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I know two people who have told me they have perfect pitch. They are both my teachers. Here are some of the things they reportedly don't like about having perfect pitch:

• In much the same way that most people, once they've learned to read, can't *not* read anymore, it's apparently impossible for people with perfect pitch to *not* identify the pitches they hear. One of my teachers said to me once that this is very tiring. Basically, she can't listen to music on her way home from work at night, because if she does, her mind will constantly be busy identifying the pitches, and when she's already tired from six hours of teaching, or from a public performance, that's just too much.
• Some people with perfect pitch will hear pitches even where us mere mortals would never go look for them. They are, for instance, acutely aware of the dissonance between the hum of the refrigerator, and that of the A/C. I imagine that, too, must be exhausting.
• Once I have mastered a piece in the key it was originally written in, I can usually play it in a different key rather easily. Which is to say, it takes me a couple hours of practice, but that's still nowhere near the two weeks or so that it usually takes me to learn an entirely new piece. My piano teacher lacks the same ability: she can't transpose on the fly, and it takes her substantially longer than I would have expected, based on my own experience, to do it with practice. She attributes this to the fact that she has perfect pitch. To her, a piece of music sounds substantially different once it's been transposed into a different key. It's not *entirely* unfamiliar, but it's no longer entirely familiar, either.

And then yes, of course, there is the fact that people with discerning ears will pick up on each and every out-of-tune pitch. But I'm not sure one really must have perfect pitch (as in, the ability to identify any given pitch by its note name without reference) to be plagued by that. As you've said, I have a pretty good ear for out of tune pitches myself, and I don't have perfect pitch. I don't need to know the name of a pitch to know that it's too high or too low: I just intuitively compare it to whatever pitch came before, or is played concurrently with it. This is a matter of relative, not absolute pitch.

In other words, if someone were to re-tune my entire piano half a tone downwards, but make sure all the strings were in perfect tune relative to each other, I probably wouldn't notice anything was wrong with it. But when the strings on my piano go out of tune unevenly, as they are wont to do with changing weather patterns and such, I definitely notice. Because then some of the pitches just sound 'wrong' to my ears, relative to the other pitches my piano can produce.

Replies to various posts, going back a couple weeks:


Going based on additional info in your other thread... Scroll up two sections above this link, and it looks like it is a 1949.


Take all below re: your piano with a grain of salt... I know just enough to be dangerous.

I had terrible sympathetic resonance that was greatly diminished once it was tuned. I would do that first before worrying about the resonance issue. I still have an issue with some of the dampers plucking the strings as they come off -- not a problem for any given note, but a real problem when putting down the pedal. That would be another place to look. Mine has gotten better as it has been used more regularly -- either that or my ears are just filtering it out.


Your hammers actually look in remarkably good shape for their age. I would guess that either the piano wasn't used all that much, or they were filed at some point in the last couple decades. If you are having consistency issues, it's quite unlikely to be the hammers themselves, but the umpteen other components of the action that can get worn, bind, and so on.

If you are looking to make an improvement without spending any dough yet, one item you can adjust yourself quite easily is the letoff, which controls the point at which the hammer is released, no longer being propelled, but has only its momentum to carry it the last bit of the way to the string.

As that setting drifts, the hammer gets further and further away from the string at the point of release. When you try to play a note softly, the hammer is released, there isn't enough momentum, and it never makes it to the string, or it makes it but only barely, and you don't get what you expected given the force you put on the key.

I'm guessing what you are experiencing is that if you play all of your keys exactly the same, you get very different results. It's virtually impossible to have your fingers know what amount of force to use since each key is different. The let off is not the only factor causing this, but probably the largest on a pub piano that may never have had its action regulated, and definitely the easiest to adjust for those of us who are not technicians.

I would highly recommend posting to the Tuner/Tech forum, they are very generous w/ their knowledge. You can get more info on the letoff, although I'd of course recommend getting a good tuner/tech to come tune it and make recommendations. If you'd like the details of my amateur method re: adjusting the letoff to be consistent, feel free to PM me. My tuner/tech told me I did a good job on it, so I'm at least somewhat qualified


She's noodling, pretending to read my sheet music of "New York State of Mind". As long as one did not have ears, she was very convincing!


Yes, that is what caused me to take her (free, from our church) in the first place. If she is fixed up, she will be a major upgrade over "Rufus", which is the name that we settled on for our 1978 Vose & Sons spinet. Even though it wasn't a popular baby name at the time, it seemed apropos for the era of disco, funk, and so on.

My daughter is beginning to get the picture that when we get rid of one of these two pianos (Mom's edict -- must be done prior to the holidays), Rufus has the potential to be adopted by a nice home where he will be enjoyed as a nice starter piano for a family that can't afford a better one. Mabel, on the other hand, will be going to the town dump if we don't keep her and fix her up.


LOL... I love your sense of humor.

I've found the solution for this already though... The Yamaha was only there temporarily, it was moved two days later, so I was back to using the horrendous and ancient baby grand (out of tune, bad action, missing a string, harp is falling apart, the mother of all squeaky pedals, etc.) that is normally in that space. After that experience for a few days, coming back home and playing Rufus was a delight!


My recital recording steps are: 1) nobody else can be at home, 2) phone gets turned off. Dogs are still around though, can't get rid of them.


