This post is picking up on the strand with the same title on the R3/CD recordings messageboard, with a view to connecting some of the respondents to my original posting.

stevehywave

watcha stevehywave, oh, and..

watcha the chafe

Steve - I have read the BBC link and can report that I have been experiencing this problem since I started driving... It's particularly upsetting listening to unfamiliar Mozart and Haydn which appears to be in unlikely keys. I also notice it, by the way, on film soundtracks.

I wonder what sort of car you drive? I'm in a Micra at the moment (well, not at THIS moment, obviously!) Any connection if it IS to do with engine noise?

My sense of perfect pitch is definitely less reliable than it once was, though.

 

Interesting you should refer to Mandarin and Cantonese, Daniel - I've just spent a month in Hong Kong and was told by several Cantonese speakers (musicians) that the intonation aspect of that language is far less pronounced - and less vital to understanding - than in Mandarin. Having said that, my attempts at communication in Cantonese were greeted with much hilarity... (that could have been my Merseyside accent!)

Any speakers of these languages on the board?

Welcome Stevehywave.

Am I completely off-track in thinking that perfect pitch is really part of auditory memory?

What's this thread all about then ?

I used to think I had perfect pitch - and indeed, by the standards of A=440 and equal temperament I did.  When I was 4, I could name random notes my dad played on the piano.  Much later I became interested in early music, and adjusting to the baroque standard A=415 took some doing!  I kept playing notes a semi-tone higher than written to adjust to how I thought it should sound - oops.  But I got used to it fairly quickly.

The baroque standard of A=415 is a big compromise in itself.  Just about every town had its own A, depending on how the church organ was tuned.  These days, sticklers for "authenticity" will play at A=440 or 465 for 17th Century Northern Italian repertoire and Austro-Hungarian composers like Schmelzer and Biber, A=392 for French repertoire, and A=415 for nearly everything else.  But even this "simplification" can be a step too far, as it can impinge on modern programming creativity (not to mention one's bank account - you'd pretty much need a different set of instruments for each pitch standard).

Another thing that makes me question the concept of "absolute" pitch is temperament.  Even if you assume an A should be 440hz, can you tell whether a note is a G-sharp or an A-flat without hearing any other notes to compare?  And can you say, again without hearing notes to compare, whether that's a G-sharp in Valotti, quarter-comma mean tone, Werkmeister, etc etc?

So I no longer believe there's any such thing as "absolute" pitch.  I think everyone is capable of learning pitches, but some people have a greater aptitude for it (or they just started younger).  Usually they've learned them by pressing the keys on an equally tempered piano tuned to A=440.  This can become so ingrained that people imagine it's "absolute" - but pitch is a much more fluid concept than that.