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From: D0430@PUCC.BITNET (Paul Lansky)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: tone deafness
Message-ID: <1355@PUCC.BITNET>
Date: Wed, 12-Nov-86 23:46:25 EST
Article-I.D.: PUCC.1355
Posted: Wed Nov 12 23:46:25 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Nov-86 04:01:12 EST
Reply-To: D0430@PUCC.BITNET
Organization: Princeton University Computing Center, Princeton, New Jersey
Lines: 23

I am a musician and have spent years teaching, singing, writing, playing,
etc., and have dealt with lots of ears from incredible to crummy.  Here,
however, is an interesting fact which has me completely baffled.
If you take a group of untrained singers, none of whom have absolute
pitch, but all of whom can carry a tune, and have them sing without
instruments in a key made mostly of white keys (C,D,F,G, etc) almost
without fail (this has happened to me dozens of times) the group as a
whole will drift flat, usually a semitone and end up in a black key
(Cflat, Dflat, Fflat, Gflat etc, relatively), **and stay there**.
BUT---if you start them out in a black key, such as F#, they
will not drift, but will stay where they are. In all cases, without instruments
 
I haven't the foggiest idea why this will happen.  I've talked with
choral directors, and they confirm this, particularly if they are
dealing with amateur singers.  It leads me to believe that there
is a lot about pitch memory that we don't understand and that
many of the distinctions between absolute pitch and normal hearing
are too simple.
I'd be interested in the experiences of others in this area.
 
Paul Lansky                                 bitnet==d0430@pucc
Music Department                            uucp == princeton!winnie!paul
Princeton University