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Awesome video man! I have perfect pitch and i always love to do research on it Also, it's a little unrelated to the topic but still pretty close to it, i'm an audio engineer and i struggle with hearing frequencies in the mix as much as non-perfect pitch people struggle with hearing notes. I guess there's no "perfect EQ pitch" :D /Nevertheless, i still have to say that your voice in the video is really "booming" with low frequencies, and it's a little annoying to listen, especially in headphones. So i'll leave a kind suggestion for you to mix the audio track more precisely. Thanks!
@@BradHarrison Is this a perfect pitch? My 6 years old son did not try that much and did it after a few try. He does not have piano lessons. On rare occasion he just try to imitate what he hears. Coffin dance ru-vid.com2xsAE7HHcRw?feature=share
Very interesting and educational video that doesn't hate perfect pitch or think that people without it are worse musicians. And your examples were perfect, congratulations!
I am norwegian and “gift” is actually poison in norwegian aswell, just like in german. So “gift” can mean married AND poison, it just depends on the context of how it’s used in a sentence. Don’t ask me if there’s a reason for why…
I was laughing until I realized it's a really similar thing in Russian, the same word stands for "marriage" and "defect". I wonder what's up with our languages...
My ex is definitely that UNM(untrained natural musician) category. Its really a phenomenom to witness that. Its like something else. Could harmonize, make whole songs in her head, every part, and every single detail just in her head! Not jealous, not jealous at all :D
Why does it kinda resonate with me🥲 I always produce songs only in my head, and I even have some “finished” songs, but I never try to actually produce them…
Pretty crazy how every comment ive read has had perfect pitch. Its like youve managed to gather every perfect pitch person that can speak english under one video
I was never musically inclined as a kid. I started taking band in middle school for the easy grades, and after a few years I started to develop an "early stage" of perfect pitch, where I could tell you what a played note was most of the time & sing an instructed note less often. Jump to today, and I have the curse of total perfect pitch; I call it a curse because _everything_ has a pitch that my brain now automatically tries to listen for. Even after stepping back from band & choir entirely, some friends still want me to "do the note thing" as a party trick, and that's honestly the only enjoyable part of it right now.
Holy damn I relate to you bud. I am too, was never musically inclined when I was a kid. But when my music teacher taught us back in grade 1 what C D E F G A B sounds like, the first time I heard it, it never faded away and still to this day my brain analyzes each sound produced in my environment like "how do I make it stop?!" Can't focus clearly sometimes because of this blessing(curse)
I rarely ever talk about my absolute pitch or even demonstrate it at rehearsals because I know it's socially a touchy subject; even when, for example, I know the key a singer's in and the other musicians are trying to find it, I've learned to keep quiet because it can come off as being pedantic, which I guess is understandable. There's also a lot of misinformation online. Something to add to this great video is that you can improve your AP with practice: you can learn to recognize microtones and all the notes in really complex chords for instance :)
Sad you have to tone down your great ability so you don't offend someone or make them jealous. People need to accept that some people are a lot better than them at some stuff.
@@guitarsandcars2586 Imagine you're trying to solve a puzzle or crosswords, and someone beside you keeps saying all the answers/how to solve it before you even have time to start trying yourself. I think it's probably the same. Some people do that all the time, only to show off, and he don't want to be that annoying person who ruins other people's fun, that's why he keeps quiet about it.
In my freshmen year of high school, my chorus teacher made such a big deal out of my AP that I sang the starting note for every song we sang in class for the full year. The fact that I had AP became normalized among my peers and most people never bring it up now because I’m just kinda the “pitch guy”. I’m glad I can speak somewhat openly about it in my school and people treat it normally. After that year, I never gave pitches as often because I felt a little used so I spoke to my teacher about it and I’ve never had to give pitches often since, but my friends aren’t judgemental about it still :)
@@guitarsandcars2586 haha, I'm not sure if you're sarcastic lol Imagine walking up to a person who sees in black and white and telling them the colors you can see. It may be cool at first, but it gets understandably annoying even if the person who can see in color has good intentions, it has nothing to do with jealousy.
My freshman music theory professor memorized what a G was from binge-watching The Office and not skipping the intro. No perfect pitch, but now he can find stuff pretty well without it. As for me, I have perfect pitch (or “the curse” as I call it) and learning B-flat trumpet years after starting piano was well…a trip and a half. Also, American music schools emphasize relative pitch over absolute, so in sight-singing and dictation classes the examples would almost always be transposed some amount Edit: Should also mention, a lot of people with perfect pitch (especially untrained) don’t hear key relationships well. For the longest time, I could sing a song in a different key just fine, as long as there wasn’t a key change. It took years to be able to mentally transpose key changes. Also, for me, hearing something in a different key changes the meaning, so if there’s a song I like, being sung by someone who’s voice I like, but in a key that I feel isn’t amicable to the song, I can’t listen.
