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Indeed - I'm sure the people who believe the earth is flat would say the same thing.

Paul.

Bill, You are a very fine piano technician and a very interesting person. But you are not entitled to your own set of facts if you want to interact well with others.

The sort of long term pitch memory required to identify a note with no external reference is fairly common. The sort of long term pitch memory to identify whether a pitch is A=440 or A=441 with no external reference is exceptional. Then, of course, there are the myriad degrees between these extremes.

The only case of this that I ever knew was a blind 11year old that I met through his ability to identify his teachers' piano as being 1-2 Hz higher than his families' piano some few miles away, giving credence to the adage that perfect pitch is hereditary..... It's the pitch if your mothers' piano.

So. How absolute is absolute? How perfect perfect??

The late Owen Jorgensen (piano technician for Michigan State Univ. and author of materials about temperaments) used to handle claims of perfect pitch this way:

He'd get people who claimed perfect pitch together in a classroom. Then he'd play a note on a piano and say "this is supposed to be an A but it's out of tune. When I get it to correct pitch, raise your hand." Then he'd proceed to change the pitch of the note until a majority of hands were raised. Then he'd continue on to the next note until he had a complete octave tuned according to "perfect pitch".

Then he'd play chords and it sounded horrible--as in not even close to satisfactory. Claimants of perfect pitch then left with a broader perspective of their "abilities" and the following year, another class would be processed.

Yes. It's in the field of ensemble music where the cult of 'perfect pitch' becomes damaging. Many ensembles are spoiled by those members claiming perfect pitch and insisting that their 'special ability' makes them the only ones in tune. of course they will attempt to perpetuate their beliefs and half truths that give them this position of power over those who have little depth of musical experience.

So called "perfect pitch" has never been found accurate enough for any serious music making.

Up to this point, it is little more than a harmless party trick. It most certainly is no guarantee of musical ability and/or sensitivity and is diametrically opposed to relative pitch sensitivity when doggedly adhered to. .

The chords sounded out of tune because, as rXd implied I think, absolute pitch recognition has a tolerance or error term the same as any measure has. It seems like plus or minus about 10 or 20 cents could be typical and such tolerance would give rise to an out of tune piano.

Interestingly, most of us have a reasonable absolute recognition of the frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum on the light range. This enables us to absolutely identify red light for example as opposed to blue. The tolerance is for most of us with the ability to differentiate slight differences in shades of color.

Without wanting to flog a dead horse, there is confusion about what the term "perfect" or "absolute" pitch means. The perfection is the ability to name a note without reference, not to identify a particular frequency to an arbitrary accuracy. Perfect relative pitch (that most musicians have) is the ability to name a second note after an identified first note is played.

Here is an online perfect pitch test that says: " Absolute pitch, or perfect pitch, is the ability to name the pitch of a note without reference to another note. "

I tried the blind test in the link several times and always scored 10/10.

BTW, since perfect pitch is a testable hypothesis, its existence, or otherwise, is not an opinion.

Paul.

To ride a dead horse further... (nice picture..), I can tell you that there are cases not to have had absolute pitch first, the very normal case... , but then to recognize that you now have.

Me.

When I trained to play the Bach variations of Goldberg, then at any time there was the starting note, the G, so fixed in my head, that I tried to sing the note in advance (first activity after a day without piano playing), then played it at the piano.

YESS.

It fitted.

Since then I have absolute pitch. With this Bach G (based on 440 Hz for A...) I am able to identify any note accordingly.

so, my assumption is that absolute pitch may be learnable... maybe not for everybody but for some who think deep into music? I don't know. But who can imagine how happy I am that absolute pitch came to me - suddenly, surprisingly. ....

This is getting more ridiculous with every post. The paper for which there is a link is so full of holes, it looks like a player piano roll to me.

Then, this online test goes much further than that in being a complete fraud and waste of time. I tried it several times and could not get even half way through it when there was no tone at all that matched the pitch it was supposed to! On one attempt, there was a note an octave higher than the note indicated, so I clicked that and went on but on the next line, there was no tone at all that matched the one being called for!

Each time I tried it, they had the tones rearranged, so on another attempt, there was the tone that was missing the previous time but a little further down, there was a row of tones but not one of them was the pitch it was supposed to be!

What is this? Some kind of April fool's joke? In any case, if there had actually been the tone in the row offered and I was able to actually get through the test, it would have been no more than a display of what I said in the first place: "He knows vat note dat is vitoot even lookin!" YA! Dat's vat dey call dat Perfect Pitch! YA! Vat kann he do vit dat, doh? Vell, he kann go into any coffee shop and as long as he also gots a dollar in his pocket, he kann buy himself a cup of coffee!

