A Personal Perspective on Perfect Pitch (Pt. 1)

[DanMcCaffrey]

Interesting that you mentioned MBTI type stuff whilst mentioning pitch. I was just thinking about the two today to myself. You smell like an INFJ.

[cccorsetti]

the point of this video is for her to show how awesome she is

[Dreamdancer11]

From what i have gathered she doesnt have perfect pitch either......recalling some of the notes and not all the time its not perfect pitch.

[sunshinegirl1967]

I'd like to add that i do not see myself as the abnormal one at all. I tend to see musicans who have relative pitch as weird because they hear notes all the time and forget them. To me it's like they have musical Alzheimer's disease. Why don't they remember?

I usually explain PP by comparing it to the color sense. Most people don't use color swatches because they remember what colors look like. With PP, I also remember what pitches sound like. So? It's just pitch memory. That's all.

[sunshinegirl1967]

Hi there Kibouchan4, i can totally relate to all you said, having AP1 myself. My sister tested me when i was 13, many years ago. Since then my hearing has gone a bit south :( I sometimes mislabel C as B and so on. Very annoying and frustrating! I used to really hate hearing songs not in their original key and many times would not even recognize them. Now i'm a bit more relaxed and even enjoy hearing songs in different keys as it definitely changes the flavor. (part 1 of 2)

[Criticalperspective2]

People who have perfect pitch usually link a sound to an image, a color or a feeling. If you don't experience this, but you can more or less tell the notes, you have a good relative pitch.

[jamesmanortiz]

If everything you said was true, then i have perfect pitch... I always just thought I had a good ear.

[aaronamccoy]

this video is false

[sunshinegirl1967]

@aaronamccoy Wrong, everything she said i can verify.

[JayyBeeMusicx33]

@sunshinegirl1967 I have perfect pitch and I can do all those things too!! Hahaha

[aaronamccoy]

perfect pitch aint shit..

[sunshinegirl1967]

@aaronamccoy true, it's really not all it's cracked up to be by those who don't have it.

[songbird72290]

I have perfect pitch!!! Thank you so much! We rock :)

[ReminiscenceS2]

are you pregnant?

[matimaui]

perfect pitch must be the most amazing gift!!! imagine being able to comprehend music just by listening!!! what a waste this girl has it and she's not even a musician

[BenMcCormack91]

Hence the stereotype in classical music of Asians being good musicians. Many Asian languages have pitch-based words, where the same syllable with different intonation/contour can have a completely different meaning. It's not that everyone with absolute pitch is good at music, but that having AP increases the likelihood, assuming relative pitch is decent as well, that someone will take readily to music.

[BenMcCormack91]

I guess I'd argue that having good helpings of both relative and absolute is the real gift. It means you can hear both harmonic and melodic structures really well, which helps.

Also, interesting fact: With the exception of people with amusia, everyone is born with perfect pitch, and there is a critical period in the first few years where it's either reinforced or, if left alone, goes away. In countries with pitch-based languages, people with absolute pitch are actually the majority.

[BenMcCormack91]

Relative and absolute pitch aren't opposite or necessarily mutually exclusive. The easiest way to describe it is that they're two different aspects of pitch cognition. Absolute pitch is the ability to identify and recall individual pitches, whereas relative pitch is the perception of the relationship BETWEEN pitches. Example: Someone with absolute pitch hears "C, E, G." Someone with good relative pitch hears "major 6/3." Someone with both hears C major. Everyone has a little bit of both.

[BenMcCormack91]

@BenMcCormack91 And when I said "major 6/3," that was a remnant from a part of the comment I'd deleted. C,E, and G are not a 6/3 chord in that order.

[aspergershawn]

I like how you talk about hearing someone tone deaf singing a song and your hearing it at the same time in the original key. I have PP and I am a classically trained musician - I can read a score and hear it in my head and have no problem hearing two different pieces of music in different keys playing at the SAME time in my mind. people are just insanely jealous and mean about my ability, but they are just trolls who spend all their time developing_perfect_pitch.

[IllegalOfficialBand1]

Haha..that beeping in the background is a G

[Elconceive]

Unfortunately the speaker in this video does not only talk about her personal perspective, but also generalizes the cognitive abilities of people with relative- and perfect pitch.

It is extremely difficult to be as objective as possilbe. There is not just one way of relative pitch hearing as there is not just one way only to perfect pitch.

The point however is that even if there were, not one person experiences this world the same way.

[Kibouchan4]

@Elconceive As I said in the second video, I am not a scientist who has studied this objectively. This is why the video is called "A Personal Perspective," not "A Scientific Perspective." It is simply what I believe perfect and relative pitch to be from my personal experience and talking with others of both types. I totally agree that I generalized. These topics are extremely vast and would require much more than two YouTube videos to cover adequately.

[sunshinegirl1967]

@Elconceive Hi Elconceive!  Long time no hear! We used to chat on the PP yahoo group a long time ago and also on skype too - i'm ginny. How are you doing?