Ear Training...Getting a trained ear.

[jancivil]

There goes your idea about whatever musically superior race.

You've made some great posts here, man. This is just you having at a straw man.

I mentioned my father's grandfather because that music is more home to me than western music was. I have a vague and I suppose naive idea of genetic memory. But, it is true that owing to the conception of pitch, a trained classical musician there will have VASTLY superior sense of pitch than someone restricted to 12 equal tones. More than 12 is more than 12, end of story. Similarly a violinist is going to have more going on than someone that is restricted to piano.

[jancivil]

I had a Bb trumpet for a few months in the fifth grade. had to have braces and moved to drums. saw Hendrix May 9 1969, started lobbying for a guitar.

In my school if you played the violin you started in 4th grade and 5th grade for all other instruments. I chose violin but my mother would not allow it because I could never (in her eyes) be coordinated enough to play a violin. I then chose trumpet which I stuck with through 7th grade but was not very good and by that time had fallen in love with the guitar.

I had a memory last night about the trumpet vs. the cornet. My mother had an opinion, 'the cornet has a sweeter tone'. That's odd because she was not a musician at any time in her life. My father seemed nonplussed by the remark. We listened to records. Beyond that it's fuzzy. I DO remember when other kids had a cornet I was glad I had a trumpet because I liked the sound better. That seems an oddly fine distinction for me at that age, so I have to have been influenced by my father's records. I don't know which one would have had a cornet, but he was interested in details like that.

Now I do not think musically I was Berklee material, intectually wise yes* but certainly not talent wise. But that's not what my point is, I'm not saying I should have gone to Berklee. What gets me is after 40 years this is the first time my mother has said anything positive about my music.

I asked my wife about it on the way home and she said my mother told her that my grade school said I had a strong apptitude for music. I'm still not sure how to do deal with this comment last Sunday.

*in basic training I was taken aside for three days with about 30 other guys, given three days worth of tests and in the end there were three of us left...we were all offered 1 year OCS and then we would go to West Point...I turned it down.

My parents had a general idea that being a musician is a shit life, and they'd be more or less justified I guess. My mother tried to nudge me into classical music early, to get me out of jr high where I was having a bad time, into NC School of the Arts. Later she was real upset when I sold my classical guitar and abandoned it. She was from dirt poor and had somewhat an instinct towards social climbing, while my father grew up having a father that was able to capitalize and didn't give a shit for that. I wish I'd gone to Berklee. My mother hated the idea of me going to the north at all. I chose CCM, Cincinnatti as someone I knew had gotten in there and there was a guitar program. I didn't connect with anyone to help a career there, a fish out of water. I'd woodshedded for maybe three years to get classical skills where people that are worthy start as little children.

I do not consider myself as especially talented, or not prodigious, given my history. I was not slow at picking up drums and rhythm, though, my father was so inclined as well so the example of his grandfather entered the picture. A brown man behind some very white people, the Civils. His picture was there among other ancestors but obscured, albeit you can't trace the lineage before him hardly. "Civil is an Irish name." I'm not too sure about that one.

[Sascha Franck]

I mentioned my father's grandfather because that music is more home to me than western music was.

All fine with me...

I have a vague and I suppose naive idea of genetic memory. But, it is true that owing to the conception of pitch, a trained classical musician there will have VASTLY superior sense of pitch than someone restricted to 12 equal tones. More than 12 is more than 12, end of story. Similarly a violinist is going to have more going on than someone that is restricted to piano.

All fine with me, too.

Thing is, almost all throughout this very thread, folks chimed in with ideas about what perfect pitch could/should be like. Not only that this is of rather little relevance for someone trying to improve their (usually relative) hearing skills, it's really offending to anyone with whatever little clue about ear training.
I will perfectly agree that there's different "standards" of how we may perceive music. Hence "perfect pitch" may as well be related to that. And I will even agree that there's a possibility of folks perceiving music differently, as in how it suits their "genetic background" or whatever. But it's defenitely not as easy as shankfiddle seems to make it up. "Indian bloodlines" my ass, really! Musical hearing as we discuss it in this very thread simply isn't old enough to be of "genetic relevance". You may however disagree...

Cheers
Sascha

[Tony Ostinato]

it goes back to when cavemen would sing to the moon god at night for blessings and the out of tune ones would be stoned.

its part of evolution

now we sing on youtube for fame and the stoned ones are out of tune.

thats devolution.


aside from dumb jokes id say dont let perfect pitch talk worry you, ignore and try anyways.

you'll suck at first and probably for a long time till you drive yourself nuts with it and that angst and frustration will start the brain burning process and stuff will start being coded in machine language inside your brain and gradually youll get really really good at it.

[jancivil]

I don't know how long musical hearing is in my genes. I know my father could bang on the dashboard of his car like a drummer, he had the sensibility and claimed he got it from his grandfather, as he suggested I may have got my somewhat different pigmentation than his seriously pale self. It's not possible to trace the lineage without paying for it on spec, and it isn't that relevant to me as I'm not that interested in genetics or biology.

"Superior race" is not a big issue for me in the USA. We're mongrels a lot of us. An Indian musician tends to be from a long lineage however, and will view this differently. I, with only the most broken kind of line, have nothing much to consider. You may want to dismiss that kind of historial view, I definitely would not do, I think it isn't wise.

[tapper mike]

+1 Sascha.

Niether of my parents or any near relatives played instruments in my home. When I took up the guitar I had to play it in the garage. Where it wouldn't disturb anyone.

