Sacks discusses this as well. As I recall, PP is far more common in Asians whose language has a tonal element.
Singing is definitely something one can get better at, but it requires practice - like any instrument. Ear training is an interesting exercise as well. My daughter teaches music, and she will refer to certain well-known songs as demonstrating various musical values/relationships.
I’m hopeless at singing harmony. I attended a workshop once, and it was so simple to just pick a 3d or a 5th above or below the melody - but far more challenging to do “in the real world.” I have a somewhat low voice, so am often able to add some vocal color by doubling the melody an octave lower.
I’m no singer. In grade school if you were in choir there were some perks, so I joined choir. I never sang, just lip synced. The teacher liked it if you “got into” singing, so I lip synced and waved my hands around. Once she asked if I’d sing a solo and I told her I had a sore throat. I was in choir an entire year and never sang once!
What’s weird is that Asian-Americans who don’t even speak a Chinese language have also been found to perform better than non-Asians in perfect pitch studies, so it doesn’t seem to be wholly related to the quality of the language (though it may still have something to do with it).
I went on one date about twenty years ago with a woman working on her Ph.D. in absolute pitch (aka “perfect pitch”) acquisition in children, and she relayed that there seems to be a developmental window, if you have the gene or whatever that is responsible for it to acquire it, you must learn it in or you just won’t get it (somewhere around 6-7 years of age, IIRC). Being the contrarian that I am, I somewhat argued this point, but years on, I have not seen any studies or examples of people developing perfect pitch later in life. Some people do develop some type of pitch memory, whether based on vocal chord tension or constant use of their instrument, but nothing that qualifies as absolute pitch. Rick Beato, before his “What Makes This Song Great” series had a few videos on perfect pitch (which he does NOT have) and challenged various people in the comments who claimed to have developed it in their teens or beyond, but all have come up short. His son, Dylan, meanwhile, has astounding perfect pitch (and relative pitch). Rick will play some godawful tone cluster on the piano and Dylan will recite the 8 (or so) seemingly unrelated pitches with only brief pauses to catch some of the interior notes. When I’ve seen perfect pitch in action, it was like magic.
I didn’t learn an instrument until I was 8 years old, so a bit out of that window. I don’t know if I had any shadow of perfect pitch, but I do remember being able to tell white and black notes being played on the piano without thinking. Black notes just had a certain feeling to them the white notes did not. Probably had to do with unfamiliarity, but they stuck out as obviously not C major scale notes to me, without any sort of reference to C. I can’t do that now (and haven’t been since my first year or two of piano), and that was never explored or practiced with me.
I had a friend, a very talented guitarist, who was recording a song in my living room when suddenly a car horn blasted, and my friend immediately replicated the exact (I thought so) sound on his guitar. I guess I could hear that this was same exact tone, but far more impressive was the instanteousness of his response–he found the note before the car horn had sounded for a complete second.
And that doesn’t necessarily require perfect pitch to do. If he’s already been playing, he has reference pitches, so if he’s quick on the draw, he can pick it out without having to have perfect pitch. (That’s what well exercised relative pitch will do.) That said, he may well have perfect pitch.
Yeah - that can seem impressive, but a lot of musicians can do that pretty quickly. And if they aren’t able to hit it PERFECTLY, they can narrow in on it quickly. Many folk could hum/sing imitate the horn. A decent musician can pretty readily do the same thing on their instrument.
Above I alluded to a discussion when someone asked me (while I was playing) what I listened to while I played. I realized it was kinda complicated even to think of, and really complicated to try to explain. Not as complicated as replicating a car horn, but if someone starts playing a song, it is not terribly challenging to tell what key it is in (even without looking at someone’s hands.)
Without perfect pitch it is. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what key a song is in unless I had a reference point. That’s part of what perfect pitch is about. Maybe with a guitar it’s somewhat easier to guess with the sounds of open vs barred chords and what is possible in what key, but I always have to look at a guitarist’s hands to know what key we’re in (assuming they are in standard E tuning). A piano tune (which is my primary instrument)? Forget it.
