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Does Williams have perfect pitch?


FossMan

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If you have a perfect pitch and you are a beginner on the violin, are you suffering the same from your play like the people around you? If you don't have a perfect pitch your brain manages to correct the wrong notes and you hear just what you intended to play.

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Relative pitch is the ability to hear two (or more) notes and notice if any are out of tune relative to the other. Most musicians who are reasonably well-trained and experienced are good at this.

 

However, I’m sure I saw an interview with JW fairly recently (female US interviewer, at Tanglewood, perhaps?) where he said he didn’t like listening to music recreationally, especially as background music because he’d constantly be spotting problems ‘like that D was sharp’. If my memory’s correct, this strongly implies he has perfect pitch.

 

Also, there is much evidence that PP can be learned, not least the observation that PP is significantly more prevalent in native speakers of pitch-timed languages (eg, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean) than in native speakers of non-pitch-timed languages (eg, most European languages). This seems to be a result of the brain having to listen for small differences of pitch from an early age.

 

I don’t have PP, but if I do a lot of rehearsing and performing compared to normal, I can feel my pitch getting more and more perfect, if you see what I mean.

 

Mark

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3 minutes ago, QuartalHarmony said:

However, I’m sure I saw an interview with JW fairly recently (female US interviewer, at Tanglewood, perhaps?) where he said he didn’t like listening to music recreationally, especially as background music because he’d constantly be spotting problems ‘like that D was sharp’. If my memory’s correct, this strongly implies he has perfect pitch.

 

On 02/08/2020 at 5:09 PM, KBR said:

I think he does because in this video at 6:35 he says; "If i go to a dinner party, wich i do rarley and somebody has music on I'm thniking well thats in d major and oh my god! the F# was flat!!"

 

Could mean two things

- He has absolute pitch and therefore he could tell what key it's in

- or he knew it was in D-Major and therefore he heard that the F# was flat, wich is'nt that much really.....

 

LINK THE TO VIDEO!! (youtube)

 

 

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4 hours ago, bruce marshall said:

I may have the specifics wrong I.e. pitch and instrument, but the story is the same.

Previn picked out one instrument in.the entire orchestra that was half- step flat/sharp.

Let's see you do that!

 

Fyi I heard him tell this story on the radio( NPR?). So, it was memorable and impressive to him

 

 

A half-step sharp/flat? I've done that many times in my life. It would actually stand out immediately as a wrong note. Maybe you mean a cent sharp/flat? Noticing that would be far more superhuman. Except even then, literally the whole point is for the oboe to establish the tuning for the rest of the orchestra. So the conductor wouldn't even need to tell everyone to adjust their pitch to match the oboe; that's what they always do.

 

In any case, it's cool that your cousin was on the radio. Might want to check with him to make sure you get the story right, though. :)

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I have a relative pitch, and I'm deeply sorry for the humans who have a perfect one. It must be hell.

 

If I listend to two cues one after the other, and the pitch is slightly not the same, my stomach hurts and I want to vomit.

 

This is not a joke, it's really unpleasant.

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35 minutes ago, Bespin said:

I have a relative pitch, and I'm deeply sorry for the humans who have a perfect one. It must be hell.

 

If I listend to two cues one after the other, and the pitch is slightly not the same, my stomach hurts and I want to vomit.

 

This is not a joke, it's really unpleasant.

It hurts me the most when the strings are off this way.  I would prefer waterboarding to listening to most high school string orchestras.  

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