I don't buy into genetics. I do buy into environment. When Natalie Cole came into her own everyone said it was her genes being the daughter of Nat King Cole. They were wrong, She was adopted.

I remember going over to a buddy of mines place back in high school. He eventually became my bass player. Anything with strings he could play,,,and well. Anyway, His mom played the piano and guitar, His dad played bass, guitar, mandolin. Practically everyone in his extended family played an instrument. It was like the big family jam house and practically none of them read standard notation.

So my take away is,,,,,
Developing relative pitch is easier at a younger age then later in life. However, Having a keen sense of relative pitch does not make one a greater musician or more musical.

[jancivil]

I don't find nature vs nurture as like either/or dichotomy too compelling a conception, myself.

[Hink]

I can't speak of genes because I have absolutely no knowledge of my genetic history. Quite literally the only thing I have been told I'm part Scottish and part English (but then my ssiter was told she was french and english, she tracked down her real family and was greek), I question it though. So as far as if music was genetically passed on I cannot say.

As for nuture, I was always pushed away from music after giving up on trumpet. My mother was very much that way, if I didn't like trumpet I wont like guitar for very long. My grandfather (maternal) had a big band but I never heard him play anything, my mother half sang and half hummed music all the...ALL THE TIME and my father couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle and straps (I have a funny tape from my sister's answering machine of him singing happy birthday).

Jan, very similar to you indeed except I had a good reason for not liking the coronet...I thought it looked stupid and the trumpet was cool looking

I did have to work for everything, or so I think. I believe developmentally I am behind where someone has been playing as long as me merely because I lacked the belief in myself. Learning to tune was brutal on me and by the time little tuners became affordable I had reached the point where I could tune okay but was very determined the get an ear I could trust. (in fact I use to tune to songs I liked and sometimes did the opposite and tuned my turntable to my guitar) On other things I have found in my later years there were things I did my way growing up that everyone told me was wrong but I now I have found with many I wasn't wrong.

I understand now though, whatever reason music chose me will never be known, but I do know that my earliest memories have me being drawn to music. I also know that I tend to over think my playing but the best times come from 'accidental' playing and just being my natural self. Whether or not others care for my music really doesn't apply to this as it almost is exclusive to only my hearing it. Something about that red button that changes me to thinking it out too much, but there is a strong natural side to my playing and enjoyment of music

[shankfiddle]

I will perfectly agree that there's different "standards" of how we may perceive music. Hence "perfect pitch" may as well be related to that. And I will even agree that there's a possibility of folks perceiving music differently, as in how it suits their "genetic background" or whatever. But it's defenitely not as easy as shankfiddle seems to make it up. "Indian bloodlines" my ass, really! Musical hearing as we discuss it in this very thread simply isn't old enough to be of "genetic relevance". You may however disagree...

it goes back to when cavemen would sing to the moon god at night for blessings and the out of tune ones would be stoned.

its part of evolution

A vulture-bone flute discovered a few years ago.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ument.html

Found with fragments of mammoth-ivory flutes, the 40,000-year-old artifact also adds to evidence that music may have given the first European modern humans a strategic advantage over Neanderthals, researchers say...

Music as a Weapon?

Music may have been one of the cultural accomplishments that gave the first European modern-human (Homo sapiens) settlers an advantage over their now extinct Neanderthal-human (Homo neanderthalis) cousins, according to the team.

This flute was actually found in Germany, Sacsha. That's actually really cool that musical perception first evolved in your region. And if you look at your history, it's those Aryans who later migrated to and settled India.

Now, I know you're German, but not everything's about "superior races". Different cultures have different advantages... it's different, not better. I never said that.

[shankfiddle]

more on the bone flute:
http://www.greenwych.ca/fl-compl.htm

Our conclusion then is this: The notes on the Neanderthal flute, if possible for it to reach the total air-column length of about 42cm (in match #two), are consistent with 4 notes of the minor diatonic scale (flatted 3rd and flatted 6th included). All the notes, even in the lesser match #1, are still within the general pitch range able to be considered as notes within the diatonic scale.

also this from China:
http://www.archaeology.org/9911/newsbriefs/flute.html

The best preserved of the flutes, which are up to eight inches long and have between five and eight holes, has been played and analyzed; its tonal scale is remarkably similar to the Western eight-note, do-re-mi scale. "Here you have hard and fast evidence that the Chinese were not just making [one-note] whistles 8,000 years ago, but were capable of making instruments that produced a series of sounds," says Jenny So, curator of ancient Chinese art at the Freer-Sackler Galleries in Washington, which will present an exhibition "Music in the Age of Confucius," between April 28 and September 17, 2000.

edit:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Em-VJo ... ng&f=false
full text of the Bob Fink Musicological analysis (the former link)

[Meffy]

[...]

That's more than enough of that kind of stuff. Stick to music theory and leave the ethnic stereotyping for some other forum, not KVR. "I was only being wry" wouldn't be an acceptable excuse.

[Sascha Franck]

Hey Meffy, it's all fine, I think. People have been disagreeing quite some more @ KVR before. We'll get along, seriously. Even if some statements make me wonder... but then, that's life.

Cheers
Sascha

[Meffy]

Long as it goes no further than that. There's plenty to discuss that's on topic for the thread.

[Tony Ostinato]

to feel superior to any is to be inferior to all.

[Nanakai]

I don't find nature vs nurture as like either/or dichotomy too compelling a conception, myself.

Very astute. It hasn't been taken seriously in psychology for quite some time.