Perfect Pitch (vs relative pitch)

Hi folks! Is there anyone out there with perfect pitch? i.e. you hear a melody and immediately you could tell what notes they were (e.g. A - F# - G# - E - F# - D, etc.)

I've been trying to train for perfect pitch, but i have no idea whether it's because my ears are horrible, or perhaps it's an inborn thing, but whenever i try to do transcriptions i Always have to have a piano/keyboard with me, otherwise i'll be clueless as to what's going on in the music.

Also although i've been playing the piano for years, i would have no idea if the entire piano is out of tune unless i play it with a recording (since all the keys on pianos have such an ingenious way of going out of tune uniformly)

but then again i can tell if someone goes out of pitch, or if an instrument goes out of pitch in a band/choir/ensemble setting.. (is that relative pitch?)

anyway looking forward to you to share your experiences with perfect/relative pitch and if you're someone who used to be blind to perfect pitch but can manage it really well now, please do share the whole story!

why do you want to train for perfect pitch? can train meh?

Just ask Cheez lah.... =p

Haha! Why ask me???

There's an element of "being born with it" for perfect pitch. But I'm one that believe it can be trained. You obviously have a good ear already, being able to pick up off tune instruments. That's still relative pitch. Next is to sharpen that - if you play in an ensemble or band, always tune the instruments without using a tuner. That's how it all started for me. And make sure you have a tuned piano to practice on. Keep practicing your relative pitch. Then try to get one note right. I find the easiest is concert A. When you learn that pitch in your head, then practice relative pitching using concert A - in your head. Eg: get somebody to play a note like C#. Then sing concert A in your head and find that C#.

But don't stress too much on trying to get perfect pitch "perfect". I had a friend who tried very hard to learn it. Actually, he managed to get a few notes. That was a good start but not perfect pitch - since by definition, you'll need to get all notes right - ie perfect. But he realised that certain notes had a certain "colour" to it. That's how I hear it too. Notes will "appear" like actually "seeing" - as in a particular "colour". You know you get it when you start hearing notes from ambulance sirens and the bells from elevators....

Actually for me, I never quite "learned it", although I would like to believe I acquired it rather than born with it. It just happened one day when my piano teacher tried to see if I have perfect pitch by playing different notes and have me tell her. She said I was born with it. I feel that it was a result of me tuning the band for years without using a tuner. It become more evident when one day, I hear the school bell ringing and could tell the pitch. The next thing was the construction site next to my school - the beam piler was knocking the beam into the ground, and that was an Ab.

Amazing.....:-D

Like the thread starter, I whack the keys with the CD playing. I guess that should be relative pitch. It's quite fun.....

Or I just play the chords and see what song comes to mind. Last nite was "transformers....more than meets the eye". Fav show when I was 5.

LOL....

Btw, my friend is said by others to have perfect pitch as she can sight sing. However, sometimes she sings out of tune (again said by others). Would that be even possible since she should know the notes inside her already?

Hi guys,

I've never contributed a post here, but I think I have some insight into the 'perfect pitch' vs 'relative pitch' debate.

Firstly, we shouldn't look at it at a 'vs' thing. Let's first look at one form of perfect pitch. Imagine this, a pianist who can only play in concert 440. he goes to a gig and the piano is tuned at 439 and he is disgusted and can't play. This is the kind of perfect pitch that musicians don't want to have. The perfect pitch that musicians have isn't that perfect. They still hear the notes as but it doesn't have to be so exact.

Let's give an e.g of perfect pitch. If you play a C maj 7 i.e C E G B, the perfect pitch musician will hear C E G B but may not know the E is the 3rd. For a relative pitch musician, he'll hear it as 1 3 5 7, so he knows the that it is an extended triad. Makes sense? So if you give the relative pitch guy an 'A'. He'll immediately know its C maj 7. That is developed relative pitch. Relative pitch isn't shooting in the dark. A relative pitch musician can transcribe music without the instrument. He just used a number system to write his music, or he can assign his own key, which they can usually guess the right one.

