What's your take? Do you think there actually is a way to train perfect pitch? Let me know!! Also, there's just ONE DAY left to get the brand new Harmony 101 course at the 50% off pre-sale discount!! The full course drops TOMORROW, so be sure to check it out! No code necessary- cornellmusicacademy.com/harmony
i feel like the color analogy could be enhanced by saying that you would know the exact hex code of that color, even mixes of color. And the same for pitch perfection, you can hear the distinction even in mixes of notes
I honestly don’t know for those who have not recieved any kind of musical training and/or exposure. For me, I had been exposed to classical music before I had even left my mom’s womb and on top of that, I went to a preschool where the classrooms had the names of Mozart and Beethoven and we were all exposed to certain musical instruments. Where my perfect pitch came out was when I took piano lessons wherein I became familiar with the concept of notes and simple chords like C Major or G Minor. I guess my prior exposure helped the perfect pitch to come out, and my discovery of TwosetViolin lit up the boiler that would fuel my love for classical music. Idrk how others can gain perfect pitch, but I guess if there was enough exposure, then I gues you’d be able to train your ear.
As a voice teacher and piano teacher, and the parent of a son with perfect pitch, my answer is the same as yours -- no. You cannot learn perfect pitch. However, my wife has a skill that can be learned -- she is a vocalist and voice teacher and she has what I call "perfect pitch recall" -- she can hear a song and remember the key that it should be in perfectly. That pitch recall can be trained and works just like you demonstrated. I can see how matching pitch recall with music theory allows you to name notes by hearing them with no context. Essentially, you create the context from your memory.
Interestingly, there was a study conducted in by a Japanese psychologist who taught perfect pitch to a number of students with a 100% success rate. However, the catch was that they were all between the age of 4-7 (or thereabouts). He trained them daily 3 times a day by playing keys on the piano and having them guess the notes. I believe the training went on for a number of years and by the end of it, they all developed perfect pitch. However, they tried this with adults, and it was unsuccessful. Adults could get good at identifying notes but never fully developed perfect pitch. (this is all published in the book 'Peak' by K. Anders Ericsson. A psychologist who specializes in the research of peak performers. He suggested that children's brains are a lot more malleable and easily able to learn and develop new concepts that adult brains cannot. Hence, with the proper tutorage, children can perform spectacular learning feats, such as learning a language much faster than an adult. He also suggests that Mozart most likely had perfect pitch and that it was not a random stroke of luck, instead, he believes that as he came from an extremely musical family and that he learned many different musical instruments in those crucial developmental years he actually learned perfect pitch. (I'm going from memory after reading this book so some of these details may not be exact but please look up the info as it is extremely interesting).
This makes me question if it is akin to having more rods and cones as CC says, or just having more sensitive or developed ears. It could be similar to language fluency where it may be possible to learn as an adult but would take an exponential amount more of effort comparitively.
@@Ryan-mw1ry This has nothing to do with rods and cones nor hearing sensitivity. The colour example is kinda meh. It's better to think of perfect pitch of having an exact frequency table and the brain has connections allowing direct translation of sound to a medium that can be compared to the table. Non-perfect pitch people don't have this 'connection' and if such a table exists, there's no mechanism to interpret sound in that fashion. @Richard I highly doubt Phychologist's work. It's likely a zero percent success rate and he just thinks what he did worked when it didn't. It's also possible his patients already had perfect pitch and they just didn't know it (tonal-languages contain a higher rate of people with perfect pitch). Most classical musicians/keyboardists likely had perfect pitch. Not really anything new. Mozart literally transcribed a Bach keyboard work note for note and put his own name on it. Probably by accident without realizing it. "Adults could get good at identifying notes but never fully developed perfect pitch" This sentence implies that perfect pitch can be developed but it cannot. Either you have it by five months old-ish. Or you don't, or didn't know you had it. The fascination with perfect pitch is silly. It's more bad than it is good. A couple years of practice can get a person very sufficient with aural skills. Then you don't get upset when people play out of tune (Well, not as much at least). And without perfect pitch, you don't begin losing it at around fifty. It's more of a curse than a gift.
@@asliceofjackie91 pp can only be found in those that contain the genetic marker. This isn't proper science. "We have no clue how our variables are linked but if we do x, y, and z then result happens but we can't explain why or how it's not circumstancial." Plus I can't read the article when you didn't mention the profs name or multiple since you claim this study is done everywhere. I swear, if these articles consist of some dude pressing A and saying A then find the same to a bunch of notes I'm never going to pay attention to this is unacademic crazy nonsense again. Plus this sort of study is not ethical by nature. Forcing children to rewire their brain for a feature that is more curse than benefit.
@@asliceofjackie91 Deutsch's research is almost certainly outdated at this point. I question whether you even read the article as what it argues is completely different from what you're arguing. That aside, there's multiple issues with the research that don't account for outside variables. They mention Brady in a wishy washy manner. Either he had PP as a child or even today he still doesn't have it. They claim he scored 65% on a test. With practice, I could score much higher with some room for guess work. They showed a shortened PP test example that any trained musician could get 100% on with some margin for luck, depending on whether the examiner is paying attention to if the person hums their first note to receive a reference. The one that really gets me, is listening to tonal-languages and concluding they must have perfect pitch without accounting for natural speech patterns. The vocal cords have natural positions. But again, they weren't really proving that seven or five year olds have perfect pitch. They were attempting to prove that tonal languages use some form of perfect pitch which they achieved with blatant errors in their methodology. Another egregious assumption is that when someone says "I have perfect pitch" they believe them. How can you believe someone that knows nothing about what they're talking about, when you yourself don't even understand what perfect pitch is. It's a foundational error which means any further research based on that will collapse along with it. Students in Asian countries are more likely to lie about possessing PP as their cultural system is all about reputation. Deutsch also mentions that people who learn a second language after they are an adult can't pronounce the language right. This is due to people not comprehending how the mouth alters syllables/vowels. It has nothing to do with age. If no one tells you that the German (iirc) T/D sound is farther back in the mouth instead of directly under the teeth like English speakers do, how the f is anyone supposed to figure that out on their own? Especially when most Germans themselves wouldn't realize the difference. I'm a terrible mono-linguist. But with practice I could speak German and sound like a native speaker once I learn proper speech patterns. And even that is a silly claim in the sense that there really is no standard to speaking German. A poorly written article using 'murica's archaic spelling system. It discusses topics all over the place with a misapplied methodology when it is on-topic. The article is only good for what it is actually arguing; relation between tonal-language and PP. The notion that the article was ever arguing that seven year olds 'aquired' (not the correct use of that word either) perfect pitch is just wrong. And it's not supported by evidence in the article. There's a reason in university they teach you to quote evidence and then write a convincing argument regarding what the evidence means. If you blindly believe an article you aren't really reading the article. New Musicology beginning in the 90s switched from "I tell you what to believe (see "Baroque" by Palisca in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as an example) to we provide the evidence and clear argument of why you should believe my argument.
@@asliceofjackie91 Rick Beato says that PP only developed in the beginning months of being born and only in people with the right genetics, he even told you *which* genetic trait. He's completely opposite to your (and the article in question) loosy goosy arguments that anyone can learn pp as long as they're below the age of seven-ish. All of which is not supported by actual evidence. Again, facts, evidence, and convincing argument over odd idealisms.
But I still can't help but feel having a perfect pitch is such a major help to any musician. As a beginner musician without perfect pitch myself, I felt disappointed that I don't have perfect pitch since it's so hard for me to distinguish notes without any reference point. I feel like if I were to have a perfect pitch, it'll be way much easier for me to learn music rather than not having one.
@@csharpminorflat5 not true at all. having absolute pitch, does indeed help you in the long run of your musical journey but it doesn’t help you learn music better, or be better at music (whatever it means). the only true skill that matters is relative pitch, work hard on your ears and when ur relative pitch gets to a point where you can easily identify chord progressions and various intervals, all you really need is to know the key of the tune to match the famous perfect pitch. it’s way to overrated
@@csharpminorflat5 Hey, I think that's understandable especially when the ear is still developing, but once you DO have a reference point eventually it gets super easy to hear the next notes or chords in relation to that reference. Like, if you hit a note "G" out of the blue, yes someone with perfect pitch can tell you what that note is, but if you then hit another note "C" afterwards, immediately the playing field is levelled, since with just a bit of ear training you can hear the relation of "oh that second pitch is a perfect 4th away (or 5th depending on direction)" and know that it's a C based on the first note. That same principle continues into hearing chord qualities, progressions, etc. People with good trained ears, good trained relative pitch, and usually a good base of theory, can figure out things just as quickly and still play by ear and all that good stuff, whether it's brass quintets getting their chords perfectly in tune with adjusting partials to lock in or cocktail pianists recognizing common pop or jazz progressions and assembling an arrangement on the fly. I have perfect pitch, and about half of my family has it, but there's still tons and tons of transcribers and players out there that can write out or play back lines of what they hear faster than I can.
Having relative pitch is imho more useful. I met people with perfect pitch who just couldn't play a transposed (electric) piano because their brain couldn't compute the discrepancy. There is very little advantage in having perfect pitch when compared to having good relative pitch. Music is all about relative pitches and relations anyway. There is nothing absolute about the way we tune our instruments. Edit: just keep training that ear and you'll notice how much you can do!
@@blumenmusic another thing to consider, which you sort of touched on, is the fact that a lot of music is not “absolute”. I am a classically trained violist, and while we don’t typically stray into microtonality and our music is written diatonically, perfect pitch is not helpful in the necessary bending of pitches to achieve more convincing and, frankly, “in tune” scales to our ears, including things like leading tones and perfect intervals. Since notes have multiple ‘correct’ places, absolute pitch can in fact hinder the ability to place these notes in the correct place.
One interesting thing I’ve learned about perfect pitch over the years is that people who have perfect pitch don’t usually have the same pitch center - it’s almost always a little off from each other. I have a few friends who’s perfect pitch is a little over A = 440. Mine is slightly flat. I had a professor in college who’s perfect pitch is exactly a quarter-tone flat because his piano growing up was a quarter-tone flat. Also that perfect pitch and relative pitch isn’t separate from each other. People with perfect pitch also have relative pitch, but it’s usually very weak because it’s not used as much.
It’s so annoying because it also shifts (at least for me) depending on what temperament you do music in - if I’m doing a lot of music in baroque pitch (A=415 or down roughly a semitone) then my pitch will get lower and I will find sight-singing in A=440 harder and vice versa for when I sing in A=415 after singing at A=440 most of the time
This is nonsense. There is a range of A. Every single A you hear is slightly different. Tuning is not perfect. Yes you can develop sensitivity to pitch but you don’t have a “pitch center”. Every person has different levels of hearing ability.
@@disinformationworld9378 A has been standardised to 440. People use different As for different purposes, sure. But A's default pitch is 440. Nothing about this comment is nonsensical
After singing in an a cappella quartet for several years I developed really solid pitch memory. Pretty much every song that we sang started with me going "Doom doom doom" to start it off, so I got to the point after we'd gotten pretty busy with regular gigs where all I had to do was think about a song and I could consistently start in the right key.
I had a guy in my college choir that had perfect pitch but we transposed a song at one point because it was too high for the sopranos and he got visibly angry because the notes he saw were not the notes being sung/played so it can be a blessing but also a curse in certain situations. The only way I can determine a pitch is by singing it. I notice how it feels in my voice and based on that I'm never more than a semitone off but that's definity not based on color or anything else. I've just sung certain notes so often that I know what they are based on feel. Great video though. It was very informative.
I’m the exact same way. The resonance in the chest through passaggio through to head voice, the feeling it makes in my body could help me recognize a note.
I learned something interesting working on my masters this summer. Infants are born with a lot of neural connections, more than what we have as adults. A lot of these connections get "pruned" as the brain learns which connections are needed and which aren't. When you sing simple melodies to young children, if you sing it in different keys, kids with perfect pitch will perceive it as a different song. It's quite possible that a lot of us are born with the capacity for perfect pitch but that those connections were pruned because it wasn't deemed important, or that it was more important to recognize that specific melodies or speech or speech patterns were the same regardless of what pitch they were at. And if I remember correctly, cultures that have a tonal language tend to have a higher percentage of children with perfect pitch because pitch is more a important component when those kids are learning language.
I've heard this being thrown around a lot of times... about how speakers of tonal languages are more likely to have perfect pitch. I know that there is research to back this, but almost everyone seems to just accept this as something obvious or natural... like "oh yeah their language uses pitch, music uses pitch, so the correlation makes sense". The issue is, every tonal language out there makes meaningful tonal pitch distinctions based on the RELATIVE pitches of syllables or a pitch contour within a syllable, or a combination of both. There is no language where, say, A4 corresponds to tone 1, and Bb4 corresponds to tone 2, or something along those lines. Rather, what speakers of tonal languages actually listen for is stuff like: "is the current syllable higher or lower than the previous, and by how much?", "is the pitch rising or falling?" In other words, if anything, these factors would suggest that speakers of tonal languages ought to be more perceptive towards RELATIVE pitch differences with REFERENCE to the pitch of surrounding syllables (within the context of a single sentence spoken by a single person), rather than being able to map every perceived pitch with a musical note without any reference, which is what absolute pitch is about. So WHY exactly would speakers of tonal languages be more likely to have perfect pitch, as compared to, say, good relative pitch (which seems to have a much stronger correlation with how tones actually work in languages)? Am I missing some perspective on this? In fact, having perfect pitch (those who recognise pitches in the same way as recognising colours) might even pose a hindrance for people trying to learn tonal languages. Using the example of Cantonese, a syllable said with the pitch of A4 could be a high level tone, a mid level tone, or a low level tone, depending on the relative pitches of the surrounding syllables. I imagine it would be confusing to learn that a single "colour" is associated with 3 different tones, and that a single tone could come in many "colours" depending on the context.
@@WhildTangeredCalymondrin I believe that perfect pitch is often predicated by a strong auditory working memory. If you speak a language that strngthens this skill, you are more likely to have a 'good' ear and develop a 'great' one during your early nuero-plastic years.
so that means my neural conntection for understanding notes and music colors have not fully died out😅because i listened to very different music as a child, like i remember listening to classic hip-hop, rock, pop, ballads of the 2000's(im 2002 year of birth), and i found myself harmonizing with songs, if its lower pitch, i harmonize by singing higher notes with no clashing of notes, if its a higher pitch, i do a lower harmony, can it be connected to that?
I have perfect pitch, and my grandmother does too. We like to say she passed her musical prowess down to me. I didn't really know it was such a talent until I was hanging around with a friend of mine in college, a music education major, while he was working on a transcription of a solo on Pat Martino's "Blue Velvet". There was a section he was struggling with and myself, with no piano experience whatsoever, walked over and sounded out the whole section note by note and he was completely awestruck. I'll never forget that moment lol.
@@ofcl.kd420 Untrue, in HS I had 0 piano experience and I still can't read music lmao. But I could play songs after just hearing them. For my final I played Fur elise with an empty paper in front of me because I couldn't read it anyway and I had to fake to make it LMAO.
I have a friend with perfect pitch. I asked her to play in the orchestra for a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass that I conducted a few years back. The performance, had the orchestra playing on period (baroque) instruments. Which, among other things, means that A was tuned to 415, vs 440; almost Aflat on modern instruments. Given she’s plays modern violin, I had to rent an instrument for her. She found the experience so confusing, that she had to have the second seat chair tune the instrument for her. I can’t imagine the cognitive AND musical dissonance she was experiencing looking at her part, and hearing music that registered approx 1/2 step lower than she was expecting
I've had a very similar experience. I have perfect pitch and sang in my college's glee club. When we sang Ave Maria, our opening soloist always went around a quarter to semitone sharp of the reference pitch, and there were some parts that I just couldn't sing when it was out of key. I'm sure it would have been much easier if I had developed any sort of relative pitch, but being that music is just a hobby for me, I never got around to it.
As someone with perfect pitch I can confirm, baroque tuning as well as really any transposition of any song feels so incredibly wrong. Using the color analogy, it's like a hue shift. Imagine if apples were all of a sudden orange (or really any other color than red for that matter)
There's also a terrible hidden downside to perfect pitch that I found about recently - it often starts to go wrong on you in late middle-age. You hit 60 and your perfect pitch drifts by a semitone to a tone, and the thing you've relied upon your entire life is suddenly steering you in the wrong direction.
I can totally relate. during my final high school year music aural exam (back in the day where cassette tapes were used), , the speed of the cassete player was a little 'slow', so for the first time in my life (not an ideal time as this was during an exam!), the notes which I heard were not the notes written on the exam paper and I had to transpose every thing I heard "Up" in order to finish those melodies. Frustrating experience! I did bring this matter up to the examiner after. Then years later, I learnt a Chinese string instrument when anumber notation was used. 1=tonic, 2=super tonic etc. For some reason, I was associating 1 for C pitch........I lost the perfect pitch! Still lost to this day many decades later. 😢. now, it's relative-pitch. would be lovely to know how I can get this natural ability back. I'm not desperate for it to happen. it's more curiousity to see when/how/if it will happen. I went back to piano playing 1 year ago after 37 years when I got a calling. Best decision ever!! so grateful I picked up piano again💖. nameste everyone
@@Martin-xd4jl oh I didn't know this. sorry to hear you've lost it. I lost my perfect pitch too (which I explained in my comment above). What you wrote just gave me a realization. I have tinnitus where I hear a constant fix pitch noise in my ears. I should go to my piano and find out what this pitch is. So it will be like my internal 'pitch app' running in the background. 😂, a reference point to identifying pitch whenever I need it. haha.😉😆
As a colour blind person I want to thank you for correctly describing it. It is surprising how many people think it means seeing in black and white. Usually followed by being "tested" and them concluding that you see colours fine. Funnily enough there is a strong relationship between how I discern colour and how I discern notes. If I am uncertain about the colour I am seeing I sometimes require additional context for comparison to help me. I may not be able to tell if something is green or yellow, for example, but if you put a more obvious green or yellow next to it I can tell more easily.
I also thought that color blindness most usually meant complete lack of cones of a particular type, but looking it up it turns out most cases actually have anomalous cones and rather mild symptoms.
I’ve played the violin from a young age, and the string notes, E, A, D, and G are ingrained in my head since I’ve tuned my violin a million times. I can use those notes to figure out any other note or what key something is in. Still takes a few seconds tho.
I heard that it's easier to have perfect pitch if your mother tongue is a language with lots of tones (eg Cantonese which has 9 tones). I've always thought perfect pitch was a common thing coz my sibling and close friends have it as well, until I was told that it isn't
Studies have shown that among those who speak tonal languages and begin musical training young perfect pitch is normal, for instance one study which concluded that 60% of Mandarin speakers who began musical training between the ages of 4 and 5 have it.
