| 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?
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