There are all kinds of perfect pitch.
Some people can only detect the pitch but can't produce the pitch.
Some people only have it on their own instrument.
One friend of mine has it only when he is at the piano, but then
can hear it with other instruments except he has trouble with
strings sometimes.
I've studied this alot and asked many top jazz artists if they
have perfect pitch.
One thing though I've found is that perfect is very rare among
top artists or composers. Mozart had it but I don't think any of the
other famous composers did. I have yet to meet or hear about a famous
jazz artist that had perfect pitch .
I've been told that perfect pitch is very common among top conductors
but have not personally verified this statement.
I also found that it is very common among great "musicians". By "musicians"
I mean people that have great musicianship. i.e. People that can
play by ear, know many tunes, respond to widely varying situations.
In other words great sidemen often have it.
Alot of people that have perfect pitch also have this "CD recorder"
like musical memory. I.e., if they hear something they like, they never
forget it and can reproduce it 20-30 years later if they need to,
even if they have never tried to reproduce it before. When they want
to remember a tune, they can just draw up a recording they have stored
away in their mind and listen to it.
It's a great skill for progressing rapidly in the beginning and
getting work. I've heard of bass players going from absolute beginner
to pro in 6 months if they had perfect pitch. When you think about
what a professional bass player needs to be able to do that is
pretty awesome.
>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?
>
My classical piano teacher had it and was from France. They tune higher
in Europe but she has been here for a while and has become accustomed
to it but whenever she goes back to Europe she says it makes her nervous
to hear the orchestras play.
BTW, there is a funny story about Horowitz that I read. His ex piano
technician has been telling all these stories since Horowitz died.
Horowoitz used to tell everyone he had perfect pitch and of course
nobody was about to challenge him. One time he was saying how in
Europe they tune lower and this conductor corrected him and he threw
a big fit.
>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.
>
They hear all the notes. They are not that easily fooled by overtones
as someone earlier suggested, at least from my experience.
>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
>
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