Newsgroups: comp.music
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From: jsc@riddler.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi)
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
References: <3123@esquire.dpw.com> <1991Mar18.104444.29128@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1991Mar18.214745.6496@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 08:29:48 GMT
Lines: 13

In article <1991Mar18.214745.6496@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, ttl@aura.cs.wisc.edu (Tony Laundrie) writes:
|> "Ask Cecil," a syndicated trivia newspaper column, recently stated that
|> perfect pitch may be inherited, but who cares?  Cecil acknowledged that it
|> is a nifty trick to be able to whistle an arbitrary key, but most musicians
|> don't have it and still play fine.  Do you people with "perfect pitch" really
|> find it useful?

I've found it occasionally useful in identifying keys of pieces and tuning instruments. Other than that, it can actually be quite an annoying ability to have. For one thing, it is much easier to transpose while taking dictation if you have relative pitch, it's just like taking dictation without transposing; you can't really tell the difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This is supposed to give the music a 'bright







er' tone. I think this is really ridiculous because a) if you don't have perfect pitch, how can you tell? and b) if you do have perfect pitch and you know the piece, it's annoying to listen to something being played a semitone higher than it's supposed to be.
--
Jin Choi
jsc@athena.mit.edu
617-232-3257
