I agree. I don't beleive all the perfect pitch hype. I mean, you got it
or you don't? You can't have slightly perfect pitch?
OK, you take your typical ppp (perfect pitch person). I assume they can
sing a note at 440 Hz. How precisely? If the band is tuned to a
different pitch can they easily adjust to the new pitch and still refer to
the standard 440?
And then when our ppp goes to sing a 5th, what kind of 5th does she sing?
A perfect 5th, one would think. Or is a perfect ear even tempered like a
piano? The even tempered scale has that weird 12th root of 2 equation in
it; it does not seem that it would occur in nature.
OK, and now our ppp hears a single note that is something other than a
tuning fork sine wave. This can be decomposed into harmonics. Can our
ppp tell us what the weight of each harmonic is like a spectrum analyzer
would? After all, there is no difference between distinct harmonics of
one note and several distinct notes from separate sources.
OK, now about jazz improvisation. Can you imagine a caveman just thawed
from the ice (a ppp) and you give him a piano. All he does is play the
piano all day. You don't let him hear any recorded music or teach him
anything. And then suppose he had the mentality where he would try to
play what he heard in his head. He never drilled or repeated anything.
Never learned to played a scale. Every note he played was improvised.
Every single note he played was by choice, because he wanted to play that
note at that time, not because it was the next note on the page or the
next note in some arificial system. Would this guy be good?
William Norris
bill@mugwump.taiga.com "Look out honey, I'm using technology"
http://taiga.com/~bill Iggy Pop
Detroit, MI, US of A