Relative pitch is hearing notes in context to a given harmony - which is what musicians with perfect pitch need to know as well. Perfect pitch is absolute. Relative pitch is a journey. A rock musician with good relative pitch might not survive a jazz gig well because he isn't used to the harmony in jazz.

A min7b5 chord is the same as a min6 chord; what do you hear it as in the chord progression - depends on the bassist. So a perfect pitch musician can still hear the chord 'wrongly', while the relative pitch musician will more likely get it right. Recap: Relative pitch is hearing notes in context to a given harmony.

It's a blessing to have perfect pitch of course and these cats will learn relative pitch real fast. For the rest of us, its a journey which takes years of ear training and transcribing to achieve true, working relative pitch. Hope this helps.

KC

Insightful. =)

pf said:

why do you want to train for perfect pitch? can train meh?

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pf -
it's totally sad but sometimes i can't catch a little riff i hear off the recording without a few tries before hand and it o(><)o kinda pisses me off

plus sometimes when i'm playing with the records or in bands and i hear a little melody in my head and i try to translate it on the keys and it sounds off or different i can't help but get pissed off again ("--)

and i suspect all this has got to do with me being over-reliant on scores. actually i don't even memorise music cos it takes a humongous effort to do so. and if i'm playing to a score and it gets blown onto the floor sometimes i'm stumped, i can hear the intervals that come next but i can't play them out! ):

so i guess it's time to train my ears. i think i'm sorely lacking in that area.

plus of course it'll be great not to be over-reliant on an instrument when doing transcriptions..

regarding sight-reading, it's kinda odd to say that sometimes i can 'hear' the music when i look through the scores, but often it's really just the texture of the piece. i wouldn't know 100% how it would sound like unless i play them out. unless it's a single line melody which imo is easier to work with..

perhaps your singer friend has a strong sense of relative pitch since she could sight read the piece

Cheez said:

It become more evident when one day, I hear the school bell ringing and could tell the pitch. The next thing was the construction site next to my school - the beam piler was knocking the beam into the ground, and that was an Ab.

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Cheez,

i'm curious when was it when your piano teacher tested you on perfect pitch? how old were you then? i really have a feeling that i'm past that 'window of opportunity' whereby if you don't learn a certain thing you'll find it really really exponentially difficult to do so in the future. yikes.

that's amazing how you could 'see' each note as you do colour. i've heard of that (actually read it off somewhere online) where someone was talking about how Eb would sound warmer, rounder, etc.. and i just couldn't for the life of me tell the difference.

i can actually pitch the middle C because since young (13 y/o) i kinda obsessed over this song which was in C and i kinda listened to that for years..

but other than that one particular note i can't tell the rest. and if i were to hear C i might not be able to identify it, unless i'm to deliberately do so..

that's amazing you could actually tell the pitch of sirens and school bells etc? omgosh don't think i'll ever be able to do that! but it's really interesting nonetheless, i never though of it that way

which brings to mind an incident i encountered lately. i had a colleague who could play drums and we tried to jam in the school's music room and she wouldn't play on it cos she insisted that the drums was not in tune. that's the first time i heard that drums (other than the timpanis, i thought) had to be tuned

and this vocalist friend then told me about how the common drum sets in the usual rock bands are also in tune but they've like really low frequencies that's why we can't tell immediately what pitch they are in.

but what a fascinating idea! i mean that same set of drums are used for all songs, regardless of keys, right? it's just amazing they have to be in tune (and tuned to? a span of frequencies or just a single E note, say?)

also between pitches(semitones) there are also an infinite range of pitches between the two standard semitones (say C and B).. just out of curiosity Cheez, can you tell when say the beam pillar is hitting somewhere between C and B?

thanks for the many interesting insights btw

KayCee said:

The perfect pitch that musicians have isn't that perfect. They still hear the notes as but it doesn't have to be so exact.

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KC, thanks for your definitions and examples! Oh yes i certainly do not want to find myself unable to play on an 'untuned' piano because everything sounds 'off' (sometimes 'ignorance' is bliss?)