I've heard this being thrown around a lot of times... about how speakers of tonal languages are more likely to have perfect pitch. I know that there is research to back this, but almost everyone seems to just accept this as something obvious or natural... like "oh yeah their language uses pitch, music uses pitch, so the correlation makes sense". The issue is, every tonal language out there makes meaningful tonal pitch distinctions based on the RELATIVE pitches of syllables or a pitch contour within a syllable, or a combination of both. There is no language where, say, A4 corresponds to tone 1, and Bb4 corresponds to tone 2, or something along those lines. Rather, what speakers of tonal languages actually listen for is stuff like: "is the current syllable higher or lower than the previous, and by how much?", "is the pitch rising or falling?" In other words, if anything, these factors would suggest that speakers of tonal languages ought to be more perceptive towards RELATIVE pitch differences with REFERENCE to the pitch of surrounding syllables (within the context of a single sentence spoken by a single person), rather than being able to map every perceived pitch with a musical note without any reference, which is what absolute pitch is about. So WHY exactly would speakers of tonal languages be more likely to have perfect pitch, as compared to, say, good relative pitch (which seems to have a much stronger correlation with how tones actually work in languages)? Am I missing some perspective on this? In fact, having perfect pitch (those who recognise pitches in the same way as recognising colours) might even pose a hindrance for people trying to learn tonal languages. Using the example of Cantonese, a syllable said with the pitch of A4 could be a high level tone, a mid level tone, or a low level tone, depending on the relative pitches of the surrounding syllables. I imagine it would be confusing to learn that a single "colour" is associated with 3 different tones, and that a single tone could come in many "colours" depending on the context.
Yeah it makes sense seeing as you have to identify tones to speak the language. But from what I learned the tones are not set to notes they are just relative tones so it makes me wonder how relevant it is.
This is essentially how I "learned" perfect pitch as a child. In elementary school I memorized what the four strings of a violin sound like (G D A E), and other starting notes of the short exercises in the method book (e.g. Rolling Along started on an F#), then used relative pitch to fill in the other blanks. By the end of 6th grade I had all 12 notes, but who knows if it's something I just taught myself or if it's an actual ability.
Yes, you taught yourself it sounds like. There are many baffling myths about AP that simply won’t die. The worst one is that you only have it if you can ID 12 notes at once kind of opinion. There is a range of ability of hearing and everyone has their own unique hearing level. The ability to ID pitches with AP exists on a spectrum. And it is normal to be good at some notes first before mastering others. This was my experience. Relative pitch depends on an ability to classify what you are hearing which is a mental description. An “intellectual” understanding of the sound. AP is a bit different. Like seeing a color. You can see it or if the lights are off you can’t.
This. If it's now so fast that it's essentially second nature so that you know the pitch right the moment it is played, without thinking about it, I would call it perfect pitch.
It’s theorized that to develop perfect pitch, you have to be taught it as a child before a certain point in your brain’s development. So, it is possible that you DID, in fact, teach yourself perfect pitch.
My daughter has perfect pitch, and the thing that I’ve learned is that we hear music differently. I have decent relative pitch and can pick out things by ear. But if you play me a song that’s in a different key than it normally is, or even just slightly high or low, it still sounds like that song. To her, most of the time, if it’s not in the original key, it sounds wrong. In some cases to the point where she doesn’t want to listen to it. The first time we picked this up was when she decided she wanted to watch Pink Floyd in Pompeii. She remembered watching it when she was a kid, but had been a while. When the first note of Echoes started she said, “it’s wrong.” Huh? “It’s too high. It’s wrong.” Of course, this is the official release. That’s absurd. So I grabbed a guitar. It’s wrong. Apparently in the original PAL to NTSC transfer, it ended up roughly a half-step sharp. They didn’t correct it (except for the audio CD in the box set). The whole film is this way, which explains why the drum section of A Saucerful of Secrets seems so fast, and even the interviews sound a little off. We were at an event, Love Shack came on, and again she said it was wrong. We checked it, and it was. I don’t know what the DJ was using, but sure enough it wasn’t the original key. The only thing I can compare it to is of the color balance is off on the TV. Like an old TV where the tint was either too green or too red. It’s so noticeable that it’s really difficult to watch without fixing it. That’s what listening to music is like for her, I guess. She also has certain notes and keys she prefers. She had a very strong affinity for C# minor. I often tune my guitar to her now…
Does she hate Seth Everman's Moonlight Sonata / Still D.R.E. meme? Moonlight Sonata is in C# minor, but Seth transposes it to A minor so the transition to Still D.R.E. is in tune.
@@rook4830 Of course it’s possible to learn how to recognize keys, etc. just by listening, But the point is not that she recognizes a different key, but that those keys sound qualitatively different. Since I can’t experience it the same way she does, I can’t really explain it better than when she hears something that’s different, she knows it instantaneously. It’s just an example. It’s not something she learned.
Although I will say that covers are often different because of the arrangements, performance, tonal qualities, etc. She’ll still recognize that the key has changed, but it may sound good. In other words, it’s not just the key/notes that matter but the sound (context)itself in terms of whether she likes the way a piece of music sounds in a given key. And she doesn’t like every piece of music in C# minor, but we have found that she definitely has a preference for it.
For me I memorize notes just from things I hear/play a lot. A,D,G,C from tuning (I'm a pianist/cellist), e from fur elise (one of my favorites since I was little), and c-sharp from Debussy's arabesque #1. It was super interesting to learn where this came from!
the color theory is always interesting to hear, because both pitch and color exist on a gradient. the colors we can name are wildly different from eachother and encompass a large group of shades. perfect pitch is like there being 8 slightly different shades of blue, and being able to name the one you're shown without the reference of the other 7 shades. it's like infinite sensitivity
Why do you say that colors are wildly different but not sound? The visible light frequency is 400 THz to 700 THz. That's a ratio of only 1.75 between the lowest color we can see and the highest one, yet anyone easily identify at least 7 or 8 different colors. With sound, the ratio between a note and the note an octave higher is 2, and there are 12 notes in between. So it's actually pretty similar to color. Your example with 8 slightly different shades of blue would be like someone able to identify microtonal intervals of less than a eighth of a tone, and even people with perfect pitch probably can't do that.
I’ve been banned from uTube postings for speaking about this, but my findings are here on uTube on my Acoustic Rabbit Hole channel. And, yes, I so see the notes as colors, and as an exact rainbow spectrum.
@@Acoustic-Rabbit-Hole Do you "sort" the notes chromatically or according to the circle of fifths? For instance do you consider the closest note to C is G or B?
@@thomapple OMG (Oh my Goddess.) You are the first person to respond after many days of silence. I'm assuming the uTube suspension has been lifted. THANK YOU. // Ok, to answer your question, it's actually even more literal than that, as far a sorting out the notes. I literally have C as red, D as orange, E as yellow, etc. And the "middle" notes are "in-between colors". In other words, C# is red-orange. And E-flat is Orange-yellow. Therefore, I see it as entirely spectral. Even following how the warm colors (C to F) are one one side, the cool colors (F to B) are on the other. Ending with the end of the rainbow, magenta (the B-note), which blends into red to continue the octave cycle. I'll try to send you link to my youTube channel (The Acoustic Rabbit Hole) so that you can see how i DO arrange it as per 5ths and thirds, as you were mentioning at first. I call it my Musicolor Matrix. Here is an example of the visual color-shape layout of the key of B. I pray that the link works, or that you get my response at all. (Would you believe it was actually Rick Beato or is followers who had me blocked my "reporting" me me like a mob of hayenas because I was disagreeing with them about tuning to A-432, which they kept saying was "conspiracy theory" and "misinformation." (It was a video where Rick Beato was openinly making fun of musical healing, and people who tune to A-432). Anyway, here my B major Matrix. Part of my Micro-matrix's which I started making for each individual key. And, let me assure you, i'm not crazy. The is the second time i've been banned. The first time was by the Adam Neely minions! Over the subject of perfect pitch! - th-cam.com/video/JjFMh1k9FHw/w-d-xo.html
I've heard many arguments that relative pitch is actually better. People with perfect pitch are sometimes less able to break out from the known chord structures and what they know, where those with learned relative pitch are a bit more willing to branch out and experiment.
I’m a learning opera singer with perfect pitch (voice hasn’t fully developed yet haha) and the fact that you know you’re about to sing some high note and *exactly what it is* brings in tension which brings in a heap of problems with my technique
It's not so much chord structures as it is about the 12TET mindset. If you developed PP in a society based on 12TET, you develop a 12TET based PP and so you can't help but hear everything in a 12TET framework. I feel like this does make it harder to internalise the music of different cultures simply because your brain keeps trying to interpret everything it hears as a variation of 12TET.
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum i mean i feel like true copium would be like using the excuse of "hey i will never be good at music because i dont have perfect pitch lol not my fault" Also another thing, those are musicians who have definitely put massive effort into learning music and arent just random people who just happened to have perfect pitch so i dont think it is exactly the most fair comparison
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum The statement “Relative Pitch is better than Perfect pitch” is definitely copium. BUT, the statement “Relative Pitch gets you further than perfect pitch” isn’t. Let’s take your first example, Jacob Collier. He definitely is an amazing musician, no doubt. And his inhuman recognition of microtones he is popular for is definitely something to note. But one misconception I see about him is that the reason he can differentiate Microtones and sing in Just Intonation is solely because of his perfect pitch. That is not true at all. His perfect pitch, like others’ is tuned to 12-TET, A=440hz. That means that solely with his perfect pitch, he likely cannot recognize the difference between “a note in between E and Eb” and “E but approximately 45 cents flat.” So how does he? Well, he has trained and put hours into his relative pitch as well to be able to compare these microtones to the 12 reference notes in his head. So, can you recognize them too? Short answer, yes. Long answer: another misconception I see about Jacob is that no one else can recognize microtones to the level he does. This isn’t true at all as well. All us Humans, including Jacob can recognize a maximum difference of ~5 cents. It may take some ear training to be able to, but this level of relative pitch is definitely acquirable. So, with good relative pitch ear training to match it (and substitute for Jacob’s AP) Ones without perfect pitch can be shown a C as a reference; then recognize an Ab, 65 cents sharp shortly after. Perfect Pitch gives you a head start, relative pitch gets you further.
YES this is exactly what I've been doing to recognize notes without reference, just acknowledging either which note does this X melody start on or which key this X song is on and reference myself from there, i call it Partial Pitch lol i.e. Coldplay's Clocks melody starts on Eb, Hallelujah is on C, Don't stop me now is on F, etc
I memorized the standard guitar tuning from higher to low ( E-B-G-D-A-E) within the first few months of starting my studies at age 9.. The only 2 open string notes missing are C and F, both half a step higher than the 1st and 2nd strings on the guitar. So, although I'm sure I don't have perfect pitch it is RELATIVELY easy for me to figure out what notes I'm hearing. The only requirement is to sing the guitar tuning in my head until I either land on the note (because it belongs on the guitar) or come close to it by the half step as in the cases of C and F. The interesting thing is that my teacher would always check that the tuning was correct before every lesson (although I don't know if he had perfect pitch, he would sometimes either play or just sing an E to me so I'd correct the overall tuning relative to that first E string which is also the pitch on the open 6th string on the guitar) I remember his nodding smile the day I sang all the guitar tuning back to him.. ;-) So I guess I learned it from him that I was supposed to also remember the notes, and so I did... (like Charles similar explanation about remembering those jazz tunes openings)
I definitely taught myself perfect pitch at a young age, but I didn’t know what it was until my junior year of high school, so at first I didn’t even know there was a name for what I developed. I would sit at the piano and try and pick up songs by ear. Eventually, I got really good at it. And once I got good at it, I started to remember what specific pitches sounded like. I always associate certain notes with certain songs. Having a good ear for intervallic relationships also helps a lot. Just my personal experience.
Associating songs with pitches is pitch memorization, not perfect pitch. If you had perfect pitch you wouldn't even have to think about what the note is. Still very impressive though, and it's not like perfect pitch is needed.
This is exactly how my jazz band director explained it. I took it and ran with it. I can now identify almost all 12 pitches now and it's quite useful. Thanks Mr. Bordelon.
I have perfect pitch, and I can confirm that everything Charles said about it not being as helpful as understanding intervallic relationships is completely true. I spent my entire teenage years resting on my laurels and relying on perfect pitch for everything, never truly learning music theory as much as I should have, and it's a huge liability now that I'm in my thirties whenever I want to discuss music with fellow musicians. I can never seem to find the exact terms or the precise chord names to describe what I have in mind, without having to resort to naming the pitches individually and hoping someone else in the group can "translate" for me. Don't get me wrong, I cherish the fact I'm one of the lucky 1/10,000, but I do regret not spending more time to learn some proper musical vocabulary.
@@paradox9551 My solfege is fine! Chord names are what I struggle with mostly, but I'm slowly getting there already. Perfect pitch doesn't really make it any easier though; being able to tell whether (for example) a minor 7th chord is Cm7 or Gm7 doesn't really make a difference!
I know no one asked, but I want to explain how my perfect pitch works. I've had perfect pitch as long as I can remember, but I didn't know it was a rare thing until more recently. As a kid, I told my teacher I could hear the notes talk to me, she looked at me with a funny look and kind of just dismissed it. I took 10 years off from studying music, and I didn't know it was called perfect pitch until I was 25 years old and started training again. Before that, I thought everyone heard music like I did - in "color." The way it works for me is I hear the note "say" its own name using the solfege names (do, re mi, fa, sol... etc.). It's pretty instant - no thought process or comparison necessary, I just know each note when I hear it and it "says" its own name. I can also hear a note in my head and sing it on demand - although this is sometimes a little off since I don't have good pitch stability when I sing. Each note also has certain colors and characteristics for me, and some notes sound like even or odd numbers. Certain tonalities also have feelings/associations, mainly around colors. I love F minor because it feels like dark murky green. C sharp minor is metallic and badass. C - Blue - even number C# - purple and sour - even number D - White/clear - odd number Eb - Maroon and tangy - even number E - Red and piercingly sharp - even number F - GREEN as hell - not even or odd F# - Lighter green - not even or odd G - Yellow - strange - even number Ab - sounds like A but muffled - not even or odd A - purple and fat opera singer - even number Bb - sounds like a mix between A and B I hear it as Bae (sounds closer to B for me) yellowish Orange - not even or odd B - Orange and sharp - not even or odd However, sometimes I struggle with recognizing pitch from voice/when someone is singing a song. I think it has to do with the way I recognize the pitch - when someone is singing it interferes with me hearing the note say its own name. When its from any instrument, or if the singer sings in a way that is devoid of words (i.e. whistles), I don't have any issues with pitch recognition - I get it right 80-90% of the time depending on the day (yes, some days I'm more off than others, especially if I'm tired or if I go into an area with different air pressure). So I guess perfect pitch isn't the right word for me, because it really isn't PERFECT. I like the term absolute pitch better because for me, its more about knowing each note than being able to singing it perfectly on the dot. For example, I can't do some of the things that Jacob Collier does with microtones or knowing if its A = 432 or A = 440. I just know its A.
@@armenghazarian3515 If you can "see" those colors and numbers in your mind's eye (you're not ACTUALLY seeing color), it has been known as synesthesia, more specifically chromesthesia.
Finally! I keep having to explain to my family and friends that I don't have perfect pitch. Here are the songs I use for each pitch C: I'm a pianist and its been burned in my mind C#: All of me by the piano guys D: Megalovania from Undertale Eb: Staff credits roll from Super Mario Galaxy E: Fur Elise F: The Circle of Life from The Lion King F#: YYZ from Rush G: Also from piano and cello: Ab: Theme from Legend of Zelda: Windwaker A: Cello tuning Bb: Star Wars B: just check one step below C lo
I have always been told I have perfect pitch, particularly since I was 11 and I could tune my violin without any reference. But I think I memorised the 440 Hz A and the other notes came after. Yes I can do the party trick of singing a required note into a tuner, but what was truly useful for my musical career was the ability to play songs after listening to them a couple of times, I can play old songs I used to listen with ease. I find uncomfortable when people sing or play a song in a different key than the original, but I am able to transpose anyway. I am persuaded that a well trained relative pitch has a slightly higher impact on a musician or a singer than perfect pitch.
Indeed you can memorize A and other notes. And when you get fast you just instantly tell the pitch. There is no magic here. Our brains have equal developable potentials. Training training and training. After thousands of hours learning perfect pitch, everyone can get it.people give up before they even start, just admit that you are not gifted. Wimps a bunch…
Same here - I can start from A as a reference (or F#, since my middle school orchestra would often miss those and our teacher would have us sing it often) and get most notes pretty quickly, so when he did that little run early in that video (C-G-B-F#-D-A or something) I could pick out all the notes without looking because of the intervals. with chords though (especially 3rds and 4ths) it's definitely more difficult
Short story of me, and how I started learning "perfect" pitch at ~11 years old : We had a tuning fork at home, which was a very entertaining item for tiny me : Odd shape, amplifies on some surfaces and stuff... I remember I was always bringing that thing at school, and eventually, I somehow thought that it'd be cool to memorize the fork's pitch (A440). After quite some time repeating the process, I somehow ended up to be able to recognize an A, but I can tell I couldn't recognize any other note. Then, I started to learn the other "white keys" : Since I couldn't recognize them at first, I used relative pitch with my A to find these new notes, and after quite some training, I ended up being able to identify the 7 "white" notes. And then, I worked on the black notes... I don't remember how long it took, but at the end, I can tell my "ability" is definitely more of perfect pitch than relative, as when I hear a tone, I can tell quite instantly which one it is without hearing any reference tone.
I went to Yamaha music school when i was 4 or 5 and they basically trained the kids to have perfect pitch. The teacher would play a note or a chord on the piano and have the students tell what notes were played, and it was part of the exam as well. I met another friend who also went to Yamaha, and she also has perfect pitch. It can be useful to have perfect pitch, but it can be a curse too, it's hard for me to learn instruments in other keys e.g. sax, so I had to think of it as always playing in e flat, but this Yamaha friend of mine plays the sax and she can switch between thinking in C and in E flat, which is fascinating to me
I am one of two people at my school in Honor’s Theory without perfect pitch. It is interesting to see how difficult sight transposition is for them (cause obviously without perfect pitch you can reasonably convince yourself that any note you want is what you want it to be) Although sometimes we’re asked to sight transpose on fixed-do solfège, plus I’m a classical trumpet major so I have to do genuine transposition then too Not quite so easy then
I went to Yamaha music school when I was 5 years old. Same, I have perfect pitch, but definitely not at Charlie's Puth level. Anyway I remember other children joining my class who developed perfect pitch thanks to that methodology. Today, without anymore practicing any instrument, 25 years later I can still distinguish immediately notes played on guitar, piano, strings, but definitely I cannot tell all the notes of a weird chord played randomly on an instrument (apart from the leading one)
fun fact about perfect pitch and tonal languages. Musicians often have an easier time learning mandarin, vietnamnese and cantonese. In Mandarin, the tone changes the meaning, so people with "a musician ear" are able to hear the subtle differences. People who can't hear tonal differences have a tough time learning Mandarin and vietnamnese.
clarification on PERFECT PITCH/ it is the ability to recognize instantly the pitch being sounded, - not FIGURING IIT OUT, not THINKING about it, or not testing it with how the pitch feels in your head or throat, but if you have the ability to identify a color on a card, immediately you have color recognition, so too, you can do with with pitches if you have PERFECT PITCH, someone can play or sing a note and without any time lapse you can identify the pitch accurately (assumingn you LEARNED the ''name of the pitch'' FROM AN ''intune '' piano'' because an ''out of tune piano'' will make you learn to wrongly identify the sound and you'l be stuck with it (much llike someone who is 'COLOR BLIND'' ) however a person can learn ''relative pitch'' so that the note heard can be ''guessed at with a v.close identity to the actual pitch..
