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From: James Bassett
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 12:14:30 GMT
Subject: Re: Absolute Pitch

Bobbie wrote (edited)

> > Most professional musicians acquire perfect pitch for their own
> > instrument but not for others.
>
> An excellent point that makes sense in light of the learnability of absolute
> pitch we talk about. This however might also demonstrate the impact of
> relative pitch that develops in musicians as they play with other musicians.
>
> > trying to sing A and then checking with a tuning fork. I tried
> > this and soon acquired "absolute vocal configuration" for one
> > note.
>
> I will have absolute pitch for a tone for awhile after singing or playing
> in that key or on a harp of that key, but guess I'm a little too chaotic
> "upstairs" to cling to it for long.
>
> *** Bobbie ***
>
> *===*===*===*===*===*===*===****===*===*===*===*===*===*===*
>

This all sounds to me like memorizing. If you hear a note over and over
again then you are bound to memorize that note to the point where, later, with
no other reference, you can identify it. Repeat this for all of the other notes
and you have perfect pitch or whatever you wish to call it. This doesn't seem
to be down to natural/geneticaly inherited ability unlike the ability to
identify patterns and intervals.
Until last year I had a purely vocal background in music and can
sing a piece in the correct key with no other reference after a few listenings
and yet I will not know what key that is untill I have either been told or have
sat down at a piano and worked it out. This is surely memorizing. For an
awful lot of people (myself included in the extreme) our memories work best
when accosiating with music.
I can remeber the songwords to well over a thousand songs and yet I am only
nineteen. However, I can only remeber less than half of those as words. I
first have to get the tune going inside my head before I can relate the words
to the music. But by using this method I can memorize an albums worth of lyrics
(ten to twelve tracks) in two to three listenings as long as the album contains
some (for me) memorable tunes. Unfortunately this does not work well for the
vast mojority of blues I have heard as the skill comes more from the
musicianship and arrangement than from memorable tunes. Consequently I should
think I have less than a hundred blues lyrics memorized.
Sorry if this seems to be going off the track a bit but my point is that
perfect pitch appears to be a feat of memory whereas relative pitch seems to be
more of a natural skill, though one which I'm sure could be aquired through
a greater feat of memory than I am capable of. Perfect pitch would involve
memorizing twelve notes mutiplied by however many octaves you wish. Relative
pitch would require memorizing countless intervals accross those octaves
etc etc.

Just my opinion. Tear it appart as you wish. I don't care, I'll be back
home in the good old Isle of Man soon anyway :-)

- --
Jim Bassey

Old enough to know better (too young to care)

PS You might have noticed a slight addition to my sig. to help clear up some
cofusion a few people were having between me and the other Jim on the list.