Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards How many of you have perfect pitch?

Good heavens! Do you know how many cents out it was? - it would have affected speed and pitch, of course, so the record would have got longer in the 90s by some seconds, maybe. Have you read the book which specifically tells he story of the album? I haven't, but I have read several biographies of Miles Davis and his music, but I don't remember reading about this nugget of information.

Those of you with perfect pitch....

Listen to the single version of Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street and compare with the album version. In order to make a longish song more palatable for pop radio stations the album version was edited. It was also sped up by about 4% thereby raising the pitch. I like the original album version but some seem to prefer the single version. I don't know whether they sped it up by the precise amount required to raise it a semi-tone (or whatever) or whether it was an entirely arbitrary exercise. I can only assume if it wasn't done with extreme care those of you with perfect pitch will find it an uncomfortable listen.

Well, maybe consider this?

My summer place is on a hill in Mass, overlooking the beach and a lake. There's an abundance of wildlife, including multiple bird tribes who inhabit our property.

The sun comes up, and they are vocal. Like from 4:30 am to 7:00 am during the summer. I am forced to listen to them when I am awake, asleep, etc.

They are all arguing, mating, bounding territory loudly with a consistent musical language. Not our scale, to be sure, but a scale of their own. And they all follow it religiously. It's a freakin' symphony most mornings. The patterns and intonations are all there, if you want to listen for them.

Just goes to the point -- music is much deeper in our DNA than most of us realize.

Back when I was playing Jazz-Rock Trombone I used many psychedelics while playing and I could see the notes coming out of my horn and the notes were different [color:#009900]colors. I then noticed that I could see the notes bouncing off the walls and coming bak to my horn. I would then shoot more different color notes at the returning notes which blended the notes with some wild results. The nights I did these things the next horn player that was expected to solo when I was finished would be standing there staring at me. Other musicians came to the club and would record my solos. I even Razzed Miles Davis one night!
Ah, the wonders of plant-life.

I ended-up quitting jazz-rock because I started hearing "A Kristal Ship" by the Doors following me around. NO needles for me!

P.S. Louie Armstrong always smoked herbs before he played.

It's sped up to raise it by almost a semitone. But it's still very noticeably off -. short of a complete semitone by about 25 cents. Back in those days, if you wanted to play along, you had to buy the album.

My brother does. I like to set my dp half way between tunings to see him squirm.

Great question, CyberGene!

This topic is of particular interest to me and since you brought it up, you've inspired me to search the internet to see if my experience is something that occurs or if it's unusual: I think I had it and I lost it.

I had a little over 2 years of lessons between the ages of 6 and 8. Back then, when I heard a note, I always knew what note was played. And in school, in music theory class when we had musical dictation (I'm not sure if that's how it's called in english) I never missed a single not. Ever. And I was able to reproduce any melodic line on the piano naturally. After this, I changed schools and stopped music lessons due to circumstances. I only played very rarely afterwards, by my own initiative, but no more studying or progressing. I learned a new piece every few years, but that was about it.

Afterwards, in highschool, I had a prolongued inflamation of both ears after a couple of hours of exposure to really loud noise. My hearing was muffled (almost like underwater) for about 1-2 weeks. Afterwards it got back to normal, although I have no way of knowing if any permanent (subtle) damage was done.

Now, 20 years after my "perfect pitch" experience, a good while ago I became aware that I don't have the certainty of what notes are playing anymore. Sometimes I nail it, but plenty of times I don't. Now I'm left wondering if maybe I didn't really have perfect pitch, despite the perfect dictation tests, or if I lost it due to lack of usage (long breaks in playing), or if it maybe had anything to do with the auditory mishap in highschool.

Anybody else had a similar experience of a deterioration of the "musical ear"?

PS. Anybody had experience with successful ear training? And maybe at a later point in life, not at a young age?

What exactly did the dictation tests evaluate, and how?

