I think those websites are scams, aswell.

IF, you could learn perfect pitch it could take years to learn it not weeks.

Perfect Pitch can be learned!

My dad has perfect pitch, and he didn't have it when he was my age (i.e. 17.) He said that he developed it because he began to listen to musical notes properly and relating what they actually sound like to their letter name. He said the fact that he had to sight-sing at church every week (as he was in a choir) definitely helped the process. But is is definitely true that most of the people I know who have PP, developed it at an early age.

I find that I have PP if I don't think about it too much - I often hear a note and instinctively know what it is. However, as soon as I start to think about it, I confuse myself and this is when I get it wrong. My theory is that all musicians have PP (as they are surrounded my musical notes all the time) but the problem is that most people don't realise that they do, and can't access it. If you think about it, your brain MUST be able to distinguish between notes of different frequencies - it's clever enough! As I say, I think the problem is that most people can't access it.

I'm really confused!!!!

When I was really really little my piano teacher tested me for perfect pitch and said I had near perfect pitch. I don't remember what the test was, that's just what my mom told me. So now I'm confused. If having perfect pitch means that you can identify a note out of thin air, then I don't have it, not even near it. Did I lose it, was my teacher confused, or what? I always thought perfect pitch meant you are really sensitive to pitch, which I am. For example, I can tell when something is just the tiniest bit sharp or flat and no one else notices. I can't, however, tell you what note it is. It seems like that would mean that all perfect pitch people would have to be trained before becoming perfect pitch. So anyway, what the heck am I?

QUOTE (Sotto Voce @ Jan 19 2005, 03:59 AM)

:huh:  :huh:  :huh:  :huh:  I'm really confused!!!! When I was really really little my piano teacher tested me for perfect pitch and said I had near perfect pitch.  I don't remember what the test was, that's just what my mom told me.  So now I'm confused. If having perfect pitch means that you can identify a note out of thin air, then I don't have it, not even near it.  Did I lose it, was my teacher confused, or what? I always thought perfect pitch meant you are really sensitive to pitch, which I am.  For example, I can tell when something is just the tiniest bit sharp or flat and no one else notices.  I can't, however, tell you what note it is.  It seems like that would mean that all perfect pitch people would have to be trained before becoming perfect pitch. So anyway, what the heck am I?

The potential is in remembering the pitch of a note you heard some days ago. The useful facility is being able to name it. The first you acquire unconsciously, usually at an early age, and it sounds as though you have it. The ability to put names to the pitches you remember is often acquired unconsciously too, but I expect you could do it consciously if you have the pitch memory. Try listening to an A for some minutes every day and check later whether you can remember what it sounds like. If so, then it is worth putting some time to remembering other pitches with names.

One reliable witness who acquired perfect pitch is the organist Gillian Weir. She went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. At their first meeting, Boulanger enquired whether Weir had perfect pitch, and on being told that she had not, told her to come back when she had. Weir then spent some weeks enjoying Paris in the company of an A tuning fork, to which she listened at frequent intervals. Once she had memorised that pitch she had, effectively, acquired perfect pitch, since everything else could be determined by its interval to the datum. What Weir did not specify, in the talk I heard, was the level of aural skill she had before this episode.

QUOTE (kenm @ Jan 19 2005, 10:15 AM)

One reliable witness who acquired perfect pitch is the organist Gillian Weir. She went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. At their first meeting, Boulanger enquired whether Weir had perfect pitch, and on being told that she had not, told her to come back when she had.

So typical Boulanger!!! Wasn't she absolutely incredible?

That's an interesting story kenm.

Sotto Voce: it is possible to have perfect pitch and then lose it if you don't use it. It may be that you had it when your teacher tested you and lost it; or it may be that your teacher was using a different definition of perfect pitch to what is generally considered here as perfect pitch, thus she may have meant something completely different. It is even possible that you'd just heard a known note before she did the test (unknown to her and you wouldn't think that it would affect you) although you'd have had to have good aural skills to do this at a very young age: especially without knowing it!

QUOTE (cecilia @ Jan 16 2005, 01:11 PM)

Yesterday in an AS music lesson one of my classmates said, "this keyboard's out of tune, the C is playing as a C sharp!" (It was a Clavinova so someone had put it on the Transpose function up a semitone.)  This prompted the question "Do you have perfect pitch?" to which the answer was "Yes, and it's a right pain sometimes!"

