perfect pitch

[Leslie Bartlett]

I  wrote one of my clients, known as "the pitch Nazi" throughout a 
couple of school districts, to ask her comments on pitch.  It follows:
les bartlett


--- On Sun, 8/31/08,
> Date: Sunday, August 31, 2008, 4:34 PM
> when i was in high school, the band director tested my
> tuning against his
> electronic tuner (i know you know this but the science
> behind tuning makes
> me feel like i'm crazy).  i was blind to the display;
> he hid the tuner
> behind his cabinet and checked every change i indicated. 
> Even to fine
> degrees my ear agreed with his tuner - his own ear, after
> years of blaring
> trumpets, was no longer good for tuning.  after double
> checking me for a
> long time, on many different days, he turned the electronic
> tuner off and
> did not use it again.  Not a single discrepancy ever
> occurred between the
> electronic tuner and my ear (but why should my ear agree
> with an electronic
> tuner?  There was no calibration).  i was terribly
> embarrassed and scared,
> as every student in the room looked from him to me with
> each note during
> those unusual tests.  i have absolutely no idea why he
> singled me out in the
> first place, except by reputation of my sister (i was just
> a freshman...).
> Yet from then on i tuned each instrument in the band before
> concerts and
> contests (standing on the podium, pointing down the row to
> one student at a
> time).  i ponder sometimes, why or how i even managed to do
> that, without an
> accurate pitch given to start - but after three or four or
> five trumpets
> gave their individual versions of the same pitch, i just
> knew which one fell
> in line to my inner self.  It's like the center of the
> pitch sets up a
> vibration through my whole body, gentle but certain.  As
> soon as one of them
> hit exactly what felt right to me inside, i would go back
> and clean up the
> previous players, then continue through the trumpet section
> with the
> selected base pitch.  moving through the whole band, at the
> end the first
> trumpet was checked against first clarinet, first chair
> flute against
> saxophone, and they always matched.  But it seems like it
> had to be my
> arbitrary choice of the pitch i liked over the other ones -
> yet, that was
> the very pitch his electronic tuner chose as well.  i
> didn't know a thing
> about tuning, or "440."  i only knew the director
> expected me to make the
> band cohesive, as pleasing as possible to the judges.  i
> have wondered so
> many times why 440 feels right - but it does.  We must be
> trained somewhere
> to want that frequency.  The elusive thing is, if a whole
> concert performed
> by virtuosos was given, with things tuned to another
> frequency, everything
> might match up within the ensemble, but something would
> feel uncomfortably
> unhappy to my inner self.  Perhaps i would not be able to
> identify why i was
> not ecstatic with a concert over which everyone else raved.
>  likely i
> wouldn't say anything or even know why my inner soul
> felt somewhat unhappy
> and disturbed.  It is very much lg who hears, deeply
> inside.
> 
> i am aware of the gradual stretching in upper octaves, and
> prefer it.  It's
> not so much that things sound "flat" to me when
> there is no stretching, it's
> that i just don't like the whole sound of lower vs.
> upper, without some
> stretch in the upper.  The piano doesn't fit together
> to me.  i don't know
> if this explanation is even feasible or rational, in your
> tuning world.  All
> things are relative... and i know my own feelings are just
> my own feelings,
> nothing more.  When i get to choose, a higher note needs to
> be stretched a
> little to compliment a lower note, otherwise the vibrations
> get in the way
> of each other, and the higher note has to compensate.  i am
> aware that i
> tune a choir this way, with a tee weensy stretch in the
> higher voices.  They
> don't know it, though, unless we get into discussion. 
> It's funny, after
> weeks and weeks of stretching just a tiny bit, they get
> used to adjusted
> sound, and just do it.    
> 
> This will sound even stranger - i think one of the reasons
> i dismissed so
> many piano tuners is perhaps because they did not raise the
> pitch to 440
> when it needed to be done (?).  that is purely speculative.
>  but, it would
> explain a lot of why a piano can be tuned yet leave me
> unhappy.  This is
> such an inner thing, buried somewhere in subconscious, and
> it might take me
> days or weeks to know that i don't like the tuning. 
> for awhile i thought it
> was me, or something degenerative with the piano...  many
> other things
> "play" into it, of course, like my own playing,
> and that takes first blame.
> But as the weeks and months roll along, i just find myself
> not calling that
> tuner back... so we come to you, who always gives extra,
> your work being the
> very best.  Thank you for making me happy with the sound,
> making my piano
> right, when others had not.  What "right" is,
> only you know.
> 
> Such a long answer, i am sorry, > 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: leslie bartlett [mailto:lesbartlett2000 at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 11:04 PM
> To: vicki at dooman.net
> Subject: pianotech post
> 
> > You're the "Pitch Nazi"- what do you say
> to
> > this?=A0 Can you hear "stretch"=
> >  in octaves, and differentiate from non-stretched
> > instruments?=A0 How do yo=
> > u experience this, and how do you cope with it, or
> whatever
> > might be the ri=
> > ght word?=A0 Interesting.
> > lb
>