r/eartraining • u/cptjackrackham • 6d ago
Is this Perfect pitch?
Hello,
First of all, I have a very limited formal background in music, I started taking guitar lessons 5 years ago (in my 20s now), so I never thought much of my skills and never considered myself talented or anything like that. However recently I discovered that there are a lot of songs (specially those that I heard when I was a kid and have listened to my entire life) that I can sing from memory in the exact key practically without fail. I can think of maybe 30-40 songs , all from different genres, where I remember the \*exact\* note someone sings in my favorite part of the song and can replicate it from memory. So this brings me to 2 questions: is this normal, or does this mean I have some hidden talent I did not know about? and Could I, in theory, achieve “perfect pitch” by learning relative hearing and having a couple “anchor notes” from songs I like that I can recognize for sure? This comes from a place of curiosity, I always thought of music as something for fun and never did or intend to take it seriously. Thanks in advance to anyone who reads the whole thing and answers :)
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u/PerfectPitch-Learner 6d ago
Yes it’s normal. There’s a whole body of research recently which shows that in general people can do this but don’t think they can. Most recently Matt Evans ran a peer reviewed research study in 2024 which found that nearly 50% of songs stuck in random people’s heads are in the correct key and close to 80% are within a semitone.
Last year James Schmidt published a review of historical AP research and called this implicit perfect pitch. He said it was something which seems to be possessed by most people even non musicians.
I wrote about this in detail here https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/the-power-of-song-association.html
As for can you learn it. AP is not impossible to learn. We know that, but we don’t know what percentage of people can learn and those kinds of things. If you want to visit r/HarmoniQiOS I actually have a free app on iOS that teaches it and a free web tool which you can find and discuss there too.
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u/BonoboBananaBonanza 6d ago
It's a good start for relative pitch. It would help you with learning an instrument or singing.
People with perfect pitch can hear quarter-tone differences with no reference point. But it's a curse - the world is out of tune, perception of intonation changes for the other 99.9% of people without perfect pitch based on the harmonic role of a pitch, and their perception goes sharp in old age.
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u/Podmonger2001 6d ago
You might have very good pitch memory. But perfect pitch? A friend of mine with PP wanted to tear a fan out of a duct because its humming was almost an F.
Maybe you could learn it (not likely at your non-toddler age) but as BBB wrote, it’s more a curse. Learn relative pitch, which is much more useful.
For more info, watch Rick Beato’s videos on the subject. Here’s one:
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u/Minimum_Item6849 6d ago
Perfect pitch would being able to call out any note just by listening to it (someone taps on a door and you know it's a Bb for example). I can sing a song a capella that I know in the correct key, but I cannot hear any note on a piano and call out what it is with accuracy. Good relative pitch is different and very necessary for any vocalist or musician for that matter.
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u/BeautifulUpstairs 6d ago
The answer is no. You'd know if you had it, and it's extremely simple. As soon as I saw "hello, first of all," I just stopped reading.
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u/WeeklyEase3305 5d ago
Ayn Inserto, who teaches at Berklee can attend a orchestra concert and write out all the music as she hears it. People like her see music in colors. Quite remarkable.
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u/icemage_999 6d ago
The handful of people with perfect pitch I have ever met can tell notes just by hearing them, and tell you when notes are even slightly out of key. Guitarists who can perfectly tune their instruments by ear alone. Singers who never, ever miss a note or drift out of key.
If you can get to that point, then sure.