[CAUT] Pitch recognition

[Fred Sturm]

On 8/29/07 12:08 PM, "Don Mannino" <DMannino at kawaius.com> wrote:

> So, the exact pitch level is really learned, and even the best ears acquire
> what 'A' should be from hearing music.  In my opinion, if we consistently hear
> 442 because we like listening to an orchestra that tunes there, then I think
> that will sound correct to the most sensitive musical ear.

Yes, this is a very important point. Whatever level of ³perfection² someone
has was learned by reference with something. What was that something? The
family piano? A pitch fork? A pitch pipe? These days there is a lot more
accuracy with electronic pitch sources, but I have always figured that
someone¹s sense of pitch might very well depend on how often their parents
had the piano tuned, and on whether the tuner had a good pitch source (and
was a competent tuner, and was or wasn¹t floating pitch). For that matter,
even with a perfect fork, at perfect pitch (no temperature-caused
variation), it takes a mighty fine tuner to match that within 1 cent. The
RPT  standard is + or ­ 3 cents. 20 years ago, we included ³fork error² in
the test scoring.
    All this is to give a bit of historical perspective. How close has been
³good enough² over the years, and how has that affected what people have
learned as their ³perfect standard?² I guess to give a fair historical
perspective, one has to include the stroboscopes that turned up in nearly
every school band and orchestra room starting around the 60s, so maybe we¹ve
had a pretty good reference among musicians for a good while.
    On Dave¹s question, about 20 years ago I had been asked to tune a
harpsichord to 441.5 (yep, that was the precise request) for a touring
orchestra from Europe. The harpsichord was way, way off pitch when I tuned
for rehearsal, but I tried to leave it pretty darned close to 441.5. The
conductor, when he came in, played the A and told me it was a wee bit flat.
I checked, and it had settled to 441 (I was using a well-calibrated fork,
and counting beats against a watch, looking for three beats against two
seconds). So he was hearing that small difference.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico


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