Fixed 'Do' and perfect pitch

[oxy60]

Given that I've never studied this can you (or someone else) clarify why this is?

My gut feeling is because B-C or F#-G (for example) may refer to an equal temperament tuning, where as in a movable do singing situation you have the option to adjust the exact pitch of the note based on the key you are in? So B, may be a perfect B or it may be a bit sharp or a bit flat (comparatively to equal temp) depending on which scale degree it is acting as?

..which is a skill that all string players employ, since there instruments are not stuck with a rigid tuning. Hence why you mention them?

Well, sort of... There is much more to this than mentioned above. We can all bend the pitch, not just the string players. Do you want to have clean fifths? I think it depends on the music.

[keypeg]

Given that I've never studied this can you (or someone else) clarify why this is?

My gut feeling is because B-C or F#-G (for example) may refer to an equal temperament tuning, where as in a movable do singing situation you have the option to adjust the exact pitch of the note based on the key you are in? So B, may be a perfect B or it may be a bit sharp or a bit flat (comparatively to equal temp) depending on which scale degree it is acting as?

I don't have any "why's" since I learned this subconsciously when I was about 8 years old.  I do know, however, that when you are singing a capella or totally alone, and especially if there are no harmonies (other voices), you will feel the tonal center all the more.  I was in a discussion group once where a violinist popped in who had tried to adopt a tuning for violin that was related to the equal temperament of piano.  He also played his individual notes that way - in other words, no tight semitones for Ti Do or Mi Fa.  I lost a great deal of my feeling of "place" - the tonality and the degrees, like a boat losing the lighthouse.  So it played a role.

The way I discovered it was that I was checking my pitch and found I was always singing those notes "wrong" vis-a-vis the piano.  Then this tuning was explained to me.

I developed musically in total isolation - that one year with that solfege as a young child is all that I had, and this became my base.  I don't know if anyone else has what I had, because people don't usually have that extreme background.  When I heard music and duplicated it, then after a few notes a given pitch "wanted to call itself" Fa.  If it modulated from C major to G major, the bridge to it would be "tralalala (nameless)" in my mind, and then at some point, G "wanted to call itself" Do.  So I shifted rather seamlessly into a new key.  But it was so seamless that I didn't know it had modulated, and the G of C major had no relationship of G of G major except maybe as a kind of "anchor point".  I did not perceive pitch in the way people usually do.  I might have perceived it a bit in the manner that they did in the 1400s.

Recently I read a theoretician of the early 20th century saying that mov-Do solfege causes musicians (singers?) to advance rapidly at first, and then it becomes a disadvantage that slows them down.  I would agree with that.  For one thing, it works fine as long as the music is quite diatonic, operating in the context of major and minor scales which last for a while.  When the music doesn't have that, then you have no anchor whatsoever.  You have to hold on to a pitch as a pitch.  Maybe that's why the early music often had a drone.  (But that drone was still in music that had a solfege-type base).

Another area where it had a negative effect for me was in chord colour.  You recognize major, minor, and "dominant 7" chords.  You might not distinguish G7-C, C7-F,  B7-E etc. because they are "all the same" functionally.  But you are also not sensitized as much to chord colours such as the diminished and augmented chords, or the shimmer of changing chords that create mood and such.  Chord progressions tended to be heard along bass lines and melody lines.  It's great for hearing counterpoint in Bach and following several voices at the same time, but not so great for hearing the underlying harmonies.

That's my personal experience with the kind of solfege experience that I had, and shouldn't be taken as a general thing.

[ajspiano]

Its interesting..

I suspect I have an idea of and/or use this stuff in various musical applications but it must be totally subconcious. Its one of the areas that I really need to work on so far as the "how to teach" side of it.. so far as both relative and absolute skill sets.