Apparently, you can 'lose' perfect pitch deliberately, but you can't 'gain' it if you don't have it from young, no matter what training you have.

I heard an interview in a BBC Radio 3 program about perfect pitch, where a freelance violinist with period-instrument orchestras talked about it. She had perfect pitch from when she understood what it actually was, and thought that everyone else had it when she was a violin student, and couldn't understand why people couldn't just tune their string instruments without someone else playing the 'A'. When she started playing in orchestras, she was always the person who played 'A', around which everyone else tuned their instruments.

Then she caught the period instrument bug, and to her dismay, was unable to fit her sense of pitch in with the other players, because they played almost a semitone lower. (And she couldn't play in orchestras in Vienna or Berlin, because they play at a higher pitch.) There was no 'standard' for HIP performances in those early days either - how much lower than A=440 seemed quite arbitrary and even varied from one performance to the next. She forced herself to concentrate on relative pitch and disregard her own innate sense of pitch when playing from the music, and after several months, found that it got easier and easier, and says that she no longer has perfect pitch these days, and happily switch between period and modern pitch, and everything in between, depending on whether she was performing or teaching.

I've read a lot about perfect pitch, including how many of the great composers had it. More interesting of course are the ones that didn't have it. There's no consensus besides self-"confessed" ones such as Stravinsky (a cheeky comment on my side would be it's no surprise :D), Leonard Bernstein who famously sung out of tune to the orchestra, Ravel (also no surprise given how his music is also a lot about harmonic and orchestral color, subtle rhythmic development, etc.) and there are some speculations that Brahms didn't have it (he had to accompany a singer on a piano that was tuned a semitone lower, so he had to transpose a semitone higher, pressing "wrong" keys which supposedly would be almost impossible if he had perfect pitch). There are speculations about Tchaikovsky and Wagner.

BTW, Bach was famous with stating to his composition pupils that one should be able to compose by hearing music entirely in their head. If that's not the case and a pupil needed a clavier to compose, Bach would discourage them to become composers at all. On the other hand there was no standard tuning in his time and he would have had to cope with organs of various tunings so I am wondering if he was that kind of guy, similar to the violinist friend of Bennevis, who learned to ignore his perfect pitch or just cope with varying tuning challenges.

Singing out of tune would occur if the 'singer' vocal muscles weren't trained. In that regard, the only difference between those with absolute pitch and those without is that they would know they weren't keeping absolute pitch as they killed a song.

Also, being able to compose in ones head doesn't require absolute pitch: absolute pitch is the ability to discriminate pitches heard aurally----i.e., a hard-wired neural link between the part of the hindbrain processing aural signals and areas of the brain encoding a memory of that pitch. The ability to hear pitches in your head is something totally different. Many people have little difficulty listening to a piece of music and then playing it back verbatim in their head, with a pretty complete set of instruments, textures, etc. Drawing the connection between what you can hear in your "mind's ear" and which notes are being played requires absolute pitch.

OK, maybe used the wrong word. He didn't sing out of tune, rather in another tonality, e.g. no perfect pitch possesion... Not sure how you would call that in English.

P.S. to my previous statement about Bach: hearing the music in your head and being able to compose without the aid of a piano is not a proof of perfect pitch of course. I could do that in the past when I used to play a lot, especially when improvising jazz and I never had perfect pitch. It was just a very well developed relative pitch which I also lost to some degree after I stopped playing jazz.

It's not necessary to have perfect pitch to compose without using a piano or other instrument. After all, music students have to harmonize melodies in four-part harmony in the style of Bach chorales, or compose a short piece to a specification during exams (as I did). They have to be able to 'hear' the music in their heads to do that.

I composed a lot during my student days in high school during boring school lessons or evening 'prep' (when I thought I could get away with it) entirely in my head, and writing it down on manuscript paper, and later played it on the piano to check for errors.

BTW, Stravinsky couldn't compose without the piano, though most composers could.

