Absolute pitch.

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I've read that it's quite common among those on the autistic spectrum to have absolute pitch, and I guess some here on WP have it too.

Does anyone know this test?
http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/survey/page1.php

I took it today and found out that I had perfect pitch.

I suspected that on beforehand, because this summer I heard a programme on the radio about it. I didn't knew what it was and thought it was an ability that only the greatest music geniuses had (had), and that it was something very special.
But when I heard the definition - being able to tell a tone or key just by hearing it - my immediate response was: Oh, is it nothing else, that's really easy! (It is certainly quite uncommon and special, btw.)

At the University of Aarhus, where I live (ie. I live in the city, not at the university ), they have a project called Music in the Brain, where they among other things research perfect pitch.
http://www.musicinthebrain.dk/
I found the link to the test in an article about the project on another page, and a man who is involved in it, wrote that if any people found out they had absolute pitch by taking the test, he would like to hear from them.
So I may contact him one of the days, it will be interesting what will happen.

I've been able to identify what tone something is for as long as I remember, it was only noticed recently at a piano lesson where I could identify notes without looking. It's not just notes on a piano or other instruments though, I can identify what tone a bird calls at, for example, and almost any other everyday sound I can think of! On a piano, I can identify up to about 3 simultaneous notes, depnding at what pitch it is played at. Also, if I hadn't started piano lessons, it may still not been recognised in me.

I don't know how rare it is, but my piano teacher said that he hadn't come across a student with it in the 20 years he had been teaching.

Its funny because I made a similar thread a long time ago.

I can recognize notes on a piano except for the really high and really low keys.

absolute pitch discernment is the ability to pick a tone within a few cycles per second- useful for instrument tuners, sheer torture for anybody else who cringes when hearing clams from inexpert musicians/singers. more common is perfect pitch, which is the ability to identify a note within a quartertone.

for those of us who are not tone-deaf, there remains relative pitch, which means one can identify a tone using a reference such as a pitch pipe. most musicians have this ['cept for the ones with perfect pitch], hence the A=440/452 tuning period as an orchestra warms-up. there is some overlap between the three categories, and i [until recently] fell somewhere in between.


as i have grown older this ability seems to have deteriorated somewhat, as something which sounded one particular note when i was a youth, now sounds a semitone or greater sharp to me, as an old fart. an audiologist told me this is due to shrinkage of the cochlea due to aging, in addition to hardening of the arteries. in anycase it is a mixed blessing, as "out-of-tune" doesn't sound quite as bad now.

p.s. orchestras nowadays are, for the most part, tuning to A=452, which to my ears still sounds harsh, strident.

It's interesting that in the survey before the real pitch test, they also asked if you or someone in your family had a condition on the autistic spectrum.

I have really good relative pitch, but not perfect pitch. I just need one pitch reference, and I'm pretty much set. I also seem to prefer non-12-tone-equal-tempered tunings. (By the way, while many orchestras do go up to A=442 or even 445, I haven't heard of any going as high as 452.)

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i read in an old Stereo Review from decades ago, that the berlin philharmonic had switched to 452 to get a "brighter" more forward sound, and that the new york philharmonic would do likewise, to compete. i've heard CDs of the german group and found them to be strident.

I did terribly at the test!

But I can't play any musical instrument or really understand the concept of C=this key and B=that key etc....I can listen to a piece of music and replicate it on my keyboard (some tunes better than others for example I can play the main 'tune' of anything I ever listen to, can't generally play both hands but when I listened to Handel's Sarabande twice while sat infront of the keyboard I was able to completely reproduce it with both hands playing so it's weirdly intermittent)

I can remember music in the right pitch because I can play it back in my head and again I can pick out a tune on my keyboard that I literally haven't listened to in years in the same key, or even a different one but I've never been able to understand music....I couldn't learn to read it at all, and I couldn't learn what alphabet letter corresponds to which note either I find that's confusing it's like using 1 sense to describe another and I'm rubbish at it.

So I don't have perfect pitch, but I can replicate music, if you play me a note I will be able to find it for you but it will take me a bit longer to get the right key on the keyboard as I can only match them by hearing them, not by saying 'oh that note I'm hearing is a C sharp.

congrats to you, that is such a blessing to have perfect pitch!