<p>mini, I think i’ve heard of “Crapapella” is that Mount Holyoke or Smith you’re talking about?</p>
<p>Crapapella is at Smith.</p>
<p>The debate over which aspects of musicianship are innate and which can be trained has raged among better scholars than me for decades if not centuries. I’m not sure what RBase07 means by “true perfect pitch,” but check out the following link for some related research. It seems to me to suggest that perfect pitch CAN be trained in a large portion of the population if you start early enough.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041114235846.htm[/url]”>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041114235846.htm</a></p>
<p>I think we can all agree that there are certain individuals who just do not get it. No amount of training would ever prepare them to sing with a selective group other than mini’s Crapapella.</p>
<p>I was curious and googled Crapapella and listened to a snippet of their singing. They are indeed crappy!</p>
<p>when I say “true” perfect pitch, I am referring to perfect pitch that is not learned or developed. True perfect pitch is pretty much like child prodigies who can hear any note on a piano at, say, age 8 and know exactly what pitch it is. Stuff like that. Ya know?</p>
<p>“It seems to me to suggest that perfect pitch CAN be trained in a large portion of the population if you start early enough.”</p>
<p>Perfect pitch is EXTREMELY rare. Good to great pitch is mor realistic to expect, and that sort of thing can be taught/learned through mastering music theory, etc. But perfect pitch, you kinda just have to be born with. Learning to have it is very rare.</p>
<p>If you are going to define a variety of perfect pitch as the kind that cannot be learned or developed, then I would have to agree that that variety cannot be learned or developed. I would also agree that perfect pitch is extremely rare among speakers of non-tone-based languages, along the lines of 0.01% of the general population. However, more than half of the native Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers who have taken music lessons from age 5 exhibited perfect pitch in the study that I cited. I think that suggests that, while perfect pitch is indeed quite rare, a great many people are born with the ability to acquire it given proper early training. That ability decays rapidly if it is not exercised.</p>
<p>I wonder if there is a correlation between perfect pitch and an early start on violin? Two of my five kids have perfect pitch (the kind where you are just eating dinner or something, and you say sing me an “a” and they sing it and then you check it and it is right on) I wonder if they developed it by learning violin at an early age. It was obvious with the older child very early. When he was in kindergarten he criticized a substitute teacher for singing one of the songs a half note off, and he was right. It just started becoming obvious with the second child about a year ago (11 years old), so I think there is a possiblity that the little one might also develop it (also started violin at an early age) or it might be there, waiting to make itself known, if you will. The other two who did not play violin definitely do not have it.</p>
<p>I can’t find the citation right now, but I think I have seen statistics that show that children who from an early age study instruments (like violin and slide trombone) that rely on the player rather than some mechanical means like a key or a fret to achieve the proper pitch, have a much higher than normal chance of exhibiting perfect pitch.</p>
<p>Of course, the better known definition of perfect pitch is throwing the accordion (or insert least favorite instrument here) into the toilet bowl without hitting the rim.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the good advice–especially for the details, yulsie. D will be finished with exams at school by early May and will then have time to think about if and how she wants to work on her singing. She’s more interested in having musical fun with a group than in being competitive.</p>
<p>A few musicians I know with “perfect pitch” seem to have been born that way–but also “took to” their instruments quite early.</p>
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<p>An anecdote on the subject from the annals of a cappella auditions:</p>
<p>My college group gets a good number of auditionees who are accomplished musicians, but have never sung before. Our preliminary audition includes a short sight-reading exercise. One auditionee, a violinist, insisted that she had no idea how to do it. We urged her to just give it a shot to show us how she approached it. She stared at it for a few seconds, and then she began unconsciously pressing imaginary violin strings with her left hand as she sang, nailing each pitch right on the money. She didn’t know she was doing it, and she didn’t know she was right, but she was.</p>
<p>She didn’t get into the group, but she did make it to the second round of callbacks (out of three).</p>