What my theory teacher has done for me specifically is have me write melodic dictations (transcribing melodies), except he plays them in a different key than I write them down in. It really helps me with recognizing more relationships and helps me rely less on my perfect pitch to correctly identify every individual note. I’ve also been singing for 7 years so I’m pretty used to moving around the tonic. Even with perfect pitch, although songs are colored differently in different keys I don’t really struggle to believe they’re the same song, because the note relationships are the same. Relative pitch is definitely a skill learned separately from perfect pitch and it takes time to master so I get what you mean
I’ve always thought about how dramatic a song in a different key could sound to somebody with perfect pitch. Like for us normies, it’s just something different and sounds kind of cool to switch it up but somebody with perfect pitch may think a lot more in depth to it. Kind of like if my room color changed from white walls to yellow all of a sudden
Something that I really like is that you emphasized that you don’t have to have AP to be a good musician. I’m a singer, and most of my peers think they can never reach my level of musicianship BECAUSE of my AP, which is definitely not true. They also reduce my 7 years of experience in vocal practice and rehearsals and performances to having AP which is frustrating because I worked hard to become a better musician too! There’s so much more that goes into music besides reproducing “correct” notes. I haven’t finished the race by any means, I just have a head start. You can always improve your musicianship, even with AP.
Yes! I remember being in ear training class, working in identifying chords, and turned to a friend who had perfect pitch and said that it must be really easy for her. She said, not really. It takes too long to hear and identify every note individually and then mentally stack it and analyze the chord. She felt she still had to basically do what we had to do and just learn the “flavor” of each chord to identify the quality.
back in elementary school, when we had music class, i used to practice scales on melodica and recorder. it's so repetitive to the point where it's engraved inside my brain. i can identify any pitch on different instruments too. now my friends think i have perfect pitch, but in reality, i don't have it. i can't tell if the note is exactly on pitch or not.
I learned piano when I was ten, on an old piano that had not been tuned in years, so it had been tuned to itself, but nearly one semi-tone lower than A-440. This messed with my sense of pitch.
@@BradHarrison Not to mention that so many popular recordings are sharp or flat to A-440, like "Strawberry Fields", which doesn't hardly have a key at all.
Playing a piano with a different tuning from 440 would not mess your sense of pitch or cause anything. because a particular one single note has no meaning by itself. why? because even 440 was what they decided one day everyone should use. it used to be 432hz or whatever. so don't say one is wrong or messed up because of anything. Music is RELATIVE and always relative. a note by itself is not music. or is one single note, music by itself? even when you recognize it's exact pitch? A sound is not music nor identifying single sounds one at a times is not at all music. Let that sink people. So don't just worry. But there is also big inaccuracy about perfect pitch because what you now think is A is out of tune if when the standard was not 440HZ is fish a poison? you answer that question. If you think about it you see the problem. nothing is perfect in that sense nor even absolute. Just the word POISON IS NOT ABSOLUTELY ONE THING. Until context and in relations to other things - ie - people and languages plus context. But on it's own it's not at all perfect nor absolute. For Absolute and perfection never drifts nor changes.
@@makemoneyjourney7864 When I was kid, I went to my music teacher's house for lessons, and he asked me to sing out a C. I imagined a piece I played that started with C, and the note I sang out was B on his piano, which was properly tuned. I do agree with you absolutely that pitch is relative. What I was so used to being C, was actually C-flat at A440, but I was playing in the key of C.
Excellent article on pitch recognition - one of the best I've seen. My father fine tuned his relative pitch into near perfect, by checking A440 first thing after/before waking/sleeping with a tuning fork. When Frank Denke wasn't out playing music in San Francisco I remember Dad leaping to the piano to check the key my mother sneezed in, or what note a water glass breaking as it got accidentally knocked off the table made. He also associated pitches with colors. I'm challenging myself each day to play whatever music I happen to hear in my head (ranges from Old McDonald to Beethoven's 2nd Movement of the Pathetique to various Jazz Standards). I often dream in near perfect pitch, but in reality could use more refining! Learned a new word, "Amusia" - thanks Brad & sharing this.
@@TornaitSuperBird Dad was a professional pianist who marked his own piano transcriptions with colored pencils, and I do believe it not only helped him identify the harmony of tunes for memorization but also refined his pitch identification. I remember meeting a nearly totally blind kid at a music camp who "saw" colors when he heard pitches played on the piano with 100% accuracy - about all he could see - even though he wore thick glasses over his contacts - were shapes of colors pressed up to his face, but could identify even the most complex combination of notes on the piano!
There's an English researcher called Sam Leak who's experimenting with ways to learn some degree of absolute pitch. I'm in one of the training groups and have a pretty good level now, although I make frequent small errors. I'm still doing the exercises, although I completed the programme a while ago. It's a really fun skill and the fact that it's possible to learn as an adult gives me hope that we'll find even more efficient training methods in future.
I am the UNM. When I was a toddler, my parents knew the love I had for music so they provided me with stereo systems groing up and basic low quality instruments. During middle school, they tried getting me into learning guitar, but I quit after a couple of months because my fingers couldn't handle it. Decades go by... I still have a love for music and I got into DJing and music production using drum machines. While making drum grooves, I needed to add rhythms and melodies, so i purchased a midi keyboard and some sound modules. I started playing around with the keys and I blew my mind own what type of grooves I came up with with no prior experience. Later on, I needed bass lines, so I bought a bass guitar and blew my mind once again when I was able to identify the pitches I was looking for. Today, I am able to play bass lines and follow along to songs I've never heard before. I still can't read music, but my friends who are experienced musicians were blown away at what I could do because they require sheet music in order to play. They told me that if I was able to read music, I would be a musical genius. I agree, I should havenever stopped learning the guitar.
Even though I have played both piano & flute (both badly) in my youth, in my old age I am going to learn keyboard. Your channel is a godsend! I appreciate so much that I can learn from the bottom up from your videos. I have a lot to learn and you make everything crystal clear. Thank you very much !!!
