Hi, I'm getting a bit jealous of my friends who all have perfect pitches...
how does it works anyway?? Does it mean you know what the notes are when some random notes are played, or does it mean you can sing A??
How do people get them??

pianist_1210 - do a search. There have been a lot of topics about this.

Car Expert

ok thanks.

I don't have a good pitch, but if you play a string instrument, when you tune it with a piano, you'll get some pitch. You can also try singing a short tune and check it by playing it on the piano.

That's really interesting about France. I had no idea.

I've always been told that you either have perfect pitch or don't. However, I'm pretty certain I either didn't or didn't know how to use it until I was about 9 (I do definitely have perfect pitch, I can sing notes and I can tell you what notes are), which I always find interesting, because surely that means that there are many people around who do have perfect pitch, just don't know how to use it yet.

Each note has a different feel for me, it's hard to explain, but if you played me a G and tried to tell me it was an A, I'd know it was wrong because there'd be a kind of, I don't know, discordance in my brain. The two notes have completely different feels. Black and white notes are incredibly different, and even before I tapped into my perfect pitch, I could always tell which are which.

The best way I can put it is thinking of those transparancies - the transparent sheets you put on projectors and can write on. If you have two identical ones, with writing on, (one representing the note being played, one representing, if you like, the "keyboard" in my head) and put them on top of each other, you would easily be able to see when the writing on both sheets is in different places because the sheets aren't exactly in the same place. If you tried putting the sheets in different positions, and got the position where the sheets are perfectly on top of each other, you can tell immediately, because it looks as if there's just one set of writing, because the two are in the same place.

That's a bit of a long-winded analogy, but for me that's what it's like. If the note being played is the same as the note name being thought in my head, I can tell immediately, because they interlock, they feel the same. If it's different, I can also tell, because there's something not right about the feel.

This may not make any sense, but it's the best way I can describe it...

when i first started, i'm just like... when you play me a note, i couldnt tell what note it is... it was until 12 years old then i started to have perfect pitch and i'm able to know the notes you play... and it was around 11 or 12 years old then i started joining school choir and started listening to classical music every night... so i guess i develop the skill of perfect pitch by either one of these 2 or both... (at first when i join the choir, i always sing out of pitch...) so for me, it's first that i manage to sing the correct pitch when i'm given a note before i have perfect pitch to tell what note is being played... the perfect pitch is exactly like what 'cellocase' has said... each note has it's own unique sound/pitch and had a different feel and i think those things that 'cellocase' has said do make sense...

so if you want to have the skill of singing the correct pitch when the note is given to you, first, you name any note u choose then u hum to the tune, then you play the note on the piano and check whether you had hit the right note...

ShArOn

I find that perfect pitch works well. It's very useful to have, and good for impressing other people too.

True, particularly on stringed instruments where you may want a different pitch for a note when it is a single note in a melody or scale and when it is double stopped. There is no single correct pitch for every note all of the time.

Maybe you should have a listen to the latest addition to the forum recordings site .

Apparently it's also quite painful. My accompanist has perfect pitch. He hears the note written, but if a piano is slightly out of tune he "hears" both together.
Useful though, during the interval in a concert, where the only "piano" available was an electric one, another "pianist" played cocktail style. The only key he could play in was C, so he kept altering the pitch button to make himself sound better. He left it up a second. Luckily, when my man came to play my introduction, he recognised this, stopped, and was able to rescue a tricky situation - especially as I was due to sing a top E flat!

I don't have absolute pitch, and just as well, really, since the music I like is often played a semitone flat of modern pitch, and on some instruments, even lower than that, or "between the keys"...
When I heard the addition to the site, it didn't upset me, but I did identify it as a particular note, and was amused when I realised what was happening.
I understand that some European orchestras now pitch their a' at 442Hz - certainly Moeck are now making recorders at this pitch .
I'm not sure that cultivating "perfect" pitch is always such a good idea in these circumstances!

Yep, I'm just thankful that the harpsichord I play is tuned to 440 - chatting to someone who has a couple of harpsichords at his house in Glasgow, he said his are usually tuned to somewhere less than 400, so I'd be stuffed if I tried to play them....

Might try that myself sometime.

this instrument was at 406 for its last recording

I bet you're glad you don't play the clarinet (or do you?)

Would that not be the same if "this note is C" was constantly reinforced...?


