Do You Have Perfect Pitch & Can It Be Developed?

Do you have perfect pitch and do you think it can be developed?

I don't have it and I am uncertain as to whether or not it can be developed. Some say it can be developed, while others disagree. Paul Hindemith believed all could develop it. Even Nico Canzano (old member here) said he developed it in his early teens.

While I don't have it, there are rare times when I'll hear a note sound and I know exactly what it is and will check and confirm I was right. I can't really explain those rare times, but it happens here and there.

if something is in D flat major, i would be able to tell. but if you tell me: "hey, its actually in D major." i would actually believe you.

if i hear a note on the piano, i can 98% or the time tell what note it is. but if you tell me to sing a specific note at a random time, i wouldn't be able to.

so no, i dont have a perfect pitch.

I don't have perfect pitch, but it can definitely be developed with training. I know plenty of people who did. Personally, I don't see any reason to however. It is a "cool skill" to have at times, but its actual uses for a musician are limited if you have a well developed relative pitch. You'll probably never really "need" it.

It can even become irritating when transposing music, or when listening to pieces in other tunings (say, when listening to baroque music played about a half tone lower) etc.

What Gardener said, as always... I think I'll give him an amount of $ and let him post instead of me! :D

I clicked "no, it cannot be developed" but by accident :X

no, I don't have perfect pitch but I do believe it can be developed, and I've had people (teachers included) tell me how they developed it, or developed really good relative pitch.

For some reason, though, I can almost always tell if I hear something in C minor. Maybe it's because it used to be my really favourite scale, and my first pieces were all written in C minor, so...

I'm surprised so many people think it can be developed. There are some who insist it cannot be.

Those are probably the same people who think you need to be born a certain way to learn how to sing.

Don't listen to those people.

Some people also believe the earth is flat.

And trust me, if you sat down 10 minutes every single day and played the A string of your guitar continuously next to your ear (assuming your guitar is tuned properly each time), then after a month you'll be able to guess with high accuracy whether a particular note is A or not (and you'd be able to sing an A quite accurately too).

One of my teachers told us how she developed perfect pitch (or perfect relative pitch) just by playing in an orchestra at a regular basis, just by listening to that tuning A of the orchestra before each rehearsal, and before tuning her own instrument too (she used to play the viola, I think).

It is incredible what little things can do over a long period of time if done regularly (such as exercising, eating healthily, practising sight-reading and sight-singing, making origami, anything).

Also it should be noted that all people have a very rough kind of "perfect pitch" already, i.e. the ability to make certain absolute distinctions between different frequencies that have nothing to do with intervallic relationships. This is the way we can distinguish different vowels, regardless on which pitch they are sung/spoken: Every vowel has its own, distinct set of formants (resonanating frequencies) that are on rather fixed frequencies for each vowel, and accentuate the overtones in their vicinity. For example, the vowel "O" has formants at about 400 Hz, 800 Hz, 2600 Hz, etc. Any tone sung on the vowel "O" has therefore strong overtones in these areas, which is how we recognize that we are hearing an "O". If the second of these formants would move to 1700 Hz with the others staying at the same place, we'd get the impression of the vowel "E".

Our recognition of these formants is based on the absolute frequencies and not their intervallic distance to each other. This is why it sounds so unnatural to us when a human voice is transposed to another register, even if this register is still perfectly in the range of the human voice. We get the famous "Micky Mouse" effect when transposing something upwards and it becomes almost impossible to still reckognize the vowels (we might however still understand the meaning of the words, since the consonants are much more important for this).

This shows that we -all- have an absolute sense of where certain frequencies are, just not consciously. And in many cases not very accurately. But this means that perfect pitch isn't something you either have or don't have, but that it's mostly just a question of precision and developing an awareness of the frequency mappings we naturally have.

To make a more primitive example: If one played a 10000 Hz tone to one group of 100 people and asked them whether it is a low tone or a high tone, I'm sure a very large percentage (probably all 100, assuming all 100 can still hear up to 10000 Hz) would agree that it's a high tone. Without requiring any reference pitch. This is already an extremely primitive form of "perfect pitch", i.e. the ability to classify pitches by frequency without a reference. (Obviously, if we played them a 400 Hz tone, we'd get much more varied results, based on the fact that "high" and "low" are such vague terms. This only works well for extreme frequencies.)

One could show this even more fundamentally by looking at the basic biology: Our inner ears basically works like a set of resonators, i.e. different receptors that all listen to a specific frequency range. This means that the signals that are sent to our brains contain exact frequency values of everything we hear, the question is merely how our brain is trained to interprete them.

I'd argue that there really is no such thing as perfect pitch, just good relative pitch... since you're just referencing a memorized tone and comparing the two (as in jujimufu's example). Even if you're "picking the note out of the air" you're still using an internal reference to determine it.

i do think there is no such thing as a real perfect pitch. your brain would have to be a computer that can identify the frequency perfectly every time.

And trust me, if you sat down 10 minutes every single day and played the A string of your guitar continuously next to your ear (assuming your guitar is tuned properly each time), then after a month you'll be able to guess with high accuracy whether a particular note is A or not (and you'd be able to sing an A quite accurately too).

*James turns on his keyboard, punches in a clarinet patch that has no vibrato, wedges his sustain pedal down under the stand, and taps A4*

Well... if I do this every time I visit the forum, and leave the A sustaining for the duration of my forum visits every day... let's see if I develop a sense for recognising the frequency 440.

