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From: salem@sri-unix.ARPA (Bruce B. Salem)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: tone deafness?
Message-ID: <510@sri-unix.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 12-Nov-86 15:05:50 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.510
Posted: Wed Nov 12 15:05:50 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Nov-86 21:54:57 EST
References: <2376@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU> <3808@columbia.UUCP> <210@mind.UUCP> <3817@columbia.UUCP>
Reply-To: salem@sri-unix.UUCP (Bruce B. Salem)
Distribution: net
Organization: SRI, Menlo Park, CA.
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	I have known people with absolute pitch and many more who are
tone deaf. I myself am neither. I taught myself to sight sing, and so have
good intervallic ear training. I do have some kind of absolute pitch memory,
for I can recall a piece on pitch, testing with written music and tuning
fork, when I don't try too hard. I believe that it is easy for me to have
absolute pitch on the piano, when I am playing alot, but very much harder
otherwise.
	In any case I carry a tuning fork around with me and use my interval
training to get pitch. I think that the practical problem of using absolute
pitch, really pitch memory, is more complicated than remembering frequency.
I`d guess that more poeple have pitch with their favorite instrument than
with a pure wave oscillator because they rely on the timbre of the instrument
to cue them as to pitch. Even I can tell the open G string on the violin.
	As for the value of absolute pitch as a musical skill, I have heard
that it is in fact not the great asset it would seem, for a person relies too
much on it and not on interval and harmony ear training which are really more
inportant most of the time.
	One must also distinguish between pitch discrimination and absolute
pitch. About 15 years I was a subject in an expeiment that was done at a
medical school that sought to test how well a listener could choose harmonic
intervals up and down and distinguish two pitches closer than a minor second.
By the way the chromatically trained ear tends to call pairs closer than
a semitone, a semitone. I could distinguish spearations of less than 5%, I
recall.


Bruce Salem