[pianotech] Perfect Pitch / Children

[Porritt, David]

I hate the term "perfect pitch" for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread.  Pitch recognition is a much better term.  When I was younger mine was quite accurate.  

You can lose it and it usually happens around or after your 50th birthday.  I still recognize pitches but not as accurately as when I was younger.  

I knew a refinisher years ago that would go to pick up a piano and the owner would point to a table and say they wanted the piano like that.  He'd look at it (glance actually) and say "ok".  He could leave with the piano and return 4 months later and they would match wonderfully (perfectly??).  I don't know how he did it.  People have gifts that seem mystical.  Some are obnoxious about how they discuss them and that makes us want to deny them.  God gives gifts we don't understand but they are there even if the person who has them is a twit.  

Saturday morning philosophy.

dave


David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Brekne
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:59 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Perfect Pitch / Children

Its not quite as simple as that. Some folks may have a very sensitive 
pitch sense with relation to A, but get way off in judging other notes. 
I ran into a study once a while back that seemed to point in the 
direction that some notes were typically way off for folks even with the 
best so called pitch sensitivity.

I'm convinced at this point that its a kind of learned behavior that 
either you have some real, perceived or imposed in some sense or another 
need for as a very young child, or you don't. There are even reported 
cases of folks who've had <<perfect pitch>> and then "lost" it for some 
reason or another. No explanation given.

Most studies that are easy to find are really superficial and confirm 
that an individual can identify a given note for what it is.  Studies 
that pick the concept apart and try to define its real limits are not so 
easy to come by. But it doesn't take much reasoning to understand that 
the obvious variances in pitch through time and around the world, not to 
mention temperament questions or other such issues cloud the 
absoluteness of the concept quite a bit.

Cheers
RicB


    I've wondered for quite some time about the limits of so-called
    perfect pitch. I've tried to research this on the internet and not
    gotten very far in the past. Can individuals with a high degree of
    this ability discriminate between 440 and 440.5? I imagine this has
    been researched, and it would be really interesting to know how
    refined this ability can be.