Perfect Pitch

[Winslow Yerxa <76450.3230@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

TO: internet:harp-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mike Curtis mentions perfect pitch and asks about the development
courses. I've heard both praises (from Larry Eisenberg) and
damnation (from David Harp, who asked for his money back).

My own personal experience is that I've developed good pitch
sense over time. In my late teens I found that I could guess the
key of diatonic harp being played within a semitone by the timbre
of the instrument. And knowing that my lowest vocal note was an E
(most of the time), I could hum it to guess the pitch of a note,
or to find a note and sing it.

Later, after I'd sung in choirs for about three years, one day I
picked up a piece of choral music I didn't know, started to sing
the bass line, then walked over to the piano, and found that I
was on pitch spontaneously. Since then, I often find myself
hearing music in my head and believing it to be in a particular
key, and when I check, I'm usually right. But listening to music,
I often have to check. I can often tell what position a chromatic
player is playing in (beyond first, second and thord, which are
usually pretty obvious), and this often tells the key - assuming
he's playing a C-harp, which ain't necessarily the case.

I think playing experience is a situation where the key is
evident - either because you're dealing with it on an instrument,
or you're reading it while singing and dealing with it that way,
will develop your pitch sense unconsciously. If you concentrate
on it, it might get even stronger. If you play diatonic second
position all the time, thinking about the key of harp you're
playing will help.

By the way, a very handy pitch reference in the U.S. and Canada
is a telephone dial tone, which is just a few cents off F
natural. I use it all the time. People give me strange looks when
I pick up the phone, my face lights up and I say "Aha!" as I
recognize the pitch relationship. But it works.

Winslow Yerxa
Harmonica Information Press
Z
Z Don't go, baby - it's only a quarter to twelve . . .