I've told this story before, but, not here. I'll tell it again. My newphew has a great sense of perfect pitch. He can name of any chords, any notes, repeat what you just played, doesn't matter he can dod it.. He tried going into the tuning business working with me. He went in with the mindset of hey, I have perfect pitch, no problem, this will be a breeze. When he realized, he had to actually set pitch with a fork, tune by listening to beats rather than what his "head" was telling him, he soon found it, that his perfect pitch was driving him crazy telling him one thing, when he knew, he had to listen to another and neither matched. He eventually quit because he just couldn't do it and didn't have theh patience to stop listening to what his head was telling him to do. I went to a class over 20 years ago at a PTG convention where Issac Sadigursky (spelling?) did it. He has perfect pitch. He asked as many people as possible in the class who thought they had perfect pitch to come up front and set one and ONLY one note on the piano to the pitch in their head after which, he recorded it onto RCT and compared it to the real pitch that the piano needed to get set at. Somewhere upwards of 15 people came up to the front and set 1 pin. Sometimes taking up to 3 or 5 minutes to do it. Each person had to set a different note so as not to screw up the other persons but, otherwise, they were free to pick any other note on the piano that the desired. At the end of the session, he went through each note on an idividual basis. 1 string was set 1/2 step flat. Another, 1/4 sharp, another, 1/4 flat, another 1/8 tone sharp and on it went. Only one, had it dead on and to that person, he said, "you got lucky." Had I had you set another, it is highly likely that you would have gotten it wrong. His point was that for one, Issac has perfect pitch. For 2., it cannot be used in tuning as it is not nearly as accurate as people that have it think it is and if they disagreed with him, he had them do it again proving them wrong a 2nd time. The pitch they had in their heads can be off, he said, by as much as 1/2 tone in either direction. Depending upon the piano they picked up their perfect pitch from. If their piano was never tuned, their pitch was off by as much as it was flat or sharp. Even one beat difference is to much in tuning. My newphew once, set a bunch of notes with his perfect pitch only. I then checked them, with him there, with 3rds, 10ths, 5ths and 4ths. It sounded horrible! And, he knew it. So, for tuning purposes, it is useless. -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of david at piano.plus.com Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 6:09 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Perfect Pitch and Temperaments Tyler, you mention "We all know what we're really talking about so there's no reason to semanticize about the term". But, I *don't* know what you're really talking about! What are you really talking about? The current discussion was triggered by a comment made by a customer who was a *retired piano tuner*. He said that he had "perfect pitch". Given the understanding that one must have, as a piano tuner, of frequenncies in the tempered scale, one could surely be forgiven for thinking that such a statement from a piano tuner would have a different meaning from the same thing said by a non-tuner musician. J. Stanley Ryberg, you note: "Why say that? Wikipedia returns: Absolute pitch (AP), or perfect pitch, is the ability to name or reproduce a tone without reference to an external standard.[1] Follows a very in depth exposé about perfect pitch, maybe that would answer your questions. We are NOT left with no definition". Hmmm, well, one might note the following: The discussion in Wikipedia is most interesting and illuminating, certainly. But notice the initial definition: "Absolute pitch (AP), or perfect pitch, is the ability to name or reproduce a tone without reference to an external standard". You will note that no *standard of accuracy* is stated. To illustrate; there is a big difference between "the ability to name or reproduce a tone, to an accuracy within a semitone deviation, without reference......" and "the ability to name or reproduce a tone, to an accuracy within five cents deviation, without reference....." The Wikipedia article is excellent, but it does not define, when a person says "I have perfect pitch", what THAT PERSON means. To find that out, it is necessary to say to the person making the cliam, "Oh, that's interesting. What is it that you mean by perfect pitch?" Best, David.
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