Good question... closer to the latter. I was loaned a key previously by someone, unofficially, so that I could practice on the awful grand mentioned above. He's never asked for the key back (I visit a couple times a year), and I haven't volunteered either. I pick and choose my moments as to when to take advantage of this circumstance, i.e. when the "officials" are about, if anyone were to hear me and come in with questions, I wouldn't want to be in the position of throwing my benefactor under the bus, as it were.

I really should give the key back so that on a trip-by-trip basis I have to ask and he can decide if he's comfortable with me having the key for those days.


Where are the pedals?! I couldn't see any...

I had heard of that 2nd one, the 1st and 3rd are really interesting. I can't transpose simply because I rely almost entirely on muscle memory when I'm playing. I'm not thinking about what I'm doing on a music theory level at all... After much study I can slog through identifying chords and intervals and how/why they relate, but I'm a very long way away from what you are able to do -- which I'm assuming has something to do with the music theory aspects.

It's frustrating too... I'm working on a hymn arrangement right now, and have realized that what I would love to do is transpose up a whole step for the final verse. It would be a fitting finale, but it would basically involve learning it twice over, and I can't even play it in the first key ably to begin with. Frustrating.

Makes sense, I was thinking that maybe you would notice, i.e. that you did have that portion of perfect pitch, to some degree anyway, without having the identification aspect.

In English, we had to have a one syllable name for our sleeping brother because of how we have to ask the question in an inversion--

Are you sleeping? (4 syllables) /
Brother John (3 syllables)

rather than

Frère Jacques (4 syllables)/
Dormez vous? (3 syllables)

Sino raises an interesting point--(Okay, maybe it hardly qualifies as interesting) that is 'sonnez les matines' is imperative--Get up and ring the bells! while in English "morning bells are ringing" is passive.

I think maybe we scared poor Wouter away! Or perhaps he is sleeping.


SARANOYA
You're brilliant! And a hard worker!

Ikarus
I bet you had a grand time with the old instruments.

Everyone--I love reading your posts.

As for me--job interview tomorrow. Practicing has been a reasonably good distraction, but there are limits. All of the conventional wisdom says that women over 'un certain age' must color their hair and none of the conventional wisdom seems to mention anything about dreadlocks being ok, especially new and rather ratty looking ones.

The Star Spangled Banner came together miraculously (except the tremolos are a bit wacky) for my lesson. I'm not sure I have sufficient focus to record it--perhaps if the week settles down.

Onward!!

The other question is why anyone would feel a need to translate Frere Jacques in the first place! It's just fine in the original language.

I have an achievement. I think I temporarily fixed page turning problems. I hope I have a page turner when I play this in SummerKey.



More papers on the piano. Orange marks show where my part is. Unlike 1 piano duet, for two piano duet, both parts shows up on the same page. I had been confusing the parts before I colored it in yellow.
[img:left]http://m1200.photobucket.com/albumv...0000B2F1289CC3.jpg.html?o=1&newest=1[/img]

I recorded a Bach prelude for the recital. But no guarantee if I could figure out mp3 thing. I tried and spent 1 hour but could not even get it out of the Zoom. I put it in my company's laptop then there is no sound. It could be a control issue - they make it impossible for an employee to use it personally. My husband is on our family computer all day. I can hear the sound in zoom. So I just need non-company issued laptop unless there is a way to directly put it in iPhone. I need to buy personal computer. Anyway it's my first take since I decided go treat recital piece as though its a real performance. My finger scraped the neighboring black keys a couple of times and an odd silence when I forgot note. I wish I have someone to help me with technology. It's harder than piano.

How frustrating!!!! Hopefully, you can download from the Zoom to your home computer.

When you plug the Zoom to your computer with the USB cable does it show up in My Computer as an external hard drive? Look in the folders, your recording is there.

Or is there a card-reader slot on your computer? Take the memory card from the Zoom...

But some company laptops ARE "locked down" quite hard :-(

This goes a long way toward answering your own question about why anyone would translate it.

FarmGirl--That music looks like it was formatted to be difficult to read! If they had just given you a little extra space between lines it would be easier.

I vote for a big turkey dinner for your husband, then use his computer after he falls asleep.

I achieved one of my quite technical pieces for my exam. However, I studied it more or less all day long yesterday having little breaks in between. I was eager to finish it (two pages long) and was determined to get to the end without much delay. Yes I did it, but I tired myself out too much and today I do not have the mental energy to do any piano as it tired me out.

I think I did it too quickly but I did not want to take too much time over it because I wanted to get it over and done with. So, I sat glued to the piano more or less for two solid days doing the piece. Now I think what is the point of the achievement if it tires you out so much you are not capable of anything else but sleep.

I was practicing it until midnight and only had two bars left to go and thought rather than sleep and carry on the following day, I would plod on because whats two bars. I actually stoped at 1am when I had completed the final two bars and then decided to play the whole of the second page which I was struggling with from start to finish.

The first page was easier to do.

A marathon practice session bears fruit the NEXT day, or the day after that.

On the basis "If you don't understand something, don't extend your understanding to cover it - get someone to dumb it down for you? OK. :-)

???

What was this referring to?

Translating Frere Jacques into English, particularly in a way that distorts and obscures the meaning.

Today I was playing both of my Grieg pieces and attempting to record them. After I finished recording, Mr. SwissMS called from the other room in a surprised voice, "Those are sounding pretty good! I am really enjoying hearing you play." This is from someone who absolutely hated the pieces when I first started them. Well, that made my day and is my AOTW!

That IS an achievement! I look forward to hearing them too!

I hope he was suitably rewarded :-)