I was wondering how many of the C&Fers are afflicted with this trait. I’ve read so many comments about whistles being out of tune that I think there must be many PP people here. I have an acceptable sense of relative pitch and can tell when I hear a chord with a note or two out. But succesive notes like on a whistle – they have to be really out for me to be bothered or even to recognize them, especially when I am playing. So, do you have PP and if so, does it make your whistle playing less enjoyable?
Mike
I tend to be more picky about my pitch on the fiddle than on whistle for some reason…personally, Im more tolerant of whistle pitch than other instruments, but maybe thats just me.
BTW, that was Dr. Timothy Leary’s famous quote. A remarkable guy, both before, during and after the LSD phase. Saw him at UCLA during college…brilliant guy, but I dont think he ever recovered from the substances he consumed. He continually referred to himself in the third person with respect to his physical state (his body and how it felt) and first person with respect to his mind and his thoughts.
I’ve only known a few “perfect pitch” people–and I’m definitely not one of them!
Both were singers. They had pitch memory; each had a pitch they could sing from memory (one was F-sharp and one was A-sharp) that would match a piano tuned to A=440. Then by singing the intervals they could produce any pitch in the equally tempered A=440 scale.
I would think it would drive a wind instrument player slowly insane, because no wind instrument, even the modern flute, is perfectly in tune with the equally tempered scale all the way across its range.
I always considered this more of a “parlor trick” then a useful musical ability, but I know there are plenty of folks (including many operatic vocalists) who would disagree.
What is very valuable in my opinion is to be able to hear an interval and recognize the interval, for instance, to hear two notes and know they are a perfect fifth apart, rather or not you can tell what notes they actually are. Being able to hear these intervals is essential to the skill of being able to quickly pick up new tunes by ear.
All in my opinion, of course: your mileage may vary.
On 2002-07-25 13:12, peeplj wrote:
no wind instrument, even the modern flute, is perfectly in tune with the equally tempered scale all the way across its range.
And I would put forward that, especially for the music generally played on the whistle, you wouldn’t want it to be.
There’s little worse than a set of pipes with a chanter tuned to equal temperament or a fiddler playing Irish music with an equal tempered intonation. I fact I would think players striving to achieve this are missing the point completely.
There is a steam calliope on a riverboat
in the Mississippi, docked near the
French Quarter in New Orleans, which
is played sometimes during the day.
It is delightfully off, in a swingy,
loopy sort of way, and I always
thought the whistle sounds good
that way, too.
I don’t really know the definition of perfect pitch, but I might have a smidge of it. If you played a note I couldn’t say “that note is a D” or whatever to save my life, but in a succession I can tell when a note sounds wrong. Even in a tune I’ve never heard.
I’m pretty quick at picking up a new tune but I’ll forget it pretty quickly too without a kick-start (rhythm and first few notes). And I have a limited ability to produce harmonies - I can’t make a whole harmony, though, at some point I fall back into the regular tune notes. I remember my mom commenting on my harmonizing when I was little, though.
I’m not sure how many people with perfect pitch would want to take up the whistle!
I certainly don’t have perfect pitch. My sister does though - I once tested her by having her turn her back to the piano while I played a completely random “chord” (actually a horrible discord) with both hands and my elbows. She then correctly named every note in order from the lowest to the highest.
This is a wonderful gift in many respects but it has drawbacks. For example, it used to bother her when she heard recordings of baroque works recorded at a lower pitch (e.g. A = 415) because pieces which were familiar to her in a particular key sounded as though they were being played a half-tone down.
I’ll have to ask her how this affects her appreciation of Irish music - she may be able to suspend the faculty because on one occasion we listened to Donegal fiddle player James Byrne playing live for several hours and she (a cello player) thought he was magnificent. And I’m quite sure he doesn’t play in equal temperament.
Although my own pitch is not foolproof I must say that playing the whistle seems to have sharpened my sensitivity to conflicts of tuning. Has anyone else found this? Maybe because it sounds so awful when then whistle clashes with anything, while slightly out-of-tune fiddles don’t bother me at all. (Opposite of what Dazed says above.)
The other day for the first time in ages I listened to a Bothy Band track (Farewell to Ireland) and it struck me - for the first time - that the flute, fiddle and pipes were clashing in the higher register. Or maybe they were just clashing with the accompaniment. Anyway the effect was beurk!