I FUCKING LOVE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR. And it helps me so, so much to engage with the first-class information that you provide. I hope you already know this, but I'm sure that many of us can appreciate your authenticity and dedication. Thank you. Saludos desde México:)
I have relative pitch but can identify the notes being played in an absolute way. My band told me i had perfect pitch and i told them i use my guitar strings as reference. I am so relieved to find a video about it explaining what exactly makes me do this and i sent it to them.
Wonderful video! I had basically no perfect pitch most of my life, but heard that Eddy from 2setviolin got it in high school, so I started training and now I have perfect pitch. There aren't any cheat codes going on in my head, I've just listened to songs like you mentioned and practiced enough that now I can hear an A and immediately know it's an A. I seriously believe lots more people could have perfect pitch than the amount that do right now.
That’s great! Very cool to develop it later. It gives power to the theory that genetics are a component. You always had the potential, you just needed to develop the ability. It’s possible that people with perfect pitch never develop or identify it because they’re never trained, but after working with thousands of beginners, which should comprise a pretty reasonable sample size, I pretty confident that perfect pitch is pretty rare. I’ve only ever known a few students who had it. It’s more common among pros but still a tiny minority.
That’s not perfect pitch, that’s relative pitch, and it’s not quite perfect, you would still make mistakes with pitch relation. Not being rude, but the closet you could get is quasi absolute pitch. I don’t know your situation, but that takes years of dedicated practice if I’m correct, but I’m not sure. I have perfect pitch, so I couldn’t tell you.
@@BradHarrison I was born with perfect pitch but never realized it was rare until I started playing around other musicians. It’s definitely been a helpful tool when learning instruments and songs, but definitely not needed to be a good musician.
@@jackson.6282 That is not relative pitch, with relative pitch you need to be given a starting pitch and then from there you can figure out other pitched, perfect pitch you just know from the start. How is what he has not perfect pitch?
@@eonstar knowing a single note isn't that difficult, and not indicative of perfect pitch. the real test is being given a chord and identifying each individual note. you cannot learn perfect pitch, it's something that you have to develop very early in your life. when i say early, i mean before you learn to talk. this guy just got pitch memorization, which isn't flawless.
I've got pitch memory for G, Bb, A, F, and C but G is strongest. Years of choir have trained my ear. I can tell pretty quickly what key something is in if i have a moment to pick out a reference pitch.
12:30 Not sure if anyone has ever mentioned it yet before or if anyone can relate, but as someone who's ear is locked to 440Hz and can perfectly tune to that without any reference (or at least very close to that), having fevers can make everything sound flatter even though nothing changed and they are still at 440Hz. I've had a couple of moments where I was listening to music while I had fever and I thought my headphones were just broken because I was hearing everything at like 435Hz, but when I tried playing music on different devices and different headphones, speakers, earphones, they were all flatter than usual to my ears. It restores after a few days after getting cured so you don't have to manual adjust but It's kind of like losing your taste when you get COVID-19. Pretty disturbing.
The reason perfect pitch is more prominent in tone dependent languages is because people learn the subtle differences in tonalities from a very young age (as they speak and learn the language). Anyone can learn to speak those languages later in life, and so it is possible to learn perfect pitch (source: I am writing a masters thesis on the assimilation of tonal information). The sooner someone can connect their acute sense of pitch differentiation to the vocabulary, labelling, and organization of Western European music theory, the sooner they can start developing "perfect pitch". But what about someone who doesn't subscribe to that organization of musical sounds? Someone who speaks cantonese most likely says words and phrases over and over with the same pitch every time with no established key, but since it is not in a musical setting and deliberate, most people do not perceive this as someone with "perfect pitch". The numbers that I know off the top of my head are: around 2% of people have perfect pitch and around 80% of people with level 3 autism have perfect pitch. TL;DR more and more research is showing that perfect pitch is NOT about "automatically" labeling notes and more about training yourself to have the ability to differentiate micro-tonalities (possible for anyone without hearing damage to the hair cells in your ear). For some reason, we then require people to spell those out into traditional Western European music theory for it to count as "perfect pitch".
I also must add, my old roommate who has perfect pitch was not able to achieve levels of relative pitch that I had mastered because of the way they learned to listen to music. With relative pitch, we are starting from the sum of all sound frequencies, then pulling information such as harmony quality, melody distance, and rhythmic impulse. Someone with perfect pitch might skip over those in favor of following the melody notes in their head. So using perfect pitch to assist you in music is absolutely not guaranteed, but Jacob Collier is probably one of the most successful. He has exercised and assimilated his ability to detect micro-frequencies continuously throughout his life and seems to be constantly unveiling connections between his perception and the work of great music theorists.
Yeah, I'm pretty good at labeling tones in terms of hertz, but I don't know musical notation. I can tell you if the subwoofer down the street hit 40hz, 60hz, or 120hz, and what refresh rate your old CRT is set to... but I suspect all of this can be done with relative pitch since these frequencies have different physical propagation characteristics, and there are many reliable frequency references in the wild around these ranges.
Yeah, I have a feeling perfect pitch has a lot more to do with memory and visualization ability than people let on. There is definitely something intuitive going on with some people, but I think it's more of heightened learning ability with that specific subject than it is being born with innate ability to identify. Pitch is a sound like any other and I find it hard to believe that if the average person can pick apart negligible differences in a fake voice impression that the ability to learn perfect pitch is any different.