I can do that reasonably reliably most of the time, but I wouldn't by a long way class myself as having perfect pitch.

Having tuned to A for years and years playing the violin and then the flute, my A is fairly reliable, though if someone told me "this note is..." then whether I knew if they were telling the truth or not would depend on how far out the note was and how tuned in/tired I was that day - & if I had a cold or an ear infection, all bets would be off . However I wouldn't have a problem playing or singing something that had been transposed. I think playing a period pitch instrument would probably annoy me for a while, especially if I was switching from a modern instrument, but once my ears had got used to the different pitch it wouldn't bother me.

I also have pretty good relative pitch. Between being able to pitch an A, and by extension D, G, and E, having been used to pitching those notes when tuning my violin for many years, and having good relative pitch, means I have a similar sort of ability, (I correctly guessed YAP's note, insofar as that was possible ) but I wouldn't class it as perfect pitch in the same sense as it is usually meant. It's not absolute - it's a comparison with a pitch that I remember in my head, I can't pluck a note out of thin air instantaneously - and it also varies, getting better if I play and practice more, and getting less reliable and less confident when I am not doing musical things - in both these ways (for me at least - & I expect there are other differences if I stopped to think about it) it doesn't seem to meet the criteria of perfect pitch.

(I actually think that in many ways it's more useful than perfect pitch, as not having transposition completely do my head in etc is quite nice - I'd hate to have to mentally transpose music while I sang, or if I was playing something in a different key from the written music! Although I would love to be 100% reliable in my pitching of A, as then I would effectively have a chunk of the useful side of perfect pitch and like most musicians have often coveted "real" perfect pitch such as YAP, Cheeble and others have)

So can you train for it?? I can only sometimes recongise what the randomly played notes are, but this is not 100% accurate (in fact, it's mostly not correct.... ) I really want to have perfect pitch...

Well, if I did I don't think it would be a problem. I play the cello, which means I use three clefs regularly - bass, tenor, treble - and when I see notes in those clefs, I just instantly translate them into what they should be. If I played the clarinet, I assume it would be like having "another clef" (which, granted, looks exactly like the treble ) but I would just read notes differently and expect another sound. The problem only arises when you don't expect the note coming out to be what it is!

I once had to play on a piano which was mainly in tune but a whole tone out. It made me feel physically sick.

No idea! Glad I don't have the problem! (See also cellocase's reply immediately above this.)

But that is exactly why playing the clarinet can be a problem. It is a transposing instrument, and you don't play the notes written. I knew someone who'd had to stop learning the clarinet because she had absolute pitch, and the difference between the written notes and the sound she made was enough to make her feel sick too.
I'm glad I don't have this problem - like Sarah, I'd rather cultivate good interval memory.

Ah, but the crucial thing is that you expect it to be different. The shock would be if someone was playing an instrument they expected to be at concert pitch and found out it was different!

Despite the problems, I love having perfect pitch. It's really useful in choirs, and is kinda cool sometimes - like being able to tell how high someone is singing, for instance - instead of just thinking "wow, that sounds high", I think "wow, she can sing a top B" or whatever. It also means, although I can let music wash over me without analysing it, if I wanted I could work out key changes etc. Has come in handy also when I forget names of music - I can just say, "oh, that's Mozart's Piano Concerto in....Bb major" or whatever.

I sometimes wonder how many non-musicians have perfect pitch. That's a statistic we never find out.

So if you hear an early instruments production of Bach's b minor Mass, pitched at a'= 415Hz, it doesn't bother you? It used to be common to hear complaints about Baroque concerts and recordings being at the "wrong" pitch...

Sounds like yours is more reliable than mine *grin* but a similar sort of thing. I do think that this sort of learned perfect pitch may be more useful, and certainly would cause fewer problems. I know at least one poster on here who has a learned perfect pitch that has become in effect real perfect pitch: I wonder if it's a case of some people having more or less a predisposition toward perfect pitch... so someone with a strong predisposition towards it, taught how you were, or who learned to tune to concert A for many years, would develop perfect pitch, whereas others won't develop it to such a sharp degree...

I'm waffling and not sure what I am trying to say


That's one scenario where not having perfect pitch is also quite useful, though - as a learner singer, the high notes are quite scary, and being able to sing straight from music that's at a lower pitch and essentially fool myself into thinking I am singing a 3rd lower is really helpful

Bag's Alpha Male Jazz Cat has pefect pitch. He informs me it is possible to play (ie slap) the opening theme of Mozart's 40th symphony on my...er...southern wobbly bits in the right key....er....apparently....