I am a singer and I determine pitches by how they feel when I sing them. If I sing the note high or low, then I can determine what the note is by how I strain to hit them. I don't always get it, but I'm usually always less than a step away. I have a few friends that have perfect pitch. I have about 5-15 friends with it. I've kind lost track. a couple of my best friends have had it. That may sound like a lot, but I'm in really good choirs. If you are in high quality music groups, then you will make friends with perfect pitch.
I’d highly recommend “this is your brain on music” by daniel Levitin. (He’s a cognitive neuroscientist.) it’s one if the best books on music and the brain and I’ve had all my interns read it. I agree with Charles that it can’t be learned per se. But those who have the innate ability have to be trained which frequency goes with what name. So like someone who plays a transposing instrument will have been “programmed” with a different frequency/note relationship.
Pitch memorization is such a trip. I've heard Jackson Browne's solo acoustic version of "The Pretender" so many times that I can grab its opening F# and A# out of thin air. The A# (Bb) is especially useful, since I play primarily brass. ❤️
Personally, the way I like to think of perfect pitch is like learning left from right at an early age. I know people that never had that core concept ingrained. They can still tell left from right, but they always need a way to remember (thinking about your dominant hand or foot, which hand they write with, etc) So perfect pitch is like that where note sounds are ingrained and you don't need to think. Where as us normal people need to think of some extra song or something that clues us in.
It is very interesting. I don't have a perfect pitch but a good relative one and I also need to think of a left vs right. Wonder if those two things are connected..
I get the gist of ur comment in regards to pitch, but your analogy with left vs right is so confusing to me. I wasn't aware there were adults that needed to think about left vs right. I don't understand...so when they are driving and someone tells them to take a left or a right turn it's not immediately obvious which direction they mean? I don't get it...I feel like I never had any concept of "front or back" of my body or its parts but I could identify them without thinking...and I thought everyone else was the same. In the middle of writing this it just occurred to me that perhaps it's some pathology and the first thing that came to mind was something like dyslexia. After googling, some people have directional dyslexia so they do have difficulty with differentiating left from right...but the cause isn't from a lack of education, rather I think they were born that way....which incidentally is a good analogy to perfect pitch.
@@cwjalexx I have ADHD and couldn't learn left vs right, it's like my brain moves the information around and could see it either way. Funnily I also struggled with the tunes at 8:00 because they were all clearly Bohemian Rhapsody to me and my gut didn't say "this one is clearly more Bohemian Rhapsody than the others".
I like to think that without perfect pitch, we hear notes on a gray scale... Like, we can tell if a note is dark (low) or bright (high). And people who have perfect pitch don't just have the gray scale, they have the full chromatic range unlocked. To me it makes a bit more sense than the color blind comparison thing.
Just a quick story to share: I didn't have "perfect pitch" when I was much younger (before 7). However, being really interested in music, as were my parents, I would always try to mimic the sounds I heard on a CD recording on the old house piano. I would think I was hitting the right notes (I learnt to name the notes on the keyboard at age 6), but when I started really learning music, I realised everything I played was complete gibberish. So what I did was years and years of calibrating, with the help of sheet music of the pieces I heard on recordings. In essence, I tried to understand how it would feel like if I played something identical to the sounds I heard. With that, I slowly grasped and understood the feeling of resonance, like "Ah, so this is what it feels like when I play C against an audio that plays C", and I would hold on to the feeling and the memory of striking resonance. Time after time, this pursuit for resonance extended to me grasping the feelings of various intervals, both melodic and harmonic alike, which allowed me to identify virtually any note within reasonable range. Essentially, I was honing both my perfect and relative pitches in one go. I gotta say it was a long process but with both of these happening, it just kinda formed a feedback loop that increased my pitch identification accuracy. With all that being said, there is a caveat to this, as my acuteness deteriorates whenever I stop actively engaging with music, which happened a year ago where all my pitches were one halftone lower in my head lol. But yeah, for me, perfect pitch was trained, but in a manner dominated by a very comprehensive feedback system between my ears, eyes and memory.
I have Duel of the Fates’ opening chord (an E Minor chord) engrained in my mind and can pull the B natural and use relative pitch from there fairly quickly.
I’ve known one guy who could dissect the notes you’d play if you’d mash random keys on the piano. It was incredible. I would kill to have that ability.
I can switch on/off perfect pitch for the F transposition (because I'm a horn player). I don't have perfect pitch (my 4 years old son has). I hear the sons relatively, but if want I can sing any note but it takes me about one second. All the notes are transposed to F.
wrong, and i did it. 14 year-old new orleans jazz player here, and i memorized b-flat january 2020, then went up memorizing a new note going up by 4ths each month. now 2022 and i have immediate recall perfect pitch.
As someone who uses perfect pitch on TikTok to harmonise people talking quite often (very much inspired by Mononeon and you by the way), I think it's a skill that unfortunately can't be truly acquired if you don't have it. Also, you've made brilliant videos in the past showing us how to do those piano remix videos even though you don't have perfect pitch - personally, I really wish more people would watch those because I frequently see the 'perfect pitch ppl be like' type comments on my videos far too often. Great stuff as always Charles!
What does harmonizing anything have to do with perfect pitch? If you are in the keys you easely find the pitches and If you do it by ear with your voice you just don't need to care about the labels of the notes.
@@7riXter Agreed. I don't see how perfect pitch plays into harmonizing with a playing track. I don't have perfect pitch, but I can easily write vocal harmonies without much thought.
I've wanted someone to make this video for so long, and it perfectly demystifies the differences between perfect pitch and just having a good ear and memory. Great video!
something worth considering is the idea that someone can distinguish notes but hasn't spent time learning the note names and how they relate to each other. like if you could see all the colors but didn't know all the color names. I'm curious if and how much this impacts that stats for perfect pitch.
I am a classically-trained singer. I have well-trained relative pitch, like you, Charles. I have pretty strong pitch memory. I can pull notes out of “thin air”, and have even “fooled” people into thinking that I do have perfect pitch. I can even notice when a song is playing in the “wrong” key a majority of the time. But that’s the thing: I usually have to THINK about it. Like you said, I don’t have to think about whether something is blue or purple, but I do have to think about if a note is an E or F. That being said, you’re right: well-trained relative pitch is still an incredibly useful tool.
With regards to how useful having AP is - I only really rely on it under 2 circumstances. Firstly, when I'm tuning up my analogue synths, and secondly when I'm adjusting the key of a sampler so that pressing C on the keyboard actually plays a C. Other than that I agree it's pretty much useless but quite fun. Also - a thought on the colour analogy. For me, the feeling when I recognise a pitch is most similar to the feeling I get when I recognise somebody in the street. It's just like a gut feeling of 'oh yeah, I know you, you're F#'. Maybe that's just a "me thing", who knows?!
Sounds like you may play the piano, and if that's correct, can I ask you at what age you started playing the piano? And also, when you recognize, e.g. F#, if you really think about what happens inside your head, can you tell me whether that feeling is also accompanied by the feeling/look/sense of that specific key on the piano?
@@LetoDK I actually play the recorder! But interestingly in terms of what you were saying about associations - if I'm holding a recorder whilst listening to a song, I can basically bypass the "okay, that's an E - three fingers on the left and two on the right" thing, I just hear the note and my fingers sort of float towards the right holes if that makes any sense. I've been playing for as long as I remember, and I was always played a wide range of music as a kid, which I've heard helps with AP as well.
As someone with perfect pitch, I discovered that my "superpower" is identifying people by voice alone, even people I haven't seen for more than a decade. I would love to learn if this is something all people with perfect pitch can do.
@@carl13579 I honestly don’t know if I have perfect pitch or how I’d tell (accuracy tuning or whistling or singing?) but I’m really good at recognising voice actors, and I can also recall timbral or other textural qualities in audio that others say they can’t. If that helps.
There is one overstretch in the pitch/colour analogy: When lack of the perfect pitch skill is explained by analogy to colour blindness and not having certain "cones" in the eye, i.e. lack of the necessary "sensors", it implies that there is a lack of sensory input to the brain. However, people without perfect pitch do recognise different pitches, i.e. they have the sensors. Rick Beato has a video on the topic where the claim is perfect pitch can be acquired as a skill in the early stages of child development. Therefore; it is more likely that the neural circuitry to interpret the sensory input is missing,, rather than analogs of "cones cells" in colour blindness.
I agree. I think it's about what our brains are doing with the information internally and some people's brain's ability to process it in a more precise manner perhaps
I have absolute pitch, as does my dad. It's part inborn ability and part a trained skill. Not everybody can learn it, but almost everyone can improve their pitch with training. Classical singing training (ie opera) spends a lot of time improving the skill. People trained in different traditions (e.g. Indian classical singing vs European opera) hear differently because they've been trained differently.
I think it’s 2… and I guess I was wrong. But at the same time I think I’ve played that song in other keys. I can pull a low E usually whenever I want because it’s the bottom note of a guitar and needed to tune it and I know what it feels like to sing that note in my vocal range. The song method tends to work much less for me than imagining myself playing it on guitar and figuring out where it is. Being perfectly in tune is really hard though. I guess we all wish we had perfect pitch but I definitely feel that. I just carry a pitch pipe in my back pocket if perfect pitch students try to 1-up me.
I also thought it was number 2. The first one sounded a little weird so the second one seemed correct but then came the third and I was so confused because I already decided 2 was right but 3 also sounded quite right. But I would have checked 2 and would have been wrong.
Relative pitch is a great skill to have. Especially since people lose the perfect pitch as they age. It's important to protect your ears if you have perfect pitch.
Yes, yes yes, yeeees, I love this video because it perfectly describes perfectly how perfect pitch works. I have this memorization to a certain level, especially with the piano. If u play some notes as u did in the video, I can directly tell u the notes, but if u ask me to sing an f# out of context, it wouldn't be able to do so. So if people ask me, whether I have perfect pitch, I struggle to answer. Additionally, I really like the color-comparison, it suits this topic very well.
Maybe I can't know a difficult chord and then explain what notes are in the difficult chord, but I can correct people who sing falsely to the correct chords and even know what chord is when they sing a false chords.
First jazz song I ever heard was Easy Living by Billie Holiday. I haven't had a listen to it in years but you pop that track on and I could sing it note for note, lyric for lyric.
Though I haven't seen the term in writing, in college music theory classes, we referred to this type of tonal memory as "absolute pitch." This means that we have exact, infallible reference tones that we hear in our head. We happen to know what those notes are called. I agree can sometimes be more useful than perfect pitch. Especially when singing with an acapella group.
"...reference tones that we hear in our head." This, exactly. When someone says a note, I hear it clearly in my head. Conversely, when I hear a tone, I see it in my mind as the particular note written on a staff.
I dont know if i would describe having perfect pitch as seeing in full color (i have perfect pitch) . Its more like you dont need a reference to know what you are experiencing. Imagine knowing what length something is by looking at it, without needing to be told or shown some reference before. Most people cant tell how long something is, but after someone gives a reference, they can figure it out. Perfect pitch is just hearing the length in your head when you look at something
@@moltenbutter6958 its close, but the difference is that color blind people dont have all the receptors to see all tje colors, but we all see length, we see/ hear all the same sounds, but some can come up with a concrete value of what they experience
I had the exact same thought while watching the video. His analogy seems a bit off to me because, unlike with color-blindness, everyone can _hear_ every pitch, they just can't usually describe pitches in absolute terms. I think there's a valid analogy to be made with colors, but the one presented here isn't quite right
The really interesting thing about the Bohemian Rhapsody test is that I guessed correctly, and I've never actually heard that song properly from the start! It just sounded "right" to me
So glad you did this video!! Growing up as an orchestral percussionist, A-440 has always been ingrained in my head and I’ve always used this technique to ‘replicate’ perfect pitch. I dubbed it years ago as ‘Relatively Perfect Pitch’ but it’s always been hard to explain to people. As always, love your videos!
I'm only about halfway through the vid, so maybe you'll touch on this soon, but I have an itch in my brain 😅: A few of my friends who don't consider themselves musicians-- people who don't believe me, a former professional singer and arranger, when I say, "You're a good singer!"-- can hum a song I know, nail the key, melody, and sometimes subtle background parts of songs they've just casually listened to over the years. I don't have perfect pitch, and neither do they. But pitch memory is very common. Ask a handful of musicians, especially those who are BOTH classically trained AND can memorize/ replicate/ improvise by ear, and many of us might say that perfect pitch is overrated. Ok, thx for reading, back to our show. 😅👍
Played piano and recently picked up the flute. Perfect pitch makes it really really easy for me to learn whatever piece I want. It's useful but I'd trade perfect pitch for perfect music theory knowledge any day.
perfect pitch is actually really helpful for remembering pitch theory like chords and such, but if you're into jazz you can also try going from a sound in your head to a musical idea instead of formulating an idea from theory
The interesting thing about that color analogy is that I have Chromesthesia, which is seeing color in sound. So, certain notes have specific colors attached to them, making my music listening quite fascinating. It is a wacky quirk to have in my brain, but it allows me to view music in a completely unique experience from anyone else and I absolutely love it.
Not long ago, I had a teacher who asked me if I have perfect pitch, simply based off of the fact that I was never off key. I’ve always memorized my music based off of the way it sounds and always grew up playing the piano and violin just by memorization instead of reading the music while playing. Perfect pitch is an entirely different concept that I’ve loved the idea of, but there is so much more to music than most people ever realize. Charlie’s knowledge is way above what we’d ever have with how instant it comes to him
Apparently people with perfect pitch experience "pitch drift" over time. So what they once heard as an E is actually an E flat or something. That must be maddening and confusing if you've had perfect pitch your whole life. Imagine being sixty years old and you suddenly start seeing blue as green. And you're absolutely convinced you're seeing green.
I’ve used this same strategy to memorize most of the pitches. I’ve used songs, tuning notes, the open strings on a guitar, etc… to do this. Some notes I have better memorized than others, but I can usually identify any note in a few seconds. To help retain this skill, I also try to not think of any other note relative to what I hear; I only directly reference the material I used to memorize that note.
I knew a guy in highschool that had perfect pitch. He was a gifted pianist. He could listen to any pop song and immediately play it on the keyboard. He taught me a lot of 80s pop songs. His perfect pitch was awesome. With his back to the piano, you could smash a random mix of white and black keys, and he could name them all. I don't believe it can be learned, it's a gift. The best you can get is relative pitch with experience.
even most from people with perfect pitch is able to doing this, you dont need a perfect pitch for playing songs with improvisation. I have a perfect pitch and yes, if i know some song i am able to play it without practice. But i know a "lot" of musicians with the same skill and they has not a perfect pitch :) Perfect pitch is overrated skill. Yes, in music you have a lot of atvantage (you dont need spend a same time for prooving like others) but thats all. Only once atvantage is when i was learning a music theory on conservatory (harmony, intonation etc.), perfect pitch is a little bit like a cheat :D
All seven kids in my family have perfect pitch. We all started string instruments very young (most before four years old). I've read and written a lot on the subject, but I can tell you with certainty that it is, to some degree, learned. Oh, and neither of my parents have it.
This is delightful to watch; I've struggled many years to determine what I have: I used to be able to identify tones faster, but now I've grown sluggish, and always thought I've had a great "relative pitch" memory. But at the same time, I essentially follow the same method that described here: I have pieces "saved" in my head in undeniably certain keys (for example, I would associate the Star Bangled Banner in A-flat, giving me both the E-flat starting note and the key of A-Flat, or from video games the Legend of Zelda Song of Storms, which is D minor). I associated certain pieces with certain keys and could "learn" from that. It's also interesting that there can be different layers. There are people that can identify tones (by hearing them), and then also those that can produce them, but not necessarily both. Additionally, those that truly have pitch can determine the precision of a tone (A440, A439, A438). Sometimes I feel that I've listened to too much authentic Baroque musique that my "tone anchors" (like what I mentioned above) have started to become abscured.
I just automatically hear the name of the note in my head together with the actual note. If you play C, I automatically hear 'Do' in my head (I didn't learn the abc version as a kid). Strangely, I don't hear flats and sharps. They do sound different, flat is a bit darker and sharp is a bit brighter, it feels like how it would feel if you tried to sing the notes, you would turn you head down for lower notes and turn it up for higher notes, that's what you do instinctively. So I get flats and sharps right about 60% of the time. Sometimes I confuse notes with similar sounding names, like Do and So, or Mi and Si, the notes have a vowel tied to them. As I got older and more versed in music, this got easier. But I'm pretty sure I have almost perfect pitch (or 'pretty good pitch', if you will), because I can wake up in the morning and usually accurately tell you notes. I'm not the best at tuning though, because notes have a range to me. A isn't necessarily 440hz. I feel it intuitively, so I do feel like a note needs to go up or down, but it's not necessarily in line with standard western tuning. I did however grow up with an old-ish, rarely tuned piano. So I do need to decipher a little bit, but not as much as others
I have perfect pitch, and this video was absolutely fascinating to me. I couldn’t imagine hearing music not in “full color” if you know what I mean. I started out music on piano, which is (obviously) a concert pitch instrument, then moved to trombone later (also concert pitch). My friend has perfect pitch also, but he started out on Alto Sax, so his perfect pitch is “tuned down” a minor third, because Alto has to transpose. I just find that really weird and interesting.
I don’t know if I have perfect pitch because I can’t do it when it’s played so fast I can’t keep up kinda like Charlie pith can, but if I hear a singular note I don’t have to think about it.
I have perfect pitch & had it since I was a child. I would literally mimic whatever sound that caught the attention of my ear & do it to perfection. Because I didn’t know music theory I would label the notes on the piano as colors which was weird but it helped me. It wasn’t until I took piano lessons in my late teens early 20’s that it was revealed to me what perfect pitch was. Everything came natural to me, it helped me to understand what was going on in my mind musically & I could actually tell the viewer in detail everything thing I’m hearing. My instructor in 2009 tested me by having me stand with my back turned & he played several notes & I told him everything he was doing without looking at the piano. We became the best of friends after that. Going to school for music was the most interesting & stressful thing I’ve ever done for myself. 4 semesters of Music theory enhanced my skills tremendously. Melodic dictation was hard but it did help. & knowing what hey the song is in without looking at the sheet music is an advantage!! Your channel is amazing Charles & thank you for this video!
