Re: Perfect pitch tapes - do they work?

[initialsBB]

paul(no wrote in message >...
> I believe that the science of the matter says that true perfect pitch
> is genetic. It takes no training and is totally inate.

Sorry but that makes no sense. Perhaps if our system of equal
temperament was mathematically "correct" I could buy into this but
it's obviously just a learned skill. I can believe that some people
are much better at learning it though.

> It
> apparently can also be quite a curse having to listen to a largely out
> of tune world. Imagine singing in a choir where they have all drifted
> a 1/8 tone flat and you need to match them. It would be painful.

Well, then I pity these people because apparently they wouldn't be
able to listen to and enjoy Indian classical music or the blues or
even music in Just temperament.

> I remember a one time in my misspent youth having listened to the
> Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" so many times, I had the Key of E firmly
> etched into my brain and could tune a guitar by ear simple by starting
> with that note with no reference tone other than the one in my head.

The Grateful Dead? In tune? I can't imagine it ; )

[Knud]

>In my opinion, perfect pitch has little to do with how well someone
>performs.

It's not really opinion... absolute pitch (nobody's hearing is "perfect")
is a skill that may or may not be useful to a musician. It's chief benefit
might be how it eases the idea-taking process. For example scribbling a theme
on a piece of paper. Anyone who thinks it makes people more in tune is confused
because "in tune" is purely a function of relative pitch. With nothing to
relate to, there is no such thing as "in tune". In any event, absolute pitch
has no relationship to musical talent/skill. There are plenty of geniuses
without absolute pitch and plenty of giftless ******s with absolute pitch
abilities. Anyone who claims it has relation to compositional talent or
inspiration needs to get a life.


{FACI-FUKI-NATIN}

[Mark T. Wieczorek]

Someone in another forum I hang out in reminded me of something.

Some cultures have developed a language dependant partially on pitch. It's
not enough to say the word, but what pitch you say it at conveys meaning.
These people were able to listen to tones and then speak them back weeks
later - adults, children, almost anyone they tested in this society.

Regards,
Mark

--
http://www.marktaw.com/

http://www.prosoundreview.com/
User reviews of pro audio gear

[Glenn Booth]

Hi,

In message >, Mark T. Wieczorek
> writes
>Someone in another forum I hang out in reminded me of something.
>
>Some cultures have developed a language dependant partially on pitch. It's
>not enough to say the word, but what pitch you say it at conveys meaning.
>These people were able to listen to tones and then speak them back weeks
>later - adults, children, almost anyone they tested in this society.
>
>Regards,
>Mark

I heard the same thing on a recent BBC radio programme.
Apparently, this is exactly why we 'westerners' find Mandarin such a
bitch to learn. The same word (sequence of characters) can have several
meanings depending on how it is intoned by the speaker. God knows how
they make sense of the newspapers; I guess the Chinese have written
'modifiers' that describe how a written word, or part of the word,
should be spoken.

They also pointed out that the ability to learn to differentiate between
some of these sounds diminishes rapidly above a certain age - for some
languages (they quoted Dutch) it can be as young as six.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

[Mark T. Wieczorek]

Glenn Booth > wrote in
:

> I heard the same thing on a recent BBC radio programme.
> Apparently, this is exactly why we 'westerners' find Mandarin such a
> bitch to learn. The same word (sequence of characters) can have several
> meanings depending on how it is intoned by the speaker. God knows how
> they make sense of the newspapers; I guess the Chinese have written
> 'modifiers' that describe how a written word, or part of the word,
> should be spoken.
>
> They also pointed out that the ability to learn to differentiate between
> some of these sounds diminishes rapidly above a certain age - for some
> languages (they quoted Dutch) it can be as young as six.

My nephew is around 8 months old and has started vocalizing a lot. BA BA BA
BA BA BA BA BA and LAAAAAAAA and stuff like that. My sister decided to try
to harmonize with him and went down a third from his pitch, and he followed
her!

I'm an adult (who never really sang much) and I have a hard time doing
that. I'm sure there's something to learning about pitch when you're young,
around the same time you learn about shapes and colors.

Regards,
Mark

--
http://www.marktaw.com/

http://www.prosoundreview.com/
User reviews of pro audio gear

[Carlos Alden]

Glenn Booth > wrote in message >...

