Do you have PERFECT PITCH?

[tiger vomitt]

when i hear something not tuned to a440 it doesnt sound weird to me (i have perfect pitch on good days, slightly less than perfect on bad days ). it just sounds like theyre playing a different game.

having perfect pitch doesnt equal having a closed mind, fortunately. there are blue notes all over american music. blues and jazz are microtonal, even tho the word is usually reserved for snobbier descriptions. for me, i hear the microtones and i recognize them as that, it's notlike it makes the stuff sound bad ya know?

then again...

one time i went to an ozzy concert (1993 maybe? at the paramount next to madison square garden. they played a half step lower or a whole step lower from the albums, i guess so he could hit the notes easier or something. it was like i was hearing the sound they were making plus the version that i was used to, all going on in my head at the same time. like making clusters on the piano. it sucked!!

[audiofriction]

whoa, this is going all over the place... i think people aren't making enough distinction between the european/western system of music, the pure physics of hearing/sound, and other (non-western) definintions of music, etc etc.

to say that if you had perfect pitch, you would only like western "tonal" music doesn't make much sense. yeah, i've met people who say "because i have perfect pitch, i can't stand xyz music" but that's really their personal preference, not some sort of logical outgrowth. as an analogy, how about someone who can tell exactly how fast a car is going by looking at it, but they only like seeing cars that are going 5, 10, 15, 20 miles an hour, because they hate the "in-between" speeds.

eeldip was asking about those people and non-tempered music... well, let's not forget that the western equal-tempered system is NOT in tune. and that bugs me sometimes, and i'm not even picky.

and the Scientific American article i think was pretty shoddy. those people spoke in a similar pitch each day... so what? that doesn't reflect that they hear pitch more absolutely. couldn't it just reflect that their voice, which is controlled by muscles, is trained through repetition to do more or less the same thing each time they use it? it's not a shock that my voice sounds more-or-less the same every day. and i bet the pitch of my voice, when saying the exact same thing in the exact same situation, is about the same.

even if it does mean something, i'd still say that that is relative pitch, not perfect pitch. when i was in college and practicing the cello 6 hours a day or whatever, i began to recognize certain pitches even away from any instrument. but it was really "relative" pitch. i'd hear a pitch and recognize where it was on my cello, almost like recognizing someone's voice and saying "that's Mary" instantly.

i could go on and on... it's a fun subject, huh?

[supafuzz]

I have perfect relative pitch which sometimes is a curse..
but i enjoy my mellotron very much thank you!!

[eeldip]

i guess what i was thinking was that if one had perfect pitch, as well as some training to dislike things out of tune... like for example if you went to school for cello and you hammer tempered intervals in to your brain.

then if you hear traditional chinese instruments, or listen to "ancient music", do perfect 4ths and 5ths bug you? cause if you played them on your cello they would be "out of tune" (if you are playing tempered music). you know how when you listen to music you "play" it in your head.... i would figure there might be some disonance in there. and since most people hate disonance...


and regarding the article, what they didnt say was that the same sort of study was done on english speakers, and we didnt get anywhere near the same pitch every day...

so if you told a mandarin speaker... when you say "ma" in the first tone, that is a "D".

then they always can hear a "D" cause they can compare it to their "ma". and in a pure sense.. they have perfect pitch. not that this would be a particulary useful form of perfect pitch for a musician. but the implication, that goes contrary to the conventional wisdom, is that perfect pitch is learned.

[bobbydj]

It's the implicit optimism I like!

[uqbar]

i'd hear a pitch and recognize where it was on my cello, almost like recognizing someone's voice and saying "that's Mary" instantly.

That is perfect pitch. Congrats, do you feel any different?

[swingdoc]

I was at a piano recital last evening with 48 students ages 7 to 14. Talk about a night of perfect dissonance.

Hearing and naming pitch is a talent that has different levels of greatness.
I can pretty much hear an E or whatever, can name intervals well. But I'm far from perfect pitch. I know a guy that can hear anykind of pitches, noises etc, like a computer hum, and can say...thats a Bb. But he still doesnt have perfect pitch. Like he couldnt say thats a Bb, but a few cents high. Perfect pitch to me is a guy that can hear a tone, and not only say thats an A, but also say thats an A, but a bit flat at about 438. I only know it can be done cause I really know a guy that can do that. I assume since he can determine frquencies, any style or scale scheme of music notes could be clarified. The guys I know who have these great ears arent bugged by dissonance or things out of tune, any more than us other schmucks.

[black mariah]

Based on the people I've heard say they have perfect pitch, I think that it's mostly another one of those things that only people that buy $5500 speakers cables have. Anyone that can't stand a certain type of music because they have good PITCH RECOGNITION (a much better and more accurate term) is talking out of their ass. They don't like it simply because they don't like it. You don't need any reason other than that. If it's too dissonant, it's not your hearing that's doing it, it's your TASTE IN MUSIC. I wish I had better pitch recognition. Some of the complexities of music such as Glenn Branca's get lost on me sometimes. I'd totally suck at playing any non-fretted instrument too.

[Randy]

I had a friend in high school who had perfect pitch. We would test him with the analog tuner. He could tell us how close a tone was to the half-cent. He never failed, it was very twilight zone.

He loved all sorts of music, Devo was his favorite band. He would listen to recordings of kabuki performances, Thelonius Monk, pretty much anything. The only thing was that the note was THE NOTE. We were going to do "good thing" by Devo for a talent show and he had a hard time singing the high notes, so I suggested he could sing an octave lower. He honestly never thought of that, he thought I was a musical genius.

[soulfulstrut]

"The only thing was that the note was THE NOTE."

Exactly....I have perfect pitch and listen to and love all styles of music from all over the world, and even love The Shaggs

It doesn't make me sing in key, it doesn't make me stop and place note names to creaking doors, and microtones don't make me crazy...oh but it doesn't allow me to play with a capo or hit transpose on a keyboard; when my fingers form a certain chord I need to hear that chord or I fall apart!

What it does allow me to do is play songs after one listen, write melodies and chords on an airplane, pick out horn parts and harmonies....it just makes things easier.

One other thing: I have a hard time remembering lyrics to songs that I hear, because I'm always focusing on the changes...

[audiofriction]

wow, more fun stuff. more thoughts:
eeldip, if i saw the rest of the study, that would have made some difference. but i still felt a little underwhelmed. if they wanted to do something more definitive, how about this: there are literally thousands of western-classical musicians who are native tonal-language speakers. take 100 of them and 100 non-tonal speaking classical musicians, and compare how many have perfect pitch in each group. if this study is right, there should be a massive difference. but i am pretty certain there isn't...

i actually don't think i have "perfect pitch". when i used to be better at recognizing pitches, it was because i was practicing so much that i'd hear a pitch and go "hey, i just heard that 2 hours ago... it's an A!" it was like an involuntary memory... but rather short-term. i still do it sometimes, but it's not so accurate.

i don't really miss having the ability much, anyway. i can write music away from an instrument by using relative pitch, and i can get it close to the right pitch, often. if i'm wrong, i can transpose. if i'm really lost, i use my voice: i know the lowest pitch i can sing (it does change a bit depending on a few factors) then i just go from there.

i think that true perfect pitch is not really to be envied. the stories about detuned guitars or capos causing imaginary dissonance illustrate that!