This reminds me of something I found out the other day. I was going through old camcorder footage of me, when I was younger, playing our old piano. Being quite an old instrument, it was tuned a semitone down: the giveaway was that the easy piano version of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata that I played, written in D minor, sounded to be in C# minor - rather a fortunate conincidence.... It wasn't until a few years later (when I was 9 or 10) that we got a new, A=440, piano.

Despite this, I still have perfect pitch at A=440 even though I was exposed to A=Ab for the first three years or so of playing the piano. It is often purported that if one doesn't develop ones perfect pitch abilities before age 7 then one has no chance; if this is the case, then by all rights I should have perfect pitch a semitone out, or not at all. This leads me to suspect that one can develop perfect pitch at fairly much any point with sufficient practise. I didn't do any intense aural training (other than that on the ABRSM practical exam syllabuses); all I did was read a a lot of music outside my lessons.

As for it being a pain - being called on to play out-of-tune pianos is near impossible if I'm playing by ear; if I'm not, and I know the piece really well, I can usually play it if I don't think about it - if I do, I try to transpose it, which doesn't work terribly well .

I took an online test for perfect pitch and here's what I got:

A(G) D#(D) A(G) D#(D) G#(F) C(B) F(E) A(A) C#(B) B© A(B) G(G) E(E) G(G) D(?) A#(B) B© B© D#(D#) A#(B) A#(B) C©

*notes in parenthesis are what I guessed, notes outside parenthisis are what was played

What does this mean? Obviously its not perfect pitch, but am I close enough to be able to aquire it?

P.S. the little copyright signs mean C's, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them

Do you have to name them all before you get the answers?
If not then after the first note you are relating the reast to it.
Then again you could actually have got them all right if your soundcard is not reproducing the correct pitch....

If that's the test I think it is, you have to open a separate page from the sound test to get the answers.

This one?

interesting article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...14/MN169148.DTL

Sotto Voce: your teacher may have been mistaken, my piano teacher told my mum I had perfect pitch when I was 10 and she was definitely wrong even then. If you played an octave of white notes on the piano I could tell you where you had started, and she thought that I was using perfect pitch, whereas actually I just knew the key signatures well and could work out from the intervals where the black notes should have been to work out the key. Not that that's necessarily the test your teacher used, but teachers can definitely be mistaken.

I tried that test Cecilia found, but for some reason my computer has random stopped playing MP3s... I'm confused... and annoyed grrrrrrrr!

QUOTE (cecilia @ Jan 19 2005, 10:12 PM)

This one?

yup

I got no perfect pitch.........

How depressing! I just took the test and got 1 right and a few only a note off.
The ones that were most difficult were the ones outside my voice range, as I can't feel those notes; they're just random notes in space.
Oh well...

I once played with a Saxophonist in a gig and he was using a soprano sax which is up a minor 3rd. So C actually sounds Eb. I was very very fortunately using a keyboard instead of a real piano (for I had no idea that I'll have to transpose, I was just told to go there and play) and I used the transpose function to move it up a minor 3rd. I was sight-reading and had no idea what I was playing, coz every note I played sounded wrong! Perfect pitch could really be a nuissance sometimes!

I have absolutely perfect pitch. It's just these flipping instruments that are all out of tune. What a state.

so if everyone in the world would tune to you rather than to tuning forks etc you'd be OK?

nn-nn, they'd be ok. And maybe we could melt down all these warped tuning forks.
Anyway, the big ones like C=32Hz don't half hurt when you whack your thigh with them.

LOLOL

Duck and cover, me...brolly up, hairing like crazy before that flying piano hits me...

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Feb 5 2005, 04:58 PM)

Anyway, the big ones like C=32Hz don't half hurt when you whack your thigh with them.

I like it! Seen the piano tuner do that! I wondered he didn't hurt himself he gives it quite a whack. Is a 32hz tuning fork big then?



.'.

QUOTE (Neon-lights @ Feb 5 2005, 06:58 PM)

Is a 32hz tuning fork big then?

Not necessarily. Changing the material and shape changes the pitch too, but it would have to be big for you to hear it by itself (like double basses and bass speakers). The best way might be to put its handle on the sound box of a large string instrument.