>
> I heard the same thing on a recent BBC radio programme.
> Apparently, this is exactly why we 'westerners' find Mandarin such a
> bitch to learn. The same word (sequence of characters) can have several
> meanings depending on how it is intoned by the speaker. God knows how
> they make sense of the newspapers; I guess the Chinese have written
> 'modifiers' that describe how a written word, or part of the word,
> should be spoken.

Some Westerners do have a hard time learning Mandarin, but many do
not. It is a popular cultural myth that Chinese is a difficult
language to acquire. In fact it has much less grammar bull**** than
something like French or German or God forbid Russian. The tones in
Mandarin are only four (Cantonese has nine), and they are very
distinct from each other. It takes about a week of drill to really
hear them, much less time to learn to generate them. If you're
anything of a musician it's not tough at all. Additionally there are
only a couple of sounds in mandarin that are challenging for an
English speaker. The hardest one for me was a vowel sound that is
almost exactly like the German umlaut.

There are no modifiers in written Chinese for pronunciation (as in
Japanese), although there are character components that have to do
with how it may well sound, as well as a character piece that
indicates something of the meaning. Thus if I encounter a character I
have not learned I am able to take a stab at the meaning and the
sound. The hardest part of Chinese is the dreaded second-year curse,
where one has to grind through lists of vocabulary, learning new
characters by rote. No other way around it.

It's a fascinating language and an amazing culture to study. The
music is hip, too.

Carlos

[Carey Carlan]

(initialsBB) wrote in
m:

> Well, then I pity these people because apparently they wouldn't be
> able to listen to and enjoy Indian classical music or the blues or
> even music in Just temperament.

Don't have to go as far as India. I can't stand most of the current
singers on the radio. All the high notes are under pitch and the
embellishments don't begin to find any real note--just slide around.

[Carey Carlan]

"Gareth Magennis" > wrote in
:

> I've found advantages and disadvantages of perfect pitch.
> Transcribing music I believe is much easier, especially things like
> writing out the bass line for the bass player in the form A, D, D, A
> etc. I can do this in one pass of the song to be learnt.
> Disadvantages are I find it very difficult to play a transposed
> keyboard or a guitar with a capo. I know the next chord should be a D
> for example but playing the D shape on a capo'd guitar obviously plays
> something else and I get totally confused. This brings up the
> interesting question of how do perfect pitchers and non perfect
> pitchers improvise. They must have different maps in their heads
> somehow. Mine is all based around pitch.

From years of violin playing and choir singing I have developed a pretty
solid relative pitch. I find that transposing is effortless as long as I'm
adept at the instrument (Easy on violin, hard on trumpet because I don't
play trumpet as well.) and I have the music "in my ear", i.e. I know what
the chord progressions are supposed to be.

One of my most fun tasks was substituting on viola one day. The
combination of different string tunings and different clef meant that I
pretended I was still reading treble clef on a violin and just playing a
third higher than the written note. Made for some interesting mistakes.

[William Balmer]

"Carlos Alden" > wrote in message
om...

Carlos! A blast from the past! How are you? Coming to Chicago again this
fall?

By the way, I used your Celtic Nots CD to demonstrate the new sound system
at my church. Sounded great!

Bill Balmer

[Chris]

Hi all... I've just been reading through this thread about perfect
pitch... in case anyone's curious, I have been doing a lot of research
on the subject over the past few years, and writing all about it at

http://www.acousticlearning.com

This includes an exhaustive review of the Burge course... I had to
agree with one of the posters from this thread, who pointed out that
the course immediately flogs the relative-pitch course. I've recently
been amused to discover that the relative-pitch course teaches
intervals by distance, which doesn't support absolute listening as
well as harmony.



cheers
chris

[no spam]

On 6 Jul 2003 13:52:54 GMT, Carey Carlan > wrote:

>One of my most fun tasks was substituting on viola one day. The
>combination of different string tunings and different clef meant that I
>pretended I was still reading treble clef on a violin and just playing a
>third higher than the written note. Made for some interesting mistakes.

