Have you all seen this about perfect pitch.

[KKORO]

Have you all seen this about perfect pitch. I can't wait till I get a grand baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgFdics3uKo" target="_blank

KKORO

[IsaacTuba]

Yeah, I really enjoy Rick's videos on his son. As someone else with perfect pitch but not quite enough interval training, I'm extremely impressed with him.

[Tubamaphone]

My wife has perfect pitch, the best way I can describe it to people is that it is as easy to her as identifying colors is to you. Like the game identify this note is as easy as someone holding up a red card to you and asking you to identify the color.

[MaryAnn]

Pretty funny because at the very beginning when he clinked the glass and said "That's an Ab" I thought, no that is an A. Then the kid comes up and says the same thing. Ha. I don't disagree with anything in that video. The part at the end about babies learning to recognize their native language, I have a neat story. I knew a married couple who had a baby son. The father was German and the mother was Mexican. The father spoke to the son only in German and the mother spoke to him only in Spanish, and they spoke English to each other. By age three the son was starting to separate the languages and was going to end up native trilingual. I think this is more common in areas of the world where there are many languages in close proximity, as opposed to the US where English is emphasized. Pitch recognition can "just happen" when there is exposure from birth to in-tune music in the home, just like any other language.

[Doug Elliott]

I found it very hard to learn much of anything about intervals because I have perfect pitch. Other people identify notes by the interval; I had to identify intervals by the notes.

I agree with everything that guy says about it. If I had earlier theory training I could have come close to what that kid does, but in recent years my pitch recognition is less accurate than it once was. I'm sometimes a half step off now, unless I really think about it.

[KKORO]

I found it very hard to learn much of anything about intervals because I have perfect pitch. Other people identify notes by the interval; I had to identify intervals by the notes.

I agree with everything that guy says about it. If I had earlier theory training I could have come close to what that kid does, but in recent years my pitch recognition is less accurate than it once was. I'm sometimes a half step off now, unless I really think about it.

I had very good "relative" pitch in college. I could recognize a low C (lowest note I could sing) and sing intervals from that pitch. After leaving the music scene for the past 20 years, I don't seem to have that skill at all.

We had a student in college that we were told had "Absolute" pitch. He had a difficult time singing in a choir when the choir went off pitch because they were singing in pitches that were not "recognized" pitches. We were told the difficulty he had was the difference between "Absolute" pitch and "Perfect" pitch. So, for all these years (I'm an old bugger now) I differentiated between "Relative," "Perfect" and "Absolute " pitch.

KKORO

[MaryAnn]

I found it very hard to learn much of anything about intervals because I have perfect pitch. Other people identify notes by the interval; I had to identify intervals by the notes.

I agree with everything that guy says about it. If I had earlier theory training I could have come close to what that kid does, but in recent years my pitch recognition is less accurate than it once was. I'm sometimes a half step off now, unless I really think about it.

My pitch has slipped too and I can be off by a half step. I talked to someone else my age recently whose pitch had also slipped, but...I read somewhere that it tends to slip starting at age 60, as a pattern. I don't know how old you are, but that is when mine started to be less precise, and the lady I talked to recently.
Intervals, since I play violin, I tend to set the interval pitches by playing double stops and getting the beat situation right. On brass, I just do what fits as best I can with the group. I think if you play an interval on the piano, I probably do it the way you do, like, that is a C and the E above it so it's a major third. But I hadn't thought about how I did it before. When I was back in school getting my BSEE, I took music appreciation because it would count towards the degree (which was funny.) The prof found out I had PP and started playing chords on the piano asking me what they were. I did the same as the kid did....it's funny that people think if they play more notes together you will have a harder time identifying them. Back to the color reference....if there are six colors on the wall, that doesn't make it any harder to identify each one of them.

[KKORO]

We only had four times listening to get chorale down. I don't remember how long the examples were, but if I didn't get the bass line down the first time, I was totally lost.

KKORO

[timothy42b]

When I was 10-11-12 years old and playing in garage bands, it was up to me to pull the changes. bass lines, and guitar solos off the 45 RPM records.

I played in a wind band with a guy who was obsessed with Herb Alpert. He created a book for his little combo, transcribing Herb Alpert tunes off recordings (probably a lot of LPs with a few CDs, this was a few years back).