I am not at all convinced that this is the best outlet for his undoubted gift...

Bag x

I've slowly become accustomed to being able to relax my ears to listen to A less than 440. The A=426 I put on the recordings site yesterday - I can hear it as an A if I allow myself to do so. It is harder the further one gets from 440 though - I still think of a lot of pieces I've heard at 404 being written a whole tone lower than they are.

As a result of listening to early music, my problem now of course is mainly with music which is sharp .

*boggle*

Perfect pitch is actually very annoying. In hot weather, oboes seem to find it very hard to hit a good A at 440Hz, so orchestras quite often tune sharp, so everything constantly sounds wrong if you have perfect pitch, and I sometimes find myself playing out of tune because I'm correcting my intonation to make it equal A440, when everyone else is playing to the tuning note. Even worse is when you're not able to point it out and sort something, because you're in the audience. The only useful thing about perfect pitch is tuning your own instrument without a tuner, but tbh it's hardly any bother just to get a tuner out anyway...and it can be quite a good party trick I spose.

Faultless relative pitch is the best though.

Oh, Bag, you DO make me larf...

Cellocase gave a very good description, I thought! She pointed out that people can have a great memory for pitch, which only becomes useful as "perfect" pitch when you learn to associate "that" sound with "this" note-name.

Sarah-flute, I think you're right, that hammering the relation between sound and note-name will develop pitch recognition skills. I recently read a thingie in Japanese which explored the fact that a fairly high proportion of Japanese musicians have perfect pitch. They concluded that it was nothing in the water or the genes, but was simply the result of pitch training at early ages (still very common in Japan). Apart from overt pitch training, the mere fact of starting music very young helps to develop a sense of pitch.

Is absolute pitch a problem? IN a Japanese book called "Absolute Pitch", violinist Midori Goto apparently said that when she went to the US, she had trouble adjusting to the US concert pitch, which is fractionally different from that used in Japan (or was at that time, anyway). She also said that relative pitch can be an excellent asset - I think we just get obsessed with the word "perfect"

Does absolute pitch itself = musicality? No...again, the Japanese obsession with pitch training led to a whole generation of schoolkids who were subjected to endless pitch RECOGNITION instead of singing. They're all old and grey by now, but throughout their lives, they've been known as the "silent generation", because they find it hard to sing in tune or remember melodies and rhythms!

Training can help your sense of pitch at any age, I think, but of course, some things are easier when you are young. Haven't tried software like Auralia, but it sounds interesting.

I have perfect pitch, but can adjust a quarter tone - so that if something is slightly sharp or flat, I can 'tune in'. As a pianist, the major problem I have is if the piano is a semi-tone or more out. Because the notes I'm hearing aren't the notes I'm expecting - ie I play a C, but hear a B, I start accidently playing a C#. to make it sound right. Then I'm completely thrown!

I also find it difficult accompanying transposing instruments, as what they are playing is different to what I expect to hear from the score.

On the bright side, it makes playing by ear really easy, and sightsinging is also no hassle. Used to really help during the aural side of grade exams - when the examiner used to play a C, and ask what the next note was. After a while he'd generally say 'I guess you've got perfect pitch' when he realized that I didn't need the C!

Yes, aurals were much much easier than they should have been! (though a very musical friend of mine with perfect pitch managed to fail her aurals when she was rather younger - still not sure how she managed it!)
On the other hand, it was a nightmare in academic music exams doing melodic dictation at period pitch.

Sarah-flute is quite right in pointing out another problem with perfect pitch in singing. I know the range of my voice (about e below middle C to F two above middle C), so if I'm doing a warm up in a choir and the director goes above my range, I immediately know, think "I can't sing this!" and can't, whilst my friends with similar ranges are still singing on, extending their range until their voices give up, completely oblivious to what notes they are singing. However, sightsinging and difficult entries are easy....so it's all a balancing game.

I'd find it difficult to listen to music at A = 420 or whatever. I'd have to make a huge effort to not listen to my brain. I think that if I did practise listening to music at different A frequencies, though, it would be okay.

