Perfect Pitch: Everything You Need to Know

Bryan Carmichael
Feb 14, 2021
5 min read

Updated: Mar 14, 2021

Note: This is the third article of a new series I'm writing titled Everything You Need to Know. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out my previous articles and stay tuned for all future articles.

Introduction: What is Pitch?

What is pitch? Variations in sound frequencies. Useful in terms of persuasion, getting points across, and of course music. Hearing progressions of varying pitches is beautiful, but how well can we actually hear these different pitches?

With every person, it’s different. Humans can hear pitches on a spectrum from block notes all the way to micropitches within notes. These can be categorised into three umbrella categories: tone-deaf, relative, and absolute (perfect). These categories define not how well one can hear pitch, but how well one can differentiate between varying pitches. Therefore, you could have amazing hearing but still be tone deaf. Here’s everything you need to know about pitch and these umbrella categories.

Tone-Deafness & Relative Pitch

Amusia, more commonly known as being tone-deaf, is when a person is unable to differentiate varying pitches easily. To them, every sound is more or less the same. Levels of amusia vary from person to person, but studies show that one in twenty people have amusia. You can develop this overtime due to brain damage, or you could carry this from birth due to a defect of pitch processing in your brain. Despite this, you can still make some strides in the music industry while being tone deaf. Notable examples include Paris Hilton, Scarlett Johansson and James Franco.

The next level up is having relative pitch. This means being able to identify different pitches after being given a starting pitch. For example, if given an A, someone with relative pitch would use intervals to determine the rest of the pitches given (i.e. an E is a perfect fifth interval up from an A). It is especially easy to develop relative pitch from learning music by ear or going through ear and aural training. Relative pitch is common amongst most people as pitch in musicianship, even at the low levels, is taught through intervals. Most notable musicians have relative pitch.

Absolute Pitch

Statistically, only one in ten thousand people are born with absolute, or perfect, pitch. Once again, this ability varies in purity from person to person. In simple terms, absolute pitch is the identification of notes in relation with each other without the guidance of a given pitch, unlike relative pitch. This means that a person with absolute pitch is able to think the note accurately in their heads without aid from outside sources. This is useful as not only is it easier to learn music by ear, it’s also easier to learn music by sheet (as you can hear the notes in your head as you read them on the sheet).

Higher levels of absolute pitch include recognising transposition in everyday music/speech (for example, a song being played on the radio may be in a higher or lower key than its original), identifying the pitches in sounds that are deemed pitchless (for example, slapping a table still gives a pitch frequency, which can be estimated), and being able to pick up whether the fine tuning of a note is pure or not (for example, how close to a 100% pure A is it). This last one is useful as it allows you to tune instruments accurately by ear rather than relying on a tuner.

One fun thing that people with absolute pitch can try is identifying pitches within everyday speech. It is especially entertaining to do this when someone is yelling at you, as you can just stop listening to them and instead listen to which notes they are yelling at you.

Notable examples of musicians with absolute pitch include Charlie Puth, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Eddy Chen from TwoSetViolin.

How Much of Absolute Pitch Can be Taught?

Recently, studies have shown that some areas of absolute pitch can be taught to adults, though the effectiveness like all the rest varies from person to person.

Multiple tests and studies have been conducted, relying on people’s ability to memorise what each note sounds like, so that they can later recreate the note in their heads. Essentially a brute force method. Results have found that after being exposed to the notes for a long period of time, these subjects eventually started to remember the sounds of the notes and were able to recall them in the future.

This leaves the question of: which parts of absolute pitch can’t be taught? Here’s the answer.

As this method of developing absolute pitch is impure (in that they can only remember what a note sounds like and what its note name is), when given an unfamiliar note, such as a note being in a different octave or a note with different tuning frequency (not at the standard 440 Hz concert pitch), these people would have more difficulty identifying the purity of the note (while I have no doubt that these people have the common sense to still identify the note, to them, the note would not be as clear to them causing slight uncertainty).

Another thing people with impure absolute pitch would have trouble with is retuning their perfect pitch. Here’s what I mean. In the modern day, more and more orchestras are changing their default concert pitch from 440 Hz to 442 Hz, slightly higher than before. People with pure absolute pitch would be able to adapt easily to this, by mentally marking a slightly higher version of their existing norm to become the new norm. For people with impure absolute pitch, they would have to reset and relearn all of the notes, by exposing themselves to the new notes for long periods of time.

Essentially, only the lower layers of absolute pitch can be taught, the higher layers still remain gifts from God to those one in ten thousand individuals in society.

Conclusion

The different types of pitch identification and specifically absolute pitch are very interesting and important topics to me, as I was born with a high degree of absolute pitch. Growing up, I used to wonder about the small weird stuff that only I seemed to pick up, such as why cable networks played their TV shows a semitone higher, or how I could sing back a song in its original and transposed keys after one listen. All throughout my childhood years, I would ask people how they couldn’t hear the differences or sing back melodies when it came so easy to me. It wasn’t until I was six that my parents explained to me what perfect pitch was and how it was the reason I could pick all of these things up.

Since then, having perfect pitch has been such a useful tool to me, it has enabled me to develop my theory knowledge much faster than normal, it allows me to be a better listener and composer, and I can tune my instruments by ear with total accuracy. Not to mention the fact that the people around me often exploit it, banging on tables and walls asking me to identify their pitches. All in all, it is such an amazing trait to have, and I wish that the whole world were able to experience it to the extent that I have.

Bibliography

Ferro, Shaunacy. "You Can Be Taught Perfect Pitch—Even As an Adult." Mental Floss, 1 June 2015, www.mentalfloss.com/article/64568/you-can-be-taught-perfect-pitch-even-adult. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
Wikipedia. "Amusia." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 13 Apr. 2005, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
---. "Relative Pitch." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 2 Mar. 2003, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_pitch. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
Knowledge on absolute pitch is from personal experience and prior knowledge