My ear skill were developed primarily by transcribing guitar music, and later piano, and drums (obviously more a listening to rhythm skill that pitch with the latter)..  then by improvisation on them (plus other instruments). I also think my sense of absolute pitch, which I consciously started developing as a teenager, I guess in isolation from any actual music was clouded by having studied clarinet - meaning ofcourse that I had some mental confusion with my associations of letter to pitch, having named everything a tone off concert pitch.

My learning process actually meant that my ear skills were initially developed totally irrelevant of any words or theory, it was just sound and on my own terms..  so I was able to use a relative pitch approach to play by ear without having a clue what notes I was playing, or what key I was in. Which is still to this day largely how my brain functions when playing guitar (or other string instruments).. Though I think these days there is a sense absolute pitch as well, since I feel a fairly striking difference from say Am7/// D7///, compared to Bm7/// E7..   only on a guitar its just associated to a fret (and other potential sounds on other frets), where as on a piano there is a strong connection to the theory behind the relevant key, actual note names and what it would look like on a score..  on a piano these things a instant.. on a guitar i have to stop and think if I want to know that stuff.

[m1469]

Sometimes I'm almost getting an epiphany .  Here is something that is getting a bit more clear to me:  When I was a child, I was still a perfectionist, I wanted to be *exact*, and playing by ear meant that I either heard what was happening and reconstructed it precisely, or didn't play (that piece) at all.  I didn't have the luxury of reading.  I am starting to get a glimpse of my listening mechanisms, how I would organize it, but it's just a glimpse.  What I think is that every key/note had a certain sound to me.  I mean, specifically, every key on the piano.  It wasn't just an aural skill, I specifically remember about the keys having their character.  It was very key-relatecd but, that was related to more than one note at once and how I organized that, too.  It's all I've got for now.

[ted]

It is little wonder I am not a musician and failed the only examination I sat. I have read this thread since it started and have absolutely no idea what people are talking about. It is almost as much of a mystery as harmony and theory. In fact, probably the less I think about it the better, all things considered.

[oxy60]

It is little wonder I am not a musician and failed the only examination I sat. I have read this thread since it started and have absolutely no idea what people are talking about. It is almost as much of a mystery as harmony and theory. In fact, probably the less I think about it the better, all things considered.

Don't worry, this is not something that everyone needs to know.

When singing ancient music we like to end on a clean fifth. It rings nicely in the chapel. We have no intention of extending that tuning to create an 88 note instrument.

Keep in mind that an orchestra can also create a non tempered tuning in any key but a piano must be ready to play any key anywhere on the keyboard.

[timothy42b]

 What I think is that every key/note had a certain sound to me.  I mean, specifically, every key on the piano.  It wasn't just an aural skill, I specifically remember about the keys having their character.  

I've heard that perfect pitch is like that for some people, and it makes sense.  I don't have that fine a distinction.  I hear the timbre difference between the growl of the bass notes, the mellow middle range, and the tinkly high notes, but can't separate as distinctly as you.   I'm also mildly colorblind.  I can see the difference between a bright red, green, blue but not discriminate fine shades within colors;  it's why my family picks my ties. 

But, is it specific to piano for you?  We've talked before about the difficulty matching pitch if the timbre differs greatly.   People who can easily sing a note played on the piano often can't if it's organ, oboe, etc.
If you can recognize middle C on the piano, would you also know it if I played it on trombone or trumpet?   

[m1469]

Well, for me though I didn't have the common words for the keys on the piano, or if I did it was literally the furthest thing from my mind while I played.

If I had perfect pitch as a child, I wasn't aware of it in the way that I would have thought there could even be anything different than that.  I wasn't aware of it as being anything special or as having a name, etc..  So I definitely would not have heard a note in the air, played by any instrument or sung, and said or thought "that's an A" ... no, I would have thought of a key on the piano, and perhaps would have resonated on a few levels with its actual frequency; I would have had one or more types of kinesthetic/physical reactions.