Since I began my fiddle career at 28 years old, a year before I
returned to university for music, I was told I didn't have the chops
to continue in performance and would do better playing viola.
After a year my brain still got hot enough to fry an egg trying to
read the notes one line off and move my fingers one string over.
I never was a proficient reader.
I was always dyslexic, so I would look at the music and remember what
the teacher played. Unfortunately or not I couldn't resist improving
on the writing by composing a little something new along the way.
This was a dead give away to my teacher that I was faking it.
Paul Gitlitz
Glitchless Productions
www.glitchless.net

[no spam]

On 30 Jun 2003 17:38:13 -0700, (initialsBB)
wrote:

>Well, then I pity these people because apparently they wouldn't be
>able to listen to and enjoy Indian classical music or the blues or
>even music in Just temperament.
I have just begun to learn the Maqam system used throughout the
middle east and it not only has microtones we don't normally use they
also shift in different scales so they aren't necessarily a 1/4 tone.
Much like our leading tone is sometimes played sharper in untempered
instruments.

Paul Gitlitz
Glitchless Productions
www.glitchless.net

[Chris]

>I'd wind up with a review just
>as wordy, circuitous, and repetitive as the course itself."
>Too late! This is from the every next paragraph:
>"Before I get to that, though, I'll tell you a story of my own."
*--------
Oh, how funny! I never noticed that. Of course, this is out of
context, but it's still funny.

> Boy was that a long boring read, I skimmed most of it and it was still long
> and boring.
*---------
I'm not surprised. The Burge course rambles; I fear I did it justice.
Actually, now that you mention it, the "story of my own" types of
tangents were a semi-desperate attempt to give some actual substance
to the material... I suppose for some readers that simply makes it
that much longer. The structure of my site, too, lends itself to
that, since its ongoing bloglike nature leads to a very loose
organization and little structure. Still, as I say in that same
paragraph you referenced, a significant difference between my rambling
observations and Burge's rambling observations is that I don't ask you
to pay me hundreds of dollars to ramble at you. It's all free.

> It seems to me that you're just selling your own program, discrediting the
> Burge thing enough to build your own credibility without making it seem
> like perfect pitch can't be learned, and infringing on his copyright in the
> process.
*--------
Yes, I suppose it could seem that way. I try to emphasize that the
material on my site is totally free. Even though there is a program
that I'm selling, if you wanted to you could just download the free
demo, see what the lessons are, and do them on your own instrument
without having to spend a dime. But, admittedly, when I pop in to
somewhere (like this newsgroup) to say hello, the first thing people
wonder is "what's he selling?"-- and then, when they visit the site,
sometimes that's all they see. I can't help that, but I can hope, so
I keep trying.

As for credibility, I'd hope it's not too much to ask to encourage
people to read the rest of the website; the Burge review is merely a
part of the work I've been doing. Once they've read the main
archives, people often write to me with surprise that they now think
of music in an entirely new way. That's gratifying. If you only read
the Burge review, I'd say you got the least of what's there; if you
read the rest of the site, my work should speak for itself.

As for discrediting Burge... I'm not insensitive to that. When I
began the review, I wanted to be neutral for the sake of presenting a
legitimate evaluation; but the more I listened, the less pleased I
was. Accordingly, while I was writing the review, I became very
concerned that the tone of the piece was far too negative, and at one
point I tried hard to "find good things" to say about it... but what
resulted was too forced, and I deleted it. Fortunately, somewhere in
the middle of the review I started seeing unsolicited feedback and
comments which encouraged me to accept that I was just expressing an
honest opinion.

As for infringing on copyright... I describe at the top of the review
how I'm legally in the right, but you must be invoking the ethical
issue. I'd put it to you this way: you found my review long and
boring. Perhaps, then, you have judged my skill as an
instructor/lecturer to be inferior to Burge, and since you have an
interest in perfect pitch, you will now buy Burge's course to hear him
tell you, in his words, what he has to say. That's why copyright aims
to protect the manner of expression, rather than the ideas. If you
sincerely think that my presentation is long and boring, you owe it to
yourself to seek out a more engaging explanation. Burge's success
should be predicated on his ability to effectively communicate his
ideas.

I am disappointed that you didn't find value in the material I've
gathered, but as they say, you can't please everyone. I won't attempt
to convince you that your opinion of my work is wrong; I'll just keep
working. If you decide later to change your mind, then that's cool,
but if not, that's your own business, and I respect that.

In any case, thanks for your reply. I appreciate your taking the time
to share your opinion.



cheers
chris

[Rune Thoen]

If anyone wants some online training fun, here ya go:

http://www.earplane.com/

[Chris]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the good thoughts. I hope you find something worth looking
at-- or hearing-- on the site.

I've done enough research on copyright law to know that it's never
clear-cut. Whatever your interpretation of the law, as one
intellectual-rights lawyer said to me, "anybody can sue anyone for
anything."