Forget his perfect-pitch abilities- have you listened to his latest single _Left and Right?_ The guy’s production is on a whole another level. It’s so refreshing to hear a guy make production decisions based on what is being said in the lyrics. In this song for this instance… he answers the main line _memories follow me left and right_ with two distinct vocal lines panned hard-left and hard-right (so as to show that the love-interest in this song takes up every corner of his mind). It’s incredible. I wish more people would write songs like this- where the lyrics reflect some type of change in the music/production…
@@bazingacurta2567 you are right, but it is a great song nevertheless. i’m glad that this comment made me check out this guys music, because it’s awesome and i didn’t know him.
I realize it's just being used as an analogy to help us understand, but hearing perfect pitch described as hearing in full color is really funny to me, a person who does not have perfect pitch but DOES have some minor synesthesia where I see colors/textures when listening to some music 🤣
Yeah the way he described the color analogy may not be the best. I think it would be better to say that people with perfect pitch can remember the *specific* shade of every color exactly in their head and anytime they "hear" that color they know that exact shade. They don't have to have a reference point. We all know red but without any help if we were shown one of a thousand shades of red could we instantly know which it was? They hear any sound and their brains know the "frequency" of the sound. If they hear an A they know that tone immediately, but not because they see all colors in a way that is different to us. Rather because their brain distinguishes what tone is what with basically "perfect" precision.
Billies bounce is my favorite jazz piece, I played it in my jazz group (I play trumpet) and I got the main melody at A, such a fun and entertaining piece to both play and listen to
Where my relative pitch comes from C - ukulele 2nd string, it being the super basic piano key drilled it in Db - 80% of mr brightside D - Ringmasters Notre Dame Medley Eb - my high school Alma Mater E - 3rd string of uke F - unironically the first note of We are number one F# - i just go half a step down from G G is like my home note from playing the ukulele, i perpetually have a G ringing throughout my brain Ab - an arrangement of take me home country roads my quartet did A- 4th string of uke Bb - Moon Creep by Brent Walsh B - Stars by Eriks Esenvalds And studying theory and intervals and ear training makes it the perfect party trick and i just tend to consider it faux/pseudo perfect pitch, it works just as well just a slight delay
idk obviously I don't know you so I don't know how fast you can recognize these, but I like you also have a "reference" for each pitch but for me over time it's become such an instant thing that I really don't feel bad saying I have perfect pitch. Like if you compare me with someone who has "true" perfect pitch you will be able to notice they are slightly faster (and if I want to I can stop thinking about pitch and "turn it off" which I don't think they could) but to most people in most cases it's going to be the same. So personally I would say you have perfect pitch. I believe it is something you can develop.
Specifically, it's because you have a reference for every pitch that I think it's valid. I know plenty of people with 1-4 or so and that I consider relative pitch. But if you can quickly and reliably recognize and reproduce a note I see no reason to distinguish that.
perfect pitch is a spectrum brother. a popular youtuber called Eddy chen from twosetviolin already taught himself perfect pitch. he wasn’t born with it! You should ask him about it!
I don't have perfect pitch, but I am "pitch locked". Meaning that if I were to just start singing the melody I know I always sing it in the key I heard it. For example I always sing the recorder lead melody in the theme song from the old 60s sitcom Room 222 in the key I heard it in the 60s (as a 10 year old).
The way that you decipher notes is the same way i have for years and I never knew if it would make sense to other people!! So happy to understand why it works!
My goto's. E - Fur Elise. C & G -Jump & Vince Guaraldi Trio skating. C# - Claire de Lune. A - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love. Few more but then go relative from there..
yes you can. Charlie doesn't just have some divine ability to know what C sharp sounds like. He learned what c sharp sounds like and is extremely good at recognizing that sound based off of what he has learned. Perfect pitch in it of itself is not a binary you have it or you don't. It is a skill that is acquired by a large experience of listening to notes and hearing or discerning what they're called. The notation of notes is a man made tool, so having an ability to recognize it therefore by default has to be learned. And anything that can be learned will always come easier to some and harder to others, some possess a ceiling lower than others and some have a high ceiling that will never be realized because they don't put in effort to reach it.
Unfortunately, that theory is not what's going on in practice (which is usual for theories). People can have perfect pitch without ever playing any instrument or having an instrument at home. And without knowing how that C# is called. they will just say: oh, that's the first note of that song! The only prerequisite is just listening to some music, obviously.
@@psorcerer yeah, that is included in my « theory » everything is learned. They learned the note because of x song not because they have some crazy ability. Everything is learned, and can be learned to certain degrees. It’s possible to learn perfect pitch. It’s possible never to care and not learn it. But one thing is for certain, it is annoying how it’s glorified as some supreme sorcery granted to able musicians who are of kindred spirit. Like no they just really listen to music and remember sounds well. Memory retention is not some absurd Super power. It’s the human brain applied to music.
@@VolleyballHighlights2024 there's no "crazy ability" there's a normal ability for children to rewire their brain pretty fast. Which is lost for adults. For example ability to learn a language and sound native in that language. No adult (without perfect pich) will have no accent in a newly learned language. But kids - they can.
@@psorcerer let me paint a better picture. Perfect pitch is treated as some, all powerful able to discern pitch without fault and if you aren’t perfect you don’t have this ability. It’s like comparing Magnus Carlson to someone who knows what chess is but doesn’t play. And then saying that Magnus has some ability that the avg person doesn’t. In reality that person could be better at chess than Magnus Carlson. (Who displays a ability to memorise patterns at a high rate) but since they don’t play and don’t care to try we’ll never know. The same is for perfect pitch, it’s likely much more common than someone like Charlie south will say it is, but admitting that it’s probably common to recognise pitch in music makes him seem less cool, and since he has an incredible music experience he can show off his very refined expertise in it as a way to show the gap between someone with and without it. This relationship exists in everything. Because people like to seem very good at things and separate themselves from average people who just don’t care at all
@@psorcerer this is an out of left field conversation that has value and is interesting but is no where near what the original argument was about. It can be learned, and it’s probably common, but we will never know because 90% of the world doesn’t care enough to try
Yes, the comparison to colour blindness is spot on. Many colour blind people can see the difference between shades of colours when the colours are next to one another but can't tell which is which when the colours are shown to them one by one. I. e. it's relative. So yes, as some people have an extremely precise sense of colour (=ability to sense wavelengths of light) it only makes sense that some people are very sensitive to frequencies of sound. 🤷♂️ What's odd though is that perfect pitch is so rare whereas a majority of people seem to be able to pick up colours quite accurately. 🤔
Yes, you can. And I have. And yes, every note does sound different and anyone can hear this. Listen to how each sound vibrates. The “color” of an E vibration is different than an A. AP exists on a spectrum of ability. Just like relative pitch. It is not about remembering the “highness” or “lowness”. Each pitch has a unique vibration profile. Associating with colors are mostly a personal opinion. But for me, B has a silvery kind of piercing vibration. Certain scales will also have a unique character. Ab major is mellow sound while E is more bright sounding. This “1 in 10,000” stat is not clearly factual. Also it ignores that it exists on a spectrum. The irony here is that the guy in this video Charles does have some minor perception of AP but doesn’t understand that this is actually what it is. And this is the case for many musicians, I believe. I noticed these same details before I “had” refined my AP hearing. And it is possible to practice. Just listen and compare the notes. Check your mistakes by comparing pitches directly. Absolute pitch is a more refined ear. If you have it you are able to hear in more detail compared to someone who doesn’t have it. I have personally met individuals who can only ID one pitch. This is absolute pitch. It exists on a spectrum of ability contrary to myth. Do all musicians have equal ears? That would be a silly assumption, no? When I first learned AP I would confuse pitches, but usually the same mistake. Interesting, right? Because my mistake should be “random” if I didn’t have AP. I found that I would be off by a fifth or sometimes a semitone (IMO, the fifths are fairly similar sounding, but with practice the differences become more clear.). You will see many stories online of people with AP saying they have more trouble hearing specific notes, including black keys. This was also my experience because I practiced white keys first. Then I developed the ability to hear multiple notes, then multi note chords. It takes a lot of practice. Have you tried to improve relative pitch? How slowly did your ear improve? The same with AP training. At least one study I saw identified that there is one pitch that is mistaken more than others. And if you talk or read online you can find many stories of this. Again: it’s a spectrum of ability. Every person has unique experiences and training and listening ability. Every person has unique hearing. There are many false myths about AP. Even the scientists don’t understand it. And that’s because it is difficult to explain your own subjective experience. Describing colors for example can be done with “bright/dark”, but it is more difficult to do with pitch. Eb for me is a “darker” note than a G or an F#. And for the record, I learned how to develop it from David Lucas Burge who debunked many of the myths of AP 30 years ago. But I made a small number of my own drills to practice because all of his drills make you practice at your instrument. If you truly want to develop it understand that basic AP is achievable, but developing mastery of it will take a lot longer. IMO, you can almost never stop improving your ear if you want to. A great analogy to the misleading question “can I develop AP” would be like asking, can you play chess? Anyone can play chess, but how many can master it? That would take many hours of practice. When you develop AP as a child, you already practiced a lot of pitch distinction, so the ear is used to listening for it. But test various individuals and you will find differences in ability. Developing the ear takes a lomg time so developing AP depends on the caveat that you understand that you will not have fully refined hearing overnight. The ear does not improve that quickly. But with continued practice the ear gets better at distinguishing differences.
Actually for me perfect pitch always was just having the memory of a specific pitch. So if you remember a song in the correct pitch it should be perfect pitch too I guess 🤔 I mean if you can remember the right pitch of song you should also be able to remember every tone in a scale with some training. But actually I don't know the exact definition of perfect pitch.
These are my thoughts as well. Perfect pitch is a spectrum, but if you are able to remember pitches without any outside reference, this is also perfect pitch
Absolute pitch is very weird for me, and it’s something I’ve been mindfully practicing for decades. I can define pitches with really good accuracy in the shower, or a quiet place. I grew up playing the violin so EADG is baked into my brain. HOWEVER, when there’s music playing at me, my internal sense of pitch gets distracted by the noise; if that makes sense. To the point where I cannot hear my internal clock of pitch. I’m hoping one day I can get over it.
I’m a singer with a church job, and I also play saxophone. I can name A and Bb because tuning in band hammered them in, and middle C because of futzing around with the piano. I can also tell when we sing an anthem or hymn in a different key than is written on the page, even if the change is just a half step, because decades of classical singing have taught me what each note feels like in my voice. I don’t have perfect pitch, but this kind of memorization definitely helps with sight-singing and staying in tune vocally.
This video has inspired me to start determining what notes are in all the pieces engrained in my brain so I can use the Levitin effect to identify pitches more effectively. Thus far I've been using relative pitch away from A 440 to determine notes because in middle school, my strings teacher would blast an A from a sine wave generator for a good ten minutes every morning while everyone got set up and tuned up.
I have a condition called synthesia. When I scrub over a velvet trouser I can taste a sweet taste in my mouth. And when I hear some particular tones I see a particular colour. For example, b sharp is a deep blue and f sharp is green
Right, what you described is still relative pitch. You don't HEAR what sound it is. But you recall the engrained sound of a certain part in a certain piece in context and say if they match the just heard sound, are higher or lower. It is not about eventually saying the right key without actually hearing a reference tone in comparison, but about the way of getting to that result.
8:53 "Probably because you've heard that song so many times that there's no way you wouldn't remember how to sing it or what key it's in." Definitely not true for me. The problem with using a song that you know as a reference is that it doesn't work if you are unable to remember the song in the correct key every time, even "that one song" that is so ingrained in your head. I have written over 200 original songs and produced 12 albums of my original music, but I can't accurately remember my own songs in the right key even though I have sung them thousands and thousands of times. I have very good pitch discrimination and can sing notes perfectly in the center of a pitch with a reference, but when I try to hear a song in my mind, my relative pitch kicks in 100%. The last song I heard or sang will influence the key of the song I'm trying to audiate. It's as if notes only have meaning in context. When I play a song in my car through bluetooth, I can perceive that the pitch is sharper or flatter and it doesn't sound quite right, but I still am unable to accurately remember any song every time. The closest I get is in the morning if I haven't heard or sung any other song. Once I have any music in my head everything shifts entirely to relative pitch, even my memory of the pitch of a song. I also use my voice as a reference when trying to determine the key of a song without a reference, but things will completely change depending on how warmed up I am. I actually describe perfect pitch as fixed pitch memory. It's basically that. I know people with perfect pitch who don't sing perfectly on pitch and don't hear what I hear. I hear overtones and other things that they cannot hear. Charlie Puth uses Autotune because he doesn't like to hear the flat or sharp notes he sings despite his perfect pitch. The physical act of producing a note involves more than just perception. A person with perfect pitch's main skill is being able to remember equal tempered frequencies, normally based on A = 440. That usually enables them to recognize a pitch or produce it without a reference. Then there is Dylan Beato who has super-developed perfect pitch and knowledge of music theory. He can even name complex chords which requires knowledge of theory. I wish I had perfect pitch so I could have an easier time starting a song in the desired key without a reference when singing a cappella or find a note on the piano that I hear in my mind without a reference. There are other benefits I can think of such as singing the Star-Spangled Banner in the desired key without a reference and also not modulating at all. I have trained my relative pitch which helps me in many ways, but I'd still like to have an accurate tonal memory. I also saw videos where people with perfect pitch didn't recognize that the pitch of a song modulated an entire 1/2 steps because it was so gradual like the frog in boiling water. Moreover, they say that after 50, most people's perfect pitch sags a 1/2 step which can be devastating for some people making them not want to listen to music. Such an interesting topic. There's also the issue of the fact that equal temperament tuning doesn't reflect true pitch (true intervals) and singing based on Equal Temperature isn't actually the only way to sing or play since true intervals in nature aren't the same as what we find on a piano. For example, the major third on the piano is 13.69 cents sharper than the major third in the harmonic series. Octaves are always accurate even in Equal Temperament tuning because they are doubled and major fifths are pretty close in Equal Temperament (only 1.96 cents flat).
Thanks for sharing this Charles, it is good to see other perspectives on perfect pitch. My thoughts after seeing this are; in comparing learning the names of notes to learning the names of colors is; when we learned the names of colors we would see one color and be told the name of it, then look around the room or book for things that match that color, then likewise 1 by 1 for all the colors, this slowly engrained the names of the colors in our brain. We could distinguish all the colors from the start (unless we had some forms of color blindness), and we can see variations in color in the color wheel, where there is whole spectrum of each color that blends into the next color, and the ones in the middle are questionable which one they are. Likewise with notes, we hear a whole range of notes, not many of us had training where we'd listen to one not on a piano, then a guitar and on other instruments to study and compare that note to each instrument. We were just blasted with a range of notes, so it never really stuck in to memory. I wonder if we were training colors like that as well, if we were just flashed a range of different colors would we easily remember the color, it would be harder. So, my conclusion is I think perfect pitch has a lot to do with how we were taught what the notes are called, and probably learning young makes it easier, just like young kids learn languages a lot easier than adults. And learning the notes based on simple songs we are familiar with helps, just like you learned some notes from your favorite Jazz albums.
I am in fact completely blind so can't tell how it really feels to learn about colors, but so far your comment and comparison of both color and pitch makes the most sense to me among all the ones I've read (or should I say, I've heard, as I'm using speech synthesis software to navigate the Internet). And I've read/heard a lot. In fact, at this point, I can't be totally sure that I have perfect pitch. Sure, I was good at recognizing pitch since I was a kid, and I also became quite good at identifying the 4% acceleration of films for PAL format, which got me fed up with cinema for a while. Yet, ask me about notes from a song's melody and though I will find them, I will have to think for a few seconds. Never did I have big troubletransposing music, though perhaps this was due to the fact that I only learnt about reading music in Braille very recently. Plus though my main reference is A=440, it does feel jarring to here baroque music tuned that way. So my perfect pitch, if I do have it, is in good part in contradiction with what is often said, including by people who do have it.
@@thepulseman7154 Hi, thanks for your comment. It does give more evidence that perfect pitch can be learned later in life. I saw another article that said anyone can learn perfect pitch, if they we exposed to a lot of music from conception to about the age of 2. Apparently, the young brain will automatically group the notes from any instrument, into the 12 standard notes. So if you know anyone having a baby ask them to expose them to all kinds of music when they are young. And not just simple music. Include Jazz, classic, everything.
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Ive been trying. I do drillss of the c major scale and f# pentatonic scale and i think its working a bit
(I think this is called true pitch tho)
i feel like the color analogy could be enhanced by saying that you would know the exact hex code of that color, even mixes of color. And the same for pitch perfection, you can hear the distinction even in mixes of notes
I honestly don’t know for those who have not recieved any kind of musical training and/or exposure. For me, I had been exposed to classical music before I had even left my mom’s womb and on top of that, I went to a preschool where the classrooms had the names of Mozart and Beethoven and we were all exposed to certain musical instruments. Where my perfect pitch came out was when I took piano lessons wherein I became familiar with the concept of notes and simple chords like C Major or G Minor. I guess my prior exposure helped the perfect pitch to come out, and my discovery of TwosetViolin lit up the boiler that would fuel my love for classical music. Idrk how others can gain perfect pitch, but I guess if there was enough exposure, then I gues you’d be able to train your ear.
You should see sam leak's video on perfect pitch, maybe we will have more information about his research on it soon 😉
As a voice teacher and piano teacher, and the parent of a son with perfect pitch, my answer is the same as yours -- no. You cannot learn perfect pitch. However, my wife has a skill that can be learned -- she is a vocalist and voice teacher and she has what I call "perfect pitch recall" -- she can hear a song and remember the key that it should be in perfectly. That pitch recall can be trained and works just like you demonstrated. I can see how matching pitch recall with music theory allows you to name notes by hearing them with no context. Essentially, you create the context from your memory.
Interestingly, there was a study conducted in by a Japanese psychologist who taught perfect pitch to a number of students with a 100% success rate. However, the catch was that they were all between the age of 4-7 (or thereabouts). He trained them daily 3 times a day by playing keys on the piano and having them guess the notes. I believe the training went on for a number of years and by the end of it, they all developed perfect pitch. However, they tried this with adults, and it was unsuccessful. Adults could get good at identifying notes but never fully developed perfect pitch. (this is all published in the book 'Peak' by K. Anders Ericsson. A psychologist who specializes in the research of peak performers. He suggested that children's brains are a lot more malleable and easily able to learn and develop new concepts that adult brains cannot. Hence, with the proper tutorage, children can perform spectacular learning feats, such as learning a language much faster than an adult. He also suggests that Mozart most likely had perfect pitch and that it was not a random stroke of luck, instead, he believes that as he came from an extremely musical family and that he learned many different musical instruments in those crucial developmental years he actually learned perfect pitch. (I'm going from memory after reading this book so some of these details may not be exact but please look up the info as it is extremely interesting).
This makes me question if it is akin to having more rods and cones as CC says, or just having more sensitive or developed ears. It could be similar to language fluency where it may be possible to learn as an adult but would take an exponential amount more of effort comparitively.
