If a child learns music faster than others, then he/she may have perfect pitch. It means he/she can recognise the tones correctly and immediately, like when he/she sees a number or colour. He/she may even be able to sing any tone (e.g. F# in 2nd octave) immediately without referring to any other tone.

If you want to find out if your child has this inborn capability, you can ask your child to take the test here:
http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu for the University of California Genetics of Absolute Pitch Study.

Well, as I already knew, it turns out that I don't have perfect pitch (good to check tho).

BUT I can generally sing an A and recognise and A and get all other notes from that. While I may not be able to hear a note and say what note is in 3 seconds, I could mostly find the right answer if given a bit more time. And I can sing any interval if given a note to start on. Also, I can work out roughly what note it is by singing it (and seeing what it 'feels' like to determine what note it is) but obviously can't do that in 3 seconds.

So what kind of pitch (not perfect, I know, but is it called 'relative'?) do I have?

Yes you have very good relative pitch. Absolute pitch does not guarantee success in learning music. I think "absolute tempo", "absolutely dexterous fingers" and "absolute will power" are more important. Also a very good teacher.

This test is for an academic project aiming at locating the gene for perfect pitch, so any family with more than 1 child having perfect pitch will be of great help to them.

I think that this is a fascinating subject.

My son has perfect pitch and since none of his relatives have perfect pitch, to my knowledge, it would appear to have come from nowhere.

It would be interesting to find out where his ability comes from!

Same here. One of my two daughters has perfect pitch and no others in the family seems to have it. She scored full marks in the test, with pure tone=36 and piano tone=36. In the test, if pure tone >25 and piano tone >28, the tested person is considered to have perfect pitch. Those who took the test normally found it harder in the pure tone part.

Roughly 1/1200 people has perfect pitch.
15% of musicians are thought to have it.
Musicians with perfect pitch have a larger left vs right planum temporale (in their brain) than everyone else.
There may be a genetic component as the asymmetry of the planum temporale has been observed to develop between the 29th and 31st week of gestation.
It can be the consequence of exposure to music training before the age of 6.
It is not necessarily a blessing. Having perfect pitch can make anything slightly out of tune very annoying and can make transposition especially difficult.
Also, who wants to know that the fridge hums in Bb?

Best wishes

barry

Interesting! - Well, I bought one of those packs from perfectpitch.com and found that I actually had perfect pitch (this was when I was 15), but five years on, I've found that I've lost this ability. I took that test and came nowhere near having it - I think i scored about 13 and 18 for pure and piano tone tests.

Having family of Far Eastern origin, I'm told that because of the way the language works (words with the same consonant-vowel combinations but pronounce with different variations pitch), Chinese people and the like are more likely to have it - fact or fiction?

I've got a couple of friends (brothers) one of which has very acute perfect pitch and the other is in a similar position to me and they're from a completely non-musical background. Blows the nature vs. nurture case wide open

I can only figure out what the notes are if I hear the tonic note first.

Personally I believe it's nature PLUS nurture. But that's more gut reaction and friends' experiences, not scientific

I don't have it, but I have good relative pitch and though I've often wished I did have perfect pitch, I think 99% of the time working on better and better relative pitch (which I should do more of...) is at least as useful and sometimes more so...

I thought it was A?

Reason for knowing: On a live gig with the band (guitar) you can tune your A string to the hum of the amps, which is at the pitch it is because of the frequency of Mains AC, which is the same for the Fridge. Of course, Bb and A are close . . .

I have perfect pitch - I did start musical training very early. My mum found out when I was about 3, and told her what note the aircraft passing overhead was making!

Good bits: much easier to play by ear; aural tests involving naming notes/keys was easy.
Bad bits: impossible to play a piano that's out by a semitone or more; accompanying a transposing instrument is extremely hard work. Expecially when they start talking about a Bb and then play a C (or whatever!)

I also think it can make you slightly lazy musically - you don't really need to think about intervals as you just pitch the notes. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

No-one else in my family has it - but I have read a lot of theories about it being genetic.

I am good at telling whether something is sharp, flat or in tune. Thanks to belonging to various bands, my ear has been trained to listen to a note and pitch it correctly. I don't neccesarily have to adjust my flute headjoint etc., I can generally do it by changing my embochure.

