Strange Chops issue

[Tubaryan12]

Ride starts on a F#...enharmonically the same.....but not the same key (ask someone with perfect pitch)

Actually, if you are dealing with equal temperament then yes, these are the exact same pitch.
What's more, the relationship between F#-B & Gb-Cb is also, exactly the same.

Personally, I think the whole 'perfect pitch' label is TOTALLY wrong. I defy you to produce someone to me who can tell me exactly what pitch is being played. Not just the note name, but the PITCH, including cent deviations from A440.... Oh wait, not everyone uses 440 as the standard, so that ruins that doesn't it?

SO... If someone has 'perfect pitch', do they have perfect pitch in A440, A442, A444 or a more historical pitch? A438, A435, A415, A460.... Remember kiddies A440 as the International Pitch Standard has only existed since 1935, before that an A might have been 400hz in one part of Europe, or 490 somewhere else. (Those fall between a G and a B in our modern 440 system).

So again, find me someone that can walk into a room and tell me (regardless if I am playing a tuba, a pipe organ, a piano or a kazoo), that I'm playing Gb-Cb or F#-B.

Robert Coulter

P.S. The you just got served pic might be fine for online gaming etc.... I don't think it's appropriate for this discussion board. (I might not have even responded if not for that)

I agree with this entire post, but the last section made me wonder: is this the same discussion board that regularly posts pictures of food, scantily clad women, limericks that need editing, and one memerable post where one of our younger users was told in a similar picture to "STFU NOOB"? Hopefully, we can all, young and old, treat each other better.

[Todd S. Malicoate]

I have what is commonly described in music circles as "perfect pitch."

That is to say, when you sound a pitch, I can tell you what it is without "relating" it to another pitch.

I cannot tell the difference between A440 and A442, other than that one is a bit sharper than the other...they both sound like "A" to me.

C# Major sounds the same as Db Major to me, in much the same way as g# minor sounds just like ab minor. Yes, even when played by an orchestra full of string instruments who somehow "play F# in a different place than Gb." As Chuck pointed out, that has much more to do with chord function, leading tones, etc...basic harmonic function dictates how far "out of tune" a note is played.

Your "perfect pitch friends" can, no doubt, also hear the grass grow.

[Todd S. Malicoate]

A string player, if playing a C# then a Db for example, will actually change the pitch though they are enharmonically the same

Absolutely false...I was a very accomplished string bass major early in my college career and I can tell you there is no "rule book" stating this at all. This is not taught in beginning string methods. There is no logical reason to do so, unless the harmonic function of the two notes warrants such a change.

You are confusing various theories of tuning (string vibrations, that sort of thing) with actual performance practices.

[TexTuba]

Perfect pitch, if there is such a thing, is pointless and, I believe, would annoy the hell out of someone! I have quite good relative pitch in that I can tell you any note played on a piano or instrument. But to be able to distinguish different "A=whatever" has to be maddening!

[Chuck Jackson]

A string player will tune differently for a F# than a Gb, same with a C# and Db, and if playing a C# then a Db for example they will actually change the pitch though they are enharmonically the same

Yet they have a hard time tuning in rehersals.....

NO THEY WON'T and NO THEY DON"T. You are engaged in an inaccurate game of pure supposition. Please, PLEASE tell me where you have heard this. If it was in class or in lessons, PLEASE ASK FOR YOUR MONEY BACK because you have been lied to, if a friend told you this, THEY ARE FULL OF IT. And for goodness sake, don't argue with people who live this stuff, you look like something perhaps you aren't.

Chuck

[Todd S. Malicoate]

Perfect pitch, if there is such a thing, is pointless and, I believe, would annoy the hell out of someone! I have quite good relative pitch in that I can tell you any note played on a piano or instrument. But to be able to distinguish different "A=whatever" has to be maddening!

I always have believed that perfect pitch is the ability to name a pitch nearly instantly upon hearing it sounded...to me, relative pitch includes the "extra step" of relating it by interval to another memorized pitch. Indeed, some people are very fast at this, but they still do the extra step.

I hear pitches almost like colors...all F#'s have a similar sound (color?) to me, no matter what octave or instrument. It is very handy for transcribing, ear training dictation, and giving the ol' frat boys a starting pitch for their favorite song, but the ability (at least, mine) is of little other practical use.

I've never met anyone with the A=whatever ability. Many people seem to think that perfect pitch relates to perfect intonation...that is, folks with perfect pitch can play or sing perfectly in tune, experience pain when pitches are out of tune, can tell you the pitch when you strike a rock on a table, and so on. I strenuously object...

[TexTuba]

I always have believed that perfect pitch is the ability to name a pitch nearly instantly upon hearing it sounded...to me, relative pitch includes the "extra step" of relating it by interval to another memorized pitch. Indeed, some people are very fast at this, but they still do the extra step.

I hear pitches almost like colors...all F#'s have a similar sound (color?) to me, no matter what octave or instrument. It is very handy for transcribing, ear training dictation, and giving the ol' frat boys a starting pitch for their favorite song, but the ability (at least, mine) is of little other practical use.

