who has perfect pitch?

[pekadan]

I don't need a perfect pitch. I just want one that's nice and cute. Gonna try to pick one up at the club tonite.

What?

[Hink]

I started the violin at 5 and both of my parents are musicians so I quickly developed perfect pitch. I can identify any tonal sound or mixture of such sounds (chords, different instruments, etc.) playing simultaneously to semitone accuracy (and a bit further).
It feels very natural and easy since I was very young when I got that skill.

I tried tuning a piano once but when the second string broke I had to stop, otherwise I think I can easily master that with some practice and extra strings.

yeah. Some people say that perfect pitch can't be developed. That's nonsense, I think. I started taking violin lessons at 6, and the amusing thing was that I have perfect pitch in the violin range. I have to think a lot harder when the note is outside that range. I never much worked at developing beyond that range. Now I don't much care about what notes I'm 'playing', and my sense of perfect pitch has much deteriorated. I used to be able to differentiate when an A was just the tiniest bit off from 440...

Is it developed or is it inherit or perhaps just the luck of the draw...however a week or so ago on 60 minutes (personally I hate the show but was given a heads up about this feature) was some blind kids that can't dress themselves. One boy was pretty young, another girl was about the same age, and one was closer to 20. Besides mental illness they had one other thing in common, they were blind.

So a kid under 10 has perfect pitch, trust me these kids did, no matter whether it was a real chord or jibberish one kid could duplicate any chord played instantly, I believe he said up to 7 notes (or perhaps that was his teacher). So were these kids born with perfect pitch? Did they develop perfect pitch? Perhaps we all have perfect pitch but just do not know how to facilitate it, the blind rely more on their ears, so they learn it. Or do they?

I tuned my guitar last week, my Warmoth, the guitar I play the most, completely without hearing a thing. Just based on the feel of the machine heads and tension. I was within 20 cents across the neck (my Am tuning). Bear in mind that I spent 4 years studying machine shop and tool and die making. Mechanical feel is a gift I have, though I haven't worked in a machine shop since about '82. I am "do it myself" on everything and lately I have been noticing the elevated sense of "feel" that I have.


If I tune by ear with no tuner I am usually quite accurate as I can hear the oscillation well and I know my intervals well..but that is that perfect pitch or is it a good ear? A good ear is also noticed by how I hear things like compressors breathing, artifacts...ect. A couple weeks ago a friend who plays guitar stopped by for a while and a song we both like came on Music Choice, I turned it off...he freaked.."what's wrong with you?" I explained that I could hear the breathing in the compressors that Music Choice uses. When I went to show him what I meant it was painful....yet he couldn't hear it.

These three things (the 60 minutes, the feel tuning I did and the compressor) really got me to thinking...keep em coming folks and thanx..

FWIW I do think many people confuse perfect picth or absolute pitch with having a good ear way to often.

[EtiennedeV]

Back to perfect pitch : I've heard once on the radio that (native) chinese speakers were very commonly 'gifted' with perfect pitch. Apparently, the wide range of (pitch) modulations of their language develops their ear much more than our (lucky them).

[james0tucson]

Back to perfect pitch : I've heard once on the radio that (native) chinese speakers were very commonly 'gifted' with perfect pitch. Apparently, the wide range of (pitch) modulations of their language develops their ear much more than our (lucky them).

I have a theory that Chinese being "gifted" is a result of being able to select from a pool of billions, selecting only the fittest few while basically letting others rot, plus what amounts to a centuries-old eugenics program.

[Stupid American Pig]

I dunno if I got perfect pitch, but I can usually hash out a melody I hear pretty quickly

[herodotus]

Time for some pedantry.

Although these guys: have perfect pitch, very few of the other people with 'perfect' pitch really have perfect pitch. They have an intuitive (or trained) grasp of our very imperfect system of intonation.

Real perfect pitch applies to a relationship between notes. A 'real' fifth can be expressed by the numeric ratio 2:3; a tempered fifth (which is the fifth that is used by all but a handful of people these days) can not.

This is why no one can be born with 'perfect' pitch in the normal sense. There is nothing natural about equal temperament. And equal temperament is the tuning system of every instrument that the vast majority of us will ever use (unless we modify it in some way, a very neglected potential use of electronic instruments).

On the other hand, people with really good hearing can have perfect pitch in the true sense of the word.

Check out the just intonation network for more information.