My sister, who is extremely musically talented, has clearly got perfect pitch. In her aural, she is able to play back the phrase as opposed to singing it.

Me too. My brother has perfect pitch, but doesn't always find aural that easy - he's extremely talented at the violin though.

Isn't it annoying when a sibling is better than you.

You don't need perfect pitch to do that - good relative pitch makes it possible too.

But if A=440Hz, then an octave below that is 220Hz, below that 110Hz, and below that 55Hz. So tuning A to 50Hz mains hum would result in the guitar being flat when compared to A=440, for which the equivalent A would sound at 55Hz.

Being able to play back the phrase doesn't mean you have perfect pitch, just good aural skills!

I find this test and the people who conceived it a bit annoying. Have probably told this story here before but for those of you who missed it the first time I'll tell it again.

I did the test and managed to fool them into thinking I had perfect pitch (I haven't, just very quick relative pitch). They wrote to me asking my ethnic origins and whether I had any Ashkenazi Jewish connections. Actually my mother is an Ashkenazi Jew, so I told them. They then began to practically salivate and wanted me to take a blood test!!! I hate needles and can't stand the idea of ethnic profiling, so politely declined.

Thought about it afterwards and came to the conclusion the whole thing is inherently racist. They did say Chinese people may be genetically programmed to have perfect pitch as well, but were very into the idea of Ashkenazi Jews being similarly 'blessed', because - wait for it! - they're Ashkenazi Jews themselves.

Draw your own conclusions.

I did, and decided they're out to prove the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are somehow musically superior to other people. I think this is a load of nonsense and the fact that I come from a highly musical family makes no difference - it's a cultural thing, not a genetic thing. Ashkenazi Jews are just people of Middle Eastern origin mixed in with Europeans for a couple of thousand years. Palestinians are Middle Eastern people. If a Palestinian married a European, their children would be genetically identical to Ashkenazi Jews. So I think the whole thing's misguided in its inception and these Askenazi Jews should know better, having been subject to another people's idea of racial superiority not very long ago.

Violinia

PS My mother and I have a Palestinian friend who calls my mother 'her Jewish mother' and me her 'Jewish sister'. She also once told me the Palestinians see the Jews as cousins they've fallen out with - temporarily (they live in hope).

That is a great hope to have.

I'm of ashkenazi origin as well - and happen to have perfect pitch - although I'm the only one in my family. I do think that in some case, ethnic origin can have a bearing on skills. Look at the amount of Kenyan/ethiopian marathan runners for example?

Ashkenazi Jews to tend to be very prevalent in the world of music - whether it's nature or nurture I don't know - but I would guess that if we looked at the greatest violinists of the past 100 years or so, a much higher percentage would be Jewish that should happen statistically.

But why should that be genetic? Yes there are a lot of Jewish violinists, but I think this is because learning the violin is very much smiled upon in Jewish families - it's a tradition. Think of the amount of Catholic priests in Catholic families - are they genetically programmed to become priests? Of course not. Icelandic people do a lot of reading - because it's cold up there and people have to spend a lot of time indoors. French and Italian people are very tuned in gastronomically - because their climates are conduive to growing nice food (lots of sunshine but with enough rain too), so a gastronomic culture springs up.

If you think musicianship in Ashkenazi Jews is genetic, then you should also say banking is genetic in Askenazi Jews, but it would be racist to suggest such a thing - and rightly so. Jews developed an interest in music for a lot of reasons, one of them being the need for self-expression in a marginalised social group. If you were to study the history of music-making in European Jewish culture I'm sure you'd find a lot of reasons why it became so predominant.

Think about - musical parents tend to make sure their children play an instrument, and so it goes on. My mother played violin and piano, her father played piano and composed, I play and my son plays. If something's expected in a family, it tends to happen.

I think it's very dangerous when one racial group or another assumes genetic superiority in any field, and just because the Jews were once underdogs and needed to convince themselves of some kind of superiority in order psychologically to survive the continual onslaught doesn't mean there's any need or call for us to do it now! At best it would be misguided.

