Re: [tuning] Digest Number 1148

Joseph writes:
<<I'm assuming that so-called "perfect pitch" is a LEARNED response to

12-tET... or *IS* it??

Any studies been done of such individuals with alternate tunings??

What happens??>>

Greetings,
I have often been in front of a piano tuned in non-ET with a "ppp"(perfect
pitch person). It usually requires at least a 4 cent departure from ET for
them to tell that there is something different. I have also checke quite a
few of my acquaintances against the tuning computer and find that "perfect"
is pretty loose. Most can tell if a note is 6 cents away from "norm",(such
as the C or E in a Young) but as far as their "perfection" being useful as a
tuning skill, no way.
There was one young oboe player at Vanderbilt several years ago that could
put her pitch on A440 with no more than 1/2 cent error, repeatedly! I never
saw anyone else ever get that close.
Regards,
Ed Foote
Nashville, Tn.

--- In tuning@y..., a440a@a... wrote:

/tuning/topicId_19534.html#19534

> There was one young oboe player at Vanderbilt several years
> ago that could put her pitch on A440 with no more than 1/2 cent
> error, repeatedly! I never saw anyone else ever get that close.

Ed, I'm guessing here, but I believe that that may be (at least
in part) a conditioned response.

In a concert rehearsal or performance, the oboist gives out the
"A" first, to which the rest of the orchestra then tunes.

I also used to be an oboist, and I (without perfect pitch)
recall "hearing" that "A" in my mind *before* I played it, and
my mental "A" was almost always pretty darn close to the one
I played a moment later.

It could be that that oboist you knew had her oboe tuned perfectly
to A-440.

My input from personal experience...

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

At 11:29 PM 3/1/01 -0000, you wrote:
>--- In tuning@y..., a440a@a... wrote:
>> There was one young oboe player at Vanderbilt several years
>> ago that could put her pitch on A440 with no more than 1/2 cent
>> error, repeatedly! I never saw anyone else ever get that close.
>
>
>Ed, I'm guessing here, but I believe that that may be (at least
>in part) a conditioned response.
I betcha that's true. Since I've relied on a tuning fork for accuracy in
piano tunings for so long, my "shot-in-the-dark" C can vary widely
depending on all sorts of outside factors. However, my work as an
electronics technician involved the use of metering devices that are
audible, not visual, and those skills got honed pretty finely. I can pick
out or reproduce a 1 khz tone with about that oboists's accumen and I can
pick out intonational variations in an undertone series much more
accurately than in an overtone series. (THe pitch on my resistance and
capacitance bridges falls in direct porportion to the value of the
component so I got accustomed to hearing those increments. --
Jay