Just to make sure there was not some kind of problem with this phony test, I tried it one more time after my last post. Then, I got interrupted by a long phone call about something useful: tutoring people who want to pass the PTG tuning exam. Once again, I encountered the same problem I had the first time. I played all of the tones in the first row and not one of them was a C3. There was not even a C4!

There is no such thing as perfect or absolute pitch! But, I sure as heck know one note from the other! I call on anyone else to try this and come up with the same result. The test is a complete crock!

I tried is again, just before posting. The first row had a C3 this time but the second row had no D3, only a D4. I don't think there is anything wrong with my computer but I do think there is something wrong with anyone who is trying to perpetuate this off topic tangent and keep insisting upon something that is nothing more than an old wive's tale.

I had no trouble with the test and got 10/10 every time I refreshed the page. Maybe there is a problem with your browser? Refreshing the page loads up another set of tones. Try playing the reference tones they have on the page - they all worked fine for me too. What were the specific holes in the paper?

[edit - I just tried it again, once again 10/10. What they call A4 on the test is A=440Hz - they even make the mp3 files available to check - A4 reference from the perfect pitch test

Paul.

Here's another peer-reviewed paper that ties perfect pitch into cognition by researchers at McGill University in Montreal. Given the ties to neuroscience and language I suppose those idiots at McGill are wasting their time on this old wive's tale. REVIEW 692 V OLUME 6 | NUMBER 7 |...lopment on neural and cognitive function



Paul.

p.s. there are plenty of on-line tests for perfect pitch

I always roll my eyes when I here people describe equal temperament as having "no color". That is poppycock. Even a person with very poor vision can recognize the difference between a black & white photograph, and one that has color. In contrast, an experienced musician or professional piano tuner will have an impossible time distinguishing ET from a mild well temperament during a piano performance.

The piano and the pianist's dynamics and voicing trumps the temperament by a large margin as long as the temperament is close to equal temperament (within a couple of cents) and the octaves and unisons are clean.

The hyperbole around temperaments is misleading to laypeople.

I agree.

The placebo effect is very strong.

Kees

I always roll my eyes when someone claims that ET has key color because by definition, it does not. I have studied and practiced the subject of key color for more than 30 years, yet people who have never even dabbled in the subject try to claim that what is purposefully absent is still there. The only difference is the pitch itself and the effect of it in ET. What is known as key color has exclusively to do with the variation of interval sizes and there is no such variation in ET except for the compensation for inharmonicity on a piano but that same compensation must be made for a piano tuned in a non-equal temperament.

Ok, I switched to the Internet Explorer from Firefox to attempt once again the phony test which was suggested and I got the same result. The first line had a C3 but the second had no D3 so I could not go any further. Then, I saw the chromatic test. The first line said B3 but there wasn't any B3 tone played, so I refreshed the whole thing and I got the same results again: The line said B3 and played a couple of tones twice but it never actually played a B3, do I gave up.

I searched and found some other tests. I knew all the notes, never made a mistake. So what? I'm a piano technician. Why wouldn't I know one note from the other? Does that help me as piano technician do my job? To some degree, yes, such as if I interrupt my tuning work, I always know exactly where I left off. I know which note is which before, during and after I tune the piano. If the pitch is 441 or 442, I can tell, yes and I still know which note is which. If I start to tune a piano at 435, it somewhat bugs me momentarily but not for long. I seem to be able to adapt to that pitch rather quickly.

Not too long ago, someone asked me to tune the piano at the mystical 432 pitch. I thought, no problem but that was really far enough from 440 that I found it to be somewhat disturbing. I would not want my piano tuned that way nor would I want to listen to a piano tuned at that pitch. There is another factor to be sure: the string tensions are too low, so it gives the piano a different sound than the one for which it was designed. Even 435 does that but for me, it is the limit of what sounds "right".

The problem I have with most of these studies and discussions is that they are most often using an electronic keyboard for which all pitches are at theoretical frequencies in ET. That is about as arbitrary and artificial sound as there could be. When I hear these modern recordings of pop music bands who use pitch correction software, I have to turn it off! It does not sound natural. I do not like music with artificially imposed Helmholtz frequencies in it!

These researchers go on to say that people who speak the tone languages of Asia have this or that percentage greater so-called absolute pitch than us Hillbillies over here but based upon what exactly? And so what? Gee whiz! Who could have ever guessed?

