* You To Can Have Perfect Pitch ..... *
ATI...@esoc.bitnet
in this months edition of keyboard. It brought to mind that perfect pitch
is obtained more quickly by only playing the less complex sounds of a
synth ie piano, organ, strings, etc.
What I want to know is if anybody out there, whether he/she has
achieved perfect pitch. If so, how long did it take, and can you
recognise the pitch of complex synthy sounds.
Is perfect pitch a talent of the "elite few", or can anybody master it
over time ?
I saw a nice package for the macintosh for pitch development, is there
one for the ST ?
Ta.
Andy Tinton.
Gints Klimanis
A debate over the legitimacy of this course raged for over a month on comp.dsp
middle of 1991. A related thread covered the legitimacy of perfect pitch. Basically, the folks with "perfect" pitch found the skill useful, while the folks without whined the sour grapes story ever so bitterly.
I purchased David Burge's "Perfect Pitch" course in 1986 for $40. The hype cassette was useless. The method in the booklet was effective and systematically "burned" in the pitches. The method is concise. I could post it to the net, but I believe he deserves the money. His color per pitch analogy is reasonable. However, I never saw colors when I practiced the lessons. Did Dave do acid?
In one month with daily half-hour sessions, I developed the ability to recognize the octave and note name within 1/4 second for pitches played in many timbres. Within two months, I could do the same for four-note combinations. However, I stagger picking out notes and chords from full tunes. After training, minimal maintenance supports the confidence.
My sister learned that much in twice the time. Another friend gave up. I doubt this ability is related to our gene pool, since our reproductive codes MOST likely know little about our Western music pitch conventions, including the tuning standard drifts over the last couple hundred years.
My sense of pitch is far from "perfect." Pitches map to a band of frequencies with a fuzzy boundary. As pitch approaches a band boundary, identification is more a guess -- analogous to defining when purple becomes red as you add more red. I do not associate "perfect" pitch with genius. Rather, I speculate that "perfect" pitch is merely some form of ear training, as is synthesizer patch programming from a sound on a record.
Is "perfect" pitch useful? If you are a solo vocalist, you'll start and stay in the right key. Does little for pitch stability other than increased awareness. Toss the pitch pipe. My appreciation of music changed dramatically during my training. Now, I define transposition to be the cardinal sin. Before, transposition was only annoying.
In retrospect, I would purchase David Burge's method and learn it again. Given another chance, I would never tell common acquaintances of this ability to avoid constant pop quizzes. Now that you all know, please: no e-mail quizzes.