Does anyone here have perfect pitch?

Post Reply New Topic

I don't know if I do, I always thought it was where someone could literally say, "Sing a G4" and they'd get it exactly just from that. But i was reading in a book that has a section about perfect pitch, and it described it as being able to sing something you've heard, like a song on the radio, exactly on pitch with no cue. Well I can do that, I just tested with several songs to be sure. I didn't think that was what perfect pitch was. But apparently most people can't do this either, they would be off, even if they got the intervals right.

Ok, I kept reading, I guess what I seem to have is "partial perfect pitch".

I don't have perfect pitch, but I find people who do to be interesting.
Lydia

I have a 70 mph fastball,

and I wish I had a curve!

I have imperfect pitch!

I do. I can hear a song once and sing every note correctly, which is good, since I don't read music. I have a pretty voice. I'm not bragging, I won awards and got into all kinds of select singing groups back in school, and was told that by everybody who heard me sing when I was growing up. It's pretty much useless though.

Unfortunately for those who ever heard me sing I'm tone deaf. But it doesn't deter me from singing when I feel like it.

Boo

i've been told by a music teacher that i've got perfect pitch. but since i can mimic what i hear, down to the accent...that's really no surprise.

My husband has true perfect pitch, and so did a friend in high school. They can identify the pitch of *anything* within the normal pitch range, even the humming of the refrigerator. You can also ask them to hum the note you need for tuning an instrument, and they will.

Musical memory is something different. That is when you can sing something back that you just heard.

My husband just participated in a genetic study to see if perfect pitch is genetic. He scored in the highest possible category of perfect pitch.

Perfect pitch is a blessing and a curse. It is not completely useless, especially for musicians. But the one who has it notices *everything* that is out of tune.

I was going off the definition provided in the post. If identifying the pitch is perfect pitch, then I don't have perfect pitch at all.



That is what I have then.

I don't have perfect pitch. Most musicians do not, but still get along quite nicely.

I have good "relative" pitch, which means that given a starting note, I can figure out any other note. *THIS* is what musicians need.

A lot of people, even untrained, have better pitch capabilities than they realize. Training can make it better, of course. A lot of people who think they are tone deaf probably have not really learned how to listen to pitch and reproduce them with their voices. Extremely few people are truly tone deaf.

I notice when people are singing a song out of key if I've heard it before, but that's about it. I used to wish I had true perfect pitch, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it isn't exactly a highly useful ability, especially considering you can now download tuning apps for free. It would be useful for tuning an instrument if you had no tuner, but really, I doubt any musician would be in a situation where they absolutely needed a tuner and did not have one.

I can see it being useful for a musician to play something by ear, but it isn't too hard to find the right pitch anyway. Especially for me, because I can remember what the note sounds like from memory, and then match it on a piano key or guitar string after a couple tries. If I learned a bit more about music theory I'm sure I could recognize patterns in music and play them correctly just from memory, without needing to know the actual note name beforehand.

It bothers the heck out of me when people sing out of tune, even if the intervals are right it just annoys me. I can't imagine how annoying it would be to notice everything that's out of tune.

The book I was reading defined what I described being able to do as "partial perfect pitch". I think it is different from musical memory, because (according to the book) most people don't remember the exact pitches, they just remember the intervals, which sounds like what musical memory would be. Maybe not if they've just heard it, but from their long-term memory they'd probably be off.

I've noticed this before, it is something that annoys me (especially if they are getting the intervals wrong as well). I mean there are songs that I didn't necessarily listen to and sing all the time in the past, like things I heard sometimes as a kid, and if I was asked to sing it without the starting pitch I'd get it right. I just wouldn't know the actual note name unless I had a piano and could sit for a few seconds and find it. But I can do this from memory without hearing the song beforehand.

I just tested it again, I can even do it while a different song is playing out loud.

So you remember the pitch of specific songs? That is more like perfect pitch, and I can see why it would be called "partial perfect pitch."

Yes, if I've heard the song enough to remember the tune, I also remember the pitch, which if I'm actually trying to remember it would only take one maybe two tries, then it's with me forever. I just don't have those pitches attributed to actual note names in my memory. I suppose if I wanted to I could memorize the starting notes of some songs and then use that to figure out actual note names from memory, but that wouldn't be exactly the same.

Sometimes I wonder if playing a (tuned) piano as a kid would have let me develop true perfect pitch (I never had lessons and the pianos we had were never really tuned well). I think it is partially an inborn trait, but also obviously it wouldn't be possible to develop unless one heard and associated the standardized notes and names with each other, presumably at an early age.

Though I'm sure it's not all great, as like you said it can be a curse, for a musician who wants to play things by ear or sight-sing a lot, it would actually be pretty useful. I assume that is how some people can hear a song and immediately play it on the piano. They actually know the note names when they hear something and therefore they don't have to plunk around on the keys and find them like me.

Someone I knew at college could do this. But actually when I asked him about it, he said he developed the ability, so I'm guessing he is actually a lot more like me and just practiced a lot and knows more advanced music theory than I do. Obviously as long as he could figure out the key it was in, all the notes would become obvious when you know the patterns and theory in the song.

I just know basic stuff. I'd like to learn more but I don't even know where to start. I wish my parents would have let me do piano lessons but they always said it was too expensive ($20 per lesson is really that expensive?). I eventually got money and paid for some myself when I was 17, but the older you get the less time you have to practice. That's part of why I got so into singing, my voice is always with me. It's impossible to lug around a grand piano, and still pretty difficult to carry a keyboard or guitar everywhere. And still, you can't practice those while driving either, but you can sing while doing lots of things.

It is still kind of disappointing to me though. I feel like I have a lot of potential playing music, but unless I become a full-time student of music it's not likely that I'll get good enough to do anything with it. I've thought about studying music in college, but I'm pretty sure they have to accept you into music programs, and I'd probably not be accepted considering my lack of experience.

Sorry, now I'm just ranting.

No but I am not tone deaf either.

I don't know about the singing part. I'm pretty good most of the time, but my falsetto isn't always that great.

I'm extremely good at remembering the pitch of sounds, though I can only tell differences in sounds of more than three Hertz (i.e., I can hear the difference between 440 and 443 Hz tones, but not 440 and 442).