I am quite surprised to learn about this "hidden agenda" about Ashkenazi Jews in this test. But I wonder...are we talking about the same test? This test is conducted by the University of California - San Francisco Medical Center. Would they fund such a study just to prove that Ashkenazi Jews have a better gene to be a musician? This study claims to aim at finding the gene for perfect pitch, which should be common to all humans of any ethnicity.

We are Chinese living in Hong Kong. My younger daughter has perfect pitch. We knew it for quite some years but this is the first "formal" test she did. We're not a very musical family, though we try to give our daughters music education since they're four or so. From our observation, we believe that our younger daughter is inborn with perfect pitch. She had not got any extra music training more than her elder sister, and yet she possesses this ability which is very obvious even when compared with "good relative pitch". Her identification of the tones is instantaneous, taking no time at all.

I do hope that this test is not for "racist" purposes, and other similar studies carried out on the human genome too. This little test itself can be a simple tool for those who are in doubt about whether they (or their children) have perfect pitch.

My (deceased) brother in law had perfect pitch. He didn't have any Jewish blood and came from a white C of E background. Someone once told me that we're all born with perfect pitch which unfortunatly most of us loose as we don't use it. Don't know whether that's true or not.

This test is conducted by the University of California

I've been wondering ... is this the same perfect pitch test that we discussed on these forums a few months ago? There was plenty of discussion then. If it's not the same one, it is very similar. You might like to try a search if you haven't read the previous thread.

I found the previous thread in a general discussion forum. It is the same test, pointing to the same website. If they're only interested in perfect pitch in Ashkenazi Jews, then probably they won't contact us again. Anyway, it's just a little game.

The academics carrying out the test are of Askenazi Jewish origin themselves. To be fair, they do include the Chinese in their 'genetic predisposition to perfect pitch' theory. But I still think it's racist in intent.

Personally I agree with Stringmum who said we're all born with it but will generally lose it through lack of use from a very early age. Many Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews tend to start music education from a very young age, so this will preserve the inherent perfect pitch.

Incidentally, Cyrilla teaches perfect pitch to bigger children - I've seen it with my own eyes and it works!

Violinia

I don't have perfect pitch, but like Violina, was able to get it right when I gave myself the starting note

I've been thinking about this ever since you posted it because, much as I hate to admit to being wrong (I am a surgeon after all) your reasoning is faultless and therefore must be right. HOWEVER . . .

. . . Mains electricity in the USA (I believe) is at 55 Hz, so at least it works there! (or is that France? Oh wibble!)

I don't have perfect pitch, which I already knew. But, interestingly, the only pupil of mine ever to have perfect pitch was a blind Jewish boy. Mind you, I have Jewish blood too - my grandfather was Jewish.

I have perfect pitch.
I scored 36 on piano and 33.50 on pure tones.

Guess what...
Gimme More by Britney Spears (who I usually loathe) is actually a good song, but one thing about it that annoys me is that I *think* it is in F one and a half sharp minor! It's like grrrrrrr! So yeah...I'm not certain though, even though I do have perfect pitch!

This test has confirmed that i most definitely do not have perfect pitch. I got 10 on pure tones and 4.75 on piano tones . I was really surprised to do worse on the piano one though, given that piano is my main instrument. However, like jod, i can, when given more time, work out notes from singing up or down from an F.

I'm glad to say that this is not true, as the moden chromatic scale as you get on a piano is completely unnatural, a human invention, and one which fights desperately against the natural laws. Do a Google on 'pythagoras' and 'temperament' and you might see why.

I remember a TV programme, probably 20 years ago, exploring perfect pitch, and they seemed to demonstrate pretty clearly that perfect pitch was a learnt thing - illustrated by the presence of more than one person with 'perfect pitch' that was a semitone flat ... as result of them having pianos which had been tuned a semitone flat in their childhood homes. Apparently this was not an uncommon practice at one time, as it meant you could have lighter and cheaper piano frames.

Language is something that is learnt - however after a certain age, the ability to learn a language becomes non-existant. Perhaps perfect pitch is the same, it is learnt but it can't be learnt once the brain reaches a certain maturity.

According to wikipedia, blind people are more likely to have perfect pitch.

I thought some experiments were done where they proved that all babies are born with perfect pitch. They definitely found that babies could recognise when music was out of tune, and I think they found something related to perfect pitch as well. It fades by the age of five if not nurtured, though.

