Survey: Perfect Pitch V Memorization Options

[berfaceno.1]

2 - I found out today that I can hit notes after hearing them once, but whether that counts as perfect pitch I don't know
Berwyn

Do you mean hit them on the piano or with your voice?

With my voice, hopefully once I learn what the named notes sound like I'll be able to do it on the piano too.

[Dulciana]

2 - I found out today that I can hit notes after hearing them once, but whether that counts as perfect pitch I don't know
Berwyn

Do you mean hit them on the piano or with your voice?

With my voice, hopefully once I learn what the named notes sound like I'll be able to do it on the piano too.

Then you don't necessarilly NOT have it, but that's not what perfect pitch is. You would definitely have it if you were able to play an isolated note on a tuned piano without having seen it played or been told what note it was you heard.

(Sorry to digress, Bing!)

[The Old Lady]

1. 7
2. No.
3. A bit of both, although by ear harder now, see 6.
4. After a while.
5. Visual.
6. All much harder since I lost 50% of my hearing in my late 20's.

Beverley.

[mattrattley]

1) 14
2) Yep
3) I can play by ear better than most of my classical playing friends, probably a bit under what my jazzy friends can do. My sightreading is decent but certainly not the best, especially over large intervals
4) Yes - after about 2-3 weeks of playing i tend to only follow the music as opposed to reading it
5) Auditory, not only with music but with most things, if i hear something it sticks better than reading it (ie reading textbooks out loud to revise etc.)
6) I have always tried to improve my ear in parallel with reading as i've always got the impression music education nowadays is biased towards reading...

[Bing]

Actually digressing is quite good...the purpose of the essay is partly to stimulate conversation. Both on the board, and at college, everyone has been really interested, which makes me feel much more positive about the topic I'm working on! Once again, thank you to everyone who is participating! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Bing]

1 - 25 yrs and 4 months, piano, guitar a few years back but only strum happy and no training
2 - I found out today that I can hit notes after hearing them once, but whether that counts as perfect pitch I don't know
3 - very little of each at this early stage although I'm getting there on both scores
4 - yes
5 - near verbatim and true colour glossy poster
6 - Is it possible to develop perfect pitch?

Berwyn

Whilst I am prepared to be shot down in flames for saying this....

Research seems to prove that perfect pitch is highly unlikely to be developed. It is strongly related to early musical training - apparently 40% of children who start formal musical training before the age of 5 have perfect pitch, as opposed to 3% of those who started after the age of 9. The question researchers ask, is not 'why do people have pp' but 'why don't they'. They say if we can recognise colours, without needing a reference colour, why can't we recognise notes, without needing a reference note. All the websites that promise you 'Perfect Pitch in 10 easy lessons' need to be approached with caution.

However, it is perfectly feasible to develop excellent RELATIVE pitch. Many instrumentalists can pitch an A, after spending years tuning to it. Many singers can pitch notes accurately by referring mentally to a familiar song, which muscle memory enables them to pitch regularly in the same key without hearing the note. Perfect pitch is hearing any note, on any instrument and immediately recognising it - just as you recognise the colour 'red'.

Got another 4500 words, so I'll shut up now!

Bing

[berfaceno.1]

1 - 25 yrs and 4 months, piano, guitar a few years back but only strum happy and no training
2 - I found out today that I can hit notes after hearing them once, but whether that counts as perfect pitch I don't know
3 - very little of each at this early stage although I'm getting there on both scores
4 - yes
5 - near verbatim and true colour glossy poster
6 - Is it possible to develop perfect pitch?

Berwyn

Whilst I am prepared to be shot down in flames for saying this....

Research seems to prove that perfect pitch is highly unlikely to be developed. It is strongly related to early musical training - apparently 40% of children who start formal musical training before the age of 5 have perfect pitch, as opposed to 3% of those who started after the age of 9. The question researchers ask, is not 'why do people have pp' but 'why don't they'. They say if we can recognise colours, without needing a reference colour, why can't we recognise notes, without needing a reference note. All the websites that promise you 'Perfect Pitch in 10 easy lessons' need to be approached with caution.

However, it is perfectly feasible to develop excellent RELATIVE pitch. Many instrumentalists can pitch an A, after spending years tuning to it. Many singers can pitch notes accurately by referring mentally to a familiar song, which muscle memory enables them to pitch regularly in the same key without hearing the note. Perfect pitch is hearing any note, on any instrument and immediately recognising it - just as you recognise the colour 'red'.

Got another 4500 words, so I'll shut up now!

Bing

I'll be gentle in my shooting you down as I haven't yet developed it myself:

- nearly all chinese people have it because of the tonality of their language, without it they would be unable to distinguish between one version of a word spelt the same and another similar word, causing numerous issues, exposure and repeated usage of the skill help to reinforce it, as brits we don't need to so we don't bother
- I agree that we should all have it, red is red, dark red is also easy to recognise and so should c and c sharp

Berwyn

[Bing]

[
I'll be gentle in my shooting you down as I haven't yet developed it myself:

- nearly all chinese people have it because of the tonality of their language, without it they would be unable to distinguish between one version of a word spelt the same and another similar word, causing numerous issues, exposure and repeated usage of the skill help to reinforce it, as brits we don't need to so we don't bother
- I agree that we should all have it, red is red, dark red is also easy to recognise and so should c and c sharp

Berwyn

You're absolutely correct. To quote from my essay!!
"Dr Jenny Saffran, director of the Infant Learning Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been carrying out research into how infants hear and process sounds. The study found that ‘not surprisingly, the adults in her test all performed well on measures of relative pitch and poorly on absolute pitch. But the infants showed exactly the opposite pattern, excelling at absolute pitch but unable to recognize changes in relative pitch.’ It appears that perhaps all infants are born with an innate perfect pitch ability, but lose it as they grow, instead developing a strong sense of relative pitch. This may go some way to explaining why children who begin very early musical training maintain their perfect pitch – they never lose the ability as they are constantly developing it. The study also demonstrated that people blind since birth have a higher incidence of perfect pitch, as they use the skill to recognise the pitch/speed of a car, or a person’s footsteps."

