I have the gift of having not quite perfect-pitch. I have an uncanny ability to hear when a note is almost but not quite right.
Take this. I love this. But something is going wrong with the flute, and maybe somewhere else. Can you hear it?
To make this an extra special gift, I am also not very good at singing, so I get to enjoy in technicolour how off-key I am.
Luckily unlike people with actual perfect-pitch I can happily listen to deliberately off key music, atonal music and those middle eastern half notes.
I wish I had some cool gifts. Like the ability to cook or something.
Edit: Apparently I'm not talking about not quite perfect-pitch, I've got my terms confused. It's actually relative pitch which I don't quite get to have.
Monkey Game of Skill
Nicola Bayley illustration from La Corona and the Tin Frog, by Russell Hoban
About Me
- Glory von Hathor
- Mad cat lady musings and further bilge of a narcissistic nature. I am possessed by two basement cats, and I live in the arse end of London. I am a latent novellist. Like most people. Another phrase for this is a failed novellist, with a failed novel thankfully failing to get out. Having failed in adopting a range of single issue politics, I have embraced social constructionism instead. I still enjoy other people being wrong though.
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4 comments:
blinkin' Nora - I have this 'gift' too. I also have no facial recognition software installed in my brain, I simply have no idea who anybody is.
I think it's the high end of the piano in that first one. It's making the flute sound off.
Not that I really know. It is slightly off though. My dad has some crazy theory that pitch changes with each generation, so that things that sound in tune to a twenty year old sound flat to a fifty year old. He has the gift of being able to alienate anyone by talking incoherently about music.
Lulu: Prosopagnosia can be so useful though - think of all those people you never liked whom you've never had to make small talk with in the street.
CD: Your father and I also share a gift! I think that the piano is also ever so slightly flat, and the flute is a wee bit sharp. It's a team effort. There's also a string instrument pissing me off somewhere.
In middle eastern music the key is controlled by the Maqam, which is more like a mood. I may choose to bore you with that tomorrow...
LOL!
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