Another interesting anecdote - a tutor on a music course I was on had perfect pitch, but he grew up in a household where the piano was a semitone flat. Now, when asked to name a note, he's always a semitone out, and has to transpose it in his head. So it's obviously just a case of the name you're told to associate with that frequency of vibration (do you see the same blue as me? etc etc....)

I don't have perfect pitch but it's never bothered me - and I've always had excellent sightsinging - sang in a church choir from being 8 so that helped a lot. But then, do you miss it if you've never had it?

I have had a piano student for the last 4 years who does have perfect pitch and he is functionally blind so it's extremely useful when teaching him new stuff - I don't have to tell him what notes I'm playing and it has helped him enormously with being able to tell instantly what chords are, although I obviously had to teach him all the different variations of chords before he could recognise them.

He's doing Grade 6 now and has won cups in Festivals - not bad for only having played for 4 years!

Does it work if you keep remembering the note A??
Because have the pitch pipe and it can only give me A...
sometimes it worked for me but sometimes I ended up sing D instead...
anyways it's fun to train yourself though.

I used to live in Japan, so I'm used to C(do), so I know the note C

My pitch is far from perfect, but I have a similar problem with an out-of-tune piano. If, for instance, the bass notes are slightly sharp, my left hand, on seeing a low G on the page, wants to head for F# - and, yes, I can be completely thrown too, and want to kick the dam thing! I've never been very good at playing by ear, but am a reasonable sight-reader - but the above illustrates that sight-reading as much "hand-ear" co-ordination as "hand-eye". I always thought it would be great to have perfect pitch, but on reading the entries from those who have, it seems to pose problems as well as have advantages.

Interestingly, as a child, when my mum was about to switch on the vacuum cleaner, I could always hum the "note" it played before she turned it on!

Yes, any note which you can internalise should work.


I guess that's a good example of learned pitch memory

Well, as you may have seen in some of the replies, perfect pitch isn't always 100% perfect.
I've read an interesting article in psychology of music (issue from january 2005?) that investigates the different (sorts of) misjudgEments that people - subjects who said they had perfect pitch - make, in different situations: those situations are for example the use of their own instrument, another instrument, or pure sine tones (apparently the most difficult to recognise). As far as I rememer only one person came close to scoring a 100%! I think there were some other interesting tendencies (and hypothesises about the reasons) in the results, for example concerning the issue of the own instrument vs. other instrumensts.

As for the ability to train perfect pitch: there is no real agreement whether or not you can train it, at least to a reasonably high level; I remember one psychologist who wrote that he only could train it a little by walking around with his tuning fork all of the day, and noticed that the ability went down rather quickly when he stopped the intense training... In contrast, the actual perfect pitch (as far as this existst, cf. supra) never fades...
The example of the Japanese on the other hand seems to show that it is trainable if you start it at a real early age. (On a personal note I can add that both me an my sister have perfect pitch to a fairly high degree, and as far as I know always have got it - I started playing the piano by imitating things I heard, and I always found the right note or key, as my father noticed). Perfect pitch is yet another theme where the nature-nurture debate comes up

In several works or articles you can read that aprox. 1/10.000, or 0.01% of all people have perfect pitch, but several others say - in my opinion right so - that this is only a very, very hypothetical number:
Apart from the fact that there are not many studies done with a large number of subjects, there is the fact that many people may have a good (perfect) pitch hearing without the formal musical knowledge to express this.
One study tried to counter this problem with an original approach: they asked people to sing one of their favourite tunes, but before they started they asked the persons to imagine the original versions as accurate as possible. Then they compared this sung version with the original: they found that the persons in average weren't more then a semitone or whole tone off. Not bad, but on the other hand a whole tone or a semitone might seem quite a bit for someone with perfect pitch (though, again on the other hand, the investigation I first mentioned showed quite a bit semitone errors by some people claiming to have perfect pitch!)...
One weakness of this study, as has been pointed out, is that people could use indirect methods for their pitch positioning: probably they have sung the song with the record on, and maybe there is some muscular memory (or better: memory for the muscular tension)... And, as I can testify, actual perfect pitch in contrast doesn't need an indirect measurement: I can imagine or internally hear a reference A (though it can be some Hz off-pitch, of course).

As you can see, perfect pitch is an intriguing, and still far from completely understood thing!

all reactions on these thoughts or investigations welcome! (BTW: If you know any other interesting investigations concerning PP, please tell me so!)

bye,

frederik

Thanks frederik that was really interesting

For me, I do sometimes get notes wrong, though it's rare. If I'm wrong, I'm generally a fifth out. I also tend to go a little flat, especially on a tuning A, because my piano at home has always been a little less than 440.