I've never met anyone with the A=whatever ability. Many people seem to think that perfect pitch relates to perfect intonation...that is, folks with perfect pitch can play or sing perfectly in tune, experience pain when pitches are out of tune, can tell you the pitch when you strike a rock on a table, and so on. I strenuously object...

Ok..

[SplatterTone]

...that is, folks with perfect pitch can play or sing perfectly in tune

I think we all know that it is the skill of being able to make a banjo land on top of an accordion in a dumpster with 100% accuracy.

[Roger Lewis]

when E is the root of the chord the needle on your tuner needs to be straight up and down, however, when in C and the E is now the 3rd of the chord, it needs to be about 14 cents flat. Do you use different fingerings then?

A great training aid (and warm-up) - www.tuneupsystems.com - basic training.

Alan Baer is probably the master at this and he says (loosely translated), when playing Meistersinger, play the E's in the staff open, not 1&2 as you would in E major. It's the 3rd of the chord since you are in C, so it needs to be on the flat side.

Too often we tune "automatically" by ear and do things without knowing that we are doing them. It makes it a lot easier to understand what it is you are doing and learn how to apply it effectively everywhere on the horn.

As to what I call the "blocked Gb", the only times I have run into this in my students was when (here we go again) I had a student who was playing in the mid and upper register on an upstream embouchure (buzzing the lower lip) but would switch to a down stream embouchure (buzzing the upper lip) in the low register because an upstream embouchure won't work very effectively there.

This has become his transition point and he is most likely trying to buzz both lips at the same time, and the vibrations are canceling each other out. As to a cure? Check the embouchure and air stream direction with a visualizer, then work on exercises where the student is blowing and buzzing at his hand with a downstream embouchure so that he can get used to how it should feel. It takes about 30 days to make the transition.

Just my thoughts.
Roger

[MaryAnn]

I always have believed that perfect pitch is the ability to name a pitch nearly instantly upon hearing it sounded...to me, relative pitch includes the "extra step" of relating it by interval to another memorized pitch. Indeed, some people are very fast at this, but they still do the extra step.

I hear pitches almost like colors...all F#'s have a similar sound (color?) to me, no matter what octave or instrument. It is very handy for transcribing, ear training dictation, and giving the ol' frat boys a starting pitch for their favorite song, but the ability (at least, mine) is of little other practical use.

I've never met anyone with the A=whatever ability. Many people seem to think that perfect pitch relates to perfect intonation...that is, folks with perfect pitch can play or sing perfectly in tune, experience pain when pitches are out of tune, can tell you the pitch when you strike a rock on a table, and so on. I strenuously object...

Yes. I used to be able to take a tone generator (electronic thing with a dial) and, from "ground zero," meaning not having heard any pitches since the day before, find A on it. I was always flat though, generally stopping on 438. The last couple of years this ability has slipped to the point where often I "hear" things on the radio in the wrong key; I will hear something in Eb and it turns out to be in D. Same thing happens in groups, and it is unnerving to not know what pitch is being played, when you have spent your entire life knowing what pitch is being played, without a reference.

As a former pro violinist, it is poo-poo that a Gb is intrinsically different from an F#. It depends entirely on the note's position within the chord, basically what Roger said.

I have long called it "pitch recognition" with the "recognition" part being the name of the note. One still has to play in tune, and I've never met anyone who does that by Hz.

However, people with pitch recognition do differ from those with even most excellent relative pitch, in that they tend to read music differently. Relative pitch people can learn to read a clef via fingerings and then transfer those fingerings to another instrument in a different key that reads the same clef. Example: trumpet in Bb player who transfers to Eb tuba in a brass band. They just read and go, with a minor adjustment period. But someone with perfect pitch will be unable to do that, because when they see a note written on the staff, what they perceive is the pitch of that note, just like you "hear in your head" a word written on the page. They hear the pitch in their head, and then they play the note on the instrument; so they have to learn an entirely new set of fingerings to play that Eb tuba part written in treble clef, because they don't associate a note's staff position with a fingering, but with a pitch. (This is despite the fact that they are the same fingerings...the mental process to play the note is different enough that they come across as new fingerings.) Totally different process than playing by fingerings; I've never met anyone except "perfect pitch people" who read music that way, and I've never met a "perfect pitch person" who does not read music that way.

Perhaps over-explaining a little farther, what if you had "relative color" and could only name a color correctly if you had a previous reference to another color? Wouldn't that be a total change in how you approached seeing things?

MA

[MaryAnn]

If you just re-name "perfect pitch" to "pitch recognition" then you will have answered your own question; being able to name a note you hear does not mean that you will modify the pitch of that note to place it correctly within a chord. You'd be the same as the guy who sits there with the tuner clipped to his bell, who protests that he *must* be playing the note in tune because the tuner said so.

My own pitch recognition does not help me when playing a cappella; I don't play very well in tune without at least one other player to supply an intonation reference. On violin, I have the open strings to do that, but on a brass....nada. I know a local tuba player who has a *much* better internal intonation reference than I do, and he does not have pitch recognition. They appear to be two different skills/gifts/whatever.

MA