As a singer, my perfect pitch gets in the way when I listen to or sing with a harmony that is in Baroque tuning. I was in a chorale that was performing a Bach piece with a keyboard tuned to A440, but the practice recordings for my tenor part were in Baroque (likely A415) tuning. It became painfully obvious that my relative pitch was lacking because I could not get any meaningful practice with the recording. I also get completely lost if the song I've been practicing is suddenly played in a different key that I haven't practiced with. If I have sheet music, I would have to transpose to the new key in my head, which is exhausting and much slower than using relative pitch and thinking in intervals. Sort of like translating to a different language on the fly.
back when i played guitar, i couldn’t retune at all because i associated the finger positions with the specific pitches, so every time i retuned and played it felt like every note was wrong and i just couldn’t do it. every single note threw me off and learning how to play like that was kind of going against everything i knew
This is interesting! I experience something very similar to what you describe (only the listening to something in a different tuning/key part, not reading sheet music part), but I’m a singer *without* perfect pitch. I have relative pitch with decent pitch memory, and I think it’s the pitch memory aspect that makes adapting difficult for me.
Yes this, I had to really fine-tune (no pun intended) my relative pitch skills since I was so reliant on my perfect pitch. To train it, I usually learn a song in the original key, then I’ll pick a random key signature and try to play from there.
Thank you for also pointing out what true tone deafness is! As a singing teacher, I have come across people who find it difficult to match pitch when singing and assume they are “tone-deaf”, but are actually quite good at picking up nuances in music as they listen. A lot of people jump to recommend ear training in that kind of situation, but in my experience, it actually comes down to the relationship between what you hear in your head and how you coordinate your body. It’s oftentimes an issue of breath management (which can determine how fast your vocal folds vibrate, i.e. the pitch). If you don’t realize you’re singing out of tune at the time, but listen back to a recording and notice that you are, you’re definitely not “tone-deaf” 😁
Pitch memorization feels amazing. I don't actively practice it, but every so often I'll hear a sound like a car horn or a motor humming or a piano chord and immediately a song jumps to mind and I know that it's 100% the starting note of this song
I actually didn’t even realize that I had perfect pitch until I was a junior in high school. And that was after I quit band after being in it since fifth grade-sophomore year. In band we used to play the Bb scale as a warm up. And sometimes and Eb but mostly Bb and I was able to tell which one was which by ear if it was a Bb or Eb scale. Once I realized I recognized F# in a video, I decided to try and train my musical ear on an online piano and now I can tell you any note on command whether natural or sharp and on any instrument. Very useful for tuning my guitar as well. For example when the card reader beeps I can instantly tell what note it is(most of the time it’s an F#) but when I was younger I would never be able to listen to songs in different keys, or when the drive thru beeps I picked up that note instantly. It always bothered me when I heard a cover of a song in a different key too.
Great video. I grew up "tone deaf" because of a procedure done to my ear when I was 2. I could not differentiate any note above the D string on the guitar. I could tell that it made a noise but I could not tell the difference between the G string or the high E string. I started playing bass because I could hear those low tones and it was better than watching TV. I am 60 now and about 10 years ago, I lost my hearing completely due to a neurological disorder. 😭 I was lucky enough to get cochlear implants and I can hear better than I could as a kid. I have picked up the guitar again and am working on pitch memorization now. I can hear all those high notes but now I can't hear those low tones like I used to. Fair trade in my book.
@@fitmotheyap They drilled a hole in my right eardrum to allow for drainage. This was before they started putting tubes in. The doctor told my mom that "fluid" trapped behind my eardrum was the reason for my sudden loss of balance. I never could hear on a telephone with my right ear, it sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. My younger brother had tubes put in about 12 years later in both ears but after he turned 40, he wore hearing aids in both ears.
i was born with pretty good pitch, i got a keyboard for christmas when i was 9 and i would just remember songs in my head and find the note that matched it and i would teach myself any song i remembered in an hour, now i can usually identify chords as well
Because he told me to comment, I will comment my thoughts. Perfect pitch is just pitch memorization but you know all the 12 tones. This is exactly how I learned perfect pitch. I made a video about my story and how I learned it, but basically you have to practice and memorize each tone. As with anything, the more you practice, the better / faster you become. I've been trying to get the ball rolling that you can learn perfect pitch for years and it still hasn't caught on. Anyway, this was a great video explaining the concepts and I liked the pranks with the notes on the staffs. Great work!
As someone with perfect pitch - it most definitely has its practical benefits, but there's two sides to the coin. Oftentimes it can actually get in the way of daily tasks. For example going shopping, lots of the time I find myself not being to focus properly because all my mind can focus on is all the different pitches produced by the scanners and checkouts. Even going on walks, listening to the pitches of car engines/horns or planes flying overhead etc. Fortunately though, in my experience, the benefits do outweigh the annoyances! I don't like to talk about it very much as one can come across as a bit 'big-headed', but when people have asked in the past they often don't understand when I say I hardly ever listen to the lyrics in a song because my mind is constantly fixed on the chord progressions. However what is most important is strong relative pitch as, ultimately it doesn't really matter if you have the exact (perfect) pitch. But being able to immediately work out the relationship between chords/notes (relative pitch) is such a strong ability to have. But if someone has perfect pitch then I imagine that they would have strong relative pitch anyway! Most people say that one is born with perfect pitch, but my opinion is that quite a few people could have it within themselves but the correct musical experiences have to be gained at an early age so therefore some people who could maybe develop it often may not. So I believe that it is a combination of being born with it and developing it - nature AND nurture.
i have a solid guess that the probability of people having perfect pitch in tonal language places is the actual probability, and the difference with non tonal languages is just people who have that "gift" but don't know they do
It’s also some what annoying when u look at pieces written in other keys like not concert C pitch? Like a trumpet or saxophone.Cause u c a different note on score than what u hear
I have pretty good pitch memory. But „perfect pitch“ got a completely relative meaning for me when I ventured into nerdy Baroque territory with A=415 Hz i.o. 440 or 442 as current fashion is. Or go for high Renaissance 466 Hz pitch and meantone i.o. well-tempered tuning.