For those who are interested, Synesthesia of colour and sound occurs when either a hard-wired connection is made between areas of the hind-brain that process colour and sound, or, due to failure to inhibit feedback in cortical circuits. Hence why synesthesiacs of this kind have quite accurate quasi-absolute pitch! The brain is so quick at making associations between the colour seen and the pitch, so a synesthesiac more or less instantly knows the pitch; however, with proper absolute pitch, the pitch instantly ignites the association without any reference to observed colours in the visual field. In 2015, researchers detected a close functional link between the auditory cortex in the brain and the frontal lobe. Auditory perception doesn't only depend on the integrity of the auditory cortex, but also especially on the linking of the auditory cortex with super-ordinate brain structures that process memory information,". It is hypothesized that these connections are easier to make whilst the brain is very plastic i.e., within the first 4 to 6 years of age.

Perfect, no. Darned close, yes. I will know what note you're playing on the piano just to hear. I can set the frequency of a note just out of thin air and be very close.

That said, not very useful. Since I play by ear, I will completely fall apart at anything much past a half step off, what I'm hearing won't match the places my hands are and that feedback is not optional for me.

I envy people who can mechanically play anything on a page irrespective of hearing anything. I can't.

I guess we all want what we don't have...

I suppose they evaluated our ability to recognize notes. The teacher would play random notes on the piano and we would have to transcribe them as sheet music. For a time (I don't remember how long) she would start the test by telling us the first note, which would actually result in relative pitch, but later during the lessons the tests became completely blind, without a starting point, which would actually test perfect pitch, I believe. I know for certain I performed perfectly in both instances. And I was also able to play on the piano any melody I heard, but that may speak less towards perfect pitch.
This was in stark contrast to my vocal abilities which were the worst in my class and almost prevented me from entering the music school. I could only reach from C to G (same octave), and even those without too much precision. Meanwhile my voice got significantly better (lots of singing while playing the guitar certainly helped) and I sound palatable and cover 2 full octaves. But the perfect pitch is certainly gone

One last thing to add to the way my brain seems to work - I had very poor visualizing skills and the visual memory certainly wasn't part of my skillset. Face memory was terrible, generic shapes less so, but it was nearly impossible to visualize either in my mind. Meanwhile, the visualizing skills and visual memory have significantly improved. I have wondered in the past if this improvement wasn't in some way correlated with the decrease in hearing precision.

@Bennevis, interesting thing, that interview. Thank you for sharing and shedding some more light onto my question!

That's so interesting, mcoll. The music pitch tests that I know of (whether dictation or musical IQ tone tests) have always been relative. It's curious that you were effectively given perfect pitch tests too - or rather, as you describe it, perfect pitch was just part of the skill set being tested and refined.

I do not have any pure kind of pitch recognition. In fact, I see chords and tone relationships as coloured geometric blocks or real world objects. It's probably a way of characterising musical phenomena for one who is totally void of the gift of perfect pitch.

Your story and bennevis's story are fascinating. I'd never thought of the possibility of losing this capability, any more than you forget how to ride a bike or swim, which does not happen - you just get out of practice.

Synesthesia was a valuable asset to the U.S. military during WWII.

How was that? It's easy to imagine the comforting effect of hearing a fast approaching V2 as a large baby faced apricot. But I really can't see how it helped when the fxxxxr landed on your head.

Not sure if this is kind of synesthesia but when playing the piano I often perceive various imaginary scents (luckily for me pleasant ones), most often resembling imaginary perfumes. It's not too often but that has been a persistent trait I have ever since I started playing piano. BTW I have a thing with my olfactory which is overly sensitive and I am as good as a hound when detecting even the tiniest smells. More often than not I am ridiculed for that because I always complain about unpleasant odors Anyway, I think since I have a very developed olfactory system, maybe it sometimes gets triggered by the neighboring music center in the brain? Who knows...