KayCee said:

A relative pitch musician can transcribe music without the instrument. He just used a number system to write his music, or he can assign his own key, which they can usually guess the right one.

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this is really interesting, i think i may someday try transcribing numbers instead of notes, but i'm really not familiar with the numbers system. i guess i have to work on my relative pitch - i'm still not perfectly comfortable with intervals (hearing intervals and telling the distance between immediately)

KayCee said:

A min7b5 chord is the same as a min6 chord; what do you hear it as in the chord progression - depends on the bassist. So a perfect pitch musician can still hear the chord 'wrongly', while the relative pitch musician will more likely get it right. Recap: Relative pitch is hearing notes in context to a given harmony.

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hey thanks alot for bringing up this! i recently transcribe this crazy piece with my teacher (all the b3, b5, 13, #13 kind of chords) he kept on warning me that if i'm to try that with my band the bassist really needs to be solid, cos otherwise the chords wouldn't make sense

however i still don't quite see how a min6 could be mistaken for a min7b5 chord.. say for example, Cm6 - C Eb A; Cm7b5 - C Eb Gb Bb
other then the minor 3 and the root note C i don't see how they could be mixed up, unless you play around with figured bass? (but then again..?)

Perfect Pitch

The ability to discern a pitch without the need of a guide pitch

Relative Pitch

The ability to discern a pitch with the help of a guide pitch



There is no real result to which one is better. One is better in each own way. A perfect pitch musician needs to learn Relative pitch as well in order to be a good musician. So we can't say that one person is perfect pitch, and the other one is relative only. In a way, a person will have both system in them but the difference is which one is stronger.

For me personally, I'm blessed with perfect pitch. But i don't hear things as what kayce said. I don't hear the notes ONLY as single note. Of course i could single out note by note, but as a musician of course I will straight know what chord it is....

And yes, because of my perfect pitch, I can't really play keyboard when it's transposed. I can't strike a 'c' note and hear 'a' as the result. But in the other hand, I do choral music and I sing.... I learn relative pitching as well, and we have to deliberately switch off our perfect pitch in that sense in order to use our relative pitching.

The good thing about relative pitch is that it's more define. Violinist, saxophonist, all those my ex-classmate are so much better in relative pitch. So that even if you're only slightly out of tune... they will know. But for us perfect pitch, usually we don't have that ability, means we will have to learn. Yes we know the pitch, but microtones? .... relative is better, because they work their way by intervals. That's why I learn how to listen better as well....


ah .. and cheez!! ... He is correct! .. notes are coloured! ... =)
or actually even for me .. it has a syllable .... that's how i help my friend who is practicing perfect pitch ... by teaching him the syllable ...

yes! it can be practiced ...... =) ....

Why get so pissed off? You might do better if you're relaxed. (Now I sound like my own teacher...lol)

I guess you started off playing classical piano since you mentioned about playing by the score?

Anyways, it's interesting from KC's definition of relative pitch. I like it.

I always thought playing by ear is extremely extremely difficult previously. Thats because I always try to figure out a melody line with just the melody line alone.

Then one day a month ago, I decided to figure out a song which I only have the chords. I realised that I can do that very much easily when I play the chords on my left hand and then do the melody on the right.

Quite fun!!! Coz I find that amazingly my right hand hits the notes which I am thinking of in my brain. But it is done in the context of the chords of my left hand. Now it's getting a bit out of hand coz I can hear many songs replay in my brain when I'm practicing. Then I'll hit those notes which has not nothing to do with the song I'm practicing. Distracting! Sometimes if I don't concentrate, I will still hit the wrong notes. And doesn't work if I don't know/recognise the chords. lol...

