# My Perfect Pitch



## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

I can tell difference between 1Hz sounds. That's not normal, right?


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1Hz = about 4 cents.
I can hear, in context against other note references, something approximately like 5-8 cents - I haven't tested it for a while now. Your hearing is not too common, but it is also not uncommon for a musician. A 4cents or 1Hz distinction is at the limit of what the human ear can perceive. BTW the kind of distinction we are talking about here is not a definition of perfect pitch but of relative pitch. You have perfect pitch if you can mentally recall the pitch of any note _outside_ of any references.


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

Thank you for your input. It's very valuable to me.

I have no idea if I even have perfect pitch, I don't really know what it's supposed to feel like. I just wanted to share and if anyone can relate.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

I don't have perfect pitch, but I have very good relative pitch.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Try this guys.....

Perfect Pitch Ear Training Test


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

mikeh375 said:


> Try this guys.....
> 
> Perfect Pitch Ear Training Test


thats the website i am on in the video


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

I think it's more useful to be able to distinguish several simultaneous notes, than hearing one note as accurately as possible.

For example, I can't tell if a sound is played in 440 Hz or 443 Hz, but depending on the instruments I can distinguish several simultaneous notes in a chord (or a melody) without reference, which helps me a lot in composing. It also depends on the instrument - it's easier for me for piano sounds as my ear is trained best there (my main instrument). But I don't think it's too important to distinguish 1 Hz differences. Anyway - where in this video are you doing that?

So I don't exactly have perfect pitch (if that means distinguishing 1 Hz), but I can hear multiple notes without reference, which I find more handy than telling exactly the frequencies.

Best regards, Alex


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

I found the app Tone to be a useful ear trainer


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

verandai said:


> I think it's more useful to be able to distinguish several simultaneous notes, than hearing one note as accurately as possible.
> 
> For example, I can't tell if a sound is played in 440 Hz or 443 Hz, but depending on the instruments I can distinguish several simultaneous notes in a chord (or a melody) without reference, which helps me a lot in composing. It also depends on the instrument - it's easier for me for piano sounds as my ear is trained best there (my main instrument). But I don't think it's too important to distinguish 1 Hz differences. Anyway - where in this video are you doing that?
> 
> ...


I agree, people say perfect pitch is one of the most overrated skills anyway, there hasn't been any proof that it enhances your ability as a musician whatsoever. There are skills that you _can_ train, that _will_, improve _your_ _musical_ _skills_. _ahem_.

I also probably posted this because my mom didn't give me enough attention as a child.


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

SoloYH said:


> I agree, people say perfect pitch is one of the most overrated skills anyway, there hasn't been any proof that it enhances your ability as a musician whatsoever. There are skills that you _can_ train, that _will_, improve _your_ _musical_ _skills_. _ahem_.
> 
> I also probably posted this because my mom didn't give me enough attention as a child.


I wouldn't say that it is useless - having this ability is definetly better than not having it!

I guess it's also a question of definition. If perfect pitch means identifying notes as close as 1 Hz (f.e. for tuning instruments), then I think it's not really useful or necessary. But if it means identifying pitches as close as a half-tone (that's what I can manage to do - depending on the instrument), it's definetly useful and for some assignments even necessary. A conductor f.e. should IMHO be able to identify which notes were played wrongly in a chord or melody.

Also, I think it's much more useful to identify multiple notes in a chord / melody half-tone-wise, than identifying only one note very exactly.


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## John O (Jan 16, 2021)

mikeh375 said:


> 1Hz = about 4 cents.
> I can hear, in context against other note references, something approximately like 5-8 cents - I haven't tested it for a while now. Your hearing is not too common, but it is also not uncommon for a musician. A 4cents or 1Hz distinction is at the limit of what the human ear can perceive. BTW the kind of distinction we are talking about here is not a definition of perfect pitch but of relative pitch. You have perfect pitch if you can mentally recall the pitch of any note _outside_ of any references.


My daughter can tell you if 


mikeh375 said:


> 1Hz = about 4 cents.
> I can hear, in context against other note references, something approximately like 5-8 cents - I haven't tested it for a while now. Your hearing is not too common, but it is also not uncommon for a musician. A 4cents or 1Hz distinction is at the limit of what the human ear can perceive. BTW the kind of distinction we are talking about here is not a definition of perfect pitch but of relative pitch. You have perfect pitch if you can mentally recall the pitch of any note _outside_ of any references.


My daughter can tell you the pitch is 10 cents higher than normal without a reference pitch. 
No doubt she born with a musical ear but it was mainly singing Kodaly method and playing the violin from age 4.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

John O said:


> My daughter can tell you if
> 
> My daughter can tell you the pitch is 10 cents higher than normal without a reference pitch.
> No doubt she born with a musical ear but it was mainly singing Kodaly method and playing the violin from age 4.


Violinists and string players in general really do get to appreciate and hone their ears in on finer tunings. Sounds like your daughter has perfect pitch if she doesn't need a reference. Can she hear discrepancies with any pitch (other than violin string tuning) and has she been tested naming the notes of chords, especially non tonal chords?


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

From what I've seen, perfect pitch literally just means you have a different process for orienting yourself in pitch-space than people who mainly rely on relative pitch processing. A relative pitch process would look something like this: Note 1, go up a 5th, down a major 3rd (outlining a minor triad), then down a minor 2nd, and finally up a tritone – for scale degrees, this would be 1, 5, minor 3, 2, minor 6. If someone told you that the tonic was G, then you could put labels to this. 