@@Ryan-mw1ry This has nothing to do with rods and cones nor hearing sensitivity. The colour example is kinda meh. It's better to think of perfect pitch of having an exact frequency table and the brain has connections allowing direct translation of sound to a medium that can be compared to the table. Non-perfect pitch people don't have this 'connection' and if such a table exists, there's no mechanism to interpret sound in that fashion.
@Richard I highly doubt Phychologist's work. It's likely a zero percent success rate and he just thinks what he did worked when it didn't. It's also possible his patients already had perfect pitch and they just didn't know it (tonal-languages contain a higher rate of people with perfect pitch). Most classical musicians/keyboardists likely had perfect pitch. Not really anything new. Mozart literally transcribed a Bach keyboard work note for note and put his own name on it. Probably by accident without realizing it. "Adults could get good at identifying notes but never fully developed perfect pitch" This sentence implies that perfect pitch can be developed but it cannot. Either you have it by five months old-ish. Or you don't, or didn't know you had it.
The fascination with perfect pitch is silly. It's more bad than it is good. A couple years of practice can get a person very sufficient with aural skills. Then you don't get upset when people play out of tune (Well, not as much at least). And without perfect pitch, you don't begin losing it at around fifty. It's more of a curse than a gift.
@@asliceofjackie91 pp can only be found in those that contain the genetic marker. This isn't proper science. "We have no clue how our variables are linked but if we do x, y, and z then result happens but we can't explain why or how it's not circumstancial."
Plus I can't read the article when you didn't mention the profs name or multiple since you claim this study is done everywhere. I swear, if these articles consist of some dude pressing A and saying A then find the same to a bunch of notes I'm never going to pay attention to this is unacademic crazy nonsense again. Plus this sort of study is not ethical by nature. Forcing children to rewire their brain for a feature that is more curse than benefit.
@@asliceofjackie91 Deutsch's research is almost certainly outdated at this point. I question whether you even read the article as what it argues is completely different from what you're arguing. That aside, there's multiple issues with the research that don't account for outside variables. They mention Brady in a wishy washy manner. Either he had PP as a child or even today he still doesn't have it. They claim he scored 65% on a test. With practice, I could score much higher with some room for guess work. They showed a shortened PP test example that any trained musician could get 100% on with some margin for luck, depending on whether the examiner is paying attention to if the person hums their first note to receive a reference.
The one that really gets me, is listening to tonal-languages and concluding they must have perfect pitch without accounting for natural speech patterns. The vocal cords have natural positions. But again, they weren't really proving that seven or five year olds have perfect pitch. They were attempting to prove that tonal languages use some form of perfect pitch which they achieved with blatant errors in their methodology.
Another egregious assumption is that when someone says "I have perfect pitch" they believe them. How can you believe someone that knows nothing about what they're talking about, when you yourself don't even understand what perfect pitch is. It's a foundational error which means any further research based on that will collapse along with it. Students in Asian countries are more likely to lie about possessing PP as their cultural system is all about reputation.
Deutsch also mentions that people who learn a second language after they are an adult can't pronounce the language right. This is due to people not comprehending how the mouth alters syllables/vowels. It has nothing to do with age. If no one tells you that the German (iirc) T/D sound is farther back in the mouth instead of directly under the teeth like English speakers do, how the f is anyone supposed to figure that out on their own? Especially when most Germans themselves wouldn't realize the difference. I'm a terrible mono-linguist. But with practice I could speak German and sound like a native speaker once I learn proper speech patterns. And even that is a silly claim in the sense that there really is no standard to speaking German.
A poorly written article using 'murica's archaic spelling system. It discusses topics all over the place with a misapplied methodology when it is on-topic.
The article is only good for what it is actually arguing; relation between tonal-language and PP. The notion that the article was ever arguing that seven year olds 'aquired' (not the correct use of that word either) perfect pitch is just wrong. And it's not supported by evidence in the article.
There's a reason in university they teach you to quote evidence and then write a convincing argument regarding what the evidence means. If you blindly believe an article you aren't really reading the article. New Musicology beginning in the 90s switched from "I tell you what to believe (see "Baroque" by Palisca in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as an example) to we provide the evidence and clear argument of why you should believe my argument.
@@asliceofjackie91 Rick Beato says that PP only developed in the beginning months of being born and only in people with the right genetics, he even told you *which* genetic trait. He's completely opposite to your (and the article in question) loosy goosy arguments that anyone can learn pp as long as they're below the age of seven-ish. All of which is not supported by actual evidence. Again, facts, evidence, and convincing argument over odd idealisms.
"... but well-trained relative pitch is just as useful for transcribing/tuning/party tricks"
But I still can't help but feel having a perfect pitch is such a major help to any musician. As a beginner musician without perfect pitch myself, I felt disappointed that I don't have perfect pitch since it's so hard for me to distinguish notes without any reference point. I feel like if I were to have a perfect pitch, it'll be way much easier for me to learn music rather than not having one.
@@csharpminorflat5 not true at all. having absolute pitch, does indeed help you in the long run of your musical journey but it doesn’t help you learn music better, or be better at music (whatever it means). the only true skill that matters is relative pitch, work hard on your ears and when ur relative pitch gets to a point where you can easily identify chord progressions and various intervals, all you really need is to know the key of the tune to match the famous perfect pitch. it’s way to overrated
@@csharpminorflat5 Hey, I think that's understandable especially when the ear is still developing, but once you DO have a reference point eventually it gets super easy to hear the next notes or chords in relation to that reference.
Like, if you hit a note "G" out of the blue, yes someone with perfect pitch can tell you what that note is, but if you then hit another note "C" afterwards, immediately the playing field is levelled, since with just a bit of ear training you can hear the relation of "oh that second pitch is a perfect 4th away (or 5th depending on direction)" and know that it's a C based on the first note. That same principle continues into hearing chord qualities, progressions, etc. People with good trained ears, good trained relative pitch, and usually a good base of theory, can figure out things just as quickly and still play by ear and all that good stuff, whether it's brass quintets getting their chords perfectly in tune with adjusting partials to lock in or cocktail pianists recognizing common pop or jazz progressions and assembling an arrangement on the fly.
I have perfect pitch, and about half of my family has it, but there's still tons and tons of transcribers and players out there that can write out or play back lines of what they hear faster than I can.
Having relative pitch is imho more useful. I met people with perfect pitch who just couldn't play a transposed (electric) piano because their brain couldn't compute the discrepancy.
There is very little advantage in having perfect pitch when compared to having good relative pitch. Music is all about relative pitches and relations anyway. There is nothing absolute about the way we tune our instruments.
Edit: just keep training that ear and you'll notice how much you can do!
@@blumenmusic another thing to consider, which you sort of touched on, is the fact that a lot of music is not “absolute”. I am a classically trained violist, and while we don’t typically stray into microtonality and our music is written diatonically, perfect pitch is not helpful in the necessary bending of pitches to achieve more convincing and, frankly, “in tune” scales to our ears, including things like leading tones and perfect intervals. Since notes have multiple ‘correct’ places, absolute pitch can in fact hinder the ability to place these notes in the correct place.
One interesting thing I’ve learned about perfect pitch over the years is that people who have perfect pitch don’t usually have the same pitch center - it’s almost always a little off from each other. I have a few friends who’s perfect pitch is a little over A = 440. Mine is slightly flat. I had a professor in college who’s perfect pitch is exactly a quarter-tone flat because his piano growing up was a quarter-tone flat.
Also that perfect pitch and relative pitch isn’t separate from each other. People with perfect pitch also have relative pitch, but it’s usually very weak because it’s not used as much.
Also that perfect pitch starts to shift downwards in your 50s, Rick Beato has a very interesting video about this.
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum or upwards in rare cases
It’s so annoying because it also shifts (at least for me) depending on what temperament you do music in - if I’m doing a lot of music in baroque pitch (A=415 or down roughly a semitone) then my pitch will get lower and I will find sight-singing in A=440 harder and vice versa for when I sing in A=415 after singing at A=440 most of the time
This is nonsense. There is a range of A. Every single A you hear is slightly different. Tuning is not perfect. Yes you can develop sensitivity to pitch but you don’t have a “pitch center”.
Every person has different levels of hearing ability.
@@disinformationworld9378 A has been standardised to 440. People use different As for different purposes, sure. But A's default pitch is 440. Nothing about this comment is nonsensical
After singing in an a cappella quartet for several years I developed really solid pitch memory. Pretty much every song that we sang started with me going "Doom doom doom" to start it off, so I got to the point after we'd gotten pretty busy with regular gigs where all I had to do was think about a song and I could consistently start in the right key.
I had a guy in my college choir that had perfect pitch but we transposed a song at one point because it was too high for the sopranos and he got visibly angry because the notes he saw were not the notes being sung/played so it can be a blessing but also a curse in certain situations.
The only way I can determine a pitch is by singing it. I notice how it feels in my voice and based on that I'm never more than a semitone off but that's definity not based on color or anything else. I've just sung certain notes so often that I know what they are based on feel.
Great video though. It was very informative.
Yeah i also hated singing in choir for that reason :)
I’m the exact same way. The resonance in the chest through passaggio through to head voice, the feeling it makes in my body could help me recognize a note.
This is a very very real problem for us perfect pitchers.
That is so relatable
That is so relatable
I learned something interesting working on my masters this summer. Infants are born with a lot of neural connections, more than what we have as adults. A lot of these connections get "pruned" as the brain learns which connections are needed and which aren't. When you sing simple melodies to young children, if you sing it in different keys, kids with perfect pitch will perceive it as a different song. It's quite possible that a lot of us are born with the capacity for perfect pitch but that those connections were pruned because it wasn't deemed important, or that it was more important to recognize that specific melodies or speech or speech patterns were the same regardless of what pitch they were at. And if I remember correctly, cultures that have a tonal language tend to have a higher percentage of children with perfect pitch because pitch is more a important component when those kids are learning language.
There is always this chinese guy in your class which...
I've heard this being thrown around a lot of times... about how speakers of tonal languages are more likely to have perfect pitch. I know that there is research to back this, but almost everyone seems to just accept this as something obvious or natural... like "oh yeah their language uses pitch, music uses pitch, so the correlation makes sense".
The issue is, every tonal language out there makes meaningful tonal pitch distinctions based on the RELATIVE pitches of syllables or a pitch contour within a syllable, or a combination of both. There is no language where, say, A4 corresponds to tone 1, and Bb4 corresponds to tone 2, or something along those lines. Rather, what speakers of tonal languages actually listen for is stuff like: "is the current syllable higher or lower than the previous, and by how much?", "is the pitch rising or falling?" In other words, if anything, these factors would suggest that speakers of tonal languages ought to be more perceptive towards RELATIVE pitch differences with REFERENCE to the pitch of surrounding syllables (within the context of a single sentence spoken by a single person), rather than being able to map every perceived pitch with a musical note without any reference, which is what absolute pitch is about.
So WHY exactly would speakers of tonal languages be more likely to have perfect pitch, as compared to, say, good relative pitch (which seems to have a much stronger correlation with how tones actually work in languages)? Am I missing some perspective on this?
In fact, having perfect pitch (those who recognise pitches in the same way as recognising colours) might even pose a hindrance for people trying to learn tonal languages. Using the example of Cantonese, a syllable said with the pitch of A4 could be a high level tone, a mid level tone, or a low level tone, depending on the relative pitches of the surrounding syllables. I imagine it would be confusing to learn that a single "colour" is associated with 3 different tones, and that a single tone could come in many "colours" depending on the context.
@@WhildTangeredCalymondrin I believe that perfect pitch is often predicated by a strong auditory working memory. If you speak a language that strngthens this skill, you are more likely to have a 'good' ear and develop a 'great' one during your early nuero-plastic years.
so that means my neural conntection for understanding notes and music colors have not fully died out😅because i listened to very different music as a child, like i remember listening to classic hip-hop, rock, pop, ballads of the 2000's(im 2002 year of birth), and i found myself harmonizing with songs, if its lower pitch, i harmonize by singing higher notes with no clashing of notes, if its a higher pitch, i do a lower harmony, can it be connected to that?
I have perfect pitch, and my grandmother does too. We like to say she passed her musical prowess down to me. I didn't really know it was such a talent until I was hanging around with a friend of mine in college, a music education major, while he was working on a transcription of a solo on Pat Martino's "Blue Velvet". There was a section he was struggling with and myself, with no piano experience whatsoever, walked over and sounded out the whole section note by note and he was completely awestruck. I'll never forget that moment lol.
Main character realizing his power:
this is straight out of anime
😨💀👺👺👺🥹🥹🥹🥹🫠🫠
@@ofcl.kd420 yeah i don’t like calling bs but you no piano experience ever? how did you read the sheet music 😭
@@ofcl.kd420 Untrue, in HS I had 0 piano experience and I still can't read music lmao. But I could play songs after just hearing them. For my final I played Fur elise with an empty paper in front of me because I couldn't read it anyway and I had to fake to make it LMAO.
I have a friend with perfect pitch. I asked her to play in the orchestra for a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass that I conducted a few years back. The performance, had the orchestra playing on period (baroque) instruments. Which, among other things, means that A was tuned to 415, vs 440; almost Aflat on modern instruments. Given she’s plays modern violin, I had to rent an instrument for her. She found the experience so confusing, that she had to have the second seat chair tune the instrument for her. I can’t imagine the cognitive AND musical dissonance she was experiencing looking at her part, and hearing music that registered approx 1/2 step lower than she was expecting
I've had a very similar experience. I have perfect pitch and sang in my college's glee club. When we sang Ave Maria, our opening soloist always went around a quarter to semitone sharp of the reference pitch, and there were some parts that I just couldn't sing when it was out of key. I'm sure it would have been much easier if I had developed any sort of relative pitch, but being that music is just a hobby for me, I never got around to it.
As someone with perfect pitch I can confirm, baroque tuning as well as really any transposition of any song feels so incredibly wrong. Using the color analogy, it's like a hue shift. Imagine if apples were all of a sudden orange (or really any other color than red for that matter)
There's also a terrible hidden downside to perfect pitch that I found about recently - it often starts to go wrong on you in late middle-age. You hit 60 and your perfect pitch drifts by a semitone to a tone, and the thing you've relied upon your entire life is suddenly steering you in the wrong direction.
I can totally relate. during my final high school year music aural exam (back in the day where cassette tapes were used), , the speed of the cassete player was a little 'slow', so for the first time in my life (not an ideal time as this was during an exam!), the notes which I heard were not the notes written on the exam paper and I had to transpose every thing I heard "Up" in order to finish those melodies. Frustrating experience! I did bring this matter up to the examiner after.
Then years later, I learnt a Chinese string instrument when anumber notation was used. 1=tonic, 2=super tonic etc. For some reason, I was associating 1 for C pitch........I lost the perfect pitch! Still lost to this day many decades later. 😢. now, it's relative-pitch. would be lovely to know how I can get this natural ability back. I'm not desperate for it to happen. it's more curiousity to see when/how/if it will happen. I went back to piano playing 1 year ago after 37 years when I got a calling. Best decision ever!! so grateful I picked up piano again💖. nameste everyone
@@Martin-xd4jl oh I didn't know this. sorry to hear you've lost it. I lost my perfect pitch too (which I explained in my comment above). What you wrote just gave me a realization. I have tinnitus where I hear a constant fix pitch noise in my ears. I should go to my piano and find out what this pitch is. So it will be like my internal 'pitch app' running in the background. 😂, a reference point to identifying pitch whenever I need it. haha.😉😆
As a colour blind person I want to thank you for correctly describing it. It is surprising how many people think it means seeing in black and white. Usually followed by being "tested" and them concluding that you see colours fine. Funnily enough there is a strong relationship between how I discern colour and how I discern notes. If I am uncertain about the colour I am seeing I sometimes require additional context for comparison to help me. I may not be able to tell if something is green or yellow, for example, but if you put a more obvious green or yellow next to it I can tell more easily.
Same with me also ,it’s harder to tell with certain shades.
I also thought that color blindness most usually meant complete lack of cones of a particular type, but looking it up it turns out most cases actually have anomalous cones and rather mild symptoms.
I’ve played the violin from a young age, and the string notes, E, A, D, and G are ingrained in my head since I’ve tuned my violin a million times. I can use those notes to figure out any other note or what key something is in. Still takes a few seconds tho.
Right, that's a great example of relative pitch, rather than perfect pitch.
I heard that it's easier to have perfect pitch if your mother tongue is a language with lots of tones (eg Cantonese which has 9 tones). I've always thought perfect pitch was a common thing coz my sibling and close friends have it as well, until I was told that it isn't
I am from Hong Kong and quite a few friends born and bred here have perfect pitch. Maybe there is some correlation with mother tongues!
Studies have shown that among those who speak tonal languages and begin musical training young perfect pitch is normal, for instance one study which concluded that 60% of Mandarin speakers who began musical training between the ages of 4 and 5 have it.
I've heard this being thrown around a lot of times... about how speakers of tonal languages are more likely to have perfect pitch. I know that there is research to back this, but almost everyone seems to just accept this as something obvious or natural... like "oh yeah their language uses pitch, music uses pitch, so the correlation makes sense".
The issue is, every tonal language out there makes meaningful tonal pitch distinctions based on the RELATIVE pitches of syllables or a pitch contour within a syllable, or a combination of both. There is no language where, say, A4 corresponds to tone 1, and Bb4 corresponds to tone 2, or something along those lines. Rather, what speakers of tonal languages actually listen for is stuff like: "is the current syllable higher or lower than the previous, and by how much?", "is the pitch rising or falling?" In other words, if anything, these factors would suggest that speakers of tonal languages ought to be more perceptive towards RELATIVE pitch differences with REFERENCE to the pitch of surrounding syllables (within the context of a single sentence spoken by a single person), rather than being able to map every perceived pitch with a musical note without any reference, which is what absolute pitch is about.
So WHY exactly would speakers of tonal languages be more likely to have perfect pitch, as compared to, say, good relative pitch (which seems to have a much stronger correlation with how tones actually work in languages)? Am I missing some perspective on this?
In fact, having perfect pitch (those who recognise pitches in the same way as recognising colours) might even pose a hindrance for people trying to learn tonal languages. Using the example of Cantonese, a syllable said with the pitch of A4 could be a high level tone, a mid level tone, or a low level tone, depending on the relative pitches of the surrounding syllables. I imagine it would be confusing to learn that a single "colour" is associated with 3 different tones, and that a single tone could come in many "colours" depending on the context.
Yeah it makes sense seeing as you have to identify tones to speak the language. But from what I learned the tones are not set to notes they are just relative tones so it makes me wonder how relevant it is.
German with vietnamese roots here, had a very similar experience
This is essentially how I "learned" perfect pitch as a child. In elementary school I memorized what the four strings of a violin sound like (G D A E), and other starting notes of the short exercises in the method book (e.g. Rolling Along started on an F#), then used relative pitch to fill in the other blanks. By the end of 6th grade I had all 12 notes, but who knows if it's something I just taught myself or if it's an actual ability.
Yes, you taught yourself it sounds like.