I don't think its takes much effort to memorise the music if you rely on muscle memory. Just practice until your hands know where to whack all the time. Or like me.....memory failure most of the times and or got lost throughout the song at times, improvisation comes in to save the day (or your face, just tell the others that you're going impromtu lor). lol....

since1982 said:

pf -
it's totally sad but sometimes i can't catch a little riff i hear off the recording without a few tries before hand and it o(><)o kinda pisses me off

plus sometimes when i'm playing with the records or in bands and i hear a little melody in my head and i try to translate it on the keys and it sounds off or different i can't help but get pissed off again ("--)

and i suspect all this has got to do with me being over-reliant on scores. actually i don't even memorise music cos it takes a humongous effort to do so. and if i'm playing to a score and it gets blown onto the floor sometimes i'm stumped, i can hear the intervals that come next but i can't play them out! ):

so i guess it's time to train my ears. i think i'm sorely lacking in that area.

plus of course it'll be great not to be over-reliant on an instrument when doing transcriptions..

regarding sight-reading, it's kinda odd to say that sometimes i can 'hear' the music when i look through the scores, but often it's really just the texture of the piece. i wouldn't know 100% how it would sound like unless i play them out. unless it's a single line melody which imo is easier to work with..

perhaps your singer friend has a strong sense of relative pitch since she could sight read the piece

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I need to correct Kaycee slightly here. I've not found a person who has perfect pitch not to have relative pitch. Relative pitch is the basic foundation - terribly important to music. Without relative pitch, the person basically will not be able to pass any exams since relative pitch is part of aural exam right from the start. You can have relative pitch without perfect pitch; but you cannot have perfect pitch without relative pitch.

While perfect pitch is not crucial to a musician, relative pitch is!

The other thing about what Kaycee say about chords is also not exactly correct. OK - disclaimer here. I'm speaking from my perspective - to give others an insight to what goes on inside my head (which may be different from other people with perfect pitch). When somebody plays Cmaj7, I don't have to listen to the individual notes, although I can do that. That's not how it works. Firstly, C major has a certain "colour". So I know that it's the key of C. And Cmaj7 has another colour, and I confirm that by using relative pitching (the 7th note). And yes, the number system works in my head at the same time. Sometimes, perfect and relative pitch happens concurrently. Sometimes, I don't know which comes first.

So while a relative pitch person can tell that it's a major 7 chord, a perfect pitch person will tell you that it is a Cmaj7 chord. That's the difference.

Also, concert 400 and concert 339 doesn't make any difference. In fact, european orchestras and american orchestras, for example, tune to different frequencies. In fact, when I used to play a trumpet, it's a concert Bb instrument. My, that's one entire tone out of concert pitch! That doesn't matter at all. Everything adjust itself accordingly.

And I want to emphasize that perfect pitch is not necessary. It's a good thing to have (and I believe it can be trained). But relative pitching is not an option - it's a must.

Since 1982:

To answer your question, think of a Cmin6 as an inversion of Amin7b5. They have the exact same notes. To simplify matters, relative pitch tells you the chord quality i.e maj7, min9, dim etc. Perfect pitch may tell you the exact notes in the chord but not the chord quality. To be able to hear the chord quality requires some relative pitch.

E.g.

Present a typical jazz standard to a classical music student who has perfect pitch. They can transcribe the piece quite easily. But, they may not write the chord symbols correctly as they may not be sure of which chord qualities are implied, but can hear the notes anyway.

As for the numbers system, I think its my oversimplified way of explaining it. This is used largely in the chinese Ko Tai scene, and is largely diatonic to key. As for interval training, I think it has limited use other than the purpose of familiarizing with the instrument, esp fretted instruments.

Let's give a scenario:

Play the chords C, F, G, C. A typical I, IV, V, I progression. Get someone to play any random note over that chord progression

If it's Eb, you'll know its Eb or minor 3rd which is a non diatonic note. Doesn't matter still got to hear it as Eb. Of course the tester will tell you the chord progression but not the note. Either way it doesn't matter, you answer b3 if you don't know the key, i.e one should be able to thear I,IV,V to begin with. That's a start to relative pitch. By being able to hear one note, soon(maybe years) you'll be hear a stack which is chords. Key center is much more important than interval training. Typically classical interval training has no key center and the brain assumes the first note to be the root as there are no chords over the 2 intervals. There are many melodies which don't start on the root note, so how?

