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Callista
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18 Mar 2012, 10:32 pm

Definition of perfect pitch: Having memorized a wide range of notes, so that you can recognize, say, a C-sharp, upon hearing it, without a reference note.

I don't have perfect pitch.

But I've been testing myself lately, and while I can't really identify notes I can hear, I have some ability to figure out which note is which. For example, I can sing a note from a song I've memorized--say, the first note of a recorded song: Guess the note, sing it, then turn on the song and check how close I am. I get it right about 50% of the time; and I'm always within about a whole tone.

So while I couldn't identify a C-sharp, I could try to sing a C-sharp, get it right about half the time, and be somewhere between a B and a D-sharp the rest of the time. I'm also aware of a vague sense of whether I've remembered the note correctly, and I can tell when I'm dead-on the required note because I'm more sure of my memory when I've got it right.

Anyway, this makes me wonder whether "perfect pitch"--the ability to memorize notes rather than just to sing accurate intervals when given a reference pitch--is a unique phenomenon. I keep hearing about how rare it's supposed to be, even on the Spectrum, and that it's either something you do have or don't have, and you're kind of born with it. But then there's my situation--I definitely don't have perfect pitch, but I'm pretty darn good at guessing.

So, could it be that perfect pitch is the extreme end of a continuum rather than a unique thing that you either have or don't have?--Say, for example, that almost everybody would be able to recognize whether a note was "high" or "low"; and then a good number of people would be able to identify the octave; and then a slightly fewer number, could identify a note within a whole tone, like I can; and then at the extreme end of that is people with perfect pitch--people who can identify or produce a note so precisely that you can't tell the difference between that and the note you might play on a well-tuned piano.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody else is in-between like that, because I'm pretty sure it can't be unusual. Memorizing notes as precisely as people with perfect pitch can is most likely quite a rare thing; but there ought to be a range of ability, like there is with any other sort of talent.

Oh, and if you do have perfect pitch--the full-on type, not the halfway version I'm describing--could you explain how you recognize/produce specific notes, and how that's different from recognizing an interval? Any musician can identify an interval, after all; but very few can identify a lone note, by itself. That's quite interesting to me.


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Who_Am_I
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18 Mar 2012, 10:55 pm

I agree that it probably is a spectrum of ability. I think it would be interesting to test people without perfect pitch on their absolute pitch perception abilities- perhaps see if they can tell whether or not notes are higher or lower than middle C and find the range where they start getting a lot of errors.

I have perfect pitch, and I don't really know how I do it; notes just sound like the note they are. It's kind of like the auditory version of colour vision.
As for how it differs from relative pitch- to use an analogy, it's like saying that "Person x lives at 3 Brown St" rather than "Person x lives 3 doors down from Person Y".
For me, hearing intervals is the more difficult task, as the absolute perception of pitch tends to override the relative pitches of notes. As well as that, since each note sounds qualitatively different to me (to such a degree that I'm always amazed that people can confuse notes that are a semitone apart), each interval sounds qualitatively different, and that makes it hard to hear the commonalities. (Just imagine trying to compare "colour intervals" by how far apart they are in terms of wavelength, just by looking at them, and you'll get the idea.) I had to spend a lot of time playing intervals between all different notes before my ability to identify them clicked in reliably.


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Mayel
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19 Mar 2012, 2:55 am

I can't identify notes played with their names since I have a very bad memory for names at least in musical theory. If you give me the list of names and you play a note I usually can name it with an 90% accuracy. I don't know if that is anything at all. Maybe not.
But I can't recognize intervals.

Callista wrote:
So, could it be that perfect pitch is the extreme end of a continuum rather than a unique thing that you either have or don't have?
Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody else is in-between like that, because I'm pretty sure it can't be unusual. Memorizing notes as precisely as people with perfect pitch can is most likely quite a rare thing; but there ought to be a range of ability, like there is with any other sort of talent.

I think that this could be true or if you can recognize ,say, 60% of notes correctly it's considered to be nothing and only if it's 100% it's considered to be a special ability.
As I said, I am bad at memorizing names but if you give me the letters without the symbolical notes...and then play the notes, I can identify them very accurately without that it's more like 70% of recognition but I wouldn't call it that since it seems I can't retain the visual perception of the notes' order in my mind that well. If I could it would be 90%, too....I'd guess.



izzeme
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19 Mar 2012, 5:12 am

i'm about the same in this as well; i cannot name a tone if i hear it, but i have near perfect ability to reproduce it, be that vocally or on an instrument, if on the instrument, i am then also able to deduce what tone it was by looking at how i reproduced (1st valve, med-high?->regular E flat)



TheHouseholdCat
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19 Mar 2012, 9:02 am

I cannot have perfect pitch because I perceive theory and music separately from one another. ^^

I've never gotten to the point where I can translate from one to the other. Because, obviously, at school it is taught separately as well. Or it might just be my problem. If I read music, I perceive it as an abstract system, not a translation of sounds on paper. For the longest time I didn't even get the point of sheet music. Well, you know, when you'd sing in school and I just thought, "What am I supposed to do with the notes?". I can't sing by reading notes from paper. I am forced to imitate. I just remember the sounds.


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