[Dixielandjazz] Mozart Effect - Perfect Pitch

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

While I was in the AF someone higher up got the idea that we needed to be
acclimated to the Arabic world.  So one morning all of the signs in the
building were changed into that funny squiggly stuff they call writing.
It's lucky I remembered where the men's room was.  A visitor might have had
an interesting time of it.  Anyway they piped in mid-East music for two
days.  Now I know why those guys are crazy.  I wonder if they acclimate
their troops by listening to Kenny G. Tapes?

By the way perfect pitch is learned and pitch differences can become
ingrained in a person.  Even someone with good relative pitch is at a
disadvantage listening to their stuff.  It's a good possibility that they
think our music is rather plain because they allow all sorts of weird
embellishments that would be just plain wrong in our music.

>From what I have heard, their music lends itself to solo or very small
ensemble with a lot of percussion where harmony isn't used which allows
playing in the cracks without a lot of clashing.  Some people just cannot
tolerate dissonance very well and dislike modern or freeform jazz that uses
strange chords and patterns whereas others think it's cool.

By the way I did some interesting studies on perfect pitch while I taught at
Missouri School for the Blind.  I found that individuals with perfect pitch
sometimes played certain notes out of tune.  I discovered that it was
because the pianos that they practiced on as a very young child was out of
tune.  After I found that out I insisted that the pianos in the dorms and
classrooms were tuned regularly.  I don't know it for a fact but I suspect
that the age (early) of the individual is a critical component of a person
having perfect pitch.  I have talked to some people that say they can see
different pitches as colors.  I wish that I had more subjects over the years
and more time to test out theories on the subject.  There wasn't much of
anything written at the time that was correct in my opinion.

A trombone player from an AF  band did some solos at a concert last year and
he was uniformly flat throughout.  The accomplishments of this player were
phenomenal and I thought how could he play so well and be off in pitch.  It
finally dawned on me that he was saying "I am right and everyone else is
wrong, tune to me!"  The result was something like fingernails on a
blackboard  every time he took a solo.

Larry Walton
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charles Suhor" <csuhor at zebra.net>
To: <OArkas at aol.com>
Cc: <mophandl at landing.com>; <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Mozart Effect - Redux


On Jun 5, 2005, at 3:06 PM, OArkas at aol.com wrote:

> An interesting question on "perfect pitch" might be: "What about
> people raised with the folkloric "natural scale" or with scales that
> are now considered "high pitch" or anywhere that A does not equal 440?
>  Would a person with perfect pitch in our America (western world)
> society today have had perfect pitch in a different world/time?
> Probably I would guess.
>  Best regards,
>  John
>

Your inference sounds right to me, John. And nothing more mysterious
than an outstandingly keen musical memory, heritable or not, would seem
to be operating.--Charlie Suhor

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