Perfect Pitch (article FYI)

[Joe K]

We've seen the ads for years and probably thought how nice it would be. Apparently, it is something you are born with or develop while very young. Below is an article I saw in the Washington Post the other day that I thought some of you might like to read.

-Joe
====================

Pitching a Fit
Perfect Pitch Can Better Your Musicianship -- Or Make You Climb the Walls of Sound
By Shirley Ebrahimian
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page HE01


To pianist Susan Ricci, Metro's "doors closing" ding-dong is flat. She shuns the "Bach fugue" ring option on her cell phone because it's in the wrong key. Even dialing her cell phone grates on her.

Every musical riff, train whistle, child screeching, cash register beep -- every single sound she hears -- either resonates or chafes in her ears. Why? Because Ricci has a condition only 1 in 10,000 Americans can claim: perfect pitch -- the ability to identify tones without checking a device like a pitch pipe.

Anything with a discernible pitch is decipherable to Ricci. As if to help her illustrate this, her preschooler, Amanda, fiddles with a slide whistle. "That starts at an F and goes down to a C-sharp," Ricci notes with a nonchalant wave.

Although genetics seems to play some part in acquiring perfect pitch -- Ricci's paternal grandfather and her sister also have it and Amanda shows signs -- early exposure to musical training is also critical. Ricci's formal lessons started at age 4: "My mother told me I was driving her crazy trying to play the piano," she said.

Ricci, 38, first became aware of her pitch sense in church: "I was about 9 or 10," she recalled. "I realized I was looking at this music and it didn't sound right. I couldn't sing what the organist was playing. My sister and I kept looking at each other, and my mother was elbowing us in the side and saying, 'Sing! Why aren't you singing?' I said, 'I can't, because he's not playing the right notes!' " Both girls could sense that the organist had transposed the hymn's key up a half-step.

How does Ricci know what's on key or off? Research has shown that people with perfect pitch have an overdeveloped planum temporale -- a site on the left side of the brain, the same spot that helps decipher language. Stored within this expanded blob of gray matter are acoustic archetypes that automatically compare incoming pitches. Because absolute pitch appears to be part of the brain's language center, it's available at birth to everyone. But without early exposure and training, it fades away permanently.

Perfect pitch is not unique to humans. Scientists have studied many animal species that use pitch to communicate. Birds learn their pitched tweets from an avian tutor. Crickets consistently hit a favored frequency, night after night. Frogs get down with rhythm and pitch, using a call-and-response setup to seek out their better halves. The critical difference? Although animals might sound joyful, hauntingly beautiful, even melodious, their point is to communicate, not to entertain. They do not make music.

Some humans also use perfect pitch for both communication and entertainment. Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, where certain words have different meanings, according to the specific pitch of the word. The Mandarin word "ma" can mean "mother," "horse," "hemp" or "to scold," depending on the pitch used. (Imagine: "Don't you take that tone with me, young lady! I am not a horse!")

But unlike other animals, humans -- even those in cultures with tonal languages -- take sound one step further: the creation of pitched sound for pure enjoyment and entertainment; in other words, music, using both absolute and relative pitch.

Relative pitch -- possessed by everyone except the very few who suffer from true amusia (tone deafness) -- is the ability to perceive musical intervals and identify notes relative to other notes, regardless of developed musicianship. It allows a person to recognize, say, the "Happy Birthday" song, even though that same person scare the dog when trying to sing along.

What's the critical difference between perfect and relative pitch? People with relative pitch can identify the song. People with perfect pitch can identify the song, its key, and even whether it's in the original key.

Flat-Out Wrong

Along with serving as the piano accompanist for the Chesapeake Chorale -- a choral group based in Bowie -- Ricci teaches piano at Prince George's Community College and in her home studio. She also collaborates with other musicians.

She doesn't publicize her pitch ability, but it has helped others unravel difficult sections in their music -- provided it doesn't unnerve them that Ricci instantly knows the note.

