Now I understand a little what people with perfect pitch are always grumbling about.
As you know, I play for the children’s Morris Dance Troupe at my daughter’s school. They are learning the Adderbury Morris tradition, and one feature of this tradition is that the dancers sing a verse of the song/tune they’re dancing to, unaccompanied, before launching into the dance (they call this “the silly song”). Normally, I give them a starting pitch, so when I start to play, I’ll be in the same key as they were singing. At our latest practice, however, the teacher decided to launch into the song without waiting for a starting note…which meant, of course, that they were in a radically different key than the one in which I planned to play. When it was my turn to come in, I tried to tell myself “just play, and your ears will adjust,” but no go: From the first note, my ears started screaming “No! It’s wrong, wrong, wrong!,” and my fingers wouldn’t move, other than in a vain attempt to find the correct key. I finally ground to a halt after a few frustrated toots and just stood there watching helplessly as they muddled through the set without music. The instructor looked at me as if I had two heads! I will definitely be more insistant about giving the starting pitch in the future!
Oh yes! It’s quite popular here, as a matter of fact. We have a very good adult troupe (Seabright Morris), of which at least two parents in our school are members (one of them, who is teaching the group at the school, has been involved for many years). Last year, the troupe visited the school on May 1 (a rather impromptu visit…they were forced off their usual venue on the Pacific Garden Mall), and there was such interest, she decided to try to get a kids troupe together. So far, we’ve got about nine kids who come to the weekly practices (we hope to attract at least three more, so we have two full sets. There’s been a lot of interest lately, so it’s looking very hopeful).
Exactly. I know what you’re talking about Redwolf. My ears are ringing unbelievably after Band practice… (I don’t even have the “fine-tuned” type of perfect pitch, THANK THE GOOD LORD!) I feel like getting on my soap box and INSISTING that we ALL TUNE before we start rehearsal…
It also makes it difficult to enjoy live music, b/c you start picking out every note that’s a hair or two off…
It’s one “gift” (curse?) I’ve always been glad I don’t have. I have very good relative pitch, but perfect pitch seems more trouble than it’s worth. We have one fellow in our choir – a tenor – who has perfect pitch, and he just hates it when our director decides to transpose the music…he says it’s a little like having to be a simutaneous translator!
I had a similar experience once, but this was a public performance and not a rehearsal. In a band I played in, on one number, our singer, Chris, had to start unaccompanied. The rest of the band joined him a couple of bars in. Chris had been away for several months and, on his return, we had a concert scheduled before we had a chance to rehearse. When the number in question came up, he asked me for a starting note and I played an A major arpeggio. (Our replacement singer had sung it in A and I’d forgotten that Chris preferred C.) Chris started in A shot up to C as he realised that something was wrong and ended up wailing tunelessly somewhere in between when the rest of us arrived on cue playing in A. We ground to a halt, band and audience cracking up together. We did the only thing we could do; we explained briefly what had happened and recommenced in the right key. Somehow Chris managed to keep his nerve and stay in tune—I was glad it wasn’t me who had to sing those first two bars.
