Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
In honor of this week’s long-awaited return of #TheMandalorian, a rearrangement of my octet of the theme, now in C-minor. 🎻
On that note, some music talk:
I was blessed with the gift of perfect pitch throughout my childhood & 20s. Sometime in my early 30s, I discovered it had deteriorated to some degree of relative pitch. For any given note, two semitones sound “correct” to me; both 440 Hz (A) and 415 Hz (A-flat) register as A to my brain, the latter much more so. As a result, when I’d tune my instruments by ear, something I’d always trusted them to do right, everything was one half-step flat. When I tuned my violin correctly, I suddenly found myself unable to play songs I’d performed effortlessly from memory all my life. My muscle memory kept trying to “correct” my intonation to a half-step flat, my fingers stumbling over each other like legs forgetting how to walk. And I found I now had much more difficulty playing with others who were tuned right. Realizing this was heartbreaking; at the time I cried a lot over it.
Since then it’s helped immensely to learn I’m not alone, and many who report losing perfect pitch as we age also describe a depression that follows, like you’re losing a sense. For a while I resisted by keeping my violin tuned wrong, but now I’ve been retraining my ear to the right tones; with practice it’s all gradually coming back.
One thing that’s really helped: pitch-correcting old videos. I’m a Suzuki kid, recordings are how I learn, and hearing/seeing me play the Mando theme with my original fingerings but now tuned to actual C-minor helps reconfigure my muscle memory, whereas watching old videos tuned incorrectly have the opposite effect. So I may go back and reformat more of them like this in the future.
And lesson learned: don’t trust your ears. Use a tuner.
This is the way.
🎵 The Mandalorian theme by Maestro #LudwigGoransson, shirt by Lazy Day Galaxy ✨
#shorts #mandalorian #mandaloriantheme #starwars #violin #cello #octet #dindjarin #mando #thisistheway
In honor of this week’s long-awaited return of #TheMandalorian, a rearrangement of my octet of the theme, now in C-minor. 🎻
On that note, some music talk:
I was blessed with the gift of perfect pitch throughout my childhood & 20s. Sometime in my early 30s, I discovered it had deteriorated to some degree of relative pitch. For any given note, two semitones sound “correct” to me; both 440 Hz (A) and 415 Hz (A-flat) register as A to my brain, the latter much more so. As a result, when I’d tune my instruments by ear, something I’d always trusted them to do right, everything was one half-step flat. When I tuned my violin correctly, I suddenly found myself unable to play songs I’d performed effortlessly from memory all my life. My muscle memory kept trying to “correct” my intonation to a half-step flat, my fingers stumbling over each other like legs forgetting how to walk. And I found I now had much more difficulty playing with others who were tuned right. Realizing this was heartbreaking; at the time I cried a lot over it.
Since then it’s helped immensely to learn I’m not alone, and many who report losing perfect pitch as we age also describe a depression that follows, like you’re losing a sense. For a while I resisted by keeping my violin tuned wrong, but now I’ve been retraining my ear to the right tones; with practice it’s all gradually coming back.
One thing that’s really helped: pitch-correcting old videos. I’m a Suzuki kid, recordings are how I learn, and hearing/seeing me play the Mando theme with my original fingerings but now tuned to actual C-minor helps reconfigure my muscle memory, whereas watching old videos tuned incorrectly have the opposite effect. So I may go back and reformat more of them like this in the future.
And lesson learned: don’t trust your ears. Use a tuner.
This is the way.
🎵 The Mandalorian theme by Maestro #LudwigGoransson, shirt by Lazy Day Galaxy ✨
#shorts #mandalorian #mandaloriantheme #starwars #violin #cello #octet #dindjarin #mando #thisistheway
