A musical ear

“Why are some people musical and others tone-deaf?” asks a Craigie regular. “Most unmusical people can hear perfectly well, but cannot keep in tune.

“Some of them even play musical instruments, although in a mechanical fashion. They know where the notes are and how to play them. They can read from a musical score or play by memory, but don’t ask them to play by ear.

“My mother was born very deaf and she could not sing in tune. She managed after a fashion if she were standing next to somebody with a strong voice singing in her ear. She used to drive my father mad because he was very musical.

“At Harris Academy in the 1940s, one of my classmates sang hopelessly out of tune, but played the piano quite well as long as he had the music to follow. Only occasionally did he hit a duff note, but it did not bother him.

“More recently, I came across a lady piper who admitted she did not have a musical ear, but played from memory. Her only problem was tuning; she always relied on another piper to do that for her. It’s all very weird. Ears which are otherwise perfect cannot follow a tune accurately.

“Another puzzle for me is the discrepancy between choir and orchestra conductors’ baton strokes and the timing of the musicians and singers. They always seem to be out of sync. My violin teacher, Routledge Bell, and most of the choir conductors of my experience, followed the same system – when the baton came down, that was the time to start. The downstroke from then on marked the beginning of each beat.”