Meanwhile, perfect pitch processing without relative pitch context would be G, D, B flat, A, E flat – and then from this, they could extrapolate scale degrees and intervals, but that's less of an automatic process than it seems to be for a lot of people who primarily rely on relative pitch processing. Overall, some things are easier, while others are a lot less intuitive.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I remember one girl at my Alma Mater who had perfect pitch. She was fantastic at naming accurately all the notes in complex chords but was at a complete loss when reading a score because of the transposing instruments. She also struggled if recordings where slightly flat or sharp overall.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

mikeh375 said:


> I remember one girl at my Alma Mater who had perfect pitch. She was fantastic at naming accurately all the notes in complex chords but was at a complete loss when reading a score because of the transposing instruments. She also struggled if recordings where slightly flat or sharp overall.


Transposing is one of those things that is certainly less intuitive, although it certainly can be learned! Same goes for dealing with things that are “off” from standard tuning.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

I learned to read the alto clef as an adult after being very comfortable with treble and bass clefs as a pianist. Alto clef was helpful because it allows me to read more organ music without worrying about getting a modern edition (the public-domain Bach Gesellschaft Ausgabe uses plenty of alto clefs in organ music, for instance) and there are also fewer ledger lines. In many chorale preludes the pedals have the bass and the right hand has the soprano melody, so the left hand is playing in between them and alto clef is genuinely a better way of notating this. For example the famous BWV 622 can be notated comfortably in the alto clef with no clef changes; it's a bit more awkward with treble and bass clefs.

Then I remember learning BWV 645, another famous chorale prelude, from Edition Peters. It used Bach's original clefs: the right hand had an alto clef, the left hand had a _tenor_ clef, and the pedals as always had the bass clef. _That_ was a difficult experience!

But I came away from it more comfortable with both clefs. I've gotten more comfortable with seeing the tenor clef in orchestral scores (celli, bassoon, trombones). I think of them as transposing clefs; you just stick the C clef around a given line on the staff and you get the soprano, alto, or tenor clef. Bach used these three clefs a lot in his music, if you look at his manuscripts. (Such as soprano clef in right hand, bass clef in left hand for some keyboard music.)

I would have trouble transposing by a tritone or other awkward intervals but those experiences have made it easier for me to transpose a third (even if I'm not totally fluent and couldn't sight-read this way very easily).


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

There are some disadvantages with a good non-relative (or perfect) pitch, but much more advantages I would say. For example, I can't play on a transposed e-piano (it makes me crazy). Once I practised some piano piece for accompanying a singer - and then he wanted to sing everything a third lower (spontaneously). He just switched the e-piano a third lower and expected me to be able to adapt. Of course it was pressing the same keys that I've practised, but completely other notes came out than I expected - I couldn't do it! ;-) 

And for transposing everything myself on the fly, the piece wasn't easy enough for me.

But I was able to train myself to read transposed scores (although it's still a bit harder for me than reading absolute notation).

I don't call my hearing perfect pitch though (as said before), as I can't tell if a piano is tuned in 440 or 442 Hz. But I can name notes of complex chords and melodies (especially with piano sounds). It took me a while to train the other direction though (to translate the identified notes into chord notation). So I guess I've learnt it in the opposite direction than usually.

Many people call their hearing "perfect pitch", when they can define a single note at a time accurately - but this ability is not very useful in my opinion.


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

I can name every single note played simulationously as well as identify each frequency. Anyways, best wishes TalkClassical. Don't try so hard, you just are or you just aren't.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

SoloYH said:


> Don't try so hard, you just are or you just aren't.


Honestly, I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. However, I suppose my take on the issue is that it's more a matter of learning how to use your ear effectively, and that's regardless of whether you're using a relative pitch or perfect pitch based approach.


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

composingmusic said:


> Honestly, I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. However, I suppose my take on the issue is that it's more a matter of learning how to use your ear effectively, and that's regardless of whether you're using a relative pitch or perfect pitch based approach.


I'm not sure, having a bad day maybe? My remarks were not meant to criticize SoloYH, it was just my input to the discussion. But anyway, it's not possible to please or understand everyone...


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## John O (Jan 16, 2021)

mikeh375 said:


> Violinists and string players in general really do get to appreciate and hone their ears in on finer tunings. Sounds like your daughter has perfect pitch if she doesn't need a reference. Can she hear discrepancies with any pitch (other than violin string tuning) and has she been tested naming the notes of chords, especially non tonal chords?


She tell you pitch of machinery.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

John O said:


> She tell you pitch of machinery.


There's the funny story of Malcom Arnold in an electrical store in London asking the bemused assistants to switch on the Hoovers whilst he listened to them in order to choose the right pitches for his 'Grand. Grand Overture'. In Bflat allegedly iirc...


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## sus1357 (2 mo ago)

Why not to learn some microtonal scales and systems like 31edo or 22edo and write microtonal music? 
You probably could find that fun because you have to deal there with more than twelve categories of pitches, like on piano or many other common instruments with fixed temperament, and that's a big sea of possibilities to dive into, considering that it's easier for you to distinguish tiny pitch differences


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