There are many baffling myths about AP that simply won’t die. The worst one is that you only have it if you can ID 12 notes at once kind of opinion. There is a range of ability of hearing and everyone has their own unique hearing level. The ability to ID pitches with AP exists on a spectrum. And it is normal to be good at some notes first before mastering others. This was my experience.
Relative pitch depends on an ability to classify what you are hearing which is a mental description. An “intellectual” understanding of the sound. AP is a bit different. Like seeing a color. You can see it or if the lights are off you can’t.
This. If it's now so fast that it's essentially second nature so that you know the pitch right the moment it is played, without thinking about it, I would call it perfect pitch.
Right now i have picked up a song/tune for every note EXCEPT C#. If you know one for C# pls tell me
It’s theorized that to develop perfect pitch, you have to be taught it as a child before a certain point in your brain’s development. So, it is possible that you DID, in fact, teach yourself perfect pitch.
@@the_moist the opening trumpet solo of Mahler's 5th Symphony! 😁
My daughter has perfect pitch, and the thing that I’ve learned is that we hear music differently.
I have decent relative pitch and can pick out things by ear.
But if you play me a song that’s in a different key than it normally is, or even just slightly high or low, it still sounds like that song. To her, most of the time, if it’s not in the original key, it sounds wrong. In some cases to the point where she doesn’t want to listen to it.
The first time we picked this up was when she decided she wanted to watch Pink Floyd in Pompeii. She remembered watching it when she was a kid, but had been a while. When the first note of Echoes started she said, “it’s wrong.” Huh? “It’s too high. It’s wrong.”
Of course, this is the official release. That’s absurd. So I grabbed a guitar.
It’s wrong.
Apparently in the original PAL to NTSC transfer, it ended up roughly a half-step sharp. They didn’t correct it (except for the audio CD in the box set). The whole film is this way, which explains why the drum section of A Saucerful of Secrets seems so fast, and even the interviews sound a little off.
We were at an event, Love Shack came on, and again she said it was wrong. We checked it, and it was. I don’t know what the DJ was using, but sure enough it wasn’t the original key.
The only thing I can compare it to is of the color balance is off on the TV. Like an old TV where the tint was either too green or too red. It’s so noticeable that it’s really difficult to watch without fixing it. That’s what listening to music is like for her, I guess.
She also has certain notes and keys she prefers. She had a very strong affinity for C# minor.
I often tune my guitar to her now…
Does she hate Seth Everman's Moonlight Sonata / Still D.R.E. meme? Moonlight Sonata is in C# minor, but Seth transposes it to A minor so the transition to Still D.R.E. is in tune.
Noticing a song in a different key. I can do this too but I don't have perfect pitch :(. I just have good recollection of the original songs key.
@@Wontoe I’ll have to check…
@@rook4830 Of course it’s possible to learn how to recognize keys, etc. just by listening, But the point is not that she recognizes a different key, but that those keys sound qualitatively different.
Since I can’t experience it the same way she does, I can’t really explain it better than when she hears something that’s different, she knows it instantaneously. It’s just an example. It’s not something she learned.
Although I will say that covers are often different because of the arrangements, performance, tonal qualities, etc. She’ll still recognize that the key has changed, but it may sound good.
In other words, it’s not just the key/notes that matter but the sound (context)itself in terms of whether she likes the way a piece of music sounds in a given key. And she doesn’t like every piece of music in C# minor, but we have found that she definitely has a preference for it.
For me I memorize notes just from things I hear/play a lot. A,D,G,C from tuning (I'm a pianist/cellist), e from fur elise (one of my favorites since I was little), and c-sharp from Debussy's arabesque #1. It was super interesting to learn where this came from!
Thats how you think for a second to find a note out. I assume this thinking time would be very short for these notes if you heard them.
the color theory is always interesting to hear, because both pitch and color exist on a gradient. the colors we can name are wildly different from eachother and encompass a large group of shades. perfect pitch is like there being 8 slightly different shades of blue, and being able to name the one you're shown without the reference of the other 7 shades. it's like infinite sensitivity
Why do you say that colors are wildly different but not sound? The visible light frequency is 400 THz to 700 THz. That's a ratio of only 1.75 between the lowest color we can see and the highest one, yet anyone easily identify at least 7 or 8 different colors. With sound, the ratio between a note and the note an octave higher is 2, and there are 12 notes in between. So it's actually pretty similar to color. Your example with 8 slightly different shades of blue would be like someone able to identify microtonal intervals of less than a eighth of a tone, and even people with perfect pitch probably can't do that.
I’ve been banned from uTube postings for speaking about this, but my findings are here on uTube on my Acoustic Rabbit Hole channel. And, yes, I so see the notes as colors, and as an exact rainbow spectrum.
@@Acoustic-Rabbit-Hole Do you "sort" the notes chromatically or according to the circle of fifths? For instance do you consider the closest note to C is G or B?
@@thomapple OMG (Oh my Goddess.) You are the first person to respond after many days of silence. I'm assuming the uTube suspension has been lifted. THANK YOU. // Ok, to answer your question, it's actually even more literal than that, as far a sorting out the notes. I literally have C as red, D as orange, E as yellow, etc. And the "middle" notes are "in-between colors". In other words, C# is red-orange. And E-flat is Orange-yellow. Therefore, I see it as entirely spectral. Even following how the warm colors (C to F) are one one side, the cool colors (F to B) are on the other. Ending with the end of the rainbow, magenta (the B-note), which blends into red to continue the octave cycle. I'll try to send you link to my youTube channel (The Acoustic Rabbit Hole) so that you can see how i DO arrange it as per 5ths and thirds, as you were mentioning at first. I call it my Musicolor Matrix. Here is an example of the visual color-shape layout of the key of B. I pray that the link works, or that you get my response at all. (Would you believe it was actually Rick Beato or is followers who had me blocked my "reporting" me me like a mob of hayenas because I was disagreeing with them about tuning to A-432, which they kept saying was "conspiracy theory" and "misinformation." (It was a video where Rick Beato was openinly making fun of musical healing, and people who tune to A-432). Anyway, here my B major Matrix. Part of my Micro-matrix's which I started making for each individual key. And, let me assure you, i'm not crazy. The is the second time i've been banned. The first time was by the Adam Neely minions! Over the subject of perfect pitch! - th-cam.com/video/JjFMh1k9FHw/w-d-xo.html
tell me you completely don't understand without telling me
I've heard many arguments that relative pitch is actually better. People with perfect pitch are sometimes less able to break out from the known chord structures and what they know, where those with learned relative pitch are a bit more willing to branch out and experiment.
Looking at examples like Jacob Collier, Mozart, Beethoven, or Hendrix, I don't think that's true and it honestly just sounds like copium.
I’m a learning opera singer with perfect pitch (voice hasn’t fully developed yet haha) and the fact that you know you’re about to sing some high note and *exactly what it is* brings in tension which brings in a heap of problems with my technique
It's not so much chord structures as it is about the 12TET mindset. If you developed PP in a society based on 12TET, you develop a 12TET based PP and so you can't help but hear everything in a 12TET framework. I feel like this does make it harder to internalise the music of different cultures simply because your brain keeps trying to interpret everything it hears as a variation of 12TET.
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum i mean i feel like true copium would be like using the excuse of "hey i will never be good at music because i dont have perfect pitch lol not my fault"
Also another thing, those are musicians who have definitely put massive effort into learning music and arent just random people who just happened to have perfect pitch so i dont think it is exactly the most fair comparison
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum The statement “Relative Pitch is better than Perfect pitch” is definitely copium. BUT, the statement “Relative Pitch gets you further than perfect pitch” isn’t. Let’s take your first example, Jacob Collier. He definitely is an amazing musician, no doubt. And his inhuman recognition of microtones he is popular for is definitely something to note. But one misconception I see about him is that the reason he can differentiate Microtones and sing in Just Intonation is solely because of his perfect pitch. That is not true at all. His perfect pitch, like others’ is tuned to 12-TET, A=440hz. That means that solely with his perfect pitch, he likely cannot recognize the difference between “a note in between E and Eb” and “E but approximately 45 cents flat.” So how does he? Well, he has trained and put hours into his relative pitch as well to be able to compare these microtones to the 12 reference notes in his head. So, can you recognize them too? Short answer, yes. Long answer: another misconception I see about Jacob is that no one else can recognize microtones to the level he does. This isn’t true at all as well. All us Humans, including Jacob can recognize a maximum difference of ~5 cents. It may take some ear training to be able to, but this level of relative pitch is definitely acquirable. So, with good relative pitch ear training to match it (and substitute for Jacob’s AP) Ones without perfect pitch can be shown a C as a reference; then recognize an Ab, 65 cents sharp shortly after. Perfect Pitch gives you a head start, relative pitch gets you further.
YES this is exactly what I've been doing to recognize notes without reference, just acknowledging either which note does this X melody start on or which key this X song is on and reference myself from there, i call it Partial Pitch lol
i.e. Coldplay's Clocks melody starts on Eb, Hallelujah is on C, Don't stop me now is on F, etc
I memorized the standard guitar tuning from higher to low ( E-B-G-D-A-E) within the first few months of starting my studies at age 9.. The only 2 open string notes missing are C and F, both half a step higher than the 1st and 2nd strings on the guitar. So, although I'm sure I don't have perfect pitch it is RELATIVELY easy for me to figure out what notes I'm hearing. The only requirement is to sing the guitar tuning in my head until I either land on the note (because it belongs on the guitar) or come close to it by the half step as in the cases of C and F. The interesting thing is that my teacher would always check that the tuning was correct before every lesson (although I don't know if he had perfect pitch, he would sometimes either play or just sing an E to me so I'd correct the overall tuning relative to that first E string which is also the pitch on the open 6th string on the guitar) I remember his nodding smile the day I sang all the guitar tuning back to him.. ;-) So I guess I learned it from him that I was supposed to also remember the notes, and so I did... (like Charles similar explanation about remembering those jazz tunes openings)
I definitely taught myself perfect pitch at a young age, but I didn’t know what it was until my junior year of high school, so at first I didn’t even know there was a name for what I developed. I would sit at the piano and try and pick up songs by ear. Eventually, I got really good at it. And once I got good at it, I started to remember what specific pitches sounded like. I always associate certain notes with certain songs. Having a good ear for intervallic relationships also helps a lot.
Just my personal experience.
you literally just described relative pitch. You do not have perfect pitch
Associating songs with pitches is pitch memorization, not perfect pitch. If you had perfect pitch you wouldn't even have to think about what the note is. Still very impressive though, and it's not like perfect pitch is needed.
This is exactly how my jazz band director explained it. I took it and ran with it. I can now identify almost all 12 pitches now and it's quite useful. Thanks Mr. Bordelon.
I have perfect pitch, and I can confirm that everything Charles said about it not being as helpful as understanding intervallic relationships is completely true. I spent my entire teenage years resting on my laurels and relying on perfect pitch for everything, never truly learning music theory as much as I should have, and it's a huge liability now that I'm in my thirties whenever I want to discuss music with fellow musicians. I can never seem to find the exact terms or the precise chord names to describe what I have in mind, without having to resort to naming the pitches individually and hoping someone else in the group can "translate" for me.
Don't get me wrong, I cherish the fact I'm one of the lucky 1/10,000, but I do regret not spending more time to learn some proper musical vocabulary.
Same here!
It's not too late to learn chord names and solfege, in fact you'll probably find it a lot easier to learn with yo ur perfect pitch.
@@paradox9551 My solfege is fine! Chord names are what I struggle with mostly, but I'm slowly getting there already. Perfect pitch doesn't really make it any easier though; being able to tell whether (for example) a minor 7th chord is Cm7 or Gm7 doesn't really make a difference!
@@jrlepage2a03 I would recommend Michael New on youtube, he really builds up from scratch *why* those chords are named the way they are
Yes, same! I use to be really bad at transposition, since I used to always rely on my perfect pitch.😅
I know no one asked, but I want to explain how my perfect pitch works.
I've had perfect pitch as long as I can remember, but I didn't know it was a rare thing until more recently. As a kid, I told my teacher I could hear the notes talk to me, she looked at me with a funny look and kind of just dismissed it. I took 10 years off from studying music, and I didn't know it was called perfect pitch until I was 25 years old and started training again. Before that, I thought everyone heard music like I did - in "color."
The way it works for me is I hear the note "say" its own name using the solfege names (do, re mi, fa, sol... etc.). It's pretty instant - no thought process or comparison necessary, I just know each note when I hear it and it "says" its own name. I can also hear a note in my head and sing it on demand - although this is sometimes a little off since I don't have good pitch stability when I sing.
Each note also has certain colors and characteristics for me, and some notes sound like even or odd numbers. Certain tonalities also have feelings/associations, mainly around colors. I love F minor because it feels like dark murky green. C sharp minor is metallic and badass.
C - Blue - even number
C# - purple and sour - even number
D - White/clear - odd number
Eb - Maroon and tangy - even number
E - Red and piercingly sharp - even number
F - GREEN as hell - not even or odd
F# - Lighter green - not even or odd
G - Yellow - strange - even number
Ab - sounds like A but muffled - not even or odd
A - purple and fat opera singer - even number
Bb - sounds like a mix between A and B I hear it as Bae (sounds closer to B for me) yellowish Orange - not even or odd
B - Orange and sharp - not even or odd
However, sometimes I struggle with recognizing pitch from voice/when someone is singing a song. I think it has to do with the way I recognize the pitch - when someone is singing it interferes with me hearing the note say its own name. When its from any instrument, or if the singer sings in a way that is devoid of words (i.e. whistles), I don't have any issues with pitch recognition - I get it right 80-90% of the time depending on the day (yes, some days I'm more off than others, especially if I'm tired or if I go into an area with different air pressure).
So I guess perfect pitch isn't the right word for me, because it really isn't PERFECT. I like the term absolute pitch better because for me, its more about knowing each note than being able to singing it perfectly on the dot. For example, I can't do some of the things that Jacob Collier does with microtones or knowing if its A = 432 or A = 440. I just know its A.
That sounds like Synesthesia to me, another extremely rare condition where sensory perceptions overlap in unusual ways.
@@Beefnhammer yes I’ve heard of this, although I don’t really see those colors or taste those flavors, it’s more of an intellectual association
@@armenghazarian3515 If you can "see" those colors and numbers in your mind's eye (you're not ACTUALLY seeing color), it has been known as synesthesia, more specifically chromesthesia.
Fascinating observations! My brain does something slightly similar, where I subconsciously associate certain chords with corresponding colors...
@@InventorZahran I've heard Scriabin actually saw the colors in the corner of his eye. Imagine how cool that would be, or maybe it would get old idk
Finally! I keep having to explain to my family and friends that I don't have perfect pitch.
Here are the songs I use for each pitch
C: I'm a pianist and its been burned in my mind
C#: All of me by the piano guys
D: Megalovania from Undertale
Eb: Staff credits roll from Super Mario Galaxy
E: Fur Elise
F: The Circle of Life from The Lion King
F#: YYZ from Rush
G: Also from piano and cello:
Ab: Theme from Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
A: Cello tuning
Bb: Star Wars
B: just check one step below C lo
I have always been told I have perfect pitch, particularly since I was 11 and I could tune my violin without any reference. But I think I memorised the 440 Hz A and the other notes came after. Yes I can do the party trick of singing a required note into a tuner, but what was truly useful for my musical career was the ability to play songs after listening to them a couple of times, I can play old songs I used to listen with ease. I find uncomfortable when people sing or play a song in a different key than the original, but I am able to transpose anyway. I am persuaded that a well trained relative pitch has a slightly higher impact on a musician or a singer than perfect pitch.
Indeed you can memorize A and other notes. And when you get fast you just instantly tell the pitch. There is no magic here. Our brains have equal developable potentials. Training training and training. After thousands of hours learning perfect pitch, everyone can get it.people give up before they even start, just admit that you are not gifted. Wimps a bunch…
I dont have perfect pitch and i can tune my guitar without a tuner. But only because i remember it.
Same here - I can start from A as a reference (or F#, since my middle school orchestra would often miss those and our teacher would have us sing it often) and get most notes pretty quickly, so when he did that little run early in that video (C-G-B-F#-D-A or something) I could pick out all the notes without looking because of the intervals. with chords though (especially 3rds and 4ths) it's definitely more difficult
Short story of me, and how I started learning "perfect" pitch at ~11 years old :
We had a tuning fork at home, which was a very entertaining item for tiny me : Odd shape, amplifies on some surfaces and stuff...
I remember I was always bringing that thing at school, and eventually, I somehow thought that it'd be cool to memorize the fork's pitch (A440).
After quite some time repeating the process, I somehow ended up to be able to recognize an A, but I can tell I couldn't recognize any other note.
Then, I started to learn the other "white keys" : Since I couldn't recognize them at first, I used relative pitch with my A to find these new notes, and after quite some training, I ended up being able to identify the 7 "white" notes.
And then, I worked on the black notes... I don't remember how long it took, but at the end, I can tell my "ability" is definitely more of perfect pitch than relative, as when I hear a tone, I can tell quite instantly which one it is without hearing any reference tone.
I went to Yamaha music school when i was 4 or 5 and they basically trained the kids to have perfect pitch. The teacher would play a note or a chord on the piano and have the students tell what notes were played, and it was part of the exam as well. I met another friend who also went to Yamaha, and she also has perfect pitch.
It can be useful to have perfect pitch, but it can be a curse too, it's hard for me to learn instruments in other keys e.g. sax, so I had to think of it as always playing in e flat, but this Yamaha friend of mine plays the sax and she can switch between thinking in C and in E flat, which is fascinating to me
I am one of two people at my school in Honor’s Theory without perfect pitch. It is interesting to see how difficult sight transposition is for them (cause obviously without perfect pitch you can reasonably convince yourself that any note you want is what you want it to be)
Although sometimes we’re asked to sight transpose on fixed-do solfège, plus I’m a classical trumpet major so I have to do genuine transposition then too
Not quite so easy then
I went to Yamaha music school when I was 5 years old. Same, I have perfect pitch, but definitely not at Charlie's Puth level.
Anyway I remember other children joining my class who developed perfect pitch thanks to that methodology.
Today, without anymore practicing any instrument, 25 years later I can still distinguish immediately notes played on guitar, piano, strings, but definitely I cannot tell all the notes of a weird chord played randomly on an instrument (apart from the leading one)
fun fact about perfect pitch and tonal languages. Musicians often have an easier time learning mandarin, vietnamnese and cantonese. In Mandarin, the tone changes the meaning, so people with "a musician ear" are able to hear the subtle differences. People who can't hear tonal differences have a tough time learning Mandarin and vietnamnese.
That is COOL!
clarification on PERFECT PITCH/ it is the ability to recognize instantly the pitch being sounded, - not FIGURING IIT OUT, not THINKING about it, or not testing it with how the pitch feels in your head or throat, but if you have the ability to identify a color on a card, immediately you have color recognition, so too, you can do with with pitches if you have PERFECT PITCH, someone can play or sing a note and without any time lapse you can identify the pitch accurately (assumingn you LEARNED the ''name of the pitch'' FROM AN ''intune '' piano'' because an ''out of tune piano'' will make you learn to wrongly identify the sound and you'l be stuck with it (much llike someone who is 'COLOR BLIND'' ) however a person can learn ''relative pitch'' so that the note heard can be ''guessed at with a v.close identity to the actual pitch..