How is perfect pitch any different from a fully developed pitch memory (pitch memorization) that one is totally confident in? To me the concept of perfect pitch as a totally discrete ability is just crazy. It's more akin to knowing a language by ear and then learning the convention to name the pitches. To my knowledge A=440hz isn't some magical number either, just the convention that's most widely used so that's what people become accustomed with. And like with any other skill, use it or lose it.
@@matsu820 You have a very good point. At some point you have to associate a name to the pitch. What if your historical reference is an out of tune piano in your parents house, say 5 cents flat?. What if your drunk uncle told you magenta was purple? What if there was no well tempered clavier?
one of the downsides of me having perfect pitch is that i relied on it so much when i had to play songs that i eventually forgot how to read due to not practising that habit... now i struggle to read sheets fluently and i have to memorise fragments by fragments so i learn a piece
Though I am not a teacher, I have tried explaining how to easily acquire the skills of relative pitch and even pitch memory to groups of musicians both in person and online. Mostly I get shrugs or crickets in response (like, who cares, I just wanna play, etc.). But with the help of this video, I may now have a better "script" with precise (and humorous) terminology to pique interest in these very practical musical skills.
Also, is it offensive to describe "perfect pitch" as when a banjo player throws his instrument out of a window and hits a bagpipes player? Asking for a friend...
I started following this channel because of my music course, but i ahve long failed that class yet i still watch. thank you for being entertaining & informative !
Loved the graphics, they made me laugh! The research and explanation is amazing. As a Dutch girl who learned how to speak Ewe (a Togolese language, as you showed) I can definitely say that it's possible to train your ears. Don't give up guys!
Ive gotten to the point with pitch memorization and relative pitch that everyone thinks I just have perfect pitch because I can name whatever note on command.
I'm a bassist and while I may not have perfect pitch, my partner does. I'm always amazed when she mutters under her breath the pitch of someone's footsteps or of someone clapping, but I think because of he tendency to do this, it's helped me memorise pitches. Often I'll try and guess along with her and usually I come within a tone of the correct pitch. I find it much easier to identify pitches on a bass too, as I'm used to its timbre and sound. I don't think that perfect pitch is necessary in order to be a good musician, but I think it can help in some situations, but also be a bit of a nuisance. What is more important is relative pitch and being able to hear the relationships between notes. It's like if you speak several languages, it's easier to translate a phrase than all the individual words, knowing how the sounds interact is much more useful than just knowing what the sounds are.
My perfect pitch came quite naturally, and I learned how to tap into it by relating chords, pitches, and scales with colors. For instance, I always thought F major was green, A major was orange, and C minor was purple.
i do this too!! i associate 5ths with similar colors so im not always correct but C + F major = blueish green (F being greener), D + A being pinkish orange (D being a bit pinker) and C minor being reddish purple. D minor is like a ice white sea green. E minor being a blueish pink. etc. Definitely dont have perfect pitch but i would never confuse a D# major scale for a G major scale cuz theyre completely different colors. (might confuse a c# and f# tho)
I’m a UNM. I attribute it to having a musical family; my mom being a music teacher and pianist, and my dad singing in barbershop most of his life. My sisters and I are musically talented, but I have the most natural affinity to music and have used my skills towards composing and transcribing (hearing music and being able to write it out). I’ve always been able to learn by ear and can quickly play pieces with minimal effort, but over the years I have spent time in music theory and developed great relative pitch. Plus with my mom teaching Kodaly, the way of using the “Do, Re, Mi” association with pitch, it is solidified in my head, sometimes even better than her, and she has her Master’s in it. My memorized pitch is a B from the top note of the E minor chord that starts John Williams’ Duel of the Fates, and, honestly, I was able to correctly sing “Never gonna give you up” before it played. I feel I was able to do this because I can feel the quality of the chords and so whenever I hear something in a different key, it sounds “off”. Now, there are studies on what is the saddest key and things like that, and that’s as close as I can relate my sense of a different key being “off” is; it doesn’t have the same properties or sound that the key it originally was in has, which is why the E minor chord in Duel of the Fates is so easily identifiable to me. That E minor chord sounds a certain way so much so that a D minor chord, for instance, would change the sound and feel of the piece. Plus, I can also tell you if I am listening to the original recording because I listen for the Baritones / Tenors to belt the Eb in the C minor chord at the end of the choral intro. Perfect Pitch is a great ability for sure, but if you have watched Adam Neely’s video on perfect pitch and why you don’t want it, he also describes that you can lose your natural ability of perfect pitch, but having relative pitch, because you taught yourself that ability, will stick around longer. So, it’s never too late to start your musical journey and gain this kind of ability too! You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish!
Wow. I am so happy that I actually do not need perfect pitch, because I turned out to have both relative pitch and pitch memorization! This was a great and informative video. Well done!
