Hi Neal
I was listening to a local Jazz programe on my radio here in Bristol and a guy was interviewing a Piano player and he was saying he had Perfect Pitch, what does that mean?
Is it catching? No seriously is it something you can learn or is it just a gift some people have ? Or is it Hype, or what we Australians call Bul….t ?????
Thanks, playing with 60 other Wood/Brass/Wind Band on Saturday I guess it’ll be my first Gig, its a mixture of 4 learner bands should be good I’m very nervous though.
-Henry
Neal:
Perfect pitch is basically when you can hear music and play all the notes back correctly without trial and error.
It means you can hear a note and note what it is just by listening.
It is real. Kind of like a native language, you can acquire perfect pitch by being born into a situation where you hear music a great deal. Similar to how you hear your native music all around you.
Perfect pitch can be directly related to language as well. Mandarin Chinese uses tones to distinguish words, since everyone who speaks Mandarin must be aware of tones, more people who speak it tend to develop perfect pitch in music.
There is something called ‘semi-perfect’ pitch where you can figure out pitches relatively.
And the situation is also not black and white. You won’t have nothing then semi-perfect pitch and then perfect pitch.
Musicians in general probably have a better sense of pitch than the general population.
And you can train yourself to get to what’s known as ‘semi perfect’ pitch. If you train a lot, you could get to ‘perfect pitch’.
It’s good to work on being able to recognize pitches. You also want to train yourself to recognize rhythms and other things.
Henry says
Thanks Neal,
That was really helpfull, and thanks for the other little helpful hints you send us.
i picked up something at our band rehersal from a blind Alto Sax player (who’s really good), if you tongue the first note really hard on some jazz pieces it can sound distorted but if you sort of yawn slowly into the mouth piece it sounded better.
Henry