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Junior Member
Registered: 09-22-04
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I have a question about so called "Perfect Pitch". I am a skilled musician and playing in tune is key to sounding good. Tuning a musical instrument can be done in a number of ways. Guitarist use an electronic tuner. Violinists use a pitchfork. When a Violinist plays they are feeling their way around the neck of the violin by memory and feedback with the brain to achieve perfect pitch and be in tune and in key. This is only one aspect of Perfect Pitch. I want to know how accurate the human memory is having to do with sound. Can a person walk into a room cold and pick up an un-tuned Violin and tune it to perfect pitch? This would be very easy to debunk or prove by using a modern professional Violinist with an electric Violin or Microphone and a Signal Analyzer. Have the musician tune the Violin by ear without a reference tone and test the pitch of the strings. Perfect Pitch or?
Best Regards,
Tommy Ochoa
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Senior Member
Registered: 10-25-09
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This is absolutely possible. Not only can you be trained to tune a guitar without a reference, but a piano tuner can do an entire piano by ear! I know someone who can sing any note without hearing a reference. Ever hear someone sing acapella in pitch? Its called being SKILLED. Just because you can't do a triple lutz on ice-skates, run a 4 minute mile or play your favorite Paul Gilbert song on guitar, doesn't mean its not possible for someone with trained skill and natural talent. Some people can see the full spectrum of colors. Some can't. Some people hear as clearly as most people see. Most people are completely tone deaf without a reference. Others just have bad habits, or don't know their intervals. If you don't have perfect pitch, you have to learn your musical intervals and practice. Also, if the instrument is properly intonated, you can tune it by ear simply by listening for the purest pitch the string can produce (that is, when the amplitude modulation, or "beat" disappears).
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Junior Member
Registered: 09-22-04
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quote: Originally posted by psychotech:
I agree with your reply. I am an ear trained musician and didn't even use a tuner for about the first 15 years I played. As I began to do pro gigs a stage tuner to tune silently between songs became required. I don't claim to have perfect pitch but I am skilled enough to put my guitar within a few hertz eadgb. I test myself by tuning the guitar and checking it. My post was a general discussion starter and not intended to expound the virtues of perfect pitch. I want to see it demonstrated by a highly skilled musician. I can make my own youtube video of it but I though it would good discussion/subject matter. I am looking for a classy demonstration of a person with extremely developed pitch accuracy.
Regards,
Psy
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Senior Member
Registered: 11-04-08
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Yes, it's possible to tune an instrument without a reference. I've done it myself many times. When I watched others do it, they've been able to get it within about 1 hertz of perfect.
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Junior Member
Registered: 10-23-09
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Psy,
what instrument you play can have a great affect on how you use your hearing and the aspects of "perfect pitch" you use. if you play an instrument, like the violin, that is tuned in fifths, it can be more difficult to tune an instrument tuned in fourths, like a guitar, because you're may be used to tuning by checking the harmonious scale tone or the harmonic of the next string down. also, the physics of tuning show that the closer you are to the target note, the more out of tune the string sounds because the sound waves aren't matching up with what you're tuning against (memory or otherwise).
I'm pretty sure that "perfect pitch" can be either something that you know inherently or that you can learn. maybe take a tally of other musicians you know, or even audience members to see how many trained people say it was something they had to learn and how many untrained musicians can tell you about experiences where they've encountered musicians out of tune (usually this has the effect of giving the listener a headache if they have "perfect pitch").
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Senior Member
Registered: 02-12-08
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Part of the problem is having a perfectly tuned instrument handy at all times so the musician can learn a particular pitch. Without a proper reference it is unlikely that a musician could verify or acquire the familiarity with a specific pitch. I can accurately sing or whistle the beginning pitch of a song that I haven't heard for years but I can't identify the pitch (A440 as an example).
Most musicians who profess to have perfect pitch have played only piano or other concert pitch instrument. Having perfect pitch can be quite a liability as some members of my first year music theory class discovered.
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Senior Member
Registered: 10-25-09
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Oldguy, please explain. I have a friend who can identify notes on any instrument. I think some people hear sound frequencies in the same way most people see colors. You will never mistake crimson for fire-engine red. He can pick apart tone from fundamental pitch. I think it has something to do with how fast the brain can process sound, combined with extra memory space for sound that most people don't posess. I know I often confuse tambre for pitch with complex instrument voices. I would like to know how hearing clearly can be a detriment to learning music? Thanks.
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Senior Member
Registered: 09-28-06
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Just a few months ago, I read Oliver Sacks' (psychologist) book, "Musicophelia", in which he talks about how music affects the human brain and how things can go wrong.
He spends a chapter on "perfect pitch", and says it's a fairly common condition.
Some folks can indeed recognize absolute pitches without any other reference. It's possible for this ability to be damaged or to go askew as well; sometimes only in particular frequencies.
Sacks related the case of a professional piano tuner who "lost" the ability to accurately hear about an octave in the middle range of the instrument.
I suffered hearing loss in one ear early in life, so I've never had this ability. The invention of electronic tuners is a great boon!
Chet Atkins used to relate that he was terrible at tuning, and considered that perhaps being a musician wasn't what he was best suited for. However, by then, he'd made so much money playing the guitar that he couldn't quit.....
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Senior Member
Registered: 02-12-08
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quote: Originally posted by psykostx:
Oldguy, please explain. I have a friend who can identify notes on any instrument. I think some people hear sound frequencies in the same way most people see colors. You will never mistake crimson for fire-engine red. He can pick apart tone from fundamental pitch. I think it has something to do with how fast the brain can process sound, combined with extra memory space for sound that most people don't posess. I know I often confuse tambre for pitch with complex instrument voices. I would like to know how hearing clearly can be a detriment to learning music? Thanks.
Most wind instruments are designated according to the concert pitch that is sounded when the musician plays a written C on that instrument, corresponding to C, B flat, E flat, and F. If someone learns to play on one or several of those "non-C" instruments at a young age without knowing what is going on (such as myself), the opportunity to have a consistent pitch reference that is consciously connected to a particular concert pitch can be lost. That's not to say that dedicated effort can't reverse that but I haven't had much need for perfect pitch so haven't put in the effort. As for the intervals, let's just say that in my first year theory class that I was mentioning, I made the "mistake" of doing the computer lab component (ear training) in an a hour and a half, earning me the enmity of the rest of the class when the prof announced that fact in class in response to complaints about the difficulty of the lab work. I also earned a bit of money on the side tutoring after that.  I conduct small to medium size groups and have very little trouble pointing to the musician who needs to "pull it up a bit" despite starting to lose my hearing. Hearing clearly isn't a detriment; not being able to transpose quickly when the prof designates a particular pitch as D# when doing an interval quiz is!  |
Junior Member
Registered: 10-30-09
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It is rumored that Mozart had perfect pitch.
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