I loved every single example in here. I know making such a general statement kind of makes the statement have less value to each specific example, but just imagine that I listed each example, from linguistics and art and music, and said I loved it.
I think it’s really cool that my school district starts training middle school choir kids to sing an A on Ooo as a way to get their attention, but once you get to the high school program, A on Ooo becomes our tuning pitch. And because of this A pitch memorization our high school choir can sight read music without a piano guide.
Very similar. Our choir started in grade school and at the beginning of warm up, we always started on an acapella middle C. And to this day, I know a middle C no matter what. Idk if this means I have perfect pitch if I only know other notes relative to this note… but. 😂
I always taught my students to hear songs in their head to find pitch... like freebird in g, stairway to heaven in a minor, sweet home alakazama for d as examples. Even drummers can learn pitched keys that way.. simply walk up or down from a known key center in your head and you can determine any note without having so called perfect pitch. I believe classically they call this solfeggio, but i may be mistaken. All i know is its worked for me for 5 decades plus...peace
I would call that pitch memorization plus relative pitch. It can be very powerful. Relative pitch and solfège are basically the same thing. Solfège just applies the do re mi syllables.
Thank you for this video! I used to think that I had perfect pitch but couldn't exactly memorize all the notes, but now I know that relative pitch is an actual term! I associated notes with songs I regularly practiced as a kid, like Mary had a Little Lamb conventionally starts with E, or River Flows in You starts with A, Canon in D (obviously), and A Thousand Miles started with B. Then everytime I read other notes, I would use these songs as the baseline and scale up or down
I actually took a bit of time before realizing I had perfect pitch, bc one of my friends has it, and so we mostly asked him to sing specific notes, so I didn't really had any occasions to do that myself. I realized it bc I knew that I would always do an A correctly on demand, kinda like a tuning fork, and that was it, and I was ok with that, but then it developed into a thing where I can do any notes, and recognize any notes, except for sharp or flat notes for now, and I know I can train myself a bit on that apparently.
@@uchoo if it was then i would to because i can recognise almost every not except some but perfect pitch is when you don't mess up because you just know
Very interesting video. I actually have a perfect pitch that I trained. At some point I became obsessed on identifying pitches I would hear every day using the pitch memorisation (I could sing an A). After some years I realized I could identify the pitches without having to sing the A. However, and since I am a tenor sax player, I hear everything in Bb.
Interesting video! I thought I had _almost_ perfect pitch my whole life, which was frustrating since I didn’t know there was a name for pitch memorization.
This is one of the most thought out, clear and easy to understand videos I've ever seen. As a music student, it's good to know that it's still possible to sort of develop perfect pitch. Great video!
i was telling myself i could learn pitches by it’s identifying it through music that i know the key in and then you immediately taught me that’s pitch memorization. thank you!
Perfect pitch can be twarted by inconsistent recording and playback speeds if there is no point of reference. If your PC interprets A440 in the range of one or more half or whole steps higher or lower than the original master, it is left to the listener to rely upon memory in order to exact the correct pitch. The letter H will be either permanently omitted or judiciously applied subject to public demand.
You just described relative pitch. Where if given the beginning pitch you can figure out all the other notes. Perfect pitch is independent and can be figured out with no reference
9:10 My ear tells me you pronounce the word "without" like a Canadian. I'm from the U.S. so the word jumped out at me. Words like "about," "without," "sorry," and "been" are pronounced very differently by Canadians from the way they're pronounced in the U.S. As a linguist and a musician, I've noticed that musical skill and linguistic ability compliment each other. Very fascinating stuff.
I have one of those bizarre situations as I am a classically trained musician of ten years in woodwind instruments and in this have developed pretty decent relative pitch and pitch memorization. However when I started learning guitar recently Ive started to understand how it feels to be a more natural musician. Where I can understand what sounds good and how things fit together, but not quite have that extra understanding that someone who has had guitar lessons. Gave me a new perspective
I don't have perfect pitch, but a lot of my friends think I do because I've memorized all the notes in the scale and can tell when a note isn't quite in tune (you could say it's the best of both worlds - effective perfect pitch without the difficulties imposed by key changes and transposition). This video will be super helpful to explain what I'm actually doing, and that they also could do the same with a lot of training.
i think perfect pitch got scared into me, because i was asked to sing a note in music class one time and i got it so very wrong, but ever since then i’ve had a very clear perfect pitch lol. definitely a blessing and a curse, but very helpful for arranging pieces for piano!!
Actually a downside to perfect pitch that many aren't aware of (at least for me) is I am completely lacking in relative pitch skills and have had a very difficult time trying to learn them. IE: Someone with very little training in relatively pitch can easily know a chord quality IE: Major or minor even if they do not know the exact chord. I feel like I have to think of each note I hear in the chord to answer the question of what kind of chord it is, unless it is a chord I just automatically know which is all major and minor chords, but once we get into extensions beyond the standard triad, I do not have every Dominant 7 chord's sound memorized so I have to think about what notes I am hearing and apply theory to name the chord quality... if that ramble makes any sense.
Good point! During ear training class in university I said I was jealous of a friend who had perfect and she said “yeah but I still have to do almost all the same work as you because it just takes too long to listen to every note and then analyze the chord”. I thought about adding that story into the video but couldn’t quite manage to make it feel organic.
It's also something that I don't think every perfect pitch person experiences, but I don't meet enough others to have a good sample group to interview.
