Perfect Pitch - Anyone Got It?

[NateS]

there's a book called "music, the brain, and ecstasy" that ties in with oliver sack's book (which is great BTW) an has a section on absolute pitch. it's too late for me to copy the affected passages (i need to be asleep), i will tomorrow, but he talks about other non-12 tone systems. The thing about indian scales is that the pitches aren't radically different from 12 tone, they still have many of the same ratios i.e. 3/2, 2/1, etc. It's hard for me to remember now, i'll type it up tomorrow.

also, absolute pitch ascends just pitches, A, B, C, there are people who can say definitively that a fly's wings are buzzing at 300 hz. Incectologists with AP can identify different insects by how fast or slow their wings move to fly. It's truely fascinating and DEFINITELY not something you can learn. It's a 6th sense, really.

AP and synesthesia are both INCREDIBLY interesting psychological phenomenon, to me. I find it amazing that there are people who have an drastically different way of understanding the world, with basically a 6th sense. It's not studying pitches, it's knowing them, intrinsically

 

[David Jayne]

I dont have PERFECT pitch but I can get real close.
One time I took all the strings off my bass, cleaned the neck and put a fresh set of strings on.
Tuned it by ear and then checked it to my Peterson Stroboflip. To my surprize I was dead on with
each string.

I've done this as well. Sometimes I can do it on command- tune my bass perfectly by ear(without an external sound cue). Sometimes I can instantly identify a pitch; other times I'll get it wrong but I'll usually be within a half-step. My relative-pitch thing is pretty happening. I guess I'd call my thing 'Really Good Pitch.'

 

[David Jayne]

It's not studying pitches, it's knowing them, intrinsically

I think for those that have it, it's a lot like color vision. Once you've learned that red things are called red, you're there.

 

[Staccato]

Awww. You want to be that good?

Lately when I checked, I sang a single note into a chromatic tuner (without vibrato), and it lit green with no sharp or flat.
Lots of voice training contributed part of that, and maybe a smidgen of talent in the mix...

 

[pedro]

When 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.

I think much of what you've said here is confirmed in the article I linked above.

 

[Sam Evans]

I think some folks are just suffering from some terminological confusion. If by "perfect pitch," all someone means is "correctly identifying a note," then yes, you can learn to do that. But strictly speaking, "perfect pitch" is more than just that, as some posts above are pointing out.

 

[bucephylus]

Johnson O'Connor, a company which does fairly scientific aptitude testing, divides the musical aptitudes into pitch, tonal memory, and rhythmic memory. The OP seems to me to be describing tonal memory, which is the ability to recall tones and sequences of tones. Pitch is the ability to discriminate frequency differences - a key capability for string players in orchestra for example.

I don't recall JO describing any people as having any of these as "perfect;" just that some have each more than other people. To excel easily in music, it is preferable to have all three going for you. It is also true that there are folks out there wired with all three in the 99th percentile; which may not be "perfect," but they have some scary capabilities. The rest of us have to work harder to achieve close to the same results.

Isn't nature wonderful?

 

[pedro]

I think for those that have it, it's a lot like color vision. Once you've learned that red things are called red, you're there.

That's exactly how I think of it. If you have to think about a pitch and related conscientiously to another pitch to figure it out then, to me, that's not perfect pitch. You don't need to look at blue to know something is red. You just know it.

And that's one of the reasons I never buy into all this stuff about PP not being a great advantage.

 

[Blueszilla]

There is a difference between out of tune & out of tune by a few comas.

Please elaborate. Coma? No, I'm not in a coma.

 

[Samsound]

I think much of what you've said here is confirmed in the article I linked above.

I took a look, and yeah they're both citing the same sources and studies. Thanks for sharing that - it some more detail than I was willing to type on this iPod!

 

[fusoid]

I have perfectly, relatively, pretty good pitch.... I just compare incoming tones to the tintinnabulations coming from my rock and roll damaged hearing apparatus.

 

[NateS]

I have perfectly, relatively, pretty good pitch.... I just compare incoming tones to the tintinnabulations coming from my rock and roll damaged hearing apparatus.

i'vew always wanted to try to figureo ut the pitches of my tinnitus, but mine are very high - off a keyboard, or at the edge of it, and they aren't always the same...

 

[stratovani]

I know I don't have perfect pitch, and from what I've been reading so far I'm sure glad I don't. I don't think it's something a musician absolutely needs, although relative pitch sounds like something that would be desirable.

So how many of you were alive when Don Larsen threw his perfect game in '56?

I was two years old in 1956, so my memory of Larsen's perfect game is a bit thin. I could probably tell you what was in my diaper, though!

 

[SteveC]

I don't have it and I'm glad. I know people who do and it can actually be more of an annoyance than a blessing.

 

[RJC1811]

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 realize that and understand what perfect pitch is. I was just pointing out that the abilities some were attributing to PP were really relative pitch and could be learned with a little work.

I wanted to make the point that you can't learn PP but you can learn relative pitch and develope it to a very high degree through practice. I have seen someone without PP transcride some amazing stuff with very little use of his instrument.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Please elaborate. Coma? No, I'm not in a coma.

sorry I meant, Hz.

 

[pedro]

I realize that and understand what perfect pitch is. I was just pointing out that the abilities some were attributing to PP were really relative pitch and could be learned with a little work.

I wanted to make the point that you can't learn PP but you can learn relative pitch and develope it to a very high degree through practice. I have seen someone without PP transcride some amazing stuff with very little use of his instrument.

Agreed. Relative pitch can (and is) taught. PP cannot.