Wow! This is extremely helpful
Heyy Yashraj
Arre sir aap idhar kaise 😄
🙏🏻
I am a singer and I determine pitches by how they feel when I sing them. If I sing the note high or low, then I can determine what the note is by how I strain to hit them. I don't always get it, but I'm usually always less than a step away. I have a few friends that have perfect pitch. I have about 5-15 friends with it. I've kind lost track. a couple of my best friends have had it. That may sound like a lot, but I'm in really good choirs. If you are in high quality music groups, then you will make friends with perfect pitch.
I’d highly recommend “this is your brain on music” by daniel Levitin. (He’s a cognitive neuroscientist.) it’s one if the best books on music and the brain and I’ve had all my interns read it.
I agree with Charles that it can’t be learned per se. But those who have the innate ability have to be trained which frequency goes with what name. So like someone who plays a transposing instrument will have been “programmed” with a different frequency/note relationship.
Can sensing what interval there is when two notes are played be learned?
Pitch memorization is such a trip. I've heard Jackson Browne's solo acoustic version of "The Pretender" so many times that I can grab its opening F# and A# out of thin air. The A# (Bb) is especially useful, since I play primarily brass. ❤️
never call A# Bb again.
@@Hamstray never call an "h" a "b" again. Or just let people call stuff how they want to. Maybe the better choice ;)
Personally, the way I like to think of perfect pitch is like learning left from right at an early age. I know people that never had that core concept ingrained. They can still tell left from right, but they always need a way to remember (thinking about your dominant hand or foot, which hand they write with, etc)
So perfect pitch is like that where note sounds are ingrained and you don't need to think. Where as us normal people need to think of some extra song or something that clues us in.
It is very interesting. I don't have a perfect pitch but a good relative one and I also need to think of a left vs right. Wonder if those two things are connected..
I get the gist of ur comment in regards to pitch, but your analogy with left vs right is so confusing to me. I wasn't aware there were adults that needed to think about left vs right. I don't understand...so when they are driving and someone tells them to take a left or a right turn it's not immediately obvious which direction they mean? I don't get it...I feel like I never had any concept of "front or back" of my body or its parts but I could identify them without thinking...and I thought everyone else was the same.
In the middle of writing this it just occurred to me that perhaps it's some pathology and the first thing that came to mind was something like dyslexia. After googling, some people have directional dyslexia so they do have difficulty with differentiating left from right...but the cause isn't from a lack of education, rather I think they were born that way....which incidentally is a good analogy to perfect pitch.
@@cwjalexx I have ADHD and couldn't learn left vs right, it's like my brain moves the information around and could see it either way. Funnily I also struggled with the tunes at 8:00 because they were all clearly Bohemian Rhapsody to me and my gut didn't say "this one is clearly more Bohemian Rhapsody than the others".
I like to think that without perfect pitch, we hear notes on a gray scale... Like, we can tell if a note is dark (low) or bright (high).
And people who have perfect pitch don't just have the gray scale, they have the full chromatic range unlocked.
To me it makes a bit more sense than the color blind comparison thing.
Just a quick story to share: I didn't have "perfect pitch" when I was much younger (before 7). However, being really interested in music, as were my parents, I would always try to mimic the sounds I heard on a CD recording on the old house piano. I would think I was hitting the right notes (I learnt to name the notes on the keyboard at age 6), but when I started really learning music, I realised everything I played was complete gibberish. So what I did was years and years of calibrating, with the help of sheet music of the pieces I heard on recordings. In essence, I tried to understand how it would feel like if I played something identical to the sounds I heard. With that, I slowly grasped and understood the feeling of resonance, like "Ah, so this is what it feels like when I play C against an audio that plays C", and I would hold on to the feeling and the memory of striking resonance. Time after time, this pursuit for resonance extended to me grasping the feelings of various intervals, both melodic and harmonic alike, which allowed me to identify virtually any note within reasonable range. Essentially, I was honing both my perfect and relative pitches in one go. I gotta say it was a long process but with both of these happening, it just kinda formed a feedback loop that increased my pitch identification accuracy. With all that being said, there is a caveat to this, as my acuteness deteriorates whenever I stop actively engaging with music, which happened a year ago where all my pitches were one halftone lower in my head lol. But yeah, for me, perfect pitch was trained, but in a manner dominated by a very comprehensive feedback system between my ears, eyes and memory.
I have Duel of the Fates’ opening chord (an E Minor chord) engrained in my mind and can pull the B natural and use relative pitch from there fairly quickly.
Now *that* is a good tune to refer to! BAA BAAAAAA BA BABAAAA!
I’ve known one guy who could dissect the notes you’d play if you’d mash random keys on the piano. It was incredible. I would kill to have that ability.
then i could have perfect pitch in jail
@@delcim that would be a useful skill there. Being able to differentiate knife entering skin sounds.
@@HM-ut6eg yes, and the soap falling on the floor as well
I can switch on/off perfect pitch for the F transposition (because I'm a horn player). I don't have perfect pitch (my 4 years old son has). I hear the sons relatively, but if want I can sing any note but it takes me about one second. All the notes are transposed to F.
wrong, and i did it. 14 year-old new orleans jazz player here, and i memorized b-flat january 2020, then went up memorizing a new note going up by 4ths each month. now 2022 and i have immediate recall perfect pitch.
As someone who uses perfect pitch on TikTok to harmonise people talking quite often (very much inspired by Mononeon and you by the way), I think it's a skill that unfortunately can't be truly acquired if you don't have it.
Also, you've made brilliant videos in the past showing us how to do those piano remix videos even though you don't have perfect pitch - personally, I really wish more people would watch those because I frequently see the 'perfect pitch ppl be like' type comments on my videos far too often.
Great stuff as always Charles!
What does harmonizing anything have to do with perfect pitch? If you are in the keys you easely find the pitches and If you do it by ear with your voice you just don't need to care about the labels of the notes.
@@7riXter Agreed. I don't see how perfect pitch plays into harmonizing with a playing track. I don't have perfect pitch, but I can easily write vocal harmonies without much thought.
@@JordonBeal Bro just wanted to flex
Every musician (including me): Yeah I don’t have perfect pitch but I have relative pitch 😎
I've wanted someone to make this video for so long, and it perfectly demystifies the differences between perfect pitch and just having a good ear and memory. Great video!
something worth considering is the idea that someone can distinguish notes but hasn't spent time learning the note names and how they relate to each other. like if you could see all the colors but didn't know all the color names. I'm curious if and how much this impacts that stats for perfect pitch.
I mean...there are only 12 notes in Western music...
I am a classically-trained singer.
I have well-trained relative pitch, like you, Charles. I have pretty strong pitch memory. I can pull notes out of “thin air”, and have even “fooled” people into thinking that I do have perfect pitch. I can even notice when a song is playing in the “wrong” key a majority of the time.
But that’s the thing: I usually have to THINK about it. Like you said, I don’t have to think about whether something is blue or purple, but I do have to think about if a note is an E or F.
That being said, you’re right: well-trained relative pitch is still an incredibly useful tool.
With regards to how useful having AP is - I only really rely on it under 2 circumstances. Firstly, when I'm tuning up my analogue synths, and secondly when I'm adjusting the key of a sampler so that pressing C on the keyboard actually plays a C. Other than that I agree it's pretty much useless but quite fun.
Also - a thought on the colour analogy. For me, the feeling when I recognise a pitch is most similar to the feeling I get when I recognise somebody in the street. It's just like a gut feeling of 'oh yeah, I know you, you're F#'. Maybe that's just a "me thing", who knows?!
Sounds like you may play the piano, and if that's correct, can I ask you at what age you started playing the piano? And also, when you recognize, e.g. F#, if you really think about what happens inside your head, can you tell me whether that feeling is also accompanied by the feeling/look/sense of that specific key on the piano?
@@LetoDK I actually play the recorder! But interestingly in terms of what you were saying about associations - if I'm holding a recorder whilst listening to a song, I can basically bypass the "okay, that's an E - three fingers on the left and two on the right" thing, I just hear the note and my fingers sort of float towards the right holes if that makes any sense. I've been playing for as long as I remember, and I was always played a wide range of music as a kid, which I've heard helps with AP as well.
As someone with perfect pitch, I discovered that my "superpower" is identifying people by voice alone, even people I haven't seen for more than a decade. I would love to learn if this is something all people with perfect pitch can do.
@@carl13579 I honestly don’t know if I have perfect pitch or how I’d tell (accuracy tuning or whistling or singing?) but I’m really good at recognising voice actors, and I can also recall timbral or other textural qualities in audio that others say they can’t. If that helps.
There is one overstretch in the pitch/colour analogy: When lack of the perfect pitch skill is explained by analogy to colour blindness and not having certain "cones" in the eye, i.e. lack of the necessary "sensors", it implies that there is a lack of sensory input to the brain. However, people without perfect pitch do recognise different pitches, i.e. they have the sensors. Rick Beato has a video on the topic where the claim is perfect pitch can be acquired as a skill in the early stages of child development. Therefore; it is more likely that the neural circuitry to interpret the sensory input is missing,, rather than analogs of "cones cells" in colour blindness.
I agree. I think it's about what our brains are doing with the information internally and some people's brain's ability to process it in a more precise manner perhaps
For people who want another easy note to remember: All star's melody starts with an F#
The next note after that is C#. So it's a good reference for what a perfect fifth interval sounds like.
I did the test and it showed beyond doubt that I have perfectly imperfect pitch.
I have absolute pitch, as does my dad. It's part inborn ability and part a trained skill. Not everybody can learn it, but almost everyone can improve their pitch with training. Classical singing training (ie opera) spends a lot of time improving the skill. People trained in different traditions (e.g. Indian classical singing vs European opera) hear differently because they've been trained differently.
I think it’s 2… and I guess I was wrong. But at the same time I think I’ve played that song in other keys. I can pull a low E usually whenever I want because it’s the bottom note of a guitar and needed to tune it and I know what it feels like to sing that note in my vocal range. The song method tends to work much less for me than imagining myself playing it on guitar and figuring out where it is. Being perfectly in tune is really hard though. I guess we all wish we had perfect pitch but I definitely feel that. I just carry a pitch pipe in my back pocket if perfect pitch students try to 1-up me.
I also thought it was number 2. The first one sounded a little weird so the second one seemed correct but then came the third and I was so confused because I already decided 2 was right but 3 also sounded quite right. But I would have checked 2 and would have been wrong.
same, I thought it was 2.
Relative pitch is a great skill to have. Especially since people lose the perfect pitch as they age. It's important to protect your ears if you have perfect pitch.
Yeah, U-2 engines were not nice to me, but it's still there, if maybe a little more challenging in the upper registers.
Yes, yes yes, yeeees, I love this video because it perfectly describes perfectly how perfect pitch works. I have this memorization to a certain level, especially with the piano. If u play some notes as u did in the video, I can directly tell u the notes, but if u ask me to sing an f# out of context, it wouldn't be able to do so. So if people ask me, whether I have perfect pitch, I struggle to answer. Additionally, I really like the color-comparison, it suits this topic very well.
Maybe I can't know a difficult chord and then explain what notes are in the difficult chord, but I can correct people who sing falsely to the correct chords and even know what chord is when they sing a false chords.
First jazz song I ever heard was Easy Living by Billie Holiday. I haven't had a listen to it in years but you pop that track on and I could sing it note for note, lyric for lyric.
Though I haven't seen the term in writing, in college music theory classes, we referred to this type of tonal memory as "absolute pitch." This means that we have exact, infallible reference tones that we hear in our head. We happen to know what those notes are called. I agree can sometimes be more useful than perfect pitch. Especially when singing with an acapella group.
"...reference tones that we hear in our head."
This, exactly. When someone says a note, I hear it clearly in my head. Conversely, when I hear a tone, I see it in my mind as the particular note written on a staff.
Interesting, I’ve only heard absolute pitch used as a synonyms for perfect pitch
I dont know if i would describe having perfect pitch as seeing in full color (i have perfect pitch) . Its more like you dont need a reference to know what you are experiencing. Imagine knowing what length something is by looking at it, without needing to be told or shown some reference before. Most people cant tell how long something is, but after someone gives a reference, they can figure it out. Perfect pitch is just hearing the length in your head when you look at something
You’re basically saying the same thing. Just with a different analogy lol.
@@moltenbutter6958 its close, but the difference is that color blind people dont have all the receptors to see all tje colors, but we all see length, we see/ hear all the same sounds, but some can come up with a concrete value of what they experience
I had the exact same thought while watching the video. His analogy seems a bit off to me because, unlike with color-blindness, everyone can _hear_ every pitch, they just can't usually describe pitches in absolute terms. I think there's a valid analogy to be made with colors, but the one presented here isn't quite right
The really interesting thing about the Bohemian Rhapsody test is that I guessed correctly, and I've never actually heard that song properly from the start! It just sounded "right" to me
There's no way you had not heard this song from the start before
Same, except I thought number 1 sounded best 🥺
So glad you did this video!! Growing up as an orchestral percussionist, A-440 has always been ingrained in my head and I’ve always used this technique to ‘replicate’ perfect pitch. I dubbed it years ago as ‘Relatively Perfect Pitch’ but it’s always been hard to explain to people. As always, love your videos!
I'm only about halfway through the vid, so maybe you'll touch on this soon, but I have an itch in my brain 😅:
A few of my friends who don't consider themselves musicians-- people who don't believe me, a former professional singer and arranger, when I say, "You're a good singer!"-- can hum a song I know, nail the key, melody, and sometimes subtle background parts of songs they've just casually listened to over the years. I don't have perfect pitch, and neither do they. But pitch memory is very common. Ask a handful of musicians, especially those who are BOTH classically trained AND can memorize/ replicate/ improvise by ear, and many of us might say that perfect pitch is overrated.
Ok, thx for reading, back to our show. 😅👍
Played piano and recently picked up the flute. Perfect pitch makes it really really easy for me to learn whatever piece I want. It's useful but I'd trade perfect pitch for perfect music theory knowledge any day.
perfect pitch is actually really helpful for remembering pitch theory like chords and such, but if you're into jazz you can also try going from a sound in your head to a musical idea instead of formulating an idea from theory
The interesting thing about that color analogy is that I have Chromesthesia, which is seeing color in sound. So, certain notes have specific colors attached to them, making my music listening quite fascinating. It is a wacky quirk to have in my brain, but it allows me to view music in a completely unique experience from anyone else and I absolutely love it.
Not long ago, I had a teacher who asked me if I have perfect pitch, simply based off of the fact that I was never off key. I’ve always memorized my music based off of the way it sounds and always grew up playing the piano and violin just by memorization instead of reading the music while playing. Perfect pitch is an entirely different concept that I’ve loved the idea of, but there is so much more to music than most people ever realize. Charlie’s knowledge is way above what we’d ever have with how instant it comes to him
Apparently people with perfect pitch experience "pitch drift" over time. So what they once heard as an E is actually an E flat or something. That must be maddening and confusing if you've had perfect pitch your whole life. Imagine being sixty years old and you suddenly start seeing blue as green. And you're absolutely convinced you're seeing green.
I’ve used this same strategy to memorize most of the pitches. I’ve used songs, tuning notes, the open strings on a guitar, etc… to do this. Some notes I have better memorized than others, but I can usually identify any note in a few seconds. To help retain this skill, I also try to not think of any other note relative to what I hear; I only directly reference the material I used to memorize that note.
I knew a guy in highschool that had perfect pitch. He was a gifted pianist. He could listen to any pop song and immediately play it on the keyboard. He taught me a lot of 80s pop songs. His perfect pitch was awesome. With his back to the piano, you could smash a random mix of white and black keys, and he could name them all. I don't believe it can be learned, it's a gift. The best you can get is relative pitch with experience.
even most from people with perfect pitch is able to doing this, you dont need a perfect pitch for playing songs with improvisation. I have a perfect pitch and yes, if i know some song i am able to play it without practice. But i know a "lot" of musicians with the same skill and they has not a perfect pitch :)
Perfect pitch is overrated skill. Yes, in music you have a lot of atvantage (you dont need spend a same time for prooving like others) but thats all. Only once atvantage is when i was learning a music theory on conservatory (harmony, intonation etc.), perfect pitch is a little bit like a cheat :D
All seven kids in my family have perfect pitch. We all started string instruments very young (most before four years old). I've read and written a lot on the subject, but I can tell you with certainty that it is, to some degree, learned. Oh, and neither of my parents have it.
We also started our children extremely young with music, and although I have perfect pitch, none of our children do.
Imagine if people were like 'What's this colour, what's that colour?'. I'm colourblind. This happens to me ALL THE DAMNED TIME!
This is delightful to watch; I've struggled many years to determine what I have: I used to be able to identify tones faster, but now I've grown sluggish, and always thought I've had a great "relative pitch" memory. But at the same time, I essentially follow the same method that described here: I have pieces "saved" in my head in undeniably certain keys (for example, I would associate the Star Bangled Banner in A-flat, giving me both the E-flat starting note and the key of A-Flat, or from video games the Legend of Zelda Song of Storms, which is D minor). I associated certain pieces with certain keys and could "learn" from that.
It's also interesting that there can be different layers. There are people that can identify tones (by hearing them), and then also those that can produce them, but not necessarily both. Additionally, those that truly have pitch can determine the precision of a tone (A440, A439, A438). Sometimes I feel that I've listened to too much authentic Baroque musique that my "tone anchors" (like what I mentioned above) have started to become abscured.
8:06 straight to bohemian rhapsody... loved it🤗
I just automatically hear the name of the note in my head together with the actual note. If you play C, I automatically hear 'Do' in my head (I didn't learn the abc version as a kid). Strangely, I don't hear flats and sharps. They do sound different, flat is a bit darker and sharp is a bit brighter, it feels like how it would feel if you tried to sing the notes, you would turn you head down for lower notes and turn it up for higher notes, that's what you do instinctively. So I get flats and sharps right about 60% of the time. Sometimes I confuse notes with similar sounding names, like Do and So, or Mi and Si, the notes have a vowel tied to them. As I got older and more versed in music, this got easier. But I'm pretty sure I have almost perfect pitch (or 'pretty good pitch', if you will), because I can wake up in the morning and usually accurately tell you notes. I'm not the best at tuning though, because notes have a range to me. A isn't necessarily 440hz. I feel it intuitively, so I do feel like a note needs to go up or down, but it's not necessarily in line with standard western tuning. I did however grow up with an old-ish, rarely tuned piano.
So I do need to decipher a little bit, but not as much as others
I have perfect pitch, and this video was absolutely fascinating to me. I couldn’t imagine hearing music not in “full color” if you know what I mean. I started out music on piano, which is (obviously) a concert pitch instrument, then moved to trombone later (also concert pitch). My friend has perfect pitch also, but he started out on Alto Sax, so his perfect pitch is “tuned down” a minor third, because Alto has to transpose. I just find that really weird and interesting.