My relative pitch is insane, especially since it’s in the “do re mi fa so la to do”. I do it so fast it’s literally mind blowing. So now I can’t listen to a song without singing the solfa notations
I’ve been getting into the hand symbols lately to see if my hands can keep up with the solfège I can hear instantly. It’s fun to show off a little in front of other musician friends especially as a singer because I can sing the solfège in tune a tempo.
Perfect pitch can be pretty nice to have! Mine's not as developed as some other people's, but it's good enough that I can accurately identify/replicate notes or recall a song I've heard in its original pitch. However, from my experience singing in a choir or performing in a concert and jazz band, developing a strong relative pitch and even having a basic understanding of music theory in general is still quite important in those situations, even more so than knowing, with 100% tonal accuracy, what the song is supposed to sound like. But, hey, at least I was able to be the choir director's backup pitch pipe, since I can hum whatever note he wants me to as a starting pitch. Also being able to identify pitches from noises that seemingly don't have pitches (car horns, bird chirping, human speech, etc.) sometimes intrigues other people.
I started playing guitar and eventually bass around 2005. I was never born with great ears or anything close to a perfect pitch. But I've been practicing independently through youtube and tips from some friends I was able to develop something close to a relative pitch where I can get close to a note (or at times exactly) figure out the rest of the melody. Which is close to what he's explaining about maps. Great stuff
I don't have perfect pitch, but I was thinking just the other day that having perfect pitch also doesn't mean that you get everything for free, like you automatically understand music better than other people. That's just something that changes from person to person, regardless of perfect pitch. Of course the fact that you have perfect pitch CAN influence the way you see and approach music, but it does only (IMO) for the very reason you might have it, which is exposure to engaging or complex music from a small age, for example through a musical family that involved you in music since when you were little, or by playing with musical toys when you were a baby. All these things can have a general and big influence on your interest towards music, that can lead both to perfect pitch and a good musical intuition. So these two things are not one the consequence of the other, but rather both consequences of a much broader experience that shaped who you are when you were really young. You still have to spend years learning how to play an instrument and learning how to understand the musical language to be a good musician. Which is the only thing I find could have been discussed more, what you actually mean by "training". Some people can get there quicker then others, but say you have created a mental map of your friend's city, or you have straight up gps, if you don't know where the heck you're goin' and why you want to go there, it serves you no purpose.
i start playing music at age of 19 and understand notes properly at like 21/22 i for sure did not have perfect pitch. but now (27 y.o) I can confidently said i can identify the pitch of every sound i make vocally idk if this is relevant but you will see a lot of perfect pitch people like charlie puth for example, will do the sound vocally while guessing the pitch (like if the hit the table and ask him the key, or if people clap then ask the key) so the thing that i actually intrigued about is that maybe, its easier to understand and indentify your own pitch, thats why im able to learn it, like when i hear a song and want to figure out the key, i must hum/sing/anything vocally myself to know the note i do able to guess roughly if its from instrument or other people singing, but im 100% sure / perfect pitch only when it comes to my own voice
I have an interesting story of pitch memorization. Every day in the morning, my mother turns on the microwave while I am still in my room in a kind of sleepy state, therefore, I am always kind of dizzy and confused. And every time the microwave was turned on, I could hear the sound it made, not a digital sound, but the sound of it functioning, and I could indentify that first sound as a B-flat, with no perfect pitch whatsoever. That happened because every time that it was turned on, I thought Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 was going to play when I heard the first sound, probably because of my dizzyness, so, I realised the note was a B-flat, which is the first note in that piece
Very useful. I learn the Indian bamboo flute and am struggling to develop some relative pitch abilities even after hundreds of hours of structured listening. Pitch memorisation is a useful concept I've picked up from your video. Didn' t realise that a concept like this existed. It's given me an idea that if I can memorise specific phrases, it will help in identifying at least some notes. Thank you
I want to contribute to that great video as well and give an example. When I grew up, I always envied my older brother who had a perfect pitch by nature. But I loved music as well very much and trained hard every day. After a while I could identify all intervals, developed pretty fast then relative pitch and meanwhile I trained myself to have perfect pitch. So, yes: it's possible. But it never becomes as perfect (I would say) as of that in persons like Jacob Collier. So if the tram drives, or the coffee machine runs - I have difficulties identifying those pitches. I'm only relatively stable when it comes to natural music instruments. But still then: strangely I have some days in which this ability is suddenly very low, when it's normally pretty reliable.
here is a study from 2019: "Absolute pitch (AP), the rare ability to name any musical note without the aid of a reference note, is thought to depend on an early critical period of development. Although recent research has shown that adults can improve AP performance in a single training session, the best learners still did not achieve note classification levels comparable to performance of a typical, “genuine” AP possessor. Here, we demonstrate that these “genuine” levels of AP performance can be achieved within eight weeks of training for at least some adults, with the best learner passing all measures of AP ability after training and retaining this knowledge for at least four months after training." if you've ever noticed that people with perfect pitch tend to be privileged music students from wealthy families, who have been training for over a decade....that is not a coincidence (i.e. Mariah Carey, daughter of an opera singer and vocal coach)
When I was younger, I always had problems listening to music because sometimes I couldn't tell if the note was going up or down, but I found myself in choir, and doing exercises helped get over that. I can listen to almost any song now without a problem. Even hearing complex basslines.
