Piano Tuning/Repair

[EHILBERT@midd.middlebury.edu]

As for perfect pitch, I wouldn't want it as a tuner.  What happens when you
have to tune to a pitch other than A440?  Or when you are tuning outside of
the middle octaves and the stretch starts to take you considerably away from
what a person with perfiect pitch would consider the proper pitch for that
note?  Seems to me you would have to be constantly tuning to pitches which
your "perfect pitch" would say are either sharp or flat.
     As to how accurate perfect pitch can be...  Two true stories about friends of mine from
the 60's and 70's.
      Daniel Domb, cellist, who was then a cello instructor at Oberlin, and the
last I heard was playing with an orchestra in Israel, had an exceedingly
accurate sense of pitch.  While working together one summer at the University
of Vermont's Summer Music Session for Hight School Students (no longer in
business), I once tested his pitch accuracy.  I accumulated approximatly
15 tuning forks, all presumably A440 for this experiment.  I had a Strobotuner
to use as a reference.  Daniel sat in front of me with facing away so as not to
be able to see what I was doing.  As I held the tuning forks up for him to hear, he accuratly
described not only whether sharp or flat, but by how much.  Some
were a few cents off, but most caused only a slow drift in the tuner's
visual indication.  Finally, ther was one fork in the group that held the
pattern dead still.  When he heard that one he instanly said, "Ah, that one is
beautiful, it is dead on."  I tried to confuse him by repeating forks etc.
but at no time did he err.  He indeed had an amazingly good sense of pitch -
peerfect, or absolute, if you will.  A side note, his then wife (now divorced),
Carol Sindell, violinist, also had "perfect pitch" (alsthough I did not measure her for
exactness as I did Daniel) and when they played duets together, it was
absolutely beautiful.  Sorry there marriage wasn't as beautiful, apparently, as
their playing.
     The second story relates to another friend from the same time and place,
Bruce Williams, violin instructor at the University of Nebraska, if I remember
correctly.  As to the exactness of his pitch I am not sure, but as to his
ability to name pitches, I thought him to be rather talented.  We could place
two, three, or four people at a piano and all of us play notes with all fingers
on both hands the length of the keyboard (yes, thirty or forty notes at once)
and he could, without fail, name them from one end to the other.  As an
orchestral conductor, it was very easy for him to hear wrong notes!!!!
      So, while most of us do not have perfect pitch, or perhaps even the
correct body angle, there are indeed some people in the world with some
amazingly accurate ears.
      By the way, there is a fellow who advertises in piano teachers
magazines that anyone can learn to have perfect pitch.  He of course can
teach you.  He says that hearing specific notes is no harder than recognizing
specific colors.  Anyone out there ever heard anything about this fellow or
what he professes to be able to teach?
Ed Hilbert, RPT
Vermont
Chapter