I have what I guess I would call miscellaneous pitch . Years of guitar playing without a tuner or piano handy mean I can hum, tune to, and generally recognize an E (and can sometimes figure out other notes by relating them to E). I’m also good at reading relative pitch, or maybe it’s relative distance – give me a starting note and I can sing or hum from sheet music. I can often hear if something is flat or sharp, though I couldn’t name the note. And like Avanutria, A can often tell when something sounds wrong in the music.
Whatever it is, it works for me. I don’t much care about perfect pitch, as long as what I’m listening to doesn’t hurt my ears!
On 2002-07-25 14:23, avanutria wrote:
I don’t really know the definition of perfect pitch,
Perfect pitch means the ability to keep a pitch in memory. A person with perfect pitch can recognize a note as a “D” or “F#” or whatever completely out of any context. StevieJ’s sister is clearly a person with perfect pitch.
It doesn’t mean “really good pitch”. I’ve knows lots of musicians who are highly sensitive to intonation and have good relative pitch, but who do not have perfect pitch.
Relative pitch means being able to recognize intervals, which is a big part of being able to play be ear. (The other part, IMO, is knowing which scale degree a pitch is in relation to the key you’re in. If there is a name for that skill I don’t know what it is.) I think most of us can develop relative pitch and the ability to play by ear with some practice. Perfect pitch seems to be something you are either born with or not.
Although my own pitch is not foolproof I must say that playing the whistle seems to have sharpened my sensitivity to conflicts of tuning. Has anyone else found this? Maybe because it sounds so awful when then whistle clashes with anything, while slightly out-of-tune fiddles don’t bother me at all. (Opposite of what Dazed says above.)
OOps, right. I guess what I meant was that with respect to my assessment of my own playing (i.e. whistle vs. fiddle), as opposed to others, I tend to be more forgiving of variances with the whistle rather than fiddle, perhaps because I’m in the Troubling Times of learning how to play a fretless stringed instrument in tune, and finger placement that’s off by a hair makes such a difference. Or maybe im much more lazy on whistle than on fiddle re trying to stay in tune…
Perfect? Nope, none of that perfection stuff here. But when our choir director (high school) pulled out one of those electronic devices that tells pitch and went through the class one by one: teacher hits a note on the piano, student sings it back to see if he/she could sing it back on pitch… I was one of the very few in the class that hit it dead on the first time.
It’s been really helpful to have some sense of pitch when picking out a tune by ear. But the last few years, I’ve had some ear problems and I sometimes wonder how that’s effected my hearing. Maybe I’m really off now, and I just don’t know it yet? Been working on actually learning to read music; that should help.
Of course, doesen’t it take all the fun out of music if you are so stressed out about obtaining perfection in it? I’d imagine someone with absolutly perfect pitch would have to relax and let go a little bit of that “gift” of perfection sometimes so they could just enjoy the music and not cringe all the time if something’s not quite perfect. Then, other times that perfect pitch could be really handy…
On 2002-07-25 12:27, burnsbyrne wrote:
So, do you have PP and if so, does it make your whistle playing less enjoyable?
Mike
“Turn on, tune in, drop out” – someone in the 60s
Mike, great question to raise considering this common whistle flaw…I hear when the notes are slightly sharp or flat on whistle, like when I over or underblow them, or when I am using a less than perfectly in tune with itself whistle, but most of the cheapies I’ve tried like this don’t bother me at all. I’m much pickier about whether or not someone plays with steady cadence! My fiddler friend is more picky about my inaccurate pitch and I’m more picky about his rushing through arpeggios and the like.
Dazed, I had a similar perception about Leary the last time I saw him speak to an audience, and I liked that about him.
Lisa
semi-cute kid story.
I played a G on my whistle for my 3 year old and asked him what note it was.
He said “G”.
I thought," oh my gawd, he’s got perfect pitch!"
So I played another note and he said H.
I explained that there’s no H in music, just A-G.
He said “No dad, there’s a H in music…” He precedes to sing the alphabet song “a-b-c-d-e-f-g-h See dad, there’s an H in there”
Can’t argue with that logic.
Cheers,
jb
So I played another note and he said H.