My mother was always whistling Eine Kleine Nacht Musik to me through a funny little hole she made in the side of her mouth - she learnt it from her brother whose 'whistling hole' was on the other side, but then she did learn it through watching him! Anyway, she always whistled it in the correct key and somehow this has become implanted in my brain so if I think of Eine Kleine Nacht Musik it always pops into my head in the correct key. I can also always get the note 'A' right, but this must be from so many years of tuning the violin; I have to work out all the others from there though. So I've got a sort of though not absolute perfect pitch. Weird.

Having said all that I think perfect ptich is an overrated skill and believe the ability to recognise intervals is far more useful. Another thing - the notes are a moveable feast - A isn't 440 everywhere so this means perfect pitch is remembered pitch. Someone brought up in Europe will have a different perfect pitch to soemone brought up in the UK, which makes the whole thing about memory, not something absolute and fixed from birth in a notewise sense, if you see what I mean.

Ahh that's why I have a poor memory, it's all used up by perfect pitch!

Not true - I taught myself perfect pitch when I was doing my A-levels. I didn't have much musical training (apart from a bit of recorder age 6/7) until I was 9. I am convinced that every musical person could do the same if they really worked at it.

Basically I was finding the atonal aural tests at A-level hard, so firstly I just memorised where an A is. I carried a tuning fork around with me and whenever I thought about it, I hummed an A to myself and then checked it against the fork. Then I memorised where D was - first I had to do it by working out the 4th/5th to A, but then I could do it without. Then I gradually learnt the others too.

Maybe some people would call that 'good relative pitch', I'm not too bothered really. The advantage of learning it this way is that I can turn it off if eg. the piano is a semitone out, or even a tone sometimes, but I can't go further than that. I play oboe and can't deal with doubling on cor anglais because of the transposition.

I think the whole born-with-perfect-pitch thing is a total red herring. Surely every single person who fits in that category received very early musical training? I would say we all have the ability to learn - at any age. The ones who are seemingly 'born' with perfect pitch just were lucky enough to learn it very early on, before anyone really realised.

Incidentally, I have a friend who I met at uni who did exactly the same as me. My mum, who has no musical training whatsover, started singing in her local amateur choir at the age of 50 (not able to read music), but if I ask her to sing me something they're rehearsing, she will pitch it at the right place every time.

Oh, and another thing:



But what about the Chinese / Indonesian / African babies?! I mean, 'out of tune' is totally cultural, so this research sounds very dodgy and ethnocentric if you ask me.

Incidentally, I've done the test now, which I hadn't when I posted before, and was ranked at the top of rank 2, just outside the zone for perfect pitch, but invited to take the test again (I need a rest first!!). The hardest thing about it is that it is so *fast*, I'm sure I could do better if I had a couple of seconds longer on each note... especially the v. high/low ones...

Well, I wouldn't disagree with the second part of your post, Violinia, but I would be extremely interested to see how these experiments were done (and which you seem to contradict in the second part of the post) ... were they asking one-year-olds "is that an A or a B-flat?"?. Hmm. Now I can easily believe that babies would react differently to in-tune or out-of-tune intervals, as the quality of intervals IS a part of nature - but I still aver that babies cannot be born with perfect pitch, as the equally-tempered 12-semitone scale is as human an invention as gothic architecture or impressionistic painting.

My result was 10.0....does anyone know what that means??!!!

I don't have perfect pitch at all! I knew that already, but that test confirmed it!! I did sooo badly!! Complete guesses!!

I wish I did have perfect pitch...or at least really good relative pitch I think I'll try what Claire21 did and try to teach myself!

Laura

I tried listening to my fridge earlier.
For a start, there were two completely different noises happening - I didn't know which to listen to.
The one that I thought I should listen to was moving about, somewhere in the region of A/Bb/B so...maybe different fridges do different hummings?

Please don't berate me - I was only reiterating what I've read in the past in various articles! Here's one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_te...sco/1179664.stm

However, it does seem to me that this is more about remembered pitch rather than some instinctive recognition of pitch, which as several people have pointed out, would make little sense with equal temperament, which is a human-invented series of intervals rather than the natural series. And even then, what is natural, and fixed, is the intervals - not the pitches - which can be fixed anywhere you like, ie they're arbitrary. So if a baby - or a person with perfect pitch can recall them, what are they recalling exactly?

