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I've studied cello from age 5 to conservatory degree; the pitches of the open strings are burned in my memory. I can also often tell which key an orchestra play
by vnorilo 8y ago
I've studied cello from age 5 to conservatory degree; the pitches of the open strings are burned in my memory. I can also often tell which key an orchestra plays by timbral cues. However, I do not have "real" perfect pitch, although the topic study might find that I do. True perfect pitch is like the anecdotes in the thread: discomfort with "wrong" transpositions or tunings, learning melodies by real rather than relative pitch, internal references that can go out of tune with age. All these are completely alien to me.
- coliveira 8y agoI understand your point, but who knows if these things aren't really the same? My opinion is that having the notes "burned" in your memory is a lesser degree of the same phenomenon. People that are considered to have "real" perfect pitch just developed these abilities beyond what normal musicians like you did. And doing this at a very young age really helps a lot, in the same way that leaning new languages in infancy is a painless activity and quite difficult at adult age.
- vnorilo 8y agoYeah - I guess the early acquisition might be what influences the way these kids develop different cognitive strategies for music early on. It's obvious when teaching kids: the median student seems to operate on the first order derivative of the pitch curve, while the perfect pitch kids operate with the absolute values. A gross simplification. Interestingly, many of them require a different strategy for transposing melodies: go note by note, while median learners apply melodic intervals incrementally. Similar differences can be seen in solfege and dictation.