Oboist Bob Berinson, who regularly performs with Ricci, relies on her for the fine-tuning of the oboe reeds he makes. "Susan will say unerringly that it's under or over [pitch]. And I'm talking about cuts that are 1/64 of an inch if it's flat," he said. "She's usually right. Well, no, she's always right. That's the amazing thing with Susan."

As a vocal coach, Ricci also uses her gift to rein in a soaring high A before it breaks glass (yes, that can really happen). Her verdicts on tone quality sometimes upset students, but they also help them improve.

When she was a music student, Ricci clearly had an advantage over her classmates. Recognize a doubly diminished seventh during dictation class? Kid stuff. Not only could she distinguish the type of chord, but she could also tell exactly which notes were played, and therefore the key of the chord as well. Hey, no fair! her classmates may have thought.

Perfect pitch may seem like a pure gift. and in many ways it is. Chesapeake Chorale Conductor Jesse Parker, who does not have perfect pitch himself, acknowledges the advantage. Remember the music dictation classes Ricci sailed through back in college? Parker, who earned his DMA in Conducting from University of Maryland, recalls, chuckling: "In theory and dictation class . . . you would kiss the ground if you had perfect pitch." But it also can be a hindrance, he says, "especially if you're a soloist with perfect pitch singing with a choral backup," he says. "If pitch starts dropping, then [those with perfect pitch] start climbing the walls." Watch Ricci's face when people sing. If they're slightly flat, she looks slightly sick.

But consider life from Ricci's perspective:

Tones that don't jibe with the baseline pitches in her brain provoke a strong physical reaction. Ricci's spine tingles, her teeth set, her ears hurt and, if the offending tone persists, she gets a headache. Even Doppler effect distortions like a passing train whistle cause distress. The whistle sound stretches because the train is moving, and Ricci must "stretch" right along with it.

Sharpness feels to Ricci like super-brightened tones. "I just have to think about converting it," she explains. "I listen to old recordings, and I realize that from the speed of an old 78, it's sharp, everything's sharp. So I kind of look at the music and imagine that everything's being stretched to its ultimate limit."

Pitching a Fit

Flat tones offend Ricci more, depressing her. "[Flatness is] most bothersome to me when people are singing in a choir, because I can feel the whole thing just pulling down," she said.

Even good vocal music can be trying. "If I'm listening to an opera recording or the 'Live From the Met' broadcast, and there's a vibrato that's this wide" -- she spreads her hands apart to illustrate -- "I can't stomach it. I have to turn it off," Ricci laments. "People say, 'Oh, they sound so wonderful,' and I say, "No, they were flat the whole time." She sighs: "It's not only a pitch thing, it's amplitude and volume, so it's everything."

Handling Handel

Are perfect pitch and musical flexibility incompatible? Sure sounds like it. The first time Ricci ever heard the Barney song, for instance, "it was in D flat major," she said, "so anytime I hear it in a different key, I feel like it's not right." No matter if the recording was playing a half-step up. To her, D flat is the cast-in-stone key forevermore for that purple dinosaur. Daughter Amanda seems to agree. Ricci will purposely sing a song in a different key, and Amanda will object with, "No, Mommy, it's this!" and then sing it herself in the "proper" key.

Wait, stop the music, please. Who cares if the key is different from the original? It still sounds like the same tune, just a little higher or lower.

Musical tones are identified by their rate of vibration -- 262 times per second for middle C on a piano string, or 262 hertz, or Hz. Humans can discern tones from 20 to 20,000 Hz. It's the musical intervals that define a tune. So what if the key changes? After all, it's only when a musician dishonors these even intervals that offensive flatness or sharpness truly occurs.

Standard pitch is somewhat arbitrary, too. For most of us, an orchestra tuned to an ever-so-slightly flattened A at 438 Hz would be undetectable. But those with absolute pitch would immediately notice the downshift in relative frequencies, and it would be anything but music to their ears.

Perfect pitch does not necessarily mean perfect musicianship. As a child, Ricci was so good at duping her piano teachers by playing by ear that her musical literacy lagged. Trouble loomed at the University of Maryland, though, where she struggled to master both rhythm and sight reading.