This was really interesting! Currently I am in the process of trying to acquire perfect pitch myself. Contrary to popular believe, I totally think its possible to learn (most people say you can't learn it past the age of 5 and there even seems to be scientific evidence backing that up). And I don't really mean "near" perfect pitch, I mean learning actual perfect pitch (without calculating the notes through relative pitch). After all, its proven people can memorize pitches (like you also said in the video, pitch memorization is a thing), so why should one pitch be the limit? What is stopping anyone from memorizing all 12 notes? I actually only put like half an hour into learning perfect pitch at this point (started the whole thing a few days ago) and I can already identify the note C with 99% accuracy and D with like 80%. There is no thinking involved, for C at least I can identify it as clearly as a color already (I was genuinely super confused at 1:19). If I will be successful I might also make a video about how I learned it, as a lot of musicians seem to view perfect pitch as like a god-given ability and get super depressed that they will never be able to do it, which I don't think is true. If I can do it, anyone can. I don't even have any musical background at all, I am 20 and never played an instrument and I am honestly just learning it for fun, because I think its a super cool skill :D Update: I can identify the entire C-Major scale now lol Tbf currently I do need to use relative pitch for that tho, so I identify all notes by how they are in relation to C. The thing is, I now understand the difficulty of acquiring perfect pitch. Due to my non-existent musical experience I was a blank slate, so I was easily able to learn C. Now that I know that note tho, its super difficult not to use relative pitch to identify the other notes (which is bad, I don't want to identify notes by their relation to C, I want to memorize the note itself like I did with C). So I think me not having any musical experience might actually be an advantage here. Or rather, I think how good your relative pitch is, is directly antiproportional to the difficulty you will have learning perfect pitch, because you will have a harder time not using the relative pitch to try to identify the note, instead of memorizing it. This also might be the reason why it's said that only children can learn it. They still lack the ability to comprehend the concept of relative pitch, thus they won't make any calculations for the relations between notes (like we do with relative pitch), instead they memorize the notes themselves as how they are. While I have yet to come up with a solution, I don't think this problem is impossible to solve. I am sure that this will be key to find out as to how to learn perfect pitch as an adult.
It is in fact possible to learn, mine started to build over time, and by the time I was in the 9th grade, I could recognize all single notes, and now as a junior, it has progressed to be able to identify multiple notes being played, being able to recognize keys in a piece, and tune every note almost perfectly
Here's what I did to achieve this: set your alarm to a playlist with songs that all start with the same note or are in the same key. Wake up every morning to this and listen to only this playlist until you have it stone cold. Do this 11 more times with 11 different playlists.
I see colors when I play instruments or even sing. Each note and chord is a different color to me. Usually chords are solid colors but once I get into the minors and other scales, they’re different. It’s a skill I’ve had but never knew what it was until I started playing guitar. That’s how I use it to learn all types of songs 🙂
Synesthesia! Very cool. I have a tiny touch of it at times. Colours and shades and textures related to chords, tonalities, and modulations. It can be so useful for ear training.
As someone with perfect pitch, I can confirm that this video is very accurate, to a level that many other videos on similar topics fail to replicate. Great job!
Even though I have perfect pitch it doesn’t mean everything comes naturally, there’s still a learning curve on how to distinguish everything, however music theory in college taught me a lot and helped me develop the pitch even better as it is before, so it isn’t an easy slope no matter what.
@@UT4iTE No, you can have perfect pitch but still not know what you are doing when it comes to stuff in music school. However it definitely helps me a lot with ear training 😂😂
I used to have perfect pitch, and my dad who was a talented amateur musian himself forced me to learn playing the piano despite me hating that, in many cases with verbal and physical abuse. Eventually the expectations from my parents crushed my desire to play music. Rediscovered my love for music later in my life, and even picked up guitar on my own 20 years later and had a real magical time, too bad my singing voice had deteriorated due to chronic laryngitis. Exercising is still kinda hard cause I have a bad habit of hating doing stuff where I can see how unproficient I am, but I'm working on changing it :)
Member of the "Quasi-Perfect Pitch Squad" here! I routinely practice my pitch memorization. Here's just a handful of songs I use: I play ukulele, which tunes to G C E A (I've got C pretty well in there- both of the songs referenced hit C at some point) and have most of those notes memorized. One more, which might seem very random, is the Lowe's "special assistance" alert. For other people, that's probably just the NBC chimes (they are at least intervallically identical, but I don't know if the Lowe's alert starts on G like the NBC chimes do) I also have Halle Sonata 2-1 for E. Before the melody starts *moving* that's where it stays. One more thing: every time you hear the phrase "peaches" in the chorus of "Peaches" (from the Mario movie, although I've never seen it), it alternates first between Bb and Db (it's in Bbm just like "Never Gonna Give You Up" and even has basically the same chord progression) and then starting at the 6th time around, C and Eb.
Great video: extremely informative, funny, great graphics and well-researched! I've tried to teach a woman to dance who was literally incapable of hearing the most solid of beats and couldn't walk or clap in time to the beat. It was incredibly frustrating especially since I have a reputation of being able to teach the most un-coordinated people how to dance! But it's nigh impossible to teach someone without rhythm to dance - at least not in time to music (movement is different to dance). I was blown away by your observation that different temperature water sounds different!!! Astounding.
Proud member of Perfect Pitch Gang here, and this guy had a great video. For all of you here trying to develop perfect pitch, start with pitch memory and go for it! It worked for me, and I have never gotten tired of showing my musical power!
