Monday, March 04, 2002 6:57:32 PM
Perfect Pitch Relative to What?

I make no secret about it. I have a passion for the guitar. As I write I am listening to John Williams and the English Chamber Orchestra play Vivaldi. Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra in D Major. It is the D Major that will ultimately concern me in this six hundred to a thousand words.

I make it a little more of a secret how long I have been playing the guitar. It is a sordid, as are many tales of my achievements in the world, story. When I was in my early teens my parents thought that I should take music lessons. I always suspected that because we couldn't afford a piano that the guitar became the primary instrument for me. That and the fact that my Uncle Augie and Uncle Rab would do a mean Five Foot Two or Dark Town Strutters Ball on either the six-string guitar or the four-string ukulele at family get-togethers. Music, even then, held charm for me. One, Two, Three, I thought, Look at Mr. Lee. An instructor was employed and he would visit the house weekly, making clucking sounds and little marks on Mel Bey's Method for Guitar. I played them all with equal enthusiasm, Mary and her Little Lamb; I toiled with the Volga Boat Man, more marks in the lesson book and learned at least the first position play on all six strings. My talent was less obvious and it was a lot to ask to sit in my bedroom while everyone was playing whiffle ball outside. I was, after all is said and done, a failure. My teacher eventually suggested that I try another instrument and we actually rented an accordion. Lady of Spain was never my favorite piece of music and I still cringe when I hear Dick Contino at the Italian festival.

Let us now move forward to the years immediately following high school. In the days of my abortive attempt at a college education. I discovered Miles and Ornette and Charlie Parker, but I was intrigued by Wes Montgomery. Further my new college found friend Steve played a wonderful deep hued F-hole Sunburst Gibson pretty well in the jazz idiom. And then I heard Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and progressed beyond Brownie Maghee and Sonny Terry to a whole host of Texas and Mississippi and Loosiana Blues. When my school career ended abruptly, I picked up a Grey Painted F-Hole Silvertone Guitar from Sears donned a blue work shirt, jeans and played until my fingers bled on those thick steel strings. I was on my way to glory!

Somewhere along the line I heard Carlos Montoya. I did not understand the difference between Classic Guitar (It is the word that Aaron Scherer prefers to Classical) and Flamenco. Impressed by the fireworks, I promptly traded my jazz guitar for my first nylon string round holed guitar and I began to study. Vicariously, through his method, with Aaron Scherer. Four maybe six hours a day.


Fernando Sor, Mauro Guiliani, Matteo Carcassi. I discovered the difference between Segovia and Montoya and first heard via phonograph the man that Segovia called the Crown Prince of the Guitar, John Williams, he was and remains a marvel to me. I saw him perform in San Francisco and never really recovered from the experience.

Petty Music, Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh, Spring of 1965 I bought a Guild Classical Guitar. Paid $300 bucks for it. It is at this moment in the repair shop because the bridge has lifted. That guitar traveled the world with me. I don't play it much any more, but imagine it is worth a lot of money because of inflation and age.

Here it is, what, thirty-five years later? I am a quirky guitarist at best. I still study from Volume Two of Aaron Scherer's method. I have some knowledge of the higher guitar positions and can fingerpick a Travis pattern (play Railroad Bill with the best of them). Mediocre, yet satisfied and certainly more pleased than I would have been playing the 'cordeen.

Lately it has been bothering me, as I also try to pick up some keyboard technique, that my musical knowledge or more properly my ear is so untrained. Enter David Lucas Burge.

If you read the mags, namely Guitar Player or Keyboard (and there is no good reason that you should) somewhere, usually near the end, there is a two page advertisement that is essentially a story about David Lucas Burge and how he discovered that everyone can have Perfect Pitch. You don't have to be born with it. The short of it, I bought his message and his course and although I can't yet say that it works, it has sufficient merit that I will continue through the lessons.

Of course, along with the course, came another advertisement for Relative Pitch, which works in concert with Perfect Pitch. Not the same thing at all. Perfect Pitch is of the heart and Relative Pitch is of the mind. Today, with the morning mail, came the Relative Pitch course. It is an attempt on my part to actually become a musician. At present I am merely a technician and not very inventive at that.

So, me re do. Solveggio and begorrah. I look forward to the day when I can say, after hearing the beginning chord of some rhapsody, IGod that there bit of harmony was was an Augmented 7th, Flatted 11th, Flatted 13th and Eb was in the root position. The smallest things please me!