Perfect pitch

[EHILBERT@midd.middlebury.edu]

Dear Gordon,
      I am curious now about your own ability of pitch recognition.  How do
understand your own ability which you say you realized you had at the age of
six?  Had you been studying music that much at that age that you would have
developed this ability already?  Also, what do "color hearing" mean?  Do you
visualize something when you hear a pitch?  Is this similar to people who are
able to feel colors when blindfolded?  I can't do any of these things so they
all seem amazing to me -- but I have seen and read of these things being done,
so I know they happen.
      As for
GW> This statement seems a little wierd when you think about it, since a
person would have to have some musical experience, if not training, in
order to know what to _call_ the pitches they recognized...kind of
reminds me of a slightly different, but related subject:
      ... if one decides that perfect pitch can only be a learned ability,
then your assumption might seem to be valid.  However, many people get enough
music training in the elementary grades to be able to know that notes have
certain names, but that doesn't (in most elementary school music programs)
constitute enough training to develop "perfect pitch".
      And yes, there might well be someone who has such a love of music that
they practiced without lessons, but even that would not create perfect pitch.
If practice alone would do it, then there would be far more people in this
world who have the ability.  Most people who practice their instruments for
years do not develop such acute pitch discrimination.
      The two non-musicians I met who were able to name notes simply
learned to do it for the fun of it once they realized that they had an ability
that very few other people had.  They did it for fun, and simply said that
they had been born with the ability and now did it for fun.  One of them, to
my surprise sang as though he were tone deaf.  Said he had never been able to
sing on pitch and so he didn
't sing!
      So, Gordon, please tell me a little more about your own development
of your ability.  How did you train to have the skill and how does it
manifest itself to you?  Thanks, Ed
Ed Hilbert, RPT
Vermont Chapter