I play upright bass, mostly bluegrass/oldtime, so it is a somewhat narrow range musically. Probably 90% of the songs are in D, G, A, C, and probably 80% are major. But yeah, always nice to have a guitarist who telegraphs clear chord shapes.
A couple of months ago, I was at a music camp. One of the instructors (Todd Phillips - no slouch) told me to take a break up high on my neck on a song I was not familiar with. I said, “I don’t know where the notes are up there.” He said, “Doesn’t matter. Just play a note. And if that’s not the right one, play another, and then another, and eventually you’ll end up somewhere that you knew where you are at and could play something that worked.” Pretty cool way to approach it. And he added, on bass, I can always slide into a note - and let people think I’m being all dramatic when I’m just trying to figure out what the heck note to play!
It is not hard to do it yourself, but there are any number of free “apps” already available: Lingot, Tuner, etc
a propos, the difference between some just intonation and equal temperament can easily amount to 15 cents or so! For example, if you sing a 5:4 major third the equally-tempered one will be almost 14 cents wider…
You are far smarter (and more devious ) than I am or was. I’m sure the teacher & my choir-mates would have been much happier if I’d been smart enough to pull the same trick you did. Alas, I was not and so they suffered grievously from my impromptu free-form pitchless caterwauling.
Hehehe, yeah, I have amazed friends and family when I’m fooling around on guitar or bass and start playing along with whatever the TV is playing. I’m a totally terrible two handed keys player, but I can latch on to most stuff one handed pretty quickly, as well.
And it works on fretted bass, too! You just gotta act like you meant to do it.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m a bass player.
George Strait is known for sliding into his notes. It’s called a grace note. Begnners do it because they aren’t accurate hitting the note and they adjust.
Strait does it skillfully and deliberately. It certainly works for him and all the number 1 singles prove it.
Or, as Youtuber Adam Neely says, “repetition legitimizes.” Just keep on that wrong note like you mean it and resolve it to a “right” one.
My jazz teacher told a story of some jazz cat’s advice on improvisation: “think of a note – then don’t play it.”
There’s also something about playing with complete confidence. I remember getting a transcription of Thelonius Monk’s “Nice Work if You Can Get It” as a teenager, and playing through it on the piano. What the hell? I’m hitting the right notes, and this all sounds so awful, so wrong. Then I finally came across an audio recording from which this was transcribed and was just blown away at how he made all those notes sound right by playing with conviction. I’m not saying any of the notes were “wrong” per se, but playing dissonant notes like you mean it goes a long way to legitimizing, as well. (Though, with off-pitch singing, there’s only so much you can get away with.)
Heheh, well, Wooten was meaning something slightly different. He was commenting on the fact that in just about every western key, you really can’t be more than a half step away from a note that’s actually in the key. So, as long as you can hear whether you’re in key or not, hitting a wrong note is easy to fix.
But I totally agree with your point. I had that concept introduced to me by a Sunday morning comic that had the punchline “If you play it once, it’s a mistake. If you play it twice, it’s jazz.” That’s a pretty trite way to express it, but some of my favorite music is structured so that part of it tells you you’re in one key, while another part keeps insisting you’re in another by returning to a note that’s not in the key the other part is playing in.
Hehehe, and of course I totally agree. Heck, if you like, you can be like IceJJFish above - having any key whatsoever is cramping his style and creativity. I really thought him sounding like that might be a joke or an accident. So, I went to their YouTube page and sampled a few other songs. NOPE! They have a lot of other songs delivered they same way. In the age of auto tune, they obviously mean to sound that way.
Who knows? Maybe they’re a visionary and I’m just stuck in my plastic fantastic Madison Avenue scene of noise music and space rock. (I have gone back and watched it four times now).
I was actually saying that as an alternate course of action, you could just insist that’s what you meant.