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Perfect Pitch - Anyone Got It?
- Thread starter jbalou02
- Start date
I have perfect pitch but did not realise(put a name to the condition/capability) until a piano teacher friend pointed it out to me. I thought that it was quite normal. For the longest time I have been able to transpose from listening to songs. When I was in Grade 3 at school our grade level went on an excursion to listen to a performance by symphony orchestra. I was breaking down the string sections as they were playing and calling them out to my teacher who was sitting next to me. During the performance I was able to break down all of the parts of the different orchestra sections.
Back in the day of battery opeated tape players (you know, Walkman thingies) I would suffer and squirm a lot and it would make me feel quite uncomfortable if the batteries started to fade and progressively drop the music in pitch. New technology of Ipods and MP3 players has eased the pain in that respect. Brass bands on the other hand are my nemesis.
It only takes one instrument to be "out a few cycles of a tone" and it messes up the whole thing for me.
I do find that listening for pleasure is at most times a task because I am forever breaking down the music and scoring in my head. During a trip from Melbourne to Stockholm a number of years ago I ended scoring all the parts of Supertramps Crime if the Century album.
It does come handy when learning new material although some discussions do occur when other members of the band drop/add parts from the performance.
Try listening to the lead solo of Hotel California. I believe that most everybody in the western hemisphere has that down in their memory note for note. Then listen to the live version. Even though it comes close it's oh so gratingly annoying for me.
I have heard though that through repetition you can teach yourself perfect pitch.
slawie
Back in the day of battery opeated tape players (you know, Walkman thingies) I would suffer and squirm a lot and it would make me feel quite uncomfortable if the batteries started to fade and progressively drop the music in pitch. New technology of Ipods and MP3 players has eased the pain in that respect. Brass bands on the other hand are my nemesis.
It only takes one instrument to be "out a few cycles of a tone" and it messes up the whole thing for me.
I do find that listening for pleasure is at most times a task because I am forever breaking down the music and scoring in my head. During a trip from Melbourne to Stockholm a number of years ago I ended scoring all the parts of Supertramps Crime if the Century album.
It does come handy when learning new material although some discussions do occur when other members of the band drop/add parts from the performance.
Try listening to the lead solo of Hotel California. I believe that most everybody in the western hemisphere has that down in their memory note for note. Then listen to the live version. Even though it comes close it's oh so gratingly annoying for me.
I have heard though that through repetition you can teach yourself perfect pitch.
slawie
My piano teacher had perfect pitch and in music school I met a couple more folks that had it. As far as I know it cannot be learned. Memorizing pitches doesn't work. Most musicians are able to develop good relative pitch and we make do with it. But its absolutely laughable to me to hear some one say that having perfect or absolute pitch isn't an advantage and IMO quite a large one.
Had a recent conversation with our keys player who is composer and professor of music at the University on the subject and he sent me a rather interesting link regarding PP.
http://www.jackgrassel.com/pages/perfect_pitch.html
Had a recent conversation with our keys player who is composer and professor of music at the University on the subject and he sent me a rather interesting link regarding PP.
http://www.jackgrassel.com/pages/perfect_pitch.html
mikeyswood
Inactive
Please excuse me, but I hang around with alot of folkies, so I thought perfect pitch is when you can pitch the banjo into the dumpster from 30 yards and hit the accordian.
Mikeyswood, being from Detroit, I'd love to put something about Armando Galarraga's, uh, one hitter from this past June, but I'm not cokming up with any good jokes for it. As I am typing this, Roy Halliday just finished his no-hitter against the Reds.
So how many of you were alive when Don Larsen threw his perfect game in '56?
So how many of you were alive when Don Larsen threw his perfect game in '56?
It cannot be learned. It is neurological. Oliver Sacks has a section devoted to it in his book Musicophilia. Excellent book, by the way. Many PPers have terrible difficulties including the ones mentioned already: songs in the "wrong key"; instruments not perfectly tuned, etc. Essentially for them each note has its own unique sound. Some even see colors that correlate to different notes. When the performance doesn't match what's in their head it can be dreadful for them.
Glad this came up. I have two good friends, in a country band no less, who have it. One is 99 percent blind, but plays lead guitar, pedal steel, and fiddle. He is a country music trivia expert, and can tell you without fail what key any song ( that he has heard) was recorded in and what year the recording was made. The other is a young man of 42 who is a great musician..plays keyboard and lead guitar..but he is very modest with his gift. He plays keyboard in the band, playing lead with the right hand, bass with the left hand, and singing any part thrown at him, all at the same time. Now I don't mean he can sing three parts at one time, but try multi-tasking like that sometime. Where can you find a country band where 2 of the 4 players have perfect pitch. BTW, the keyboard player's brother plays rythym guitar in the band..plus sax, bass, drums..and I wouldn't be surprised if he had it too, but we have never tested him. The gift amazes me. I have tried and tried, and my ear is pretty good, but just when I think I have it, I'm off by a couple of notes. I can usually recognize what keys country or bluegrass songs are played in, but I must confess I do this by listening to the sound of guitar chords, and whether banjo is played in the G position or the C position. I can usually hum an E note, but that's about all.
I can teach you to how to have perfect pitch. It's just like learning your colors. You just need to learn the different "colors" of each pitch. Just send me $149.95 and you too can have perfect pitch.