Ricci snowed her sight reading teacher at first, because she could ad-lib relatively straightforward music. "I could 'sight read' Mozart because if I couldn't figure out what it was, I played scales to fill it in," Ricci confessed. She didn't get away with it for long: "When I got into the really bizarre, thick tonalities of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schumann -- you don't know what the hell you're reading, and what you're looking at. So I'm thinking, 'I can't do this,' and my rhythm wasn't very good."

Practice does make perfect, though. Ricci sight reads now as a collaborative pianist, vocal coach, church music director and piano teacher. She's become adept at it, but that's because "that's what I've done for my bread and butter for the last 15 years," she said. She has a tenor scheduled for later in the morning: "There's going to be stuff today that I'm going to play that I've never seen before, that's Bach, that's Strauss, that's Mozart, you know. I have to do it."

So maybe absolute pitch can in some ways be an absolute pain. What initially seems to the un-pitched masses like a half-step advantage is actually a rigid adherence to The Rules.

So why would Ricci choose a musical career? Easy: Music is Ricci's first language -- her primary method of communicating with the world. And her deep desire to speak through music wins out, through collaboration: "I love playing with singers or other instrumentalists"; and through teaching: "Having a really responsive student -- and watching them learn and grow and discover their musical identity -- that's an amazing thing to behold."
========
Shirley Ebrahimian is an aspiring vocal musician and a Washington area freelance writer

[Scotland]

What a load of bollocks !!

[Oskar]

has perfect pitch. He was a phenomenal trumpet player in high school, and he could whistle any tune perfectly in pitch. I can still hear him whistle the song Danny Boy as if he was in the room. Scotland, I'm not sure if you are referring as bollocks the woman's ability to have perfect pitch or not, but I have no reason to doubt it. My friend certainly wasn't as perfect as she is, but he was pretty amazing.

[Scotland]

Quote "Flat tones offend Ricci more, depressing her. "[Flatness is] most bothersome to me when people are singing in a choir, because I can feel the whole thing just pulling down," Unquote.

Quote "As a vocal coach, Ricci also uses her gift to rein in a soaring high A before it breaks glass " Unquote

Quote "Tones that don't jibe with the baseline pitches in her brain provoke a strong physical reaction. Ricci's spine tingles, her teeth set, her ears hurt and, if the offending tone persists, she gets a headache. Even Doppler effect distortions like a passing train whistle cause distress. The whistle sound stretches because the train is moving, and Ricci must "stretch" right along with it. " Unquote

As I said..bollocks !! Journalistic sensationalist bollocks !!

I have read this in so many forms as a "reported" truth but no one ever can seem to contact this "person". Many of us know pitch perfect people, Oskar you obviously know one, but, let me stress this no one knows anyone like the reported.
Don't believe anything you read in the press !!
Way back in 1974 a similar report was published in the Musician's Union monthly, the reporter was sacked after a team of investigators from the BBC tried to track "him" down and failed miserably. BBC's response to the report...bollocks...or words to that effect.

[Matt Plescher]

Originally Posted by Scotland

I have read this in so many forms as a "reported" truth but no one ever can seem to contact this "person".

looks like she's right here:

http://www.kennedy-center.org/progra..._id=RICCISUSAN

[lenny]

perfect pitch is absolutely real
i've known people with it, and i used to use them to tune up too lol
you tune up...check it with her...then we were set to go
if people played out of tune it drove her nuts
it was a girl named leila hathaway, daughter of the late singer donny hathaway, so the theory about it being learned from early exposure to music would seem to be supported by her

[Oskar]

and editor for more than a decade I can understand why you might be skeptical of the press in this day and age, especially as the result of a number of high profile incidents in which reporters have been found to fabricate material and entire stories. I'm not going to say that "everything" in print is the absolute and ultimate truth, or even the gospel truth. But the Washington Post is probably one of the most reputable newspapers not only in the United States, but around the world as well. Of course there are some that would accuse it on occasion of politcal bias, but I digress here away from the issue at hand.
There is also a little understood psychological/phsycial condition in which people not only have hypersensitive hearing, but hear sounds differently. She may or may not fall into this category. I don't have any reason to doubt the story unless someone can prove to me that she is indeed a phony.
As a newspaper reporter I learned a long time ago not to take anything at face value. I'm sure the Post reporter researched this individual quite well before even writing the story. The editors would have also vetted the piece if it were bogus, especially in light of the problems that have been uncovered over the past few years with reporting.
I guess it boils down to whether you believe it or not. If you don't, I'm certainly not going argue with someone's beliefs. Not my place to do so.