I don’t know if I have perfect pitch because I can’t do it when it’s played so fast I can’t keep up kinda like Charlie pith can, but if I hear a singular note I don’t have to think about it.
sad. no amount of 40 hours will make me pitch perfect like eddy. sad.
I have perfect pitch & had it since I was a child. I would literally mimic whatever sound that caught the attention of my ear & do it to perfection. Because I didn’t know music theory I would label the notes on the piano as colors which was weird but it helped me. It wasn’t until I took piano lessons in my late teens early 20’s that it was revealed to me what perfect pitch was. Everything came natural to me, it helped me to understand what was going on in my mind musically & I could actually tell the viewer in detail everything thing I’m hearing. My instructor in 2009 tested me by having me stand with my back turned & he played several notes & I told him everything he was doing without looking at the piano. We became the best of friends after that. Going to school for music was the most interesting & stressful thing I’ve ever done for myself. 4 semesters of Music theory enhanced my skills tremendously. Melodic dictation was hard but it did help. & knowing what hey the song is in without looking at the sheet music is an advantage!! Your channel is amazing Charles & thank you for this video!
Can't you do it faster or slower depending in how used to each note you are?
Forget his perfect-pitch abilities- have you listened to his latest single _Left and Right?_ The guy’s production is on a whole another level. It’s so refreshing to hear a guy make production decisions based on what is being said in the lyrics. In this song for this instance… he answers the main line _memories follow me left and right_ with two distinct vocal lines panned hard-left and hard-right (so as to show that the love-interest in this song takes up every corner of his mind). It’s incredible. I wish more people would write songs like this- where the lyrics reflect some type of change in the music/production…
That's cool, but you're going a bit overboard with your enthusiasm. It's really nothing special, it's just a common diegetic strategy.
@@bazingacurta2567 you are right, but it is a great song nevertheless. i’m glad that this comment made me check out this guys music, because it’s awesome and i didn’t know him.
Talking about word painting. Yeah, word painting needs to happen more.
And that's called word-painting. David Bennet has a great video on this theme.
@@bazingacurta2567 In film… yes… but not so much so in music.
Is choose 3 😁 This is very fun! If you made a 30 min video just guessing the correct key I’d totally watch! Lol
I realize it's just being used as an analogy to help us understand, but hearing perfect pitch described as hearing in full color is really funny to me, a person who does not have perfect pitch but DOES have some minor synesthesia where I see colors/textures when listening to some music 🤣
Yeah the way he described the color analogy may not be the best. I think it would be better to say that people with perfect pitch can remember the *specific* shade of every color exactly in their head and anytime they "hear" that color they know that exact shade. They don't have to have a reference point. We all know red but without any help if we were shown one of a thousand shades of red could we instantly know which it was? They hear any sound and their brains know the "frequency" of the sound. If they hear an A they know that tone immediately, but not because they see all colors in a way that is different to us. Rather because their brain distinguishes what tone is what with basically "perfect" precision.
Billies bounce is my favorite jazz piece, I played it in my jazz group (I play trumpet) and I got the main melody at A, such a fun and entertaining piece to both play and listen to
Where my relative pitch comes from
C - ukulele 2nd string, it being the super basic piano key drilled it in
Db - 80% of mr brightside
D - Ringmasters Notre Dame Medley
Eb - my high school Alma Mater
E - 3rd string of uke
F - unironically the first note of We are number one
F# - i just go half a step down from G
G is like my home note from playing the ukulele, i perpetually have a G ringing throughout my brain
Ab - an arrangement of take me home country roads my quartet did
A- 4th string of uke
Bb - Moon Creep by Brent Walsh
B - Stars by Eriks Esenvalds
And studying theory and intervals and ear training makes it the perfect party trick and i just tend to consider it faux/pseudo perfect pitch, it works just as well just a slight delay
idk obviously I don't know you so I don't know how fast you can recognize these, but I like you also have a "reference" for each pitch but for me over time it's become such an instant thing that I really don't feel bad saying I have perfect pitch. Like if you compare me with someone who has "true" perfect pitch you will be able to notice they are slightly faster (and if I want to I can stop thinking about pitch and "turn it off" which I don't think they could) but to most people in most cases it's going to be the same. So personally I would say you have perfect pitch. I believe it is something you can develop.
Specifically, it's because you have a reference for every pitch that I think it's valid. I know plenty of people with 1-4 or so and that I consider relative pitch. But if you can quickly and reliably recognize and reproduce a note I see no reason to distinguish that.
Great video. I too have pretty good pitch memory, but absolutely do not have perfect pitch.
perfect pitch is a spectrum brother. a popular youtuber called Eddy chen from twosetviolin already taught himself perfect pitch. he wasn’t born with it! You should ask him about it!
Ok, sure but I head it took 40 hrs of practice a day
Color blind taught/trained to see color?
@@NvincibleIronMan Perfect pitch develops in the first few years of your life, you can "learn" it when you're young
You are saying this man made a whole video about it doesn't mean anything???
@@gamesmusicandmore9819 He meant you can't learn perfect pitch as a(n) teen/adult, but you can develop it when you are very young
I don't have perfect pitch, but I am "pitch locked". Meaning that if I were to just start singing the melody I know I always sing it in the key I heard it. For example I always sing the recorder lead melody in the theme song from the old 60s sitcom Room 222 in the key I heard it in the 60s (as a 10 year old).
@@Bloorgusgoorge
@@stevenwishnoff154 LOL sorry bro I was bored respect tho
The way that you decipher notes is the same way i have for years and I never knew if it would make sense to other people!! So happy to understand why it works!
My goto's. E - Fur Elise. C & G -Jump & Vince Guaraldi Trio skating. C# - Claire de Lune. A - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love. Few more but then go relative from there..
My takeaway. I’m not a big enough queen fan and I must learn all their songs by heart.
yes you can. Charlie doesn't just have some divine ability to know what C sharp sounds like. He learned what c sharp sounds like and is extremely good at recognizing that sound based off of what he has learned. Perfect pitch in it of itself is not a binary you have it or you don't. It is a skill that is acquired by a large experience of listening to notes and hearing or discerning what they're called. The notation of notes is a man made tool, so having an ability to recognize it therefore by default has to be learned. And anything that can be learned will always come easier to some and harder to others, some possess a ceiling lower than others and some have a high ceiling that will never be realized because they don't put in effort to reach it.
Unfortunately, that theory is not what's going on in practice (which is usual for theories). People can have perfect pitch without ever playing any instrument or having an instrument at home. And without knowing how that C# is called. they will just say: oh, that's the first note of that song! The only prerequisite is just listening to some music, obviously.
@@psorcerer yeah, that is included in my « theory » everything is learned. They learned the note because of x song not because they have some crazy ability.
Everything is learned, and can be learned to certain degrees. It’s possible to learn perfect pitch. It’s possible never to care and not learn it. But one thing is for certain, it is annoying how it’s glorified as some supreme sorcery granted to able musicians who are of kindred spirit. Like no they just really listen to music and remember sounds well. Memory retention is not some absurd Super power. It’s the human brain applied to music.
@@VolleyballHighlights2024 there's no "crazy ability" there's a normal ability for children to rewire their brain pretty fast. Which is lost for adults. For example ability to learn a language and sound native in that language.
No adult (without perfect pich) will have no accent in a newly learned language. But kids - they can.
@@psorcerer let me paint a better picture. Perfect pitch is treated as some, all powerful able to discern pitch without fault and if you aren’t perfect you don’t have this ability. It’s like comparing Magnus Carlson to someone who knows what chess is but doesn’t play. And then saying that Magnus has some ability that the avg person doesn’t. In reality that person could be better at chess than Magnus Carlson. (Who displays a ability to memorise patterns at a high rate) but since they don’t play and don’t care to try we’ll never know. The same is for perfect pitch, it’s likely much more common than someone like Charlie south will say it is, but admitting that it’s probably common to recognise pitch in music makes him seem less cool, and since he has an incredible music experience he can show off his very refined expertise in it as a way to show the gap between someone with and without it. This relationship exists in everything. Because people like to seem very good at things and separate themselves from average people who just don’t care at all
@@psorcerer this is an out of left field conversation that has value and is interesting but is no where near what the original argument was about. It can be learned, and it’s probably common, but we will never know because 90% of the world doesn’t care enough to try
Yes, the comparison to colour blindness is spot on. Many colour blind people can see the difference between shades of colours when the colours are next to one another but can't tell which is which when the colours are shown to them one by one. I. e. it's relative. So yes, as some people have an extremely precise sense of colour (=ability to sense wavelengths of light) it only makes sense that some people are very sensitive to frequencies of sound. 🤷♂️ What's odd though is that perfect pitch is so rare whereas a majority of people seem to be able to pick up colours quite accurately. 🤔
On a side note do you have a best of jazz playlist?
Who needs perfect pitch when you have a mobile app, just identify yourself as a cyborg
Yes, you can. And I have.
And yes, every note does sound different and anyone can hear this. Listen to how each sound vibrates. The “color” of an E vibration is different than an A. AP exists on a spectrum of ability. Just like relative pitch.
It is not about remembering the “highness” or “lowness”. Each pitch has a unique vibration profile.
Associating with colors are mostly a personal opinion. But for me, B has a silvery kind of piercing vibration. Certain scales will also have a unique character. Ab major is mellow sound while E is more bright sounding.
This “1 in 10,000” stat is not clearly factual. Also it ignores that it exists on a spectrum.
The irony here is that the guy in this video Charles does have some minor perception of AP but doesn’t understand that this is actually what it is. And this is the case for many musicians, I believe. I noticed these same details before I “had” refined my AP hearing. And it is possible to practice. Just listen and compare the notes. Check your mistakes by comparing pitches directly.
Absolute pitch is a more refined ear. If you have it you are able to hear in more detail compared to someone who doesn’t have it.
I have personally met individuals who can only ID one pitch. This is absolute pitch. It exists on a spectrum of ability contrary to myth. Do all musicians have equal ears? That would be a silly assumption, no? When I first learned AP I would confuse pitches, but usually the same mistake. Interesting, right? Because my mistake should be “random” if I didn’t have AP. I found that I would be off by a fifth or sometimes a semitone (IMO, the fifths are fairly similar sounding, but with practice the differences become more clear.). You will see many stories online of people with AP saying they have more trouble hearing specific notes, including black keys. This was also my experience because I practiced white keys first. Then I developed the ability to hear multiple notes, then multi note chords. It takes a lot of practice. Have you tried to improve relative pitch? How slowly did your ear improve? The same with AP training.
At least one study I saw identified that there is one pitch that is mistaken more than others. And if you talk or read online you can find many stories of this. Again: it’s a spectrum of ability. Every person has unique experiences and training and listening ability. Every person has unique hearing. There are many false myths about AP. Even the scientists don’t understand it. And that’s because it is difficult to explain your own subjective experience. Describing colors for example can be done with “bright/dark”, but it is more difficult to do with pitch. Eb for me is a “darker” note than a G or an F#.
And for the record, I learned how to develop it from David Lucas Burge who debunked many of the myths of AP 30 years ago. But I made a small number of my own drills to practice because all of his drills make you practice at your instrument. If you truly want to develop it understand that basic AP is achievable, but developing mastery of it will take a lot longer. IMO, you can almost never stop improving your ear if you want to.
A great analogy to the misleading question “can I develop AP” would be like asking, can you play chess? Anyone can play chess, but how many can master it? That would take many hours of practice. When you develop AP as a child, you already practiced a lot of pitch distinction, so the ear is used to listening for it. But test various individuals and you will find differences in ability.
Developing the ear takes a lomg time so developing AP depends on the caveat that you understand that you will not have fully refined hearing overnight. The ear does not improve that quickly. But with continued practice the ear gets better at distinguishing differences.
Actually for me perfect pitch always was just having the memory of a specific pitch. So if you remember a song in the correct pitch it should be perfect pitch too I guess 🤔 I mean if you can remember the right pitch of song you should also be able to remember every tone in a scale with some training. But actually I don't know the exact definition of perfect pitch.
These are my thoughts as well. Perfect pitch is a spectrum, but if you are able to remember pitches without any outside reference, this is also perfect pitch
Absolute pitch is very weird for me, and it’s something I’ve been mindfully practicing for decades.
I can define pitches with really good accuracy in the shower, or a quiet place. I grew up playing the violin so EADG is baked into my brain. HOWEVER, when there’s music playing at me, my internal sense of pitch gets distracted by the noise; if that makes sense. To the point where I cannot hear my internal clock of pitch. I’m hoping one day I can get over it.
I’m a singer with a church job, and I also play saxophone. I can name A and Bb because tuning in band hammered them in, and middle C because of futzing around with the piano. I can also tell when we sing an anthem or hymn in a different key than is written on the page, even if the change is just a half step, because decades of classical singing have taught me what each note feels like in my voice. I don’t have perfect pitch, but this kind of memorization definitely helps with sight-singing and staying in tune vocally.
This video has inspired me to start determining what notes are in all the pieces engrained in my brain so I can use the Levitin effect to identify pitches more effectively. Thus far I've been using relative pitch away from A 440 to determine notes because in middle school, my strings teacher would blast an A from a sine wave generator for a good ten minutes every morning while everyone got set up and tuned up.
At the music school I go to I’m one of only two people in the Honor’s theory course that doesn’t have perfect pitch 😩
I have a condition called synthesia. When I scrub over a velvet trouser I can taste a sweet taste in my mouth. And when I hear some particular tones I see a particular colour. For example, b sharp is a deep blue and f sharp is green
Right, what you described is still relative pitch. You don't HEAR what sound it is. But you recall the engrained sound of a certain part in a certain piece in context and say if they match the just heard sound, are higher or lower. It is not about eventually saying the right key without actually hearing a reference tone in comparison, but about the way of getting to that result.
8:53 "Probably because you've heard that song so many times that there's no way you wouldn't remember how to sing it or what key it's in." Definitely not true for me. The problem with using a song that you know as a reference is that it doesn't work if you are unable to remember the song in the correct key every time, even "that one song" that is so ingrained in your head. I have written over 200 original songs and produced 12 albums of my original music, but I can't accurately remember my own songs in the right key even though I have sung them thousands and thousands of times. I have very good pitch discrimination and can sing notes perfectly in the center of a pitch with a reference, but when I try to hear a song in my mind, my relative pitch kicks in 100%. The last song I heard or sang will influence the key of the song I'm trying to audiate. It's as if notes only have meaning in context. When I play a song in my car through bluetooth, I can perceive that the pitch is sharper or flatter and it doesn't sound quite right, but I still am unable to accurately remember any song every time. The closest I get is in the morning if I haven't heard or sung any other song. Once I have any music in my head everything shifts entirely to relative pitch, even my memory of the pitch of a song.
I also use my voice as a reference when trying to determine the key of a song without a reference, but things will completely change depending on how warmed up I am. I actually describe perfect pitch as fixed pitch memory. It's basically that. I know people with perfect pitch who don't sing perfectly on pitch and don't hear what I hear. I hear overtones and other things that they cannot hear. Charlie Puth uses Autotune because he doesn't like to hear the flat or sharp notes he sings despite his perfect pitch. The physical act of producing a note involves more than just perception. A person with perfect pitch's main skill is being able to remember equal tempered frequencies, normally based on A = 440. That usually enables them to recognize a pitch or produce it without a reference. Then there is Dylan Beato who has super-developed perfect pitch and knowledge of music theory. He can even name complex chords which requires knowledge of theory. I wish I had perfect pitch so I could have an easier time starting a song in the desired key without a reference when singing a cappella or find a note on the piano that I hear in my mind without a reference. There are other benefits I can think of such as singing the Star-Spangled Banner in the desired key without a reference and also not modulating at all. I have trained my relative pitch which helps me in many ways, but I'd still like to have an accurate tonal memory. I also saw videos where people with perfect pitch didn't recognize that the pitch of a song modulated an entire 1/2 steps because it was so gradual like the frog in boiling water. Moreover, they say that after 50, most people's perfect pitch sags a 1/2 step which can be devastating for some people making them not want to listen to music. Such an interesting topic. There's also the issue of the fact that equal temperament tuning doesn't reflect true pitch (true intervals) and singing based on Equal Temperature isn't actually the only way to sing or play since true intervals in nature aren't the same as what we find on a piano. For example, the major third on the piano is 13.69 cents sharper than the major third in the harmonic series. Octaves are always accurate even in Equal Temperament tuning because they are doubled and major fifths are pretty close in Equal Temperament (only 1.96 cents flat).
Thanks for sharing this Charles, it is good to see other perspectives on perfect pitch. My thoughts after seeing this are; in comparing learning the names of notes to learning the names of colors is; when we learned the names of colors we would see one color and be told the name of it, then look around the room or book for things that match that color, then likewise 1 by 1 for all the colors, this slowly engrained the names of the colors in our brain. We could distinguish all the colors from the start (unless we had some forms of color blindness), and we can see variations in color in the color wheel, where there is whole spectrum of each color that blends into the next color, and the ones in the middle are questionable which one they are. Likewise with notes, we hear a whole range of notes, not many of us had training where we'd listen to one not on a piano, then a guitar and on other instruments to study and compare that note to each instrument. We were just blasted with a range of notes, so it never really stuck in to memory. I wonder if we were training colors like that as well, if we were just flashed a range of different colors would we easily remember the color, it would be harder. So, my conclusion is I think perfect pitch has a lot to do with how we were taught what the notes are called, and probably learning young makes it easier, just like young kids learn languages a lot easier than adults. And learning the notes based on simple songs we are familiar with helps, just like you learned some notes from your favorite Jazz albums.
I am in fact completely blind so can't tell how it really feels to learn about colors, but so far your comment and comparison of both color and pitch makes the most sense to me among all the ones I've read (or should I say, I've heard, as I'm using speech synthesis software to navigate the Internet). And I've read/heard a lot.
In fact, at this point, I can't be totally sure that I have perfect pitch. Sure, I was good at recognizing pitch since I was a kid, and I also became quite good at identifying the 4% acceleration of films for PAL format, which got me fed up with cinema for a while.
Yet, ask me about notes from a song's melody and though I will find them, I will have to think for a few seconds. Never did I have big troubletransposing music, though perhaps this was due to the fact that I only learnt about reading music in Braille very recently. Plus though my main reference is A=440, it does feel jarring to here baroque music tuned that way. So my perfect pitch, if I do have it, is in good part in contradiction with what is often said, including by people who do have it.
@@thepulseman7154 Hi, thanks for your comment. It does give more evidence that perfect pitch can be learned later in life. I saw another article that said anyone can learn perfect pitch, if they we exposed to a lot of music from conception to about the age of 2. Apparently, the young brain will automatically group the notes from any instrument, into the 12 standard notes. So if you know anyone having a baby ask them to expose them to all kinds of music when they are young. And not just simple music. Include Jazz, classic, everything.