Since Christmas is here, let's take the melody of 'Joy to the world'. Using solfege i.e do ,re mi etc, the melody is 'Do ti la so fa mi re do' for the first 2 bars. So when you hear this entire phrase and you are able to tell where 'Do' is, that's relative pitch in its most basic manner. By interval training, you're hearing Do to Ti and then Ti to La and so on. That's totally inefficient and probably useless when improvising with others.

Take another melody, rudolph the red nosed reindeer. It goes, so la so mi do la so, so la so la so do ti for the first 2 bars. Imagine you use the interval method and use 'Do' as a starting point. It'll be all wrong as one has failed to identity that the starting melody note is a 5th or So.

Ear training is best done with a chord progression going on either in the mind or being physically played. Without a key center there's no music. Ok, its time to go practice what I'm talking about and actually hear it for myself Thanks for the discussion guys.

KC

Cheez: Thanks for clarifying, your explanation is better. As for the person with perfect pitch but with no relative pitch, I've heard of some. It's like a child inborn with perfect pitch who hasn't learnt music. Learning chords etc will give him a sense of relative pitch. That's what I meant, its an extreme e.g though.

Since1982, drum tuning is different. Tympanis and "pitched" instruments are tuned the same way. But a bass drum, for example, is not tuned to a "note". There's a certain frequency (in terms of "high and low") but not in musical notes. You can ask the drummers - I'm sure they will give a better answer than me!

I found I have perfect pitch when I was 17. I probably had it younger, but never tested. And I think it's not too late for you. I had friend who was "learning" it at 21 - when I was in the army.

But being able to pitch C is already very good. What you'll need to do is to learn to hear that note in your head. And be able to sing that note without cue. Then when somebody plays another note, you sing the C and use relative pitch to figure out the other note.

Another interesting thing. I read from a research that perfect pitch loses it's accuracy over the years as a person gets older. I find that quite true. I'm not as accurate as I was about 20 years ago. Sometimes, I need to "re-tune" my ears. It was a shock a few months back when I found out my "tuning" was off by half a semi-tone (quarter-tone) - which is a lot for me! I need to go back to a tuned instrument and "re-tune" myself - then it's OK.

So to your question on a note between C and B (ie quarter-tone), it gets difficult. That's because of tuning. It can belong to either C or B depending on whether its a C that's tuned flat or a B that's tuned sharp.

Relative pitch can be trained to work very fast. So if somebody play a melody, you just need to know the first note, or any note within the melody, and you can figure it out. If you're fast, you can replicate the melody almost immediately. For perfect pitch, it works faster. That's because we don't need to count the notes - each note has a colour and that is easily replicated immediately. And we can use relative pitch to confirm that at the same time. Same principle works for a series of chords.

KC, I guess you have a point. If somebody has never learnt music and has perfect pitch, it gets somewhat mixed results. Although I've not met anyone like that yet. But it's possible.

How do you know if one has perfect pitch if the person has never learnt music? The person probably don't know which key on the keyboard makes the sound he heard and can't put a name to it.

Cheez said:

KC, I guess you have a point. If somebody has never learnt music and has perfect pitch, it gets somewhat mixed results. Although I've not met anyone like that yet. But it's possible.

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Possible, because pitch like Cheez says is like colour. You know its red because you've been told this colour's name is red. You can see red perfectly well as a baby ( assuming
you are not colour blind ) but just don't know the name for it.

Just like pitch. If a child has perfect pitch but doesn't know. He'll know in his first few piano lessons. The teacher will tell the child, this is C, this is E etc. And the pitch retention for the child will be immediate. That's what I mean.

I think this is how it should be explained without delving into heavy philosophy.

Pf, the only situation I know is that if a person already knows the notes. So he/she can tell the notes - by hearing. A person with in-born perfect pitch is very sensitive to music, so even without an opportunity to learn, he/she will take it on himself/herself to learn music quickly. But it's possible that the person still does not have formal training - so don't know any theory/chords/etc.

But as I said, I've never met anybody like that before. I know a number of people with perfect pitch - all has formal music training. Which brings back to my original theory - I believe it can be learned!