And check out the Tallis Scholars to hear the beauty of real old fashioned consonance

[druid]

I'm on the way to having perfect pitch but I've never developed it and since I do a lot less music-related activity than previously in my life, it's caved a little from what it was.

I'm also memory-based, I can't sight-read at all and I have to memorise piano tunes. The benefit is, even after all these years I STILL know a couple of tunes and I can play them mostly with my eyes closed. Or could. I tried a couple of nights ago after having around three years not doing it almost at all, and I'm not so hot now, but I can still sense ability there.

I'm assuming these abilities stem from early exposure to musical activity. Violin, piano, choir, (compulsory) recorder, drums. Still, I'm pretty weak at it all right now, but it was great in music during highschool because most of the class had to listen to the listening tests all 7 times, and only a couple of times did I need to hear a couple of notes a second time (buffer overflow? :) ) even on the chord dictations. What can I say, it felt great to just tap my pen during the rest of the test and then after class have everyone harass me about being better than them. It was the only time I got to be better.

I just thought I'd share all that.

[EtiennedeV]

I have a theory that Chinese being "gifted" is a result of being able to select from a pool of billions, selecting only the fittest few while basically letting others rot, plus what amounts to a centuries-old eugenics program.

Well... the program was only pointing out the relation between chinese language and the way it developps ear - generally speaking - and not 4 years old playing the piano perfectly. I guess some other languages have similar modulations, and that having perfect pitch does not mean it's being used by everyone there.

[Hink]

I have a theory that Chinese being "gifted" is a result of being able to select from a pool of billions, selecting only the fittest few while basically letting others rot, plus what amounts to a centuries-old eugenics program.

Well... the program was only pointing out the relation between chinese language and the way it developps ear - generally speaking - and not 4 years old playing the piano perfectly. I guess some other languages have similar modulations, and that having perfect pitch does not mean it's being used by everyone there.

they refer to Mandiran as an example and call them tone languages and yes many seem to believe there is a direct link to tone languages and perfect pitch.

One also has to wonder how many people may in fact have been born with perfect pitch and never know it. Just because you have perfect pitch does not mean you are a musician.

In fact I know that (as was said a few posts back by Herodotus) more people claim to have perfect pitch then actually have it. In fact I would guesstimate that maybe 1 in 100 who claim to might, they say that about 1 in 10,000 people actually do have perfect pitch (one article I read). Which statiscally would mean that 7 members here have perfect pitch.

So the relation between those who have it and those who claim to have it is one thing. However what of the relation of those who have and those who know they have it. The argument could be made that more musicians have perfect pitch...but????

Let's go OT for a second, it is possible for someone to have a natural born talent to ice skate...but what if that person is born and raised in Panama? Unless they are exposed to ice skating they may never know (though of course today anything is possible and there is roller blading).

So I ask what is the relationship between those who have perfect pitch and those who know they have perfect pitch? So many variables, a nice subject for the weekend...

[Karbon L. Forms]

Hovmod: This kind of "pitch" is a resin derived from pine, other plants, or petroleum. It's soft when warmed but brittle when cold (however, it IS a liquid... a very viscous liquid). And it's what mirror grinders use to make a "pitch lap" for polishing.

Here's Wikipedia's page on pitch, with a photo of the Pitch Drop Experiment in progress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_%28resin%29 Seventy-five years running; eight drops have fallen so far.

Voidoid: *sigh* My grinding days are in the past. Never did succeed at making a usable mirror. But I did wear a circular groove in the basement floor around the barrel.

glass is an even more viscous liquid. old (like medieval) windows are thicker at the bottom.

[CypherOne]

Cher.

[Hink]

Cher.

[Karbon L. Forms]

Hovmod: This kind of "pitch" is a resin derived from pine, other plants, or petroleum. It's soft when warmed but brittle when cold (however, it IS a liquid... a very viscous liquid). And it's what mirror grinders use to make a "pitch lap" for polishing.

Here's Wikipedia's page on pitch, with a photo of the Pitch Drop Experiment in progress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_%28resin%29 Seventy-five years running; eight drops have fallen so far.

Voidoid: *sigh* My grinding days are in the past. Never did succeed at making a usable mirror. But I did wear a circular groove in the basement floor around the barrel.

glass is an even more viscous liquid. old (like medieval) windows are thicker at the bottom.

nope. just checked. talking shit.

[ross g]

bluedad,

that's the same exact course I did. Trust me, it's boring even with a partner.

so..were you the pitcher or catcher?




sorry,
rg

[Hovmod]

edit: sorry. Didn't see you retracted it...