These are just some reflections from me, a has-been musician. Is perfect pitch a blessing or is it a curse?
Perhaps a bit of both.
I’m also a has-been piano tuner. One day I went to a customer’s house and began preparations for tuning her piano. I looked in my box for the ever-present tuning fork, only to find it wasn’t there for some reason. It was a pitch-raise job, so, before I could get it anywhere near pitch, I had to raise it slightly sharp, then proceed to get it in tune. Well, I finished and began playing, sort of my traditional signal that I was finished. She, the customer came in and said, "It sounds really good," then after a pause she continued, "now, let’s see how it sounds with the organ’.
Inwardly I gasped, for I hadn’t known there was an organ in the room.
She turned on that instrument and hit some notes. I hit the corresponding notes on the piano and wow, perfectly in tune!
Thank you, perfect pitch!
Then there’s this.
Listening to any given song that people like, and I can’t enjoy it because the instruments are out of tune, or the singers are off pitch, or both, creating in my head an unbearable cacophany that doesn’t resemble music at all!
I don’t know when I began to recognize notes as they are, based on A being equal to 440. Back in the 1800’s, I understand A was equal to 435. That just sounds flat to me.
Recently I heard the healing tone of the universe is 432, which would just sound even flatter to me. I don’t know who came up with that bull crap!
One day my wife Eva and I were in a restaurant with her ever-present assistant, whoever was on duty that day, and a customer at the next table began talking with us, in English, and he said it was decided that A should be equal to 445. This I knew to be utter bull crap as well, for I’d know of such a decision. It is also a well-known fact to classical purists and maybe some other people that the entire orchestra ensemble has to be tuned to the pitch of the oboe, which can’t be moved. This must be based on A 440, for every song I’ve ever heard have been such, with oboes involved.
It must be said by me, as sort of a disclaimer, that I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if an oboe can be moved in pitch or not.
So, is it a blessing, or is it a curse, or a bit of both?
Am I not being healed because the world has conspired against me by moving away from the all-healing frequency of 432?
Ah, such questions, and no apparent answers are available.
I must tell another story.
My younger brother Richard and I both have perfect pitch. Every time we’d tell Talmadge, our older brother, what key a song was in, he’d go to the piano to check us out. Sometimes the record or whatever would be close to that key, but we were always right as to which key it was closest to.
Now, to my story.
Richard and I attended the same high school, and thus we had the same choir teacher, a very nice man named Mr. Moss. He treated us like adults and we appreciated that, though we did pick on him mercilessly. He picked right back, spunky he was.
Anyway, one day while teaching the choir, he made the comment that it was impossible for anyone to land on a note perfectly. Well, this was too much for us, Richard and me. Immediately we challenged him. On the count of three, we, Richard, Mr. Moss and I, would all hit middle C. I don’t remember who did the count off, but on three, Richard and I hit middle C right on the dot, and Mr. Moss slid up from around B flat.
While I’m here, I’ll tell another anecdote about Mr. Moss.
He had this hang-up that A, the one above middle C, and A flat where really close together in pitch. He was so obsessed with this that he took pliers or something and tuned the choir room piano to that discrepancy. He came to me, the only one of us at the time who knew how to tune a piano, and was upset. He knew he’d done screwed up. He asked me to fix this for him, and of course I did, giving the whole piano a good tuning while I was at it. He vowed to never tinker with it again.
It was so funny! He was like a schoolboy in trouble. I’ll never forget it!
Ah, everyone is different. These, as I said, are, were, my reflections, so they came from my point of view only.
It’s strange when it comes to me actually. Even though I do have perfect pitch, in that I think in 440 when I’m supposed to name notes by hearing them, and / or if I hear a song where the tuning hasn’t been pointed out before, I don’t mind these differences. Moreover, I see different tuning systems like meantone or pythagorean as an enrichment, but of course, they must be used right for that. Also, when I’m playing on my keyboard and want to play something that just uses one set of notes without any chromatics, I just cheat. I know the white keys make up a scale, and that’s it. I wonder how I can be such an exception that my brain is able to separate like this.