*randomly sings the note now and then*

Let's hope this doesn't drive my parents nuts. :ermm:

My perfect pitch abilities are not nearly that which some people have. However I can recognize and hear different pitches. However 2 years ago I had no abilities to do this whatsoever. So I say you can learn it, because I am :P

hey just thought I'd bump this thread up from like 3 months ago because I just read it and found it fairly interesting.

I do have perfect pitch, and as far as I know, I was born with it because one day, rather than realizing that I could tell any pitch out of thin air, I realized that no one else around me could do this.

It definitely has its advantages and such in a lot of areas musically. It also has some disadvantages however in the end I don't consider myself any more or less special than another musician.

This is a cool thread, hope it keeps going

Hmmmm. I have perfect pitch... but it is PERFECT after I've been playing a few notes on the piano.

Lets say, that I haven't played any music, I'll tell you that the note you are playing is D (when it is Db). But when I have played piano (once a day), I'll be able to tell you any note for the rest of the day.

Quite a funny story really... Once my friend showed me a "virtuoso" recorder piece on YouTube. I said it wasn't very difficult as it was in D. We walked to the piano... and it was D! When I did my Unisa gr7 piano, the examiner asked me for a pitch that I would be able to sing with. So I said B. So gave me a G, but I persisted on B. After testing me on perfect pitch, she gave me 100% for my hearing tests! How great is that!

In another instance, I was asked to give the notes to the (----) Youth Choir while on tour. However, with 40 people chatting about, it was sometimes difficult to give a pure F. But I was right most of the time, or I got close anyway.

Bless your hearts! Listen with your mind!

*James turns on his keyboard, punches in a clarinet patch that has no vibrato, wedges his sustain pedal down under the stand, and taps A4*

Well... if I do this every time I visit the forum, and leave the A sustaining for the duration of my forum visits every day... let's see if I develop a sense for recognising the frequency 440.

*randomly sings the note now and then*

Let's hope this doesn't drive my parents nuts. :ermm:

Let me know if that works for you! A long time ago, I set a C to play in Sibelius indefinitely more or less and listened to it constantly for about 20 minutes several times a day for about a week. Probably not long enough for it to really train my ear to the sound of a C (if indeed that method works).

What I hypothesize might be a better method of learning some kind of relative pitch is to write a Max patch or some other kind of note generator that creates random notes of random durations, playing one at a time at a fairly quick tempo. But one particular pitch class would be accented heavily among all the notes played, say 75% louder than other pitches. I really have no scientific basis in suggesting this, but it makes sense that learning what a pitch is would be easier when it's surrounded by other notes in varying "context."

I don't have perfect pitch, just good relative pitch and decent pitch memory. I'm sure perfect pitch (or "perfect" pitch) could be developed, but I just carry around a tuning fork instead... Is perfect pitch just very good pitch memory, or is there something more than that? Like, do you have to match pitches you hear with pitches in your head to identify them, or do all pitches come immediately identifiable? I've never quite understood this...

My take on perfect pitch is that it's just very good relative pitch (which most musicians eventually develop anyway) that the person can very quickly remember the reference pitch.

I don't have perfect pitch, just good relative pitch and decent pitch memory. I'm sure perfect pitch (or "perfect" pitch) could be developed, but I just carry around a tuning fork instead... Is perfect pitch just very good pitch memory, or is there something more than that? Like, do you have to match pitches you hear with pitches in your head to identify them, or do all pitches come immediately identifiable? I've never quite understood this...

I think it's more like seeing colors from what I've been told. As in, you don't need to carry around a pack of pigment swatches to know which color you're seeing is red, you instantly and instinctually know that it's red. So you'd know the pitch right away from the way it sounds.

My take on perfect pitch is that it's just very good relative pitch (which most musicians eventually develop anyway) that the person can very quickly remember the reference pitch.

Not all people with perfect pitch have a very good relative pitch though. There are non-musicians who can easily identify a pitch as what it is, but have great difficulty reckognizing intervals (unless they have enough musical training to deduce the intervals from the absolute pitch difference). I've met such people.

Yes, I have perfect pitch and I actually find it quite useful in the arena of composition. Key plays an important role in my compositions. Certain keys have moods, feelings, etc. associated with them. Therefore, when I think of a tune, I automatically know what key it is in and I can play it on the piano immediately.

Unfortunately, I don't think that it can be developed unless a person possesses a certain genetic predisposition. I have yet to meet someone who wasn't "born" with it or who actively worked to develop it.

If I play in my mind the beginning of the "Alpine Symphony", 95% of the times I will hit the Bb correctly .....

I also have other "reference points" like the D in "O Fortuna" which half of the times doesn't hit the true D,

I haven't done anything special to "improve" this ability, but I might try some methods

Nicola,

You may be right, but it sounds like you may have been 'born' with it and you simply built confidence in your skill instead of 'improving' it...

I guess we'll never know ;)

P.S. Wow! You're from Michigan too? It really is a small world :)

Nicola,

You may be right, but it sounds like you may have been 'born' with it and you simply built confidence in your skill instead of 'improving' it...

I guess we'll never know ;)

P.S. Wow! You're from Michigan too? It really is a small world :)

Nahh... I know for a FACT I didn't have it as a kid and even up until a few months ago. But, then I found that I can remember a D ANY time I think of "O fortuna". Literally ANY time. And, from there, I can discern any key. And, I am trying to see if I can just FIND it in mid-air, and most of the time it is successful.

Yes, I have it :)

But I don't know if it can be developed. One of my friends developed it with training, but I'm not sure if it would work for everyone