That's the rub - I can accommodate A = 415 and still not get freaked out, but I can also tell 440 from anything near but not quite right.
For me, perfect pitch is more about memory than skill, if that makes sense. People don't think twice about, e.g., remembering what the face of a family member looks like - you just assume you'll recognize it when you encounter it. Music works much the same way for me. I just recognize what I hear as something familiar, and music in Eb just sounds like that, and music in another key just sounds like that, and so on - not really any different from being able to tell the faces or voice of my kids apart. I recall sitting one time with Chris Wilhjelm at a French Horn lesson - he adjusted a tuning slide on my horn but the same pitch came out both before and after the adjustment because I kept making it sound like I thought it should sound. For me, it's important at this point in my horn playing to turn that sort of thing _off_. I hope that's of some help - the only other thing worth mentioning, but it's important, is that there are many, many "flavors" of perfect pitch - when I used to talk with others about it in college, we'd start a conversation saying, "I hear that passage like this ...." and expecting the other person to say, "Yes, it works that way for me, too" but it often didn't. In the end, however, because we all functioned more or less the same to those without perfect pitch, people just assumed we all heard everything in exactly the same way, which we didn't. Rather along the lines of "All <insert race or ethic group here> look alike to me." :) So how it works for me isn't necessarily how it will work for someone else with perfect pitch, e.g., someone else may have a tough time with A=415 but it seems not to bother me, for whatever reason. -S- On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Milton Kicklighter <[email protected]> wrote: > Interesting Steve, > > I have been told and have always thought that perfect pitch doesn't mean > perfect > intonation. > > Do you always hear A as 440? Has perfect pitch meant that a person that has > it > always hears > > A as 440? If so historically what about those times when 440 wasn't the norm? > > I do wonder about this. > > > Milton > Milton Kicklighter > 4th Horn Buffalo Philharmonic > Retired > > > > > ________________________________ > From: Steve Haflich <[email protected]> > To: The Horn List <[email protected]> > Sent: Thu, May 12, 2011 12:21:43 AM > Subject: Re: [Hornlist] Middle g on Bb horn > > Steve Freides <[email protected]> wrote: > > It's interesting for me, as someone with perfect pitch, to be an > amateur horn player. I actually take it as a point of pride that I've > learned to let myself play out of tune - my tendency is to try to fix > everything, but if you do that, your playing never acquires any ease. > I need to fix my intonation by trying to address the technique > problems that are causing the intonation problems. > > Perfect pitch is a very mixed blessing. On anecdotal evidence, I > believe that when one ages, one's perfect pitch gradually goes flat. An > excellent aged scholar and musician of my acquaintance complained many > years ago that his perfect pitch was now based about a semitone low. He > found this very annoying. > > [Myself, I don't have absolute pitch, but I may have absolute volume. A > colleague once remarked that I might be the loudest horn player he had > ever heard, at least among those with only two legs. But at other times > members of my section have called me the horn player who could play the > softest. If you can't play softly enough so the conductor cannot hear > you, he can always ask you to play softer. Playing softly without > losing expression and focus is a skill that seems not often taught in > this modern age.] > _______________________________________________ > post: [email protected] > unsubscribe or set options at > https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/kicklighgter%40yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > post: [email protected] > unsubscribe or set options at > https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/steve.freides%40gmail.com > _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
