Aspergers and Perfect (or absolute) Pitch

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Supposedly it's less than 1 in 10,000. Oddly enough, it's believed to be 1 in 20 autistics. So that should be a fair number of us here.

I am one of those 1 in 20. I've been able to do this for a very long time (as long as I can remember). Over the years, I have been able to "turn off" the absoluteness if the notes are simply "close" (like, within a half step or so). It's exceedingly crucial to be able to do this in a folk music setting, where often the instruments aren't tuned to a perfect A440.

I haz it!! !

now my thought on what it's supposed to be, is either

"You Fred, sing me an F#'

singer gives a perfect F#, no cents up or down

or

pianist plays note

"What was that? "

"C#"

"No, C# is a programming language"

"It's C#, nonetheless..."

"dooooon't sing" "doooooooon't sing, mommy!"
I remember howling it over and over when my mother, who could not carry a tune in a bucket, and my brother that couldn't either would warble nursery songs together. I was not welcome in their songfests and I was glad because I would have to hide under my covers to keep away from the gawd aweful caterwauling they made.

of course, they didn't see it that way and did all sorts of social adjustments to avoid my participation.

Gawd... I had to do this over and over and over and over and over for my mother. She had to show all of her friends. And every time I did it, it's as if she still couldn't believe it.

I still don't understand how everyone else can't do this. For me, it's so incredibly obvious when I hear an A that it is an A.

I have perfect pitch. Being able to name/produce notes accurately is a nice trick, but a good sense of relative pitch is FAR more valuable to a musician.

I can't even reckon out what a note is when someone is singing it while I look at the sheet music, sometimes. I'm like the person who can learn a language phonetically but not fluently. If a musical part is played for me enough times, I can learn it. And I know enough to know that my oldest child is horribly off-key and it's hard not to let her know (shoot, she might get it later on, why discourage her?).

I have a general musical sense, but it's not really related to pitch at all. I take in the whole sound, and it's difficult to pinpoint parts. I'm better at recognizing chord quality than pitches.

Even in terms of relative pitch, I'm awful. I can barely tell if two notes are higher or lower in pitch. I can tell the quality of intervals... sometimes. But transcribing a melody is all guess and check work for me.

I studied music theory, and took ear training classes... those were a horrible experience. I have some sort of cognitive issue going on, because I just couldn't cut it.

The weird thing is, that I do have a melodic sense, I can have long melodies running through my head. I have musical creativity, in terms of creating melodies. I have a very strong rhythmic sense, I can transcribe and figure out rhythm very easily.

It's hard to recognize something as out of tune for me too. To me it's just more sound, it's only at the extremes that I notice it out of tune.

well this is my first ever post. and slightly controlversial perhaps. Perfect pitch is a pain in the arse. These are some of the problems:

Expense - playing piano requires an intune piano - piano are out of tune - out of tune pianos are a living nightmare

noises on tv and in the environment can be coindently at pictch and you find yourself saying in the middle of corry orry - f sharp.

conversly many environmental sounds do not confirm to western pitch and therefore are painful.

teaching stringed instruments - pupils have a hard time starting off on the right note and i dont let them start till its perfect.

i like brass sounds

out of tune sounds grate against my head. i could be in a class and get distracted by a flat flute even if its only a couple of cents

people are not careful enough about tuning

people will ask you - ooo whats this note - and this one and this one ... and your point is

i think its funny to say that 'should' be an F but infact it is 7 cents flat. so it is a non note unless we are talking eastern tonlaity with which I am not tuned

and i have only just started

so i believe perfect pitch should be called nightmare pitch

If you get into trad music, you learn how to "suspend" your pitch so that it isn't a pain in the arse. I used to have those problems you mentioned, but you can "unlearn" it. I've actually never heard of anyone else discussing this "unlearning" before, but it's quite possible... and just downright necessary at times.

well i see what you mean but i dont think it possible to unlearn. for example i studied authentic music for 1 year below standard pictch and i never adapted- i merely tranposed a bit down and slightly out of tune!

i would like a more sstronger defintion of trad music ... is this egyptian or irish or out hebrides - im willing to give anything a go. something else as well pitches can be delusional - for example i sometimes hear a pitch which i recognise as an object - i.e a phone ringing (on a digital preset) or a door bell or even one of my chidren cryong. i will jump up to go toward the object or child only to find it is a coincidental environ pitch. honestlly it drives me mad!

anywat thanks for your advice

Well, it's possible that it's just an uncanny ability I alone possess to turn it off, but I suspect that it can be unlearned... with enough practice.

If something is "just a little out," I can recognize empirically that it's out, but I'm able to move my "head A440" a bit in either direction, but mostly up to and including a B-flat. Down is trickier, but I suspect it's because I haven't practiced that direction as much. By authentic music I'm assuming you mean early music; and that's down nearly a half step. I could see that being harder.

If it's more "off" than that, I can still play the instrument, but I really need to have the tune "under my fingers" and go almost completely tactile (i.e. stop listening to what I'm playing). I can't "pick out" music by ear on the instrument any more.

I once went to a concert where the band "tuned up" a half step, accordion and all. Afterwards I talked with the accordion player where I said, "So where did you find a C# piano accordion?" and he replied, "...I don't know what you're talking about." Huh, sure you don't.

By trad I mean predominantly Irish and Cape Breton style (i.e. 18th-century Scottish before the classical influence). The old masters used to be painful (literally) to listen to because their tuning was all over the place. Once I was able to get over the hump, though, I appreciate those old recordings with a passion.

i have relative pitch.
sometimes off-key sounds get to to me, but i really love the sliding, bending "micro-tone" sound of blues & eastern music.. &Bach's chromatic fantasy!!
plus i love electric guitar sounds, like Hendrix' mistakes & bizarre "whammy-bar sounds", harmony is beautiful too though..

I don't have absolute pitch. Actually, I still struggle with relative pitch. However, when I try to tune instruments, they sound horribly out of tune when they are as little as three cents off. (I had a hard time in school orchestra...)

This is apparently pretty "common" in people with synesthesia. Oliver Sacks talks about it in great detail in "Musicophilia", I don't have the book in front of me and I can't recall all the details, but he has a lot of the percentages, and several accounts of exactly how the two relate in different individual cases.

I'm not pitch perfect, but I have odd musical quirks. I went into an abandoned factory once and learned Linkin Parks in the End on an old piano (it wasn't too out of tune). That was the first time I ever played a piano. I can learn simple tunes almost immediately by ear, if I'm listening to a song I can often play something that sounds a little similar on piano. I can tune a guitar by ear, and I can tell if somethings out of tune to about 10C's (1/10th of a note) I learned a few whole songs by sound, But I'm not good enough at it to be called pitch perfect. If my parents knew I had AS and I was bought a piano when I was a kid I would be pitch perfect now

Weird question, but what note should a guy speak in to sound "normal". Not too effeminate, not too Rambo so to speak