Does anyone here have perfect pitch?

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I don't think you're ranting. You are expressing a desire that is unmet.

I don't think someone can know if they have perfect pitch without musical training. There is some sense of memorizing which pitch you hear is what musical letter, kind of like learning language. You may hear something, but unless you're told WHAT it is, you don't know. A lot of people have musical gifts of varying abilities, including perfect pitch, and it is left undiscovered either by circumstance or lack of interest.

I know someone who is a professional musician who had basically zero formal training before graduating high school. He went to a local junior college for music, transferred after that to a state school for music. Then he went on to a good conservatory for his master's degree. He didn't take the usual route, but it worked! His natural talent combined with a lot of hard work made it happen.

You might consider starting out at a community/junior college if you are serious about studying music. I would suggest that "voice" be your instrument, since you already sing. You would be required to learn some piano as a music major, but they assume a total lack of experience in the piano classes.

Every school, including 4-year schools, is different regarding their requirements for accepting music majors. A lot of it has to do with the intensity and quality of the program (the more intense, the higher the quality, the more difficult it is to get in.) You would have to check different schools to see what they require. The junior/community college is, from what I've seen, the best way to go for someone with not much experience.

I know someone else that took a few years of piano lessons but really didn't progress from lack of practicing but still had musical talent and wanted to study music. He was not ready for the 4-years school and also went to a local junior college. There, his voice was "discovered" and he ended up making voice his instrument. Now, he is singing opera locally. (I don't know if he went on for further education at a 4-year school.)

I just want you to know there are options if you are willing to work VERY HARD. Even for someone with the most natural talent, music requires a lot of time and self-discipline.

I've been told that I'm "tone-deaf."

However, I would have been a good contestant on "Name That Tune" (provided I've heard the song a few times before).

I can usually name a song (especially a pope song which came out before the 1980s) within about five to seven notes

All this discussion about pitch is really fascinating. I bet people with perfect pitch and a little musical training would have no problems transcribing heard music into written music. I wish I could do that more easily because I have a few songs that I have improvised on my keyboard that I'd like transcribed onto paper. I could do it, but it'd take me a really *really* long time. <sigh>
Lydia

Transcribing music takes more skill than just knowing the pitches. While having perfect pitch might make transcribing a little quicker, I find it harder to transcribe rhythm. Also, if one is transcribing by hand, it would take proper knowledge of how to actually write music well and quickly. If one is using a computer program that can transcribe directly from a MIDI instrument, then someone with perfect pitch would have a great advantage.

I've tried before, and while I can figure out what the notes are really easily, I have a harder time being sure about the time signature and, consequently, the note value.

That's me as well. And not for lack of trying. I just can't seem to connect anything at all to a bunch of dots on a page. I've had countless individuals attempt to teach me to connect egbdf and face and sharp and flat to what I hear and what I sing. The only part that's ever made any sense though is the dynamics. I'm very good at reading the dynamics, and it ends there. In choir, I used to be able to sing the starting note for every voice part, as long as it was within my vocal range. I usually had every voice part memorized besides my own because the teacher always ended up having to go over every part once at least. If I can hear it once, I can and usually do memorize it, but I can't for the life of me tell you if what I'm singing is an For an A.

I have heard of software that transcribes from a MIDI instrument. My sound files are not MIDI, so I don't know if I'd have to convert or what. I didn't think of the problems surrounding rhythms but that makes sense. There was a kid who ran a website where he had a little business of music transcription. I'm pretty sure he was autistic too. This is what made me think of perfect pitch = music transcription

I guess that´s kind of the same thing at the end, the difference is that in one case you just know what for example a G4 is and in the other case you remember the tones of songs and can repeat it. Instead of G4 it would be “the first tone of song xy”. And yes, most people cannot do either of those things.


I don´t think it´s useless. It probably makes it easier to sing the correct notes compared to others because you remember it correctly.


Maybe perfect pitch is just a long-term form of musical memory. I mean, most people have the usual musical memory, so they can repeat a note they just heard. But after a while they forget it and if you ask them for example a day later to repeat the tone they are not able to do that. But the person with the perfect pitch remembers the different tones all the time and so he can hum or identify them easily.


I agree that relative pitch is important for musicians and also with the training stuff. I sing in a choir. When new people come they are first very insecure about everything. But their ability to listen and reproduces notes gets better after a while of training and then they feel more confident. They are often surprised how good they are although they didn´t believe that. But, of course, people who come to sing in a choir usually don´t think they are totally tone deaf, but have at least a little confidence that they could sing successful.


I can identify that, too, but only when I remember the key of a song. It´s a bit like that: I see a yellow car and can identify the colour. When later another one drives around with a red car I see the difference when I haven´t forgotten what colour the first car was. But when I don´t think about the colour it can be that I forget it and I don´t mind the red car.
I guess that´s like that:

I just have to pay attention because after I recognized the key and when I have it in my long-term memory then I can always say when someone sings out of key.


For you it might be easy to find the right pitch. But there are people who cannot remember what the note sounds like and so have no chance to match it on a piano key.


Yes, as I wrote the long-term memory is probably the difference. I just wonder how long people without perfect pitch remember a pitch. I guess there are differences, too from people who can remember it longer or not so long.


I am very familiar with note names, so that is no problem for me. I play the accordion for many years and learned notes when I was 6.


It wouldn´t be the same, but if you needed to identify the notes it would be a good way to do it. That´s the same way like many people remember intervals. They just have songs in their head for every interval and so they can reproduce or identify it. I think what you have is a perfect pitch, you just cannot identify the names of the notes because that´s not so familiar for you (you didn´t learn that at an early age). A teacher told me about someone who could do that, too, but never learned to read notes. So he could always sing in the right key, but never connected it with notes. The teacher said that this is perfect pitch, too. This probably shows that there is partially an inborn trait because he just was able to do that. That also suits what nerdygirl said:



I always wonder how much of my ability in that area comes from practice. I can play songs on piano when I heard them in the right key, but my ability is better in the middle octaves where people usually sing and where I learned to play the accordion. When it comes to higher or lower notes I found it more difficult to identify the notes. That´s why I still think I don´t have a “real” perfect pitch, but am just very used to the notes I heard so many times. Furthermore I know many things about music theory what really makes it easier to find patterns.


Wow, I think that´s pretty good. I never tested how exact my ability to identify those differences really is. I just do that with notes. I know that I sometimes can hear when someone sings for example neither an a nor an a flat, but something between those, but I don´t know about the exact Hertz differences.


I also have trouble to transcribe rhythm. But just yesterday I planned to practice this part. I found a website with songs for children which are not that difficult, so I guess that´s a good point to start.

My husband has such perfect pitch that he once learned a song by ear and then performed it on guitar perfectly without ever having physically practiced it.

Nope...not me!

I need a knuckleball!

There is no such thing as perfect pitch, according to a theory/solfeggio professor I had in college. Well-developed pitch, on the other hand, is a different story. People accuse me of having perfect pitch. You should me after I'm getting over a bout of bronchitis. I can't sing, or even tell you what pitch is being played. It's even worse when the tinnitus starts up.