On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:21 AM, Steve Haflich <[email protected]> wrote: > Steve Freides <[email protected]> wrote: > > It's interesting for me, as someone with perfect pitch, to be an > amateur horn player. I actually take it as a point of pride that I've > learned to let myself play out of tune - my tendency is to try to fix > everything, but if you do that, your playing never acquires any ease. > I need to fix my intonation by trying to address the technique > problems that are causing the intonation problems. > > Perfect pitch is a very mixed blessing. On anecdotal evidence, I > believe that when one ages, one's perfect pitch gradually goes flat. An > excellent aged scholar and musician of my acquaintance complained many > years ago that his perfect pitch was now based about a semitone low. He > found this very annoying.
I've heard others say this - so far, it hasn't happened to me at age 56. (Naw, I can't really be _that_ old, can I?) My sense of pitch, perhaps because of exposure to "historical" performances and recordings, has always been willing to accommodate about a half-step flat without being too upset, and I can still do that, but I still seem to zero in on modern pitch accurately. Anything sharp or anything more than a half-step flat requires transposition, though. The possibilities for humor on the subject of things going/getting flat with age are endless. :) -S- _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
