<Flame resistant suit going on> There is no such thing as perfect pitch. That is my contention and I am sticking to it. What we have in this country masquerading as that is actually A-440 pitch memory. Do you think Bach or Mozart had perfect pitch? They would be lost today since everything is about 1/2 step higher than they used. If you go to Europe and play some of the organs there perfect pitch will become a detriment. Often the church did not have money 200 years ago for the metal to make full sized low bass organ pipes. You will find the organ pitched several notes higher since those higher pitched pipes are shorter and take less metal to make. Someone with so-called perfect pitch will go nuts trying to play those organs. Scientists are using "perfect pitch" as a term that denotes memory of an exact pitch learned as children in countries using tone languages. Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian languages use musical pitches to speak. Often the same actual words, characters, phonemes used can mean several different things as you say them with different musical tunes going up or down in pitch. Children learn these musical tones as infants and decades later are using those same pitches when they say that line as adults. That is why Asian men often sound like women by speaking in higher pitches than male English speakers. They are using the same pitches they learned from their mothers. That is probably a better definition of perfect pitch and musicians should just call our version A-440 pitch memory. Look out, they are toying with A-453 in some musical circles. We may have to adjust our "perfect pitch" to a new set of pitches, soon. D.L. Bullock www.thepianoworld.com St. Louis
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