I explained that there’s no H in music, just A-G.
Actually there is an H. So much traditional German band music is in Bb that it became common (even in classical music) to refer to that pitch as B. So in order to distinguish B-natural from B, they called it H.
“perfect pitch” is probably better called “absolute pitch” and some music programs are leaning that way… one can have, so to speak, imperfect perfect pitch, ie, a pitch memory that gets you within a reasonably few cents of an arbitrarily named note, but not necessarilly exactly on (my own sense of absolute pitch is only within a step or so, referencing D below D below middle C, which is about the lowest note I can sing… compared to a digital tuner, singing this note out of the blue ranges from C# to Eb, which isn’t particularly impressive, but demonstrates the idea that one can have a very imperfect sense of absolute pitch but still have -some- sense of absolute pitch…); it is also not an purely an innate trait, but a learnable one. If you can, for example, learn a song in a particular key and call it up in that key at will, all you need then is to put names to the notes and have a good sense of relative pitch (the ability to hear whether a scale or chord is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, how ‘big’ an interval is and what direction it’s in, etc.)
The only training I know for improving your sense of pitch is to practice vocal exercises… of course, if you don’t want to train your sense of pitch to equal temperament this is going to be a problem since very few pianos are tuned to the irish sound.
(And I’ve certainly noticed that certain notes… especially C-natural … tend to be ‘off’ in my voice against the piano… because I’m used to hearing the air on the whistle or flute, and that’s where I try to sing the note! Then I get it ‘right’ and now I’m off against a whistle… ah well.)
You will find, btw, that in laypersons terms , many people will claim to have perfect pitch, when what they actually mean (whether they have it or not) is a very good sense of relative pitch. These people are usually unrepentant braggarts and should be humoured with a smile and a nod, given no encouragement, and under no circumstances be allowed to handle the tuning of any instruments!
So I played another note and he said H.
I explained that there’s no H in music, just A-G.
Actually there is an H. So much traditional German band music is in Bb that it became common (even in classical music) to refer to that pitch as B. So in order to distinguish B-natural from B, they called it H.
True enough. Ask a German to name the notes in a C-major scale, and he will say: C D E F G A H C.
The explaination I’ve heard for this suggests that it’s older than band music, though. Supposedly the reason is early musical typsetting and the fact that flattening B-natural to B-flat was the only accidental used. They were called b durum and b molle (which is a also the origin for the German terms for major and minor). To this day, a flat looks a little like a lower case b and a natural sign resembles an h. (We’re talking middle ages here, btw.)
On 2002-07-25 17:56, ChrisA wrote:
"(And I’ve certainly noticed that certain notes… especially C-natural … tend to be ‘off’ in my voice against the piano… because I’m used to hearing the air on the whistle or flute, and that’s where I try to sing the note! Then I get it ‘right’ and now I’m off against a whistle… ah well.)
Try playing or singing a scale perfectly in tune with a drone, you’ll find you will be way off the equal tempered scale but are actually singing the proper ‘perfect’ harmonic intervals .
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-07-26 07:06 ]
On 2002-07-25 12:55, DazedinLA wrote:
I tend to be more picky about my pitch on the fiddle than on whistle for some reason…personally, I’m more tolerant of whistle pitch than other instruments, but maybe that’s just me.
When I played the violin, I was the same. I could tell the note I was playing was out, and would “slide” into the correct note. Unfortunately for classical music this was a no-no, I couldn’t even get away with pretending it was vibrato, and I never developed the finger memory to hit the note spot on every time.
As I can’t tune my whistles, other than with breath control, I don’t hassle myself about tuning problems.
When singing, I can return a note sung or played, and sing the whole scale, arpeggio, particular interval etc, but still couldn’t name the original note. I can happily sing a tune in, say C, then sing the whole thing again in D.
For me, notes are like colours, I can appreciate them without having all the names.
. Years of guitar playing without a tuner or piano handy mean I can hum, tune to, and generally recognize an E (and can sometimes figure out other notes by relating them to E). I’m also good at reading relative pitch, or maybe it’s relative distance – give me a starting note and I can sing or hum from sheet music. I can often hear if something is flat or sharp, though I couldn’t name the note. And like Avanutria, A can often tell when something sounds wrong in the music.