November 2011

In music, pitch is the location of a note related to its highness or lowness and assigned a name like A, B, C, D, E, F and G on the piano keyboard. Many of us have heard of “perfect pitch” or have known someone who claims to possess this inherited ability or skill.

“Having perfect pitch is a great benefit to me in my career,” said Nancy Groeneveld, director of music at Community Presbyterian Church in Danville. She is a professional singer, pianist, teacher, and choir director. “My father was a musician and encouraged me to study music at a very early age – that’s when I discovered I had perfect pitch.”

There are several ways to describe perfect pitch: The pitch of a tone is determined by the number of vibrations per second. For example, the note A on the keyboard equals 440 vibrations per second. Perfect pitch is the ability to name or reproduce a tone without hearing it from a source like a piano. It is the ability to sing or name a particular note on the exact pitch.

Most musicians will tell you they would love to have perfect pitch. However, there are times when it is not so wonderful. “Sometimes having perfect pitch has its drawbacks,” said Groeneveld. Recently she was having lunch with a friend in a restaurant and found it hard to concentrate on the conversation due to the background music. She found herself mentally analyzing it by the key, instrumentation, form etc. “This happens all the time when there is music present,” Groeneveld said. “It can be a real distraction.”

Researchers have found that speakers of a tonal language such as Chinese dialects or Vietnamese have a higher percentage of people with absolute or perfect pitch than people who speak a non-tonal language. These and other East Asian languages are characterized by pitch variations in single words. Sometimes as many as seven or eight slight pitch differences occur in their speaking, according to Wikipedia.

Until fairly recently it was generally believed that perfect pitch was “God-given” and not a learned phenomenon. David-Lucas Burge, in 1981, supposedly dispelled this belief and created a program in which he guaranteed almost anyone could learn to develop perfect pitch.

Chords
Those with perfect pitch can name the individual pitch or the chord by a specific name such as a C major chord or a G minor chord. When a chord is heard those with relative pitch can tell you if it is a major or minor chord but they cannot tell you whether it is a C major or a C minor chord. Only people with perfect pitch can tell you the exact name of the chord.

Relative Pitch
Any discussion of absolute or perfect pitch would be incomplete and remiss without mentioning its counterpart, relative pitch. Relative pitch is the ability to recognize and or produce any pitch after having been given one note as a point of reference. People with perfect pitch hear the exact notes or tones in their mind. People with relative pitch hear the notes or tones in relation to one another. The vast majority of people have relative pitch including this writer. I once heard the statistic that less than one percent of the population possesses perfect pitch. It is that rare.

Many musicians have quite good relative pitch, a skill that can be learned. With practice, it is possible to listen to a single pitch once and then have reliable pitch identification. This is accomplished by comparing the notes heard to the stored memory of the first pitch.

Some people with relative pitch can develop perfect pitch on a single note. “String players have a decided advantage here, as they are constantly tuning their instruments from memory using the note A,” said Reginald Jacques, in his book, Voice Training In Schools. “It is extremely useful to be able to hear a note or two with a reasonable amount of certainly and then other notes by relation.”

Relative pitch helps you understand how all the tones are arranged to create the actual language of music.

Perfect pitch is a wonderful thing to have if you are a musician but being able to enjoy the wonder of music does not depend on having this ability or skill. The wonder of music is for all to enjoy,

Sources:
Voice Training In Schools By Reginald Jacques
Wikipedia
Essential Dictionary of Music By Lindsey C. Harnsberger

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Visit our website at www.danvilleband.org for up-to-date information about the Danville Community Band.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes, I find myself shaking my head and chuckling at what appear to be mere antics of what surely must be just a few, confused, ignorant individuals. Then, I worry that these may really be well-meaning, otherwise intelligent people who sincerely believe in what they are doing.

As a rule, we don’t include much that is controversial in ALIVE, but what I see happening today troubles me to where I am compelled to share my point of view.

I fear that, as a nation, we are on the verge of major trouble, not so much for my generation, but for our children and the generations to come. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is a foreshadowing of this trouble, as it demonstrates an attitude and way of thinking that is destructive to the very fabric and fiber of our nation.

We face tremendous economic and geo-political challenges today, but underlying these are social and cultural issues that many seem content to ignore, for fear of being cast as “intolerant,” or “politically incorrect.” And the fact that many self-serving, egomaniacal politicians are willing to pander to what they apparently have calculated to be blocks of voters, fanning flames of discontent by pitting groups against one another, is nothing less than shameful. Division, dependency and weakness are being encouraged, rather than resolve, strength and self-reliance. Our citizens are being led to believe that the people are to depend upon and serve the government, when it is the other way around.

The apparent widespread acceptance of the notion that when some people achieve success others have somehow been denied, should be soundly condemned as the fallacy it is. But that is not the case. The fact that Steve Jobs worked to accumulate tremendous wealth over his lifetime, in no way caused others to live in doorways throughout American cities. In fact, it is only by the efforts of wealth creators, like Jobs, that the so called “ninety-nine percent” have any hope at all of changing their material condition. If Warren Buffet, Ted Turner and Bill Gates want to be considered for sainthood, they’ve always had the choice to give their capital to the needy. But the fact is, as anyone who understands how capitalism works knows, they could probably help far greater numbers of people by using their resources to create new business ventures.

When I was about twelve years old, my uncle, Wayne, said something that has stayed with me. He said, “Someday there is going to be a revolution in this country, but it won’t be the kind of revolution we are used to reading about in history books. Someday, the producers of the world will revolt against the non-producers.” Kill the goose that lays the golden egg and all you have is no more eggs.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is an embarrassing display that serves no purpose toward making our citizens or economy stronger. Each one of the self-proclaimed “99%” should consider what life would be like if the one percent decided that camping in the public square was the best use of their time.