[Johnny Isaacs]

...that perfect pitch was a banjo hitting an accordian in the dumpster!

Johnny Isaacs

[jlrich]

If true, sounds more like a curse to me. I guess the 'ol, "Close enough for jazz" just doesn't cut it.

[mr natural]

It's definitely real. I know a guy who has it. Great self-taught pianist. I think developing it early is the key. My folks made me take Suzuki violin when I was 7. It's mostly ear training early on. I could play Bach and Vivaldi from memory by 14. But I could barely read a note. The ear training helped a lot. I can tune a guitar by ear about half the time, and be right on with the tuner. A lot of that is the overtones, though. Taught myself lead guitar by playing along with the tv. Works great because you have to change styles really quickly during the commercials.
-Mr N.

Originally Posted by Scotland

Quote "Tones that don't jibe with the baseline pitches in her brain provoke a strong physical reaction. Ricci's spine tingles, her teeth set, her ears hurt and, if the offending tone persists, she gets a headache.

As I said..bollocks !! Journalistic sensationalist bollocks !!

Actually, those reactions are pretty much what's been described to me by several people I've known who've had perfect (i.e., absolute) pitch. I think the reporter might be guilty of being a little colorful, and the woman might be over-dramatizing her reactions a bit, but the basic information isn't inaccurate.

For instance, I knew a woman in college (Berklee) who had perfect pitch, and was also a pianist, like the woman quoted in the story. Anyway, she couldn't stand to play the piano in my apartment, because it was tuned almost a 1/2 step flat. Middle C looked like middle C, but it sounded like B natural, except a bit too sharp. Drove her crazy. And if we were listening to music that hadn't been recorded properly (this was in the early days of cassette recording) she'd either have to change it or turn it off – but ignoring the pitch discrepancies just wasn't possible.

A funny story about perfect pitch: I played in a show band with three horn players who also sang, and our trombone player, named Danny, had perfect pitch. When singing, if he couldn't hear himself well in the monitors, he would instinctively revert to singing the correct pitch, instead of blending with the others. Then he would stick his finger in his ear, as many singers do, so he could hear both himself and the others, in order to match them. Well, one night, as he was beginning to revert to pitch, the trumpet player singing next to him heard it, and he stuck his finger in Danny's ear to help him out. (You'd have to know the guys involved, but it wasn't as weird as that sounds...) ;-) This would have been fine, except right at that moment, Danny was sticking his OWN finger in his other ear. Now he can't hear anything but himself – and he didn't have the presence of mind to remove his own finger, or the one belonging to the guy next to him. He just kept singing with fingers in both ears, and looking like a deer caught in the headlights. As he was describing the event to us on the ensuing break, we were laughing so hard it hurt. :-) – CS

[Scotland]

Originally Posted by Chris S.

A funny story about perfect pitch: I played in a show band with three horn players who also sang, and our trombone player, named Danny, had perfect pitch. When singing, if he couldn't hear himself well in the monitors, he would instinctively revert to singing the correct pitch, instead of blending with the others. Then he would stick his finger in his ear, as many singers do, so he could hear both himself and the others, in order to match them. Well, one night, as he was beginning to revert to pitch, the trumpet player singing next to him heard it, and he stuck his finger in Danny's ear to help him out. (You'd have to know the guys involved, but it wasn't as weird as that sounds...) ;-) This would have been fine, except right at that moment, Danny was sticking his OWN finger in his other ear. Now he can't hear anything but himself – and he didn't have the presence of mind to remove his own finger, or the one belonging to the guy next to him. He just kept singing with fingers in both ears, and looking like a deer caught in the headlights. As he was describing the event to us on the ensuing break, we were laughing so hard it hurt. :-) – CS

That had me on the floor laughing

The only perfecr pitch in Scotland is Celtic Park !

