both good and bad...
|> >bad - out-of-tune music in almost intolerable, it is difficult to
|> >      sing in an out of tune choir or play an out of tune piano as
|> >      I mentally have to translate each note.
|> I never thought of this before, but I'll bet that those tuning systems
|> that don't adhere carefully to equal temperment, or those systems which
|> involve the use of close tuning to produce "beating" tones as a part of
|> the effect [like, say, Bali] must truly be a torturous experience.
|> Never thought of perfect pitch as a problem before :-)
|> 

Not really. Out of tune music is only intolerable when you either know the piece
or have to play it. Since you don't know what anything else is supposed to sound
like, you hear other stuff as relative-pitch people do. So, Bali music might be
a torturous experience, but not because one has perfect pitch. Temperment has 
little to do with perfect pitch, by the way.

--
Jin Choi
jsc@athena.mit.edu
617-232-3257