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Is "relative pitch" a meaningful concept in its own right, or is it defined solely in contradistinction to absolute pitch?

If only a very few possess absolute pitch, does everyone else have relative pitch?

How is relative pitch quantified? What do people mean when they say they have "very good" relative pitch?

Steven

Well I think pitch can certainly be relative to the sounds you hear.....meaning you hear a pitch and then another and you recognize the interval....so you know what the sounda are relative to each other.....but I've always thought that relative meant if someone played a key of the piano and you were to guess it...perfect pitch would know the pitch...relative would be really close...say 1/2 step.

rada

btw...just thought I'd offer this as well...when I tested into music school that is exactly one thing they did...they played 2 keys on the piano [ one at a time] to see if I knew 'relatively' where those sounds were...

rada

Relative Pitch: The ability to recognise any interval, and the ability to recognise any pitch having been given a starting pitch. But this definition assumes some training to give names to the pitches and intervals.

Extremes of range would make it harder.

If you play 2 pitches and ask someone which was higher, and they can't do this, maybe they don't have any ability to hear relative pitch (assuming this sort of person exists).
Or you could see if someone could identify whether 2 pitches were close or distant (compare pairs of pitches). No training needed for these tests.

Just some thoughts, I am not an expert.

For me relative pitch means that one needs a reference (every time, or somehow everytime) to spot the rest of the pitches, while absolute pitch needs no reference.

I sometimes wonder about that. I cannot name a note when played on the piano but I can come close. For me, my relative pitch is a liablity because I am so sensitive. I can listen to an orchestra and tell you which violin has a string out of tune. If I hear one off-pitch note, it's excruciating. No one else seems to notice. My piano technician finds me irritating. When I sing in an a capella choir, I find myself struggling to keep everyone on pitch. I'm glad I don't have perfect pitch. I'd probably go crazy.

My relative pitch:

Let me hear a middle C, then play any of the 12 tones, and I can identify the 2nd note.

I hear them as scale degrees instead of intervals. I can also hear a sharp or flat of a scale degree.

To train your ear for this, practice singing the major scale with numbers 1 thru 8, instead of do, re, mi,..... You will soon be able to hear G, preceeded by the C (reference pitch) as the 5th scale degree. Hence the interval of a perfect 5th. All the other scale degrees will start to sound familiar with practice.

BTW I don't have perfect pitch.

To me, relative pitch (which I have) means being able to find any other note given a reference pitch.

So, if you play a note on the piano and tell me what it is, I can tell you what the next note you play is because I can relate it to the first. In other words, I can hear the interval.

Another way of looking at it - if you played a melody for me on the piano, I could write it down. But since I don't have perfect pitch, I might not notate it in the correct key.

People who have good relative pitch can do this fairly easily and quickly. I can take dictation on an 4 measure phrase of four-voice chorale in 4-5 hearings. Some can do much better. Some can't do it at all.

I seem to manage composition, improvisation, sight-reading, and transcription fairly well without perfect pitch. Since I've never had perfect pitch, I don't really feel like anything's missing, and I attribute my relative pitch to good Kodaly instruction throughout middle and high school.

Exactly. (And, that therefore if you know what's the first note, you know what's the second note too.)

It's quite separate and distinct from perfect pitch. "Perfect" is better, but I'm not sure it's a huge advantage over relative. Then again I'm biased because I've got the latter but not the former.

Interesting.....we're getting into different levels of "pitch ability."

I think the ability to know "which pitch is higher" doesn't at all mean someone has relative pitch; it just means they have a decent ear. I'd guess there many people who would be almost 100% able to do that but lack relative pitch.

well the term relative pitch certainly would encompass the ability to distinguish higher from lower, its just that whenever musicians/students are tested on relative pitch it naturally goes much farther than that. Its the same skill, but because it can be developed easily through training, (unlike perfect pitch which is difficult or impossible to learn depending on who you ask) there is a big difference between 'levels' of relative pitch ability.

Perfect pitch has equally varying levels of ability...some people can name single notes correctly maybe 70% of the time, while others can effortlessly transcribe complex chords. Myself, I can sing/imagine C3 or F3 without a reference pitch, because my singing experience has taught my vocal chords to remember the muscle coordination and connected it to those frequencies; I certainly dont have what people would call perfect pitch yet I can find any note by reference to C or F. So I am like those who can tell lower from higher without distinguishing intervals.

To use colors as a comparison: absolute pitch is determining the color pink just by looking at it while relative pitch is determing something is pink by understanding it is several shade lighther than red.

Relative pitch is when someone is able to identify an interval RELATIVE to a starting note. That's why they call it relative pitch - because its relative.

Absolute pitch is when someone knows a pitch so well that he can immediately tell you what note it is.






I don't get it. What's all the fuss about Absolute pitch? All it is is just knowing a pitch so well that you are able to recognize it, use it, sing it, etc.

I would say that this mostly has to do with speed and required effort. If you hear a middle C followed by some other tone, do you have to think for a while to figure out what the second tone is or is the exact relationship to C immediately apparent without effort. If the latter, then you have very good relative pitch.

As for the discussion about knowing which note is higher, it is not always that easy. Here's a nice test: http://tonometric.com/adaptivepitch/
I find it quite hard to tell for notes separated by 0.375Hz or less. At 0,046875Hz it is rather impossible...

I can hear a single note and tell you what note that is, but Franz Mohr calls that relative pitch, so I don't know.

There is a short article in the Wikipedia on relative pitch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_pitch

I seem to have relative pitch, but not perfect pitch...

Are you sure that's what he meant?

If that's really what he said and meant, he's just wrong.
These terms have specific and well-defined meanings. If some people misuse them, it's not our fault.

.....and we can take that last part even further. "Training" can not only give you the knowledge to give names to the pitches and intervals, it can give you relative pitch.

I didn't have it till I studied music theory and "ear training" in college, and probably still wouldn't have it otherwise. We were drilled on all the intervals -- and that's why I know them and how I have relative pitch.

Tossing your mother in law out the window?

stop making me giggle, pianoloverus!

Re NickN, yes that's why I mentioned ability to distinguish higher and lower because I began my first post thinking "of course I know what relative pitch is.." then I came up against the problem of trained vs untrained RP. Training definitely makes a difference to the level of RP skills as well as the, er flavour. For example I can write out a Bach chorale, but a jazz piece of the same complexity would definitely take a lot more effort, those strange jazz harmonies and progressions are not burned into my brain in the same way. The sounds can be confusing. But you'd probably say I have very good relative pitch, I can hear any interval without thinking of mnemonics, an interval is an absolute sound.

My RP skills were still completely intact after a few decades of not playing music at all, I was surprised how good they were after being unused for that long. The day I discovered this (wrote down a piece from a CD without reference to a keyboard) was a bit of a revelation and was my first small step toward becoming a full time musician. The memory is very vivid, probably because these RP skills have been such a help in this development.