Look at the studies on "perfect pitch" (check the one going on at UCSF) and you'll find that for the most part people with PP hear within a range of A's or whatever. They don't hear A440 they hear a note which they recognize as in the A range of what has imprinted on their pitch memory (a better and more accurate description). One with perfect pitch could not, for example, go through and simply tune a piano (or any other instrument for that matter) note by note based on their notion of what the pitch of each note should be and have all the intervals line up correctly. It's just not that accurate. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Piano Boutique Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2010 12:43 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Perfect Pitch (revisited) Ed, What comes to mind is when earlier on this list, they posed the question: (what about when A was 435?) Just a thought. William ----- Original Message ----- From: Ed Foote <mailto:a440a at aol.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Monday, July 05, 2010 10:40 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Perfect Pitch (revisited) Gordon wrote: Anyway, I just said all that to reiterate the fact that there is no such thing as perfect pitch. Relative pitch, yes. Pitch memory, yes. But perfect pitch, no. How close does it have to be to be called "perfect"? I ask because I once encountered a student oboe player that could hear the pitch of A as flat when it was, (according to my SAT), 1.5 cents flat. This is close enough to "perfect" for me... Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100706/73737e52/attachment-0001.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC