Perfect/Absolute Pitch

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http://detrave.net/nblume/perfect-pitch/ I beat the game so many times

I'm pretty sure it's something you learn, though I suppose there will always be people who are unable to learn certain things, no matter how hard they try.

I think I have it, or am very close to it.

Does it count if you can sing pitches, but can't do it unless you hear it?

Any song I hear just about I'm pretty much dead on with it, but if someone were to say... "sing me a G" I wouldn't know what they meant unless I heard it first.

I have perfect pitch and sometimes take part in research studies which measure it. Lots of people just hate you for having it - they can be really rude and mean. It's one of the things I "do" well haha except for math. I studied music professionally and didn't even know I had it until years later as an adult, and I studied music at a late age. I can't explain it, but I'm glad to have it. There is a test online if you want to see how you score (my last score was 100% - I was really paying attention and not having any trouble clicking with the mouse haha - the chance of getting such a score just by pure guesswork would be 1 in a trillion for the first test, which had 80 tones to identify, according to their website). I feel good when I do perfect pitch games too -there is one online which scores you and it's fun to play. On the other hand, I'm on disability and have trouble with social interactions, so you can't have everything! If anyone is from Montreal, let me know, come say hello to me!

Shawn, Montreal Canada

Bonjour Shawn! Je suis d'Ontario.

I love that game - but at level 16 it seems to stop working, don't know if you noticed that.

ya i wish there was more

When I was in my late teens and early twenty I could just about figure out anything on Guitar,
But when I started playing in my mid teens it seemed to take me longer than normal to learn to form cords and learn where all the notes where, and I had trouble keeping time because that required thinking about two things at once.

Yes, I have noticed this, too. I've speculated that perfect pitch has given me a wicked good ear, which really comes in handy when you're taking ear training courses. In fact, I was so naturally good at sight singing I passed out of all of those classes in college.

Relative pitch is important, too, but I would say that perfect pitch has given me a distinct advantage when playing by ear. Now, I'm a fiddler and pretty much completely play by ear (hardly ever from music). It feels so much more natural to me.

How can you tell? I don't even know quite what it means. It seems to me like most people can hit exact notes when they sing. (Like, the happy birthday song is ALWAYS the same. The tune does not drift at ALL even though it's pretty much only transferred from person to person by mouth instead of recording.) How is it different from that?

Possibly related but slightly different. There are a lot of people out there, for instance, that can start singing certain phrases and know that they are singing in a particular key. Happy Birthday is a good example of this. Another good example is the Star Wars theme; many people naturally and consistently sing this in C major.

If you're at all uncertain, have someone play a random note on a piano without you looking. If you can reliably identify which note is being played, you have what someone called passive absolute pitch. If you can sing any note reliably upon request, you have active absolute pitch. (I didn't know before this thread that some people have passive without active.)

Interesting side story. My piano at home is currently tuned down a half step down because the tuner was afraid he'd snap the strings if he tuned it to concert pitch. (We got it for free and it hasn't been tuned in probably decades, so that's why.) It's strange because you'd think this would bother me. It turns out that it only bothers me if I hear isolated, random notes on it. If I'm accompanying a tune, I'm fine with it and can "turn off" my absolute pitch.

I've had perfect pitch as a child. I also used to be able to play complex classical pieces on the piano by ear. As I've developed other abilities, though, I've lost my gift. Now I'm just ordinary at it. I'm pretty sure I could bring it back if I work hard, but I have no motivation to do so.

The first file sounds fine while the second one sounds bad to my ears.

I'm curious, your second file and some of those on http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/tunetest/dtt.asp sounds really ugly to me. Do some people really can't hear anything wrong? Do these tests really test for perfect pitch?

Call me dumb, but I can't get any of those files for each question to play. "Click the Play button below Play example tune" it says, but where the hell is the play button??!


EDIT: Nevermind...installing updated quicktime player

Yay 26/26!!

I can teach myself to play anything on the keyboard/piano without knowing which notes I'm playing, but I can't hear a sound and identify the note. I can only replicate it with my voice or find the right key on the piano or keyboard.