I can remember the pitch of the strings on a violin.

Just been re-reading this thread


I have a friend who seems to me to have a sort of latent perfect pitch - things sung in different keys to how they are written bother her, but she couldn't confidently produce you an A, or tell you "that's a G#".


That's interesting for me, especially with my realisation that when I try and pitch A and go wrong, I seem to end up on E or D a 5th up or down. I wonder if it's a string-instrumentalist's thing.

I can identify with sometimes being a fifth out - and I'm not a string player. I've generally thought it's more like a strong sense of key (in my case) rather than full-blown perfect pitch.

5th and octave are the two most easy ones for me. Don't know if it's the same wiht everyone else.

I can tell if a string on my violin isn't in tune with the other strings, and I can tell I'm not in tune when playing a piece. I wou't say I have PERFECT pitch though.

Sounds like good relative pitch to me, lizbun

I sort of have what you might call almost perfect pitch. If you play a note on the piano, I can say what note it is nearest to, but I wouldn't know if it were a tad off.

On a string instrument, I can do the same to a lesser extent.

I can't just sing notes off the top of my head.

Does the fact that you're synesthesic allow you to tell notes apart? I'm interested.

Interesting article on 'Yahoo News' yesterday:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Musicians and singers work for years to develop their sense of pitch but few can name a musical note without a reference tone. U.S. researchers on Monday said one gene may be the key to that coveted ability.

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Only 1 in 10,000 people have perfect or absolute pitch, the uncanny ability to name the note of just about any sound without the help of a reference tone.

"One guy said, 'I can name the pitch of anything -- even farts,"' said Dr. Jane Gitschier of the University of California, San Francisco, whose study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

She and colleagues analyzed the results of a three-year, Web-based survey and musical test that required participants to identify notes without the help of a reference tone. More than 2,200 people completed the 20-minute test.

"We noticed that pitch-naming ability was roughly an all-or-nothing phenomenon," she said.

That lead researchers to conclude that one gene, or perhaps a few, may be behind this talent.

Gitschier said those with perfect pitch were able to correctly identify both piano tones and pure computer-generated tones that were devoid of the distinctive sounds of any musical instrument.

She said people with perfect pitch were able to pick out the pure tones with ease. And they also tended to have had early musical training -- before the age of 7.

"We think it probably takes the two things," she said.

They also found that perfect pitch tends to deteriorate with age.

"As people get older, their perception goes sharp. If a note C is played, and they're 15, they will say it's a C. But if they're 50, they might say it's a C sharp."

"This can be very disconcerting for them," Gitschier said.

The most commonly misidentified note, based on the study, is a G sharp. That may be because G sharp is overshadowed by A, its neighbor on the scale, they said. A is often used by orchestras in the West as a tuning reference.

Gitschier said she and her colleagues were focusing on identifying the gene responsible for perfect pitch, which will involve gene mapping. Then they will try to figure out what is different in people with absolute pitch.

"We'll have to play it by ear, so to speak," she said"

I've always had very accurate Perfect Pitch, and yet over the last year, I have found myself slightly sharp, I was always worried that having taken so many years away from music, that I'd affected it myself - can't decide whether I'm happier or not, that it's a function of age.

Any other older musicians here with Perfect Pitch finding they're pitching sharp?

I know that feeling lol. I was helping a friend buy a piano for her daughter and the piano was 2 tones off. Even though I pressed the correct keys playing the piece, it sound so so so wrong. Felt like puking lol. I was wincing. I plonked on it awhile and I gave up.

A question that occurred to me on the way home...

If you have absolute perfect pitch, so I play a note and you can tell me what that note is...does it only work for A=440? If I whipped out a recorder with A=415, would you still be able to identify an A as an A?

Just intrigued...

I remember reading that Michaela Petri couldn't play recorder with the 'authentic' orchestras, as she has perfect pitch at A440, and couldn't play a low pitch recorder, as it felt/sounded as if she was playing the wrong notes all the time.

Over on trumpetherald, there was a sometimes very heated, but fascinating debate on the subject. If you've got a while, it's worth a read:
http://www.trumpetherald.com/forum/viewtop...&highlight=