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I noticed that when a certain note is played I can immediately attach to it songs that begin with that note. I was wondering if: 1 - I have the potential for perfect pitch 2 - Is there a way to check if you have the potential for perfect pitch, rather than perfect pitch itself?

Aaron
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Amit
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    You say 'a certain note'. Do you mean that there is just one note that this works with? – Tim Sep 19 '15 at 18:16
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    What if the song is played in different keys by different groups? Anyway, it's easy to test perfect pitch. face away from the piano while a friend plays single keys. If there's any doubt in your mind, you don't have perfect pitch. – Carl Witthoft Sep 19 '15 at 19:22
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    It *may* be possible, without any musical training at all, to have perfect pitch; yet be completely unable to do the blind piano test - because you don't know the names of the notes. – Tetsujin Sep 20 '15 at 09:40
  • @tetsujin I disagree, perfect pitch is specifically the ability to consistently match tones with their corresponding symbols and names in music even if the name may be different based on language. In addition to the ability to sing the corresponding tone when presented with the name or symbol. – Jay Skyler Sep 23 '15 at 09:17
  • @JaySkyler Take an example; someone with no musical training whatsoever. Challenge, 'Sing me the opening line of [known reference] songs x, y & z' - a task they may eminently be capable of, without any knowledge of what those notes are called. To them, the symbols & names are just they 'know' what those notes ought to be, because that's how they heard them. Personally, I cannot sing a note I'm handed on a sheet of paper without first playing it on some instrument; but I know for certain if a known song is in the 'right' or 'wrong' key, within a semitone. – Tetsujin Sep 23 '15 at 09:33
  • @Tetsujin For instance, I certainly have the ability to begin a song singing without any instrumental backing and I have many of the notes memorized, but I do not have perfect pitch. There are countless frequencies we will accept as being an A. Perfect pitch is the ability to immediately hear and instantly abstract any of them to the note A. Many have good ears, perfect pitch is rare because it specifically requires this instant symbolic abstraction. – Jay Skyler Sep 23 '15 at 10:07
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    @JaySkyler That does not seem correct - hearing and instantly abstracting any pitch to the note A would be the ability to suppress perfect pitch and impose a system of relative pitch. If you can hear any frequency and tell what name it has (along with the system you are using : i,e, equal tempered A=440), then THAT is perfect pitch. If you are working from a reference tone, then you are not using perfect pitch at all. Where we define the cutoff for 'when you last heard a note' is rather arbitrary and leads me to believe tinnitus makes perfect pitch much easier. – Darren Ringer Sep 23 '15 at 20:36
  • I was pretty certain that having perfect pitch also entailed the ability of recognizing "out-of-tune"-ness to a very sharp degree regardless of tuning system (though most people associate this with a standard tuning such as A=440Hz). For example, being able to tell, with just your ears, whether a played A is sharp or flat, within a degree of a few cents. This, in essence, allows the person to be able to recall and produce accurately, a given note, on an instrument of choice (voice included) – psosuna Aug 24 '17 at 22:15
  • I have 2 friends, both of whom have "perfect pitch"... yet both have a tolerance to pitches being "imperfect" We used to go to a pub with an old 45rpm jukebox... which played at slightly the wrong speed'. They would irritate the rest of us by yelling the chord structure of every song at each other [we were young, we were drunk]... a semitone out from each other; because each was referencing a slightly different 'absolute' & the juke box was just about a quarter-tone out ;) – Tetsujin Jul 12 '18 at 19:01
  • [contd...] One of them is famous in local circles for once being at a premiere of a new classical choral piece. he was given the score to read whilst listening. About ten minutes in, he got up & left, to read the score outside... claiming loud enough for the conductor to hear, "I can either listen to this or read it. I cannot do both at once!" – Tetsujin Jul 12 '18 at 19:03

2 Answers2

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Many musicians can tell intervals, i.e. guess what a note is once they have been told the name of another note. That's relative pitch.

A smaller group can often start some songs on the correct note. This happens with songs they hear or practice often typically. And they will occasionally make mistakes. (I am in that category: I will get the start note of some songs right more than half of the time; when I am wrong, I am usually off by a tone or so, and sometimes I am completely off.)

Very few can systematically start a song on the correct note, or, given a note, tell instantly which song starts with that note. In my opinion, the last step of telling the name of a note as opposed to naming correctly, effortlessly, which song starts with that note is not a requirement to perfect pitch: knowing the note name is a detail that you can master easily if you already have associations to each note without thinking about it, and that last skill isn't related to your ear per say.

For example, if you can almost always sing a C because your favorite song starts with a C and from there you derive the relative interval to, say, an A, and can then sing that A pretty accurately, you have a good ear, but not perfect pitch.

In your case, you say you associate "certain" notes to its song. If you never get that wrong, you are closer than most to perfect pitch. But until you have an association of each note sound to a correct representation of that note, be it a song name or note name, you would not have what is called perfect pitch as far as goes my understanding of perfect pitch.

People with perfect pitch will be able to name quickly all the notes of a melody they hear effortlessly. They don't have to think about intervals between any of these notes. You may still have a way to go for that; most are :-)

By the way, there are some methods to help people acquire perfect pitch, and they do start exactly with what you do: being able to associate sounds to concepts: songs you know, colors, textures, etc. so all of this is a continuous spectrum... A friend of mine got very near perfect pitch with that approach so people have a margin for improvement: it doesn't have to be a gift though it can be just that.

Lolo
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Yes. Your potential for perfect pitch is very high.

Take care of your ears (you can go to loud shows but if you are close to huge speakers be sure to have earplugs). The little fibres/hairs in your ears are lifetime friends so take good care of them.

Calling out songs that blend well is a great skill and should you ever want to become a DJ you'll probably master the crossfade.

However, understanding the interval is more vital to musical success than "absolute pitch" recall, and honestly there is probably not such a thing as "absolute" pitch thanks to relativity.

Study how string length and octaves are related and your musical intuition shall steadily improve.

sova
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