New strings and tuning

[JohnDavisStringsHere]

As it is my Bulkington gig tonight I was just putting my new strings on and thought I wonder how many players have "perfect pitch" ? I am not talking about the sound of a Banjo hitting the bottom of a skip without touching the sides, I am talking about when you put your new strings on and tune by ear to what you think is "in tune" then you slap the meter on to see how far out you are....... I have never yet got it right I am always a semitone out but, at least it seems to be the same every time........ how about you??

[Danny Mitchell]

I can tell when something's in tune(I think), and boy does my playing of the pedal steel test that ability to the limit.

I've only ever come across 1 person who possessed 'perfect pitch'. A young English girl called Coral, who was studying music in Glasgow. She could tell you any note she heard, quite unbelievable. As her friend was recording the initial lead vocal to a song, this girl scored out three part harmonies on the fly, never having heard the song before
I asked her to explain how she could differentiate and define notes and she said they appeared to her as different tones of grey, that she could recognise. Needless to say I was none the wiser. Let's hear it for Peterson tuners

Hope the gig went well.

[JohnDavisStringsHere]

I didn't explain myself very well there, not talking about guitar being "In tune " with itself more like when you put on new strings, think your about concert pitch then try to play along with a recording or track..... I am always about a semi tone down at my best guess but at least its consistant maybe if I got my ears raised by 1/4" it would fix it?

[Nick Bidmade]

Without hi-jacking John's thread completely, my own experience of perfect pitch (in someone else, BTW) was when I was at Teacher Training College in the 1970's. A music major colleague who had had a 'classical' violin education decided she wanted to get into something 'different'. I played her Commander Cody's 'Honeysuckle Honey' - she then played the fiddle intro straight off, after hearing it once - note perfect! When I asked her how she did it, she said she didn't know but it was like 'silent reading' - you don't need to 'hear' the words you read - you just 'hear' it in your head. She 'heard' it, and could play it!

[Paul Brennan]

When I put new strings on my 6-string guitar or steel I can usually tune them straight up to concert pitch. For me it's a matter of timbre. There's a certain "twang" I can hear, particularly from the A string, that tells me when it's at the correct pitch(220 Hz). I can also "listen in my head" to a song I know very well and then find those notes on my guitar. I don't think this is any special gift. I believe anyone with an interest in music can do this or develop it. It's not quite the perfect pitch as described above. However, it does bother me, to the point of physical pain, when I hear anything out of tune.

In any case relative pitch is a much more important faculty/skill to develop. Given a note, any note, can you hear the 3rd, 5th, etc. Can you tell if a chord is major, minor, dom7, diminished, half-diminished? Can you chart out a song with only pencil and paper? There's a much greater payback in developing these skills. You don't have to be at your instrument to be practicing. For instance when driving and listening to the radio it's good fun and a great exercise to mentally chart out the songs you hear.