To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Date sent: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 22:15:29 -0000
Subject: Re: Perfect Pitch was: Arias Transposed
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Nancy wrote;
> No, you don't need a second person to play notes for you. Just stand or sit
> at the piano with your eyes closed and play any note. Try to guess what you
> played and then look to see if you're right. I realize you wouldn't
> necessarily be conforming to the exercises in the book, but there isn't any
> reason you couldn't do them in this manner. That's the way I've been trying
> to learn pitches. Of course, having a well-tuned piano helps. :-)

Thanks Nancy. That is the approach I started taking last night with
my computer. I do not have a piano keyboard in my house, but I do
have a midi piano keyboard on my computer, and I can let my
computer mouse wander along with my eyes closed. There is the
advantage that the tuning is always correct and the disadvantage
that I might reformat my hard disk drive while searching for the
keyboard :)

The difficult thing I really have to get my head around with all this
pitch learning business is that I now spend a lot of time playing
tenor saxophone. I understand the tenor sax to be a Bb instrument,
so there is a one tone difference between the notes played on the
tenor saxophone and a piano. So, when I sing unaccompanied as I
am used to doing a lot around the house and then I pick up the
saxophone to play the melody, I have to be aware that if I think I am
singing a C#, then I was really singing a B. I am doing lots of cycle
of fifths etc training on the tenor sax, and it is good practice to sing
the scales I am playing on the sax, but am I in danger of becoming
a Bb instrument myself? ie, all the musical notation I am reading is
written for Bb and I am singing along with my Bb instrument, so
when I see a C I think in terms of a tenor sax C, not a concert pitch
C.

Arrrghhh, I absolutely love learning more about music, but it does
my head in sometimes.

John ( the jazz singer who always would "be flat"???? )

John Cheshire
AKA A Baritone....... Who, little me?