Do You Have Perfect Pitch & Can It Be Developed?

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

lolz. Of COURSE you do, Heckel! You seem to have to have everything!!1

lolz. Of COURSE you do, Heckel! You seem to have to have everything!!1

LOL!!!!!!

Same with me, Morivou. If I need to pull an E out of midair, I think of a flute solo I played in high school, or if I need an A, I think of a particular partita out of en etude book.

lolz. Of COURSE you do, Heckel! You seem to have to have everything!!1

lol thanks :P

You are SO welcome.

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.

I thought to post something like this, so I simply decided to quote Gardener - I see it the same way.

I know some people who developed perfect pitch later in their life.

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.

Just out of curiosity, since I am no charlie parker when it comes to improv, but wouldn't it be a useful skill for improv, since you can hear what you want to play in your head, and already know that on whatever you're playing its note A B and C, instead of just knowing that whatever you want to play sounds somewhat similar to what you hear in your head?

I don't have perfect pitch.

However, I have really good aural skills from several years of practice and training.

I also have some reference pitches memorized...

So basically, I can look at a score and figure everything out by ear and with my aural skills. And... I think that's the point.

@ Mathieu/Nicola: Yeah. The point is that as soon as you do have any pitch context (be that a key or even just a single note), it all comes down to relative pitch. Most improvisations would very quickly give you such a pitch context.

Of course, perfect pitch can be helpful there as soon as you lose that context for some reason. In a dense atonal field you might easily "lose track" of your reference tones and then having perfect pitch could let you enter again with some more security, I guess. And it can always be a "fail-safe" in any other cases where your relative pitch momentarily blacks out to re-establish a context, be that when listening to something atonal where no reference pitch is always deducable, or when dealing with complex tonal modulations when the music moves towards a different harmonical context that you can't immediately follow. So sure, perfect pitch can be a great help there. But those are all things that are covered by relative pitch as well and if you train yourself well in that you probably will rarely need the additional "security" perfect pitch may provide. (And there are always other issues you have to cope with there, as mentioned, such as people transposing pieces, pieces in different tunings, etc.)

P.S. One more thing regarding improvisations and the need to "hear what you play before you play it": I actually don't think this is strictly necessary. If, say, an improvisation is going on and you don't know what key it is in and you're supposed to set in, I think it's entirely possible to set in on any note, as long as you then "justify" that note by what you play after it. In other words: You play something, which immediately gives you the tonal context you need that allows you to continue to play in a way that makes the first note seem entirely planned. I have no way of "proving" this of course, but I'm pretty convinced that this is possible for a good improvisor in almost any style of music - and even if you don't manage to "justify" it completely it's just one non-perfect note. And isn't improvisation all about tons of "imperfect" notes? You can get away with a lot in an impro if you're good at it. (I'd even suspect that "being afraid of not getting away with it" is one of the most typical problems that inhibits many people starting to improvise.)

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.

I don't have parfect pitch but I'm training.

Arrielavender

I am very interesting for the ''keys moods'' I have heard that the romantic composers was mostly using flat keys but I personaly can't hear the difference.

Also I have heard that Gm is the most melancholy key.

I wanna ask that things are standart to all of us or are changing from ear to ear?

glass000: This has been discussed in several threads, so you might want to check those out. For example:

Key Characteristics

or

Whites vs Blacks

But as a quick answer: No, you can be pretty sure that emotional connotations change from person to person, so G minor probably won't be "melancholical" to everyone.

Neither do I have perfect pitch, but by having listened to certain pieces I have somewhat learned to recognize some relevant pitches in those.

Once on a theory lesson my teacher played random chords on the piano and asked about each chord if they were the a minor chord (without us seeing the keyboard). At one point I recognized one chord immediately and pointed out that no, it's not a minor, it is g minor. Thanks to Giazotto's Adagio in g. ;) I also use a certain unknown piano piece in G major to find B, and Beethoven's Fifth to find c minor. So I guess this G note is stuck in me for now. :P

Once the same teacher asked me to sing out a C, but I failed and produced an E. :(

Consider yourself to have met one! I developed perfect pitch years ago when I realized, like SYS here, that I recall pieces I've heard in the right key. From there, I just sort of built off of it.

Most people can do this. Tests at Stanford University have shown people get within 95% of the key of most pieces/songs.

I browsed through the topic, but this may have been said before:

I read this in "This is Your Brain on Music" by musician/producer/neurologist Daniel Levitin. Perfect pitch is a genetic quality and cannot be developed if you don't have it. However, when you hear a note often enough, it will be stored in your long-term memory, as an absolute pitch. So for example I don't have perfect pitch, but if you ask me to sing Confirmation by Charlie Parker, I'll start on A 95% of the time. This skill can be developed, and I guess you could just as well call it "perfect pitch" too, as long as you remember there is a difference between genetic and developed perfect pitch.

I don't have perfect pitch, but...

I recently discovered (just after I first read this thread, incidentally) that I can accurately sing (or think of singing, more like) an Ab and C# without an external reference (the Ab/C# comes from the beginning of a piece for Eb Alto Saxophone, and on saxophone the notes are F/Bb). I've been thinking of those pitches and then checking them with an external reference, usually a piano, regularly; I "hit" the correct pitches about 80-90% of the time (the times I missed mostly happened if I did it immediately after listening to music; however, if I have a moment of silence after listening to music, I can "hit" the pitches).

I'll see if anything comes of this in the following days and weeks and then post again.

I do have decent relative pitch, so I'll see if I can combine relative pitch and my newfound Ab/C# singing abilities. :P

I don't have perfect pitch either, but I also have a few reference pitches memorized.

Ab, I get correctly about 99% of the time, even if I just listened to some other music. I have Arcade Fire's "Crown of Love" to thank for that.

Also, I get E correctly about 80% of the time, thanks to Muse's "Space Dementia"

The main way I manage to get those two often, though, is to pick songs that have very memorable sounds. For example, in Crown of Love, the singer's voice is very wavering and shaky, which sticks in my head. Also, in Space Dementia, there is a high E on piano that sticks out very noticeably.

I have been working on it. I can figure out a sung note to usually with in a half step just by knowing my vocal range. If it's on the piano I can almost always get it - especially if the notes are a chord. I also think that you can't develop "perfect-pitch" because that is always there and it seems like a natural thing you are born with. But you can recognize almost all notes by just working on it.

If there is no such thing as Perfect Pitch then what did Mozart have??

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).

I don't have PERFECT pitch but I have pretty good relative pitch which I have gained from playing the violin for so many years and tuning before every time I practiced plus orchestra rehearsals etc. I'm also really good with recognizing and naming intervals which I also think has come from playing the violin. You can feel the whole steps and half steps with your fingers and hear the result.

I think that, where people have argued the veracity of perfect pitch, I would agree - to a point.

I could tell you precisely what note you were playing, at any given time - by working from F major. I would not, however, have the exact note out of thin air. It would require some (practised) math.

Maybe we're all tuned to a certain frequency, and when developed and honed, we can use that to our advantage?

All of my compositions begin in F Major - Unless I make a concerted effort otherwise!

For me the most difficult part is something that I will call "Sound-distraction" ...

In complete silence is easier, you use one of those reference points you have in you head, but when there is sounds or music, makes you doubt.

How do you "reset" your mind to bring up a reference (recalling a particular piece) ?

That would be the problem for me.