Formal words have been helpful for me, but also sometimes quite disruptive.  My first major disruption was when I took one of my first formal piano lessons, at the age of 12, and I was asked to name the pitches by letter as I played them.  I can see the benefit now, but it was as though the loudest noise possible/imaginable suddenly separated me from what was formerly "innate" - it was almost literally like somebody banging a gong in my ears and it's as though I couldn't hear anymore what I was actually supposed to be listening to.  That is not to say I don't want formal training because I do, it's just a constant challenge for me to distinguish solid grounds between what was my "native language" with music and what was not.

[m1469]

For me, my organization of sounds was visually very black and white as it relates to the keys (not having any relation to whether I saw colors in my mind), and mathematical (without knowing that), and based on knowing simple tunes in various places on the piano.  I didn't know about 2nds and 3rds, but I knew that there were various places I could play "Mary Had A Little Lamb" - you see?  I started seeing keys as collections of sound that made music, or as shapes between two or more pitches.  And, that is what my concept of the piano largely was.  I am *just* brinking on understanding more about that, but it takes me years of growing formally in particular concepts, and amassing ideas as I progress, sometimes having bigger clicks sometimes smaller clicks, following inklings, pondering, and then for me to finally arrive at a point where I can see all of those things coming together to include my childhood.  I have an idea that my being able to transpose something like Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano, is something similar in concept to a child in Russia needing transpose little Czerny or Hannon exercises.

I have been working a lot with ideas on short term memory as well as long term, and this is related to how I thought as a child, too.  I started developing a sort of bank in my mind and ear of sound/shape samples.  But, instead of it being formal like I, IV, V, and some melody consisting in my mind as formal, numeric intervals, I thought things like "Oh, this group of notes sounds like this part of a such and such a song" and, I remember working with pitch memory A LOT, in the short term.  When I played by ear I *had* to work with pitch memory as much as possible - but what exactly I would do and how I thought back then is still a bit too complex for me to take out and look at objectively with words and formal explanations.

[oxy60]

I think that if you are in rehearsal every day, practicing your parts, and singing you will have pitch retention. A certain song won't sound right if it is played in a different key. I never had this ability or did it bother me.

I constantly transposed songs to take advantage of my singers best sounds. Until one day a new mezzo complained because I didn't tell her the new key in advance. She claimed she had to literally transpose every note or she couldn't sing it!

In popular music it seems that one must sing the song in the original key. In other words if you don't have David Bowie's high notes you can't sing his songs. Why can't we transpose them into the range of another singer?

[timothy42b]

In popular music it seems that one must sing the song in the original key. In other words if you don't have David Bowie's high notes you can't sing his songs. Why can't we transpose them into the range of another singer?

It's fine with me if you do.

But pitch affects timbre on voice or any other instrument.  So the pieces will sound different, and may lose some of their effect. 

Think of listening to Tommy Dorsey's "Marie" played in the tuba range, for an extreme example.  Any trombonist can do it.  It might even sound good.  But it wouldn't be "Marie." 

[m1469]

This morning I heard a weed whacker across the street and involuntarily knew it was a Bb, because I instantly recognized the frequency.

[timothy42b]

I don't know where you live, but in the US the electric power line frequency is 60 Hz, and a very large number of appliances give off that 60 Hz hum.  Toasters, ovens, clocks, stereos, transformers, if you listen closely you can hear it from almost anything plugged in. 

It's half way between Bb (58 Hz) and B (62).

Do you hear it as a pitch?   

[oxy60]

I don't know where you live, but in the US the electric power line frequency is 60 Hz, and a very large number of appliances give off that 60 Hz hum.  Toasters, ovens, clocks, stereos, transformers, if you listen closely you can hear it from almost anything plugged in. 

It's half way between Bb (58 Hz) and B (62).

Do you hear it as a pitch?   

Actually more as stage rumble. A lot of bass players have a fifth string which sounds that B. If their amp is up it's hard to tell if they are playing or it's just a power hum. I've convinced a bass player to forget that low B string and add a C string above the G making E the lowest, then A, then G and then C on top. With four strings I would drop the E.

He is starting to enjoy being heard...