For example, I can recognise and name any note played on the violin because as a violinist I can just sort of tell, but I find it harder with piano unless the note is A or C. This is because I have more memories related to the violin than to the piano, and also because the different strings and resonances just sound instantly recognisable. Here's an article about babies preferring harmonious music to atonal, although this is different to not liking music played out of tune - I think that was from another article I once read.

http://www.greenwych.ca/babies.htm

Hmm that's like my toilet!!! Someone told me that they flush in Eb, so I checked, and it kept changing from E to Eb and then was pitchless (I read it from a chromatic tuner thingy...I don't have perfect pitch!)

I still don't understand whether or not 'shhh' has a pitch...I thought I'd established that I was pitchless (even though I thought everything had a pitch), but I 'ssshhhed' into this machiney thing, and it changed really quickly and said that my 'shh' was G#, A, Bb and then F# (or something)....straannge...

Personally I think these kinds of 'research' are a load of biased old tosh. Eg.

"In some music systems, notably that of Javanese music, the perfect fifth is a little less perfect than other places, but Prof. Schellenberg believes that it is close enough for the ear to perceive it as harmonious."

Well then! Having your cake and eating it there.... Either you hear it as 'out of tune' or you don't.

If anyone did a truly cross-cultural study in to babies' reactions, I'd be more inclined to take this kind of thing seriously. (Even though I'm also sceptical about how much a gurgling baby tells you about anything.) But until then...

Sorry, Violinia - I didn't mean to berate!! Thanks for the link - like you say, it does seem really to be talking about accuracy and speed of memorisation of sounds, rather than perfect pitch as such, so I think their use of language is to blame. Anything about 'perfect pitch' seems to grab headlines, but it's a shame when the headlines are inaccurate as result!

If I were doing experiments, I'd want to know if people's 'perfect pitch' was equally tempered - which I think it must be. Those of us with good 'relative pitch' would, I suspect, tend to be unequally tempered.

That's right - if 'perfect pitch' recognises equal tempered notes rather than perfect intervals, then it's got to be a learned rather than an inherent thing. This makes perfect relative pitch a superior skill in my view!

We've all been somewhat conditioned by relative pitch - I found a website recently which played a scale using perfect intervals rather than equal temperament and it did sound a bit odd. The third sounded a bit narrow - but that's how it's supposed to be.

On the violin you have to adjust your pitching to whoever you're playing with - so it's completely different playing in a string quartet where no one has fixed pitches so can all adjust to each other continually, than playing with a piano which has equal temperament. This is one of the reasons why a string quartet can be so utterly sublime - intervals can be played and harmonised in complete harmony with natural intervals. I heard a string quartet on Radio 3 the other night that completely took my breath away - sublime is the only word for it. Must go to 'listen again'....

Shall post link if I can find it!

Ditto trombones ... I often find myself sitting in front of a particular wonderful trombone section, and there's nothing like it .... sheer bliss. I might even dare say that there's something even more sublime (in my completely unbiased opinion, of course) about the trombones compared with a string quartet, and I put that down to having the three equal voices, and no vibrato. Oooh, it makes me go weak at the knees just thinking about it. How they expect me to concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing when they're making such heavenly noises behind, I just don't know.

Aaaahhhh....

I know what you mean about the vibrato, but this string quartet I heard on the radio the other night were vibrating just the right amount (ie not too much) and completely in synch with each other; I've rarely heard anything like it.

Definitely goes off to find link - I'll be right back.

Got it! It was Classic Fm, not Radio 3, and it was the Eroica Quartet playing Mendelssohn's Eb Quartet. Sublime!

Just done some research on them, and they concentrate on authentic (in a period sense) interpretations; their romantic interpretations apparently use vibrato sparingly - which must be part of what made it so utterly sublime and spine-chillingly beautiful. Can't get the listen again function to go to the required bit immediately so will have to buy CD!

------

OK just found a very short excerpt but well worth listening to:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Eroica-Quartet...d/10901274.html

listen to the Andante Expressivo... argh it stops too soon....