Of course, the next question is 'why do some children who begin music early, have perfect pitch, and others not? The Univerisity of California study, which there has been a link to on these forums for a while, qppears to suggest a genetic tendency, but there study has a way to go. Diana Deutsch has done a huge amount of work on looking at perfect pitch amongst speakers of tone languages - is Mandarin, and found that a much much higher percentage of speakers have perfect pitch.

All very interesting.

[Roseau]

- I agree that we should all have it, red is red, dark red is also easy to recognise and so should c and c shar

Actually, there is the same problem with colour recognition. Different cultures do not agree on what is or is not a particular colour. My French husband and I often disagree about whether something is blue or green. I thought it was just us until I was reading a book on language and culture and discovered that in fact French and English people do distinguish differently between blue and green; apparently Portuguese and English speakers often disagree on what is pink and what is orange.

[cellocase]

Just for the interest value - I definitely thought that I did not have perfect pitch until I was about 10. I don't know whether that is because I didn't know how to access it or didn't have it. I know this because my sister did have perfect pitch and I used to be unable to do the same things - we tested it.

However, at about 10, it all clicked into place very fast, and now I can't understand why people can't hear, say, the F#ness of an F#.

Having said that, I've always been able to distinguish the white and black notes on a piano - they just sound so utterly different.

[kate bush fan]

1 9
2 No - but then my first piano was constantly out of tune
3 maybe depends what you mean by fluent
4 I wish
5 I am visual - that's probably the problem with playing from memory


I wonder if any of the people who have perfect pitch play a transposing instrument. I imagine that makes things very confusing.

[Dulciana]

The question researchers ask, is not 'why do people have pp' but 'why don't they'. They say if we can recognise colours, without needing a reference colour, why can't we recognise notes, without needing a reference note.

Colour isn't totally 'absolute' though. How many times have we looked at paint colour cards, deciding upon which shade of green to go for, only to discover that when it's in isolation on the wall, or beside a greener chair (several pounds later), it looks blue? When we get down to the finer differences between colours it's not so black and white. IS perfect pitch totally absolute? Will somebody with pp be able to tell that a given note is, say, about a quarter of a tone flat from F#? If in doubt, with colour, we can just say 'turquoise', as it's sort of subjective, but is pp totally objective?

[idiotmatthew]

1) At what age did you start musical training
2) Do you have perfect pitch
3) Do you play be ear and/or sightread fluently
4) Do you memorize classical pieces easily
5) What form of memory comes easiest to you - visual or auditory
6) Anything else you want to add



1. about 4 or 5
2. Yes
3. sightread
4. no
5. visual

[jumper]

Wondering if anyone fancies answering a few questions for a college paper I'm writing.

I'm interested in finding out whether having Perfect Pitch hinders secure memorization. The idea being that there are several forms of memory used for memorizing music - auditory (hearing), visual, muscle memory, analytical,etc. It seems that people with perfect pitch can often play well by ear, sightread well, but instead of using several forms of memory, rely too heavily on auditory memory - having always had an advantage in this aspect. This doesn't lead to really secure memorization. Or perhaps no-one has any problems in this respect? So I thought I'd take a random survey here.

1) At what age did you start musical training
2) Do you have perfect pitch
3) Do you play be ear and/or sightread fluently
4) Do you memorize classical pieces easily
5) What form of memory comes easiest to you - visual or auditory
6) Anything else you want to add

Cheers everyone.

Bing

1. 24
2. No (don't even have relative pitch at the moment but am working on it and it's impoving)
3. Neither. Sight reading is a mess (but again improving), I can pick out the melody of simple pieces by ear but that's my limit
4. Yes - too easily (see above re sight reading, I don't even need to memorise things it just happens accidentally which is a real hinderance to my sight reading)
5. For music it's auditory (but in normal circumstances it's very much visual). I also rely a great deal on muscle memory so if my teacher changes the fingering on anything I go completely to pieces.

Just as a random fact, my grandmother has never had a piano lesson in her life but if you sing anything to her she can play it back transposed on the piano perfectly - but only using the black notes (hence the transposing) which I think is bizzare (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

[petrat]

1) At what age did you start musical training

Started playing at aged four, playing tunes by rote. Started formal lessons at six or seven.
2) Do you have perfect pitch

I can usually recognise musical notes but not always other sounds, for example Ambulance sirens.

3) Do you play be ear and/or sight-read fluently
I can play by ear well, and I sight sing fluently and sight read fluently on recorders. Not as fluent at piano playing at sight but I can read a score accurately.

4) Do you memorize classical pieces easily
Music yes, words not as well.

5) What form of memory comes easiest to you - visual or auditory

Auditory and muscle memory. My visual memory is very poor indeed.

6) Anything else you want to add

Although I do not have a well developed perfect pitch I can pitch notes about 95% of the time for choirs (Not fun when the piano in the hall is slightly sharp of A 440) I have no problems playing at A 415 though.