Being a trumpet player, he wrote out everything transposed in Bb, including bass lines and guitar chords. I thought it was a pretty impressive feat for a guy with zero theory knowledge.

[Leland]

Have you all seen this about perfect pitch. I can't wait till I get a grand baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgFdics3uKo" target="_blank" target="_blank

KKORO

When he clinked the glass and said, "That's an A flat," I couldn't reconcile it against the sound that I associate with a BBb tuba's first-valve fingering. I took his word, but my mind kept going, "Uh, no, that's not an Ab..."

[Three Valves]

I do not have perfect pitch.

But I was blessed with World Class Sound!!

[MaryAnn]

We had a student in college that we were told had "Absolute" pitch. He had a difficult time singing in a choir when the choir went off pitch because they were singing in pitches that were not "recognized" pitches. We were told the difficulty he had was the difference between "Absolute" pitch and "Perfect" pitch. So, for all these years (I'm an old bugger now) I differentiated between "Relative," "Perfect" and "Absolute " pitch.

KKORO

I've had people assume that I can hit pitches at exact Hz frequencies, which I can't. I call it Pitch Recognition because there is a range (albeit small) that an "A" will fit into, like there is somewhat of a range that the name "red" that a color will fit into. Sooner or later, though, the color name will morph into something else because colors aren't divided like pitches are. Pitches, pretty soon it will be "in between" A and Ab without being either one of them. Some are more flexible than others in being able to play that way. I couldn't play violin in an early music group that wasn't using close to a 440 A, because the notes were just wrong. I can also certify that Krishna Das's CD that I listened to was not on a usual pitch. It had a LOT to do with messing up my pitch sense because I listened to it often for several months on my way to and from work. Most everything was in a very flat key of almost D, but not low enough to be C#.

[timothy42b]

If we could convince the utility companies to change the US electric power supply from 60 Hz to 58, we'd have a soft Bb reference playing in nearly every room. 60 is halfway between Bb and B and drives me nuts.

Switching power supplies and high frequency ballasts wouldn't help, but there'd still be a low frequency hum in most spaces.

[MaryAnn]

If we could convince the utility companies to change the US electric power supply from 60 Hz to 58, we'd have a soft Bb reference playing in nearly every room. 60 is halfway between Bb and B and drives me nuts.

You would have just LOVED the first two years of my engineering job when I was project managing the building of electrical substations and spent a lot of time around house-sized transformers that had a very loud 60Hz hum.

[GC]

When people speak of perfect pitch, what pitch system do they refer to? Equal temperament, mean-tone, just, well-tempered, whatever? And how wide are their "slots"?

[Three Valves]

When people speak of perfect pitch, what pitch system do they refer to? Equal temperament, mean-tone, just, well-tempered, whatever? And how wide are their "slots"?

If it is just 5 cents flat they ear it up!!

[Doug Elliott]

It depends. Piano players develop equal tempered perfect pitch. Or in the case of someone who grew up playing an out of tune piano, that becomes their reference - I knew someone like that.

For others, the slots can be wide. It's entirely possible to follow different temperments. You can learn to hear and recognize whatever you learn to hear and recognize. And I do think it happens very early in life, reinforced continually, and probably can't be learned after a certain point.

I suspect that the 60Hz hum, and continually hearing off-pitch recorded music, are the reasons it tends to decline eventually.

[timothy42b]

I suspect that the 60Hz hum, and continually hearing off-pitch recorded music, are the reasons it tends to decline eventually.

I wonder if that is changing now. With the ubiquitous cheap electronic tuner, groups tend to be a lot closer to A440 than I remember. Playing in tune can still be hard with some players, but not because the whole group is way off. Also popular music is usually autotuned, so it's a lot closer.

[timothy42b]

If we could convince the utility companies to change the US electric power supply from 60 Hz to 58, we'd have a soft Bb reference playing in nearly every room. 60 is halfway between Bb and B and drives me nuts.

You would have just LOVED the first two years of my engineering job when I was project managing the building of electrical substations and spent a lot of time around house-sized transformers that had a very loud 60Hz hum.

I'm still around large transformers that hum. In an electrical room that hum is pervasive, but not so much in a more traditional mechanical room with pumps and supply fans, because those are run with variable frequency drives now.

And then there's the "singing" of high voltage overhead power lines, which electrical engineers claim is corona discharge, but we mechanical engineers know is vortice shedding, akin to how a flute makes sound.