[pianotech] Perfect Pitch and Temperaments

[david at piano.plus.com]

Gerald, thank you for sharing those anecdotes, which illustrate exactly
what I was trying to say.

The PTG convention experiment is a superb example of primmary research - a
simple, elegant and absolutely valid practical experiment carried out in
order to gather data relevant to a hypothesis. Fantastic.

Kind regards,

David.


> 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.