ark@rabbit.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (05/07/84)
When I was a fairly small child, my parents decided they wanted me to take piano lessons. So they bundled me into the car and we went to visit a piano teacher. One of the first things he wanted to know was whether or not I had perfect pitch -- whether I could hear a completely isolated note and know what note it was. I had already heard a lot of music by that time, and knew that I could not remember a note over a long period of time, but that I know what all the intervals were and could hear them accurately. I tried to tell him that but he wouldn't listen. Instead, he decided to give me a test. I got to cover my eyes while he played notes. After each note, he would ask me what it was, and I would try to tell him. I got the first note wrong, but every one after that was right, thus convincing him that I had perfect pitch. He was wrong. His misconception resulted from a mistake. When I got the first note wrong, I asked him what it was ANE HE TOLD ME! After that, it was just a matter of hearing the interval between the note he had just played, whose pitch I didn't know, and the note he had played before that, whose pitch I did know (and he had just confirmed by telling me that I had gotten it right). While I could not remember a pitch across the space of an hour (and still can't), I could definitely remember it long enough to compare it with the next one. I learned a lesson from this episode that I doubt the piano teacher ever imagined: if I ever get to give music lessons to children, I will NOT underestimate their intelligence.