Just kidding. Many of the abilities mentioned in previous posts like identifying an out of tune instrument in a band or transcribing a song without an instrument in hand are functions of relative pitch not perfect pitch. Any college level ear training course will have students transcibing music without their instruments. They need to know the key and then go from there.
How about this, listen to a simple 3 chord song. I'll bet everybody on this board could write out the chord chart without an instrument in their hand. Add a relative minor chord and still the majority could do it. As the song and harmony get more complex the more practice it takes. Perfect pitch would make it easy but you can do it with learned relative pitch.
I have learned a simple bassline to a song by singing along with it on the way to practice. I had neglected to learn the song during the week and we were going to work on it at practice that night. I got to practice, tuned up and played it on my bass. Another time I woke up with "In memory of Elizabeth Reed" playing in my head. I sat down and with only a little searching for notes played the main melody all the way through. I am far from having perfect pitch. They move mics away from me if I start singing but I do work on relative pitch. The more you do it the better you get.
Bob
Just kidding. Many of the abilities mentioned in previous posts like identifying an out of tune instrument in a band or transcribing a song without an instrument in hand are functions of relative pitch not perfect pitch. Any college level ear training course will have students transcibing music without their instruments. They need to know the key and then go from there.
How about this, listen to a simple 3 chord song. I'll bet everybody on this board could write out the chord chart without an instrument in their hand. Add a relative minor chord and still the majority could do it. As the song and harmony get more complex the more practice it takes. Perfect pitch would make it easy but you can do it with learned relative pitch.
I have learned a simple bassline to a song by singing along with it on the way to practice. I had neglected to learn the song during the week and we were going to work on it at practice that night. I got to practice, tuned up and played it on my bass. Another time I woke up with "In memory of Elizabeth Reed" playing in my head. I sat down and with only a little searching for notes played the main melody all the way through. I am far from having perfect pitch. They move mics away from me if I start singing but I do work on relative pitch. The more you do it the better you get.
Bob
mikeyswood
Inactive
I had it but due to all the wrong notes played by guitar players over the years I have shut it off 
But the difference is someone with PP doesn't need to be told the key and doesn't need to continually id the notes based on relative pitches.
I've got good relative pitch but not quite perfect pitch. I went through a phase where when tuning by ear I was about 3 cents flat. Now I'm in a phase where when I tune by ear I'm about 2 cents sharp. I need to get it right fast before I lose the rest of my hearing, lol.
Hmm, I don't know... I find it hard to believe that a 12 tone system of tonal organization is neurologically programmed into someone's brain.
There has to be at least an element of learned behaviour that goes into having perfect pitch. I'd take a guess that some people are pre-disposed to having perfect pitch and that they apply that ability to whatever musical knowledge they pick up from their surroundings.
If a kid is born with perfect pitch in India and only listens to 22 tone Indian music, would he grow up with his perfect pitch 'calibrated' to that tuning system?
A question for any perfect-pitchers... Is your hearing fine-tuned to a particular intonation? I know most people without perfect pitch tend to tune to just intervals when singing relative pitches. However, probably 99% of music we listen to is based on equal tempered tuning, so do you perfect pitch folks have that temperament 'baked in' to your hearing from such constant exposure or do you hear all equal tempered music as being 'out-of-tune'?
Really interesting topic....
My pitch is pretty much baked in from listening to an electronic A=440 for 15 minutes a day 5 times a week for 6 straight years in orchestra. I have nightmares about that dreaded noise every night
lolWhen I say you can't learn it - what I mean is Joe Blow can't just decide to sit down and "study" intensively until he gets perfect pitch. It is neurological. They've done lots of studies, and compared the brains of AP and non AP (Absolute Pitch) musicians with MRI and you can see an exaggerated asymmetry between right and left planum temporale.
What has been observed is that there seems to be critical period for developing AP before age 8 or 9. Again, doesn't mean you can teach it to your 4-yr old. Only 14% of US language speakers who begin musical training between 4 and 5 develop AP.
There is some research that suggests perhaps we're all born with AP, but lose it during language development, except for few cases under unusual conditions. Discussion here centers around the idea that primitive language shared a common origin with music and that AP was a core piece of the language puzzle before we developed a compositional language.
All of this is from Oliver Sacks' book. Really cool book. It also talks about musical hallucinations, amusia, synesthesia, and lots of case studies about music therapy and parkinson's disease, amnesia, tourette's, strokes, and dementia.
Also, PPers don't hear only 12-tone or 22-tone differentials, but rather it's an analog continuum. They learn to line up what they hear with the notes of a musical scale. So, a westerner might learn to "quantize" his PP to the 12 notes of the western scale, and the Indian kid will learn to "quantize" his PP to 22 specific notes (or whatever).
Kind of like looking at a big box of Crayolas. Your typical 2-yr old might ID blue, red, blue, blue, red, red, because that's all the labels he's been taught. The older kid IDs blue, red, perriwinkle, cornflower, burnt umber, fiesta red, because he's learned the additional labels. They both see the variations, but the 2-yr old doesn't know what to call it other than red, blue, green, etc.
Kind of like looking at a big box of Crayolas. Your typical 2-yr old might ID blue, red, blue, blue, red, red, because that's all the labels he's been taught. The older kid IDs blue, red, perriwinkle, cornflower, burnt umber, fiesta red, because he's learned the additional labels. They both see the variations, but the 2-yr old doesn't know what to call it other than red, blue, green, etc.