In this case, I'm willing to take the risk. I think it's remarkable
that Burge has been around for so long and yet you can't find a
reasonable analysis of his work *anywhere*. I've been pestering
people on eBay to find out their reasons for buying it, and almost
every one of them says "I saw an ad somewhere and figured it might be
interesting." The few others say they're buying it on the
recommendation of a teacher or a friend-- but *none* of them have any
idea what they're buying. Nobody is making an informed purchase, and
Burge's course is expensive. It's not fair.

Plus, if it ever came to some kind of head, like I've mentioned, the
review is really just one part of my work; for my purposes, what it
prompted me to explore was more valuable than what was actually in the
Burge course. If I were somehow compelled to, I could just extract my
ideas that I'd woven in among Burge's, delete the contested material,
and proceed as though nothing had happened.

And it's definitely not torture.. in a way it's a delusion of
grandeur. For all his advertisement and his product's longevity,
Burge has completely failed to budge the public perception that
perfect pitch is a genetic bestowment. It's my impression that this
is because Burge is merely describing his personal observations, which
are scientifically invalid (and often inaccurate). I hope that my
research can eventually, ultimately, provide the facts that Burge is
only guessing at. Can you imagine what would happen, and how you'd
feel, if you managed to change the world? That's what I'm shooting
for. And it seems possible-- the entire field of music cognition is
brand spanking new, invented in 1983. It's a genuine frontier.
Wa-hoo, baby!



cheers
chris

http://www.acousticlearning.com



>
> I'm not sure about infringing on copyright. I'm not an expert here, and I'm
> not a lawyer, but I remember hearing somewhere that while you can mention
> King Kong, if you start going in to "well, it's a movie about a giant ape
> that's kept on an island by the natives and..." then you're treading
> dangerous water. I really don't know, I just hope for your sake that you
> do.
>
> Good luck in your endeavors, I may drop by the site later to see what
> you've been up to. I'm certainly interested in "opening" my ears more and
> more.
>
> Regards,
> Mark

[Mark T. Wieczorek]

(Chris) wrote in
om:

> as one
> intellectual-rights lawyer said to me, "anybody can sue anyone for
> anything."
>
> In this case, I'm willing to take the risk.

That's basically what I wanted to hear.

You're right about the Burge thing not changing people's perception of
perfect pitch - everyone "in the biz" is already cynical, and just
considers them to be snake oil. I remember an article in some magazine
about perfect pitch, basically lambasting the Burge thing, and telling you
to learn your relative pitch, and memorize song passages - the first notes
of Smoke on the Water, for example, as a poor man's perfect pitch.

Regards,
Mark

--
http://www.marktaw.com/

http://www.prosoundreview.com/
User reviews of pro audio gear

[Mark T. Wieczorek]

"Rune Thoen" > wrote in
:

> If anyone wants some online training fun, here ya go:
>
> http://www.earplane.com/

Nice link. I've compiled a few of my own here:

http://www.marktaw.com/recording/EarTrainingforMusiciansAu.html

Regards,
Mark

--
http://www.marktaw.com/

http://www.prosoundreview.com/
User reviews of pro audio gear

[Carey Carlan]

wrote in :

> - I taught a choir for several years, using a tuning fork to check
> intonation as we sang. After a few years I found that I could sing a
> 440 A accurately first thing in the morning (before hearing the fork).
> I could also recognize 440 A, for example if I was walking down the
> street and a car horn beeped an A. This is common, as many string
> players can recognize or sing A but may not have that sort of
> sensitivity to other pitches.

I used to frustrate the hell out of the other members of my high school
chorus by *always* hitting an A on demand exactly on pitch in rehearsal.
What they didn't notice, and I never let on, was that the flourescent
lights hummed a B-flat.

As a violinist I can tune to 440 very accurately without a tuning fork. I
find it's the quality of the sound coming out of the instrument that I
listen for, rather than raw pitch. 440 Hz sounds "better" than 441. Can't
explain it beyond that.

[Chris]

"Mark T. Wieczorek" > wrote in message everyone "in the biz" is already cynical, and just considers them to be snake oil.
*-----
Oh, wow.. I didn't know that. It explains a few things, though.

