I was born with AP, unfortunately, and lived with it without much thinking to the age of 20. At that time i felt compelled to "destroy" it. I still know what the individual notes are, but it is rather secondary to hearing the relation between the pitches. The experience (plus being surrounded by other Perfect Pitch equipped musicians) made it clear to me that PP is a function of memory and habit, more then anything else. It is possible to have it working in such a way that a piece once heard at a=440 will sound absolutely unacceptable at a=415, - the mind just refuses to accept it as the same piece of music. It will have the same effect as for a person mechanically counting the same stairs - suddenly to find there are a few missing. However, if intentionally or otherwise a different habit or memory is created (for example for a meantone tuning) - it becomes quite natural. I had a personal experience when, after year of playing only early music, never in ET, confronted with a grand piano that sounded horribly out of tune to me. And so i mentioned to the performer (oh, youth and silliness..), not taking into account that it was a very respected hall and a top notch tuner, and the actual problem was my perfect pitch that has forgotten the Equal Temperament. I think the problems that perfect pitch presents are overcome when the rigidity of the mind is overcome. I have to mention that it is a strong habit oriented mind quality. I thought that i trained my ear to be oriented to the pitch relations rather then actual digital pitch positions, until i started listening and playing persian scales - every "out of tune" note i literally had to force the finger, as it would refuse to go where needed. In particular to your examples - for an AP person actually the inner relations in the scale are less irritating then the whole scale moved over (especially something like a = 404, or 422 ). You could compare it to a digital tuner - if in the neighborhood - it is C, or D, if you focus a little more - perceive in more detail. alexander
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:56:20 -0700 (PDT) <[email protected]> wrote: > Regarding temperament, I've always what people with absolute pitch think of > our various efforts. How would someone with perfect pitch perceive an Ab in > F minor in 3rd, 4th, 6th, 11th, or 32.9567 comma meantone? Would this person > hear a kind of "real" Ab, an "out of tune" Ab or some other species of note > altogether? How about a G# in E major? (There's also the issue of pitch > level. Let's pretend that our examples are all at 440.) > > Is there anyone on the list with AP who would care to enlighten us muggles > about what you hear? > > Chris > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