Sure, there are some people who can identify a pitch with more accuracy than others and there are sometimes cultural or environmental reasons for it as well as pathology such as blindness and autism which causes the brain to focus in a way that is , shall we say, super normal?

If you want to study that, fine but I wouldn't give a dime for studying the few people who can do something that most people cannot and does not actually help them feed themselves or keep their room tidy, much less play a musical instrument to any better degree than anyone else.

So, once again, I say, "So what?" I've always known which note is which but so what? The problem definitely is in the labeling of such an ability. If it is all so all fired scientific, then why do these scientists insist upon using terms which by their very definition, leave no room for exception or tolerance at all?

They talk about it as if its some miracle of nature, something to which everyone would want to aspire but it is literally not helpful to anyone. Yet, there are people selling phony programs to teach people to acquire this amazing ability which will not do them one ounce of good. If anything, those people start going around saying they have this amazing attribute so therefore, they have the right to complain about certain circumstances and therefore disturb everyone else. All based upon phony "science".

I prefer to answer the question about so-called perfect pitch the way Franz Mohr did: There is nothing in this world on this side of Glory which is perfect [or absolute for that matter]. Even the scientists who offer a definition of it when they do, offer nothing better than what any lay person says as a matter of folk lore.

Also, for all of any scientific studies there can be on virtually any subject, sooner or later someone will come along who largely deflates the whole idea:

http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/06/11/perfect-pitch-may-not-be-absolute-after-all

By the way, there is a man with autism who works at the local piano dealer which is also the area's premier restorer. I have known the man for 40 years. He cannot play even a simple melody on the piano with one hand. He had gone to a special school for the developmentally disabled when he was a child. As a young adult, he was totally dependent. He could not care for himself in any way and was unemployable. He still lived with his parents.

Fortunately for him, however, the very kindly piano dealer who lived in his neighborhood and was a member of his church, gave him an opportunity. When I first made the young man's acquaintance, he could not speak a single word. To this day, he can only speak in short phrases but he can write voluminously. He always had an unkempt appearance, wore inappropriate clothing, had very poor hygiene and behaved in many unsocial and inappropriate ways.

The people who had given him employment and the church groups to which he belonged (never any kind of government social or health service) were able, over the years to correct many of these problems so that today, he is seen only as the quiet man who attends to his duties fervently.

He certainly has a pitch recognition ability that would be called perfect or absolute pitch, for sure. He is, without any reservation in saying, among the most highly skilled piano technicians there could ever be. Tuning is mostly what he does but he is also very highly skilled at regulation, voicing and repairs. He can find the source of an unwanted noise like none other. His ability to chip tune a newly strung piano with no action or dampers in it to a specified high pitch is truly amazing. He does it at non-standard pitch and with the built in unequal temperament that is required of the dealer.

He also has other amazing mathematical abilities such as solving a decimal addition, multiplication or division problem in his head within a few seconds which most people could only do with a calculator. He tunes exclusively in non equal temperaments at the dealership because that is what the proprietor wants.

Yet, if asked, he will not claim to have perfect pitch and will actually chuckle at the notion. He says basically what Franz Mohr does and which he is capable of uttering without hesitation: Only God is perfect.

The placebo effect is very strong.

Kees [/quote]

So, I wonder why so many people who have no specific information make such specific comments?

I guess I should show you the courtesy of a reply when addressed so directly.

I have no idea what you mean with that sentence. I'm puzzled about your near hysterical crusade against the existence of a well-known phenomena, and what to make of all the mock-yiddish? Do you think absolute pitch is a Jewish conspiracy to force ET upon us all or what? Also the fact that you seem unable to understand how to take that simple online absolute pitch test is a bit worrisome.

I hope everything is alright with you and I still respect you greatly for your fantastic educational material on piano tuning, either posted here on on your website.

Kees

People who speak Yiddish aren't named Leena or Johnny. Come to Wisconsin sometime and hear the way people talk. There is no such thing as perfect pitch but you know what they say, "Dere is some people who knows vat note that is vitoot even lookin'! Now I dunno how day knows dat but day say it's called dat Perfect Pitch. YA!

Bill, I do not disagree that well temperaments create some subtle variations in intonation, and some variation between the key signatures. But claiming it is analogous to color is a gross exaggeration. At best you might compare it to manipulating the tint in a Photoshop image - but not enough that people can easily tell that something has been done to the photo.

Owen Jorgensen, a well meaning man but a poor scholar, used this same analogy in his "Temperamental Journey" lecture at the Smithsonian. He literally compared equal temperament to a painting with the color removed. It was a foolish analogy, but unfortunately Owen's work is taken sometimes taken as gospel truth.