Well, I do not question the validity of the drone, only its monopoly.
Yes, in retrospect, I used the wrong words for the wrong things... a perfectly in tune scale is of course one that is properly intonated, and not tempered at all. Only that the Pythagorean comma very successfully makes perfect impossible... With 'absolute pitch' I refer to in tune with the tuner, i.e. tempered, piano tuning.
I can only further stress your point that 'if you can't hear it, you can't play it.' That was precisely my case. I couldn't hear a tempered 2nd, so I couldn't play a tempered 2nd when required of me. Seconds and sevenths - major or minor - also happens to be those which are easiest to put in the wrong place, because they could be intonated in a huge variety of ways, or so it seems to me. Low major 7th if in a downwards movement, high it it leads to the next note, etc. Now discovering that I was unable even to play an in tune open D to E was alarming, because as a bass player, your most important role is to provide the fundamental note (and I didn't even have the "bread and butter area" at all as clear as I thought I had.
). For instance, if you have played an A on the G string and are about to play a C#, you may assume that the C# is the 3rd, and so you play a perfect 3rd. If it turned out to be a new base note, you will be almost 4hz or something too low, because base notes are almost always to be played in absolute pitch. (And this in turn could mean that the poor guys playing the 3rd in case it's a major chord have to play their note 8hz lower than usual in order to get it in place!
) This could be a possible problem, since you may not ever have played an 'absolute' A-C# shift if you only play with the drone. Typically, the orchestra won't like you if you play "your own" intervals, neither will the rest of the section. The fixing of hand shapes and becoming able to play absolutely in tune serves to get your left hand in place no matter what. Then, if you know that a note has to be played low in order to sound good, you just play it lower than usual, which - at least in my limited experience - has just proven itself to be much better for my general intonation. Also, it might minimize any bad habits of sliding into place.
That said, if you have the absolute pitch of the instrument perfectly clear and could even play any note in tune without any reference points, you may still not be able to play a perfect 3rd, because you haven't played with a drone or otherwise learned how to intonate according to what's around, or at all learned the basics of intonation. We need drones. We don't want to play with frets!
