Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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How is your sense of pitch?
At the weekend while visiting the spa city of Bath with my partner and having lunch in a good pub, I overheard a young girl of around 9 at the next table telling her family that her friend at school has perfect pitch and can name any musical note. She apparently would hum a note or hear a note played and say that's D or D flat. She has perfect pitch. I thought 'that's cool'. And I remembered my Mum who was a concert pianist and how she had almost perfect pitch...being able to get a note accurate to within a quarter of a tone.
The next day I came across an interesting blog by Jake Mandell that offers the facility to test your musical skills and to what level are you tone deaf . Is the Universe trying to tell me something? Jake Says "The test is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct. Give it a try! " So I did, and guess what....I got 89.9%. And am I an excellent musician? If only! That will be the day. I've had next to no formal training in music apart from my recent two years at learning to play the violin. However, I was brought up in a musical family so I was exposed to music throughout my childhood and I suppose something must have stuck. You might like to try the Tone Deaf test for yourself.
Jake also offers a Quick Rhythm Test and a Pitch Perception test. I haven't tried these yet, but hope to have time later today.
Perfect pitch would come in pretty handy in playing my instrument.....after all, it is supposed to be played in tune. I've been not too hot at hitting every note accurately since I started playing the violin two years ago, but it has been getting better. It's quite possible to damage your 'musical ear' by playing out of tune so now I'm working specifically on improving my sense of pitch.
For starters, I've got a tuning fork for A. By tapping the fork against the back of your hand then putting it to your hear, you hear the note at exactly the correct pitch. So periodically through the day I hum the note I think is A and check it out with the tuning fork and am pleased to see my accuracy is getting better over longer spaces of time. I'll give this a week or more and then see if I can hit and name other notes too. Practice makes perfect, eh? The key thing is to practice accurately, as haphazard practicing ingrains errors. We can easily become perfect at our mistakes!
As I've often said, if you're going to practice anything, you've got to get the best example to copy (by an expert) and also ensure you do it accurately, even if it's swinging a golf club in slow motion.....accuracy is the key until the muscle memory builds up and then you can try increasing speed.
I'll keep you posted.
