<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: [CAUT] Pitch recognition</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> On 8/29/07 12:08 PM, "Don Mannino" <DMannino@kawaius.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>So, the exact pitch level is really learned, and even the best ears acquire what 'A' should be from hearing music.  In my opinion, if we consistently hear 442 because we like listening to an orchestra that tunes there, then I think that will sound correct to the most sensitive musical ear.   </BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, this is a very important point. Whatever level of “perfection” someone has was learned by reference with something. What was that something? The family piano? A pitch fork? A pitch pipe? These days there is a lot more accuracy with electronic pitch sources, but I have always figured that someone’s sense of pitch might very well depend on how often their parents had the piano tuned, and on whether the tuner had a good pitch source (and was a competent tuner, and was or wasn’t floating pitch). For that matter, even with a perfect fork, at perfect pitch (no temperature-caused variation), it takes a mighty fine tuner to match that within 1 cent. The RPT  standard is + or – 3 cents. 20 years ago, we included “fork error” in the test scoring.     All this is to give a bit of historical perspective. How close has been “good enough” over the years, and how has that affected what people have learned as their “perfect standard?” I guess to give a fair historical perspective, one has to include the stroboscopes that turned up in nearly every school band and orchestra room starting around the 60s, so maybe we’ve had a pretty good reference among musicians for a good while.     On Dave’s question, about 20 years ago I had been asked to tune a harpsichord to 441.5 (yep, that was the precise request) for a touring orchestra from Europe. The harpsichord was way, way off pitch when I tuned for rehearsal, but I tried to leave it pretty darned close to 441.5. The conductor, when he came in, played the A and told me it was a wee bit flat. I checked, and it had settled to 441 (I was using a well-calibrated fork, and counting beats against a watch, looking for three beats against two seconds). So he was hearing that small difference. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico </BODY> </HTML>