[kickz28]

I think I'm glad I don't have perfect pitch. It would be a pain in the ass for guitar players, considering the less than perfect intonation of this instrument.

[sparky]

some exaggeration at least.
How can the lady listen to a piano without feeling ill? Like a guitar it can never be 'in tune', only 'well tempered'.
And what does it matter if a tune is in a different key to the one in which she first heard it? (Assuming ALL the musicians are in the new key :) ).
And what about the vibrato business?
And what about . . . ?
And . . . ?

Actually I love the word 'bollocks', it saves a lot of typing :).

[lenny]

i think guitars sound fine even to perfect pitch people if played right(despite the tempered tuning)
once you got a reference note, and it tuned just right,..
no problems
p.s.
haha chris s good story

[Nick Fanis]

I don't know if perfect pitch exists but from my own experience I am always amazed when I colaborate in my productions w/ a good friend who happens to be the conductor of the biggest classical orchestra in my country.
I use him a lot for score writing (cause I unfortunately have forgoten despite years of classical piano training how to write a proper music score ) and he is amazing:
I simply play him the parts on the piano (or hum them to him) and he IMMEDIATELY writes them down on score paper WITHOUT looking at the keyboard.
They are always spot on and on the right key.
He can also automatically transcribe the whole part for many different instruments (ok I admit that all serious conductors can do this..).
How can he always understand and write down the exact notes??
The most amazing thing is that he writes down WHOLE CHORDS without sweat.
I.E.I play an A7 chord or an E9 chord and he can always tell them!
He can even tell "strange" and very complicated chords some guitar players play (again not me )
The guy is an absolute musical genious (he was also the conductor of the Munich Opera before he returned home).
BTW he NEVER once claimed to have perfect pitch...

[Joel Terry]

because I hear music in almost anything and everything around me, regardless of its pitch. (What if you're born with 442 tuning instead of 440? 8) )

For instance, a new house is going up close to mine, and I can hear the first five notes of the verses of the old Mexican folk tune, "Cielito Lindo" from the vibrations of the cement mixer when it is spinning: C-C A B-G; repeat. I love it! And don't get me started about other industrial machinery; birds; fields of frogs and crickets at night; high tension wires in the wind; water glasses--you name it! I love to mentally frame numerous, random sounds around me as musical/rhythmic pieces.

Actually, I do believe I might have some semblance of perfect pitch; actually, it's more like one of those built-in E-tuners in some of the old Vox amps and guitars: The Rush song, "Tom Sawyer." It's in the key of E at 440 tuning. That first classic guitar chord/Moog Taurus-pedal note intro is etched on my brain from countless repetitive plays, beginning at the young age of 12, when Moving Pictures was released. I can tune pretty accurately by that first note in my head. Crazy, but true.

(By the way, Chris--like John, I nearly rolled in the floor laughing over your "Perfectly possible" post/anecdote. Classic! :D)

Joel

[Baard]

if you can start a song in the right key, without ´havin to strike a chord first, that as good pitch as I´ll ever need.

Baard

[eryque]

Originally Posted by Joel Terry

I can tune pretty accurately by that first note in my head. Crazy, but true.

I can do that, too. For me it's the opening C note in "Mustang Sally." For some reason, I can nearly always hear that note accurately in my head.

I can't always tune the rest of the guitar very well, but I can get my A string right by tuning at the 3rd fret :-)

Chris, that story was AWESOME. I made people at work wonder what I was laughing about!

[Wahwax]

I could see it being a problem if the root and 3rd or 5th were slightly out of tune. However if she heard just one note by itself, I don't see why that would be annoying. Heck I can't stand anything out of tune, but I consider out of tune as it relates with all of the other notes.