Dear Randy:
An interesting reply. I believe I, too, have encountered information
that "shows different brain activity between those who match pitch
and those who don't."
Tied to this, perhaps, is my own experience as an elementary school
music teacher. I found it was possible to get all of the children in
my primary classes to match pitch and do it very well. Some caught
on right away, others needed more individual help until they were
able to do it. Once they could do it, the ability remained with them.
However, as the students got older the non-singers were more
difficult to correct. By 6th Grade I found it almost impossible to
teach a non-singer to match pitch.
Of course the process required that the student could sing back,
correctly, the pitch that was played or sung and could then learn a
series of pitches that would make up a melody. The later ability is
often referred to as melodic memory. Some students with good pitch
matching abilities were not as capable at melodic memory. I never
had a student with goo melodic memory who was not good at pitch
matching.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
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