>I remember an article... telling you to learn your relative pitch
*-----
This week I'm reading Ron Gorow's book to try to understand why "they"
think relative pitch is more important than perfect pitch. (I'm
trying to break down the barrier between the two concepts with
"harmonic listening" theories)

>and memorize song passages - the first notes
>of Smoke on the Water, for example, as a poor man's perfect pitch.
*---------
Hm.. Levitin's research has explicitly shown that this doesn't work
reliably.

Well, nuff said for now, perhaps.. just one more plug for those who
might be curious.. http://www.acousticlearning.com and lots of free
info.

Thanks!


cheers
chris

[Rob Adelman]

Chris wrote:


> This week I'm reading Ron Gorow's book to try to understand why "they"
> think relative pitch is more important than perfect pitch. (I'm
> trying to break down the barrier between the two concepts with
> "harmonic listening" theories)

More important for what? For making music, I definitely agree. Unless it
is a song consisting of one note ;)

Also, i.m.o. musical training is all about relative pitch. 3rds, 5ths,
7ths, and so on. It's all relative..

[Paul McEvoy]

I used to be able to get a perfect A every time by remembering the
first note of the four note intro to "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural
Woman" by Aretha Franklin. I'm not near a piano now, so I'm not sure.
But if you know the lick I mean, try it. It works for me, at least I
think.

Paul

[Chris]

"Rune Thoen" > wrote in message
>I'd take the relative pitch over perfect pitch any day ;-)
*----
I'm still working on trying to understand why people think it's
either-or. My knowledge of musicianship and music theory is still
extremely new.

As far as my research is concerned, what you've just said is
equivalent to saying, about language, "I don't need to know anything
about letters, just so long as I can speak in syllables." Although
it's undeniably true that the meaning of a word resides in its
syllables and the way the letters blend with each other ("syl-la-ble"
versus "s-ih-lu-bu-ul", for example), no one seems to question that
you should also be taught to know and read the phonemes, or to suggest
that you have to make a choice between syllables and phonemes.
(Alternately, illiterates compose language just fine without ever
knowing how to spell anything.) Ideally you'd want to be able to
construct all the words you wanted to, and know what the phonemes are
within them.

Likewise, even though relative pitch carries the meaning and the
message of the music, there's no reason why you shouldn't also be able
to know the sounds of the pitches within. I've been trying to figure
out why people insist that relationships are exclusive of their
components.



cheers
chris

[Rune Thoen]

"Chris" > wrote in message
om...
> "Rune Thoen" > wrote in message
> >I'd take the relative pitch over perfect pitch any day ;-)
> *----
> I'm still working on trying to understand why people think it's
> either-or. My knowledge of musicianship and music theory is still
> extremely new.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean that. It was more like an "if " it was
either-or. Having both would be ultimate, so I encourage all parents to let
their children play with some kind of keyboard while they're growing up :)

Runepune

[Carey Carlan]

(Chris) wrote in
om:

> Likewise, even though relative pitch carries the meaning and the
> message of the music, there's no reason why you shouldn't also be able
> to know the sounds of the pitches within. I've been trying to figure
> out why people insist that relationships are exclusive of their
> components.

If you have perfect pitch, you also have perfect relative pitch. It's the
ultimate standard. Even if you couldn't "hear" a perfect fourth, you could
still hear an F and a B-flat and know what they were.

If you have relative pitch, you can still recreate entire works, you just
can't guarantee that they're in the original key.

I will confound bands who record at my place by going to the piano after
the session and playing their song, including a good portion of the licks,
on the first try. Of course, given most bands, that's hardly challenging.
I wouldn't want to try that on some of Knud's stuff.

[James Boyk]

Carey Carlan wrote:
> If you have perfect pitch, you also have perfect relative pitch. It's the ultimate standard.
Even if you couldn't "hear" a perfect fourth, you could still hear an F
and a B-flat and know what they were.

Yes, with p.p. you can *figure out* that it's P4, but that isn't the
same as having the immediate unitary impression that it's P4, which is
what good relative pitch conveys. Similarly, with regard to chords, the
person with p.p. can get away without developing the sense of the
'flavor' of tonic, dominant, subdominant, and so forth. Of course a
person with p.p. *may* have all these abilities, but the p.p. can be so
powerful that people with it can often avoid developing these skills. Of
course I'd love to have both!

And of course some p.p. isn't that powerful; there are degrees and
degrees. I'm talking above about people for whom to hear a note--on any
instrument--is to identify it with no time lag; and the reverse: to
think of the name of a note is to hear the pitch.

James Boyk