Absolute (perfect) pitch, Do you have it? Do your students? Options

[ma non troppo]

I am very interested in this subject, as I have absolute pitch. At university, a sizeable minority of students in my year had it too.

Do you have it? Is it a help or does it cause problems? Do any of your students have it? (I have been surprised that only three over a twenty year period of teaching have had reliable absolute pitch - many more "nearly" people). I am surprised it is less common in the general "musical population".

If you have absolute pitch, do you also have synesthesia too? I hear in colour and associate many pitches with specific colours (e.g. and A is red, F sharp is dark purple). I know that much has been written on this subject, and my apologies if I am duplicating a prior discussion, but I would be fascinated to hear other personal experiences. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Deborah]

I don't have it and wouldn't want it - ah, the joys of playing a transposing instrument! That said, I've known of people who've developed perfect pitch in Bb (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

One of my closest friends at university had perfect pitch, and found it a mixed blessing. Some aural skills, particularly dictation, were a walk in the park, but transposing at sight, or performing at A=415, caused her all sorts of problems.

[Roseau]

One of my closest friends at university had perfect pitch, and found it a mixed blessing. Some aural skills, particularly dictation, were a walk in the park, but transposing at sight, or performing at A=415, caused her all sorts of problems.

My teacher has perfect pitch but said he had to train himself to be able to "switch it off" as it made playing the cor anglais almost impossible and is not very useful when playing with others who don't have perfect pitch - if the rest of the orchestra is drifting you need to drift with them.

[ma non troppo]

When I was younger, any transposing of an unknown passage from notation was a nightmare. Nowadays, I can kind of "switch it off" as previously mentioned, if I have to. Also, singing a long acapella choir part could be hard when others' pitch "drifted" through the work. I don't play a transposing instrument, so that's not a problem. It's certainly a mixed blessing. I also had to work hard at learning methods to teach aural work - as I had always found it obvious, I couldn't really understand why people couldn't just "do it".... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/party1.gif)

[edgmusic]

I'm a pianist with perfect pitch.

I've found it very useful for party tricks and aural tests.

A real liability when transposing, or playing a very out-of-tune instrument!

[miffy]

I have perfect pitch. When I was at school my head of music said I had the most perfect pitch she'd ever come across - whatever that means!
It is a mixed blessing - flat a Capella choirs, transposing instruments, as has already been mentioned (plus trying to teach on a Clavinova stuck on transpose the other day..), but it's part of me and I couldn't be without it. I lost it temporarily once due to a medication and it was like my whole world was tilted at an angle - horrible.

I have several pupils with pp and some with relative pitch, which seems a good useful one to have, and I tell them to be proud of relative pitch as it's a lot to do with their own hard work.

I also have synesthesia - I didn't know until I was at college that not everyone hears/sees this way.

[accellerando]

I used to take a little autistic girl for informal music therapy sessions; I assumed she had perfect pitch as she couldn't cope if I didn't play a tune in the same key every time. She acted as though it was hurting her ears.

[GMc]

DD has absolute perfect pitch and synaesthesia and Aspergers. I think its quite common in musical Aspies. We certainly know another two like this. No one noticed the perfect pitch bit until she auditioned for something and the chap doing the interview looked for it. I just knew that she was fussy about harp tuning and always lliked it stretched. But she can turn her internal pitch to different frequencies it would appear - if she tunes to a different one she can adapt to it. I dont know if she can change her colours with the this too but I assume so. I have never asked if she can turn it off deliberately. She has one key that she will pretty much not play in - C major makes her very uneasy - not sure if it hurts or not but she avoids it - she transposes those to c flat major major on harp and anything she feels like on piano.

Do other people lilke this have keys that they avoid (and not just cos too many accidentals like us mere mortals!)?

[julio]

I don't have it but a fellow member of a choir I used to sing in had it.
We found it quite useful when our coach broke dowm on the way to a competition leaving us with no warm up or rehearsal time before we had to sing.
We could sing through in exactly the right key while we waited to be rescued!

[Bagpuss]

Alpha Male Jazz Cat has perfect pitch. Apparently most toilets flush in Ab and my vacuum cleaner is in F#.

How handy is that? (!)

Bx

[Louise H]

I'm a pianist with perfect pitch.

I've found it very useful for party tricks and aural tests.

A real liability when transposing, or playing a very out-of-tune instrument!

I'm in a similar boat in that I can hear and say what pitch/key something is in - not sure about the party tricks! However, I've always found it very useful for aural tests. I would never have coped with playing a transposing instrument!

I'm not great at pitching my voice to sing a note without hearing it first although I will be quite close most of the time. I have think/hear the pitch in my head and then sing it but this is not as accurate as hearing, then identifying pitch the other way round.

[Village Flute]

I remember being told as a child that I had perfect pitch but I'm not completely convinced. When doing O Level music aural I could get the pitch for each note of the piece played straight away and can sing a note to order. Also can relate to Alpha Male Jazz Cat's comment about the pitch of the hoover. Playing Alto flute was hopeless as I kept trying to pitch the note as written by using harmonics and lip rather than the one a 5th(?) lower. Playing the sax however I just get on with it and can manage with fingering an F# and the sound coming out concert A. Just makes it harder to find where you are in an ensemble piece as I hear a part and think that's not mine as I haven't worked out how to do the mental sound conversion to what the notes are on the stave.

[linda.ff]

I haven't got it, though I consider I've got excellent relative pitch. But when I first went to university, several people in my year had it, and they'd mostly been the big fish in th small pond in their school, and were used to being able to show off tht they could tell. In one early lecture rom the baroque period we were played a recording and shown a piece of score and the preformance wasn't at the written pitch, or rather not at the pitch they would have got their ears tuned mto. I was quietly laughing afterwards at the number of them who ere trying to impres one another with the fact that they'd noticed this. (I hadn't, of course, I wouldn't have kown). They soon realised that they were not now exceptional.

We sang an unaccompanied double choir piece when I was in the Schola Cantorum, joined by another choir from the university who weren't quite such superior singers. Although the two halves were mixed, the pitch sank (it wouldn't have sunk with just us) and two of our number, with excellent perfect pitch, just had to stop completely. They managed to get back in again once it had sunk far enough for them to transpose down an entire semitone (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[SkyT13]

I have absolute pitch, but no synaesthesia.

It was very useful for playing the piano actually (I think it might have made it easier for me to memorise pieces), and of course aural... But now that I'm learning the violin, it's both a blessing - can tune without tuning fork or tuner or piano - and a curse - never really developed good relative pitch! I'm steering well clear of transposing instruments - think they might drive me mad...

Also, when I listen to music I will either consciously or subconsciously identify the notes being played - leads to a lot of thinking along the lines of "A F C A A F C E C G"...

[saxophile]

Son No.1 has perfect pitch to a degree (if that makes sense): ie he can pitch a concert middle C without a reference pitch, and then works out other pitches from there.

His perfect pitch does sometimes get confused by the fact that he also plays Bb trumpet: sometimes when asked to hum a middle C he will give a Bb instead!