But that is dischordant. That’s what is called being “out of tune” relative to each other. That’s the skill that a musician uses to match two pitches to tune an instrument. If you’re in a combo, and you’re sharp or flat relative to the rest of the musicians, you’re going to annoy anyone with a good ear. If you’ve ever tuned an instrument to a tuning fork, you’ll know you can hear pulses when the two tones mismatch even slightly. It’s a physical phenomenon that annoys you.
What, specifically, do you hear that irritates you at the end of “Somebody to Love”?
>I don’t have perfect pitch, but I have a pretty good ear. I just > listened to it. What pisses you off?
At about 3:47, he’s singing the “toooooooooooooooo” of “somebody to love” & he’s irritatingly flat until the last fraction of a second.
Oh, yeah, that. Well, it’s true, but of course not having perfect pitch doesn’t keep many of us from wincing when we hear it. A pretty decent ear and high performance standards for professionals is enough. I don’t know what pitches people are singing when they take a shot at a note and have to bend and push and pull to get there. But it sure does irritate.
As someone who can expect people with tin ears and low performance standards to wince when I sing, I wish I had Freddy Mercury’s talent. Are there any proven techniques for improving one relative pitch specifically to be able to sing on key?
So Monk, (since you have perfect pitch) without looking it up, what note is he flat? ;D
Rusalka: I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had to tune using a pitch fork, although I have tuned relative to oboe/tuba/whatever in orchestra/windband/etc.
And the note referred to in “Somebody to Love” is, IIRC (since I haven’t heard the song in a couple of years) an E flat. It doesn’t actually irritate me through pitch bending (in fact, I find the slide kinda classy 
I just don’t like Queen.
So, Rusalka, if being unusually sensitive to dischord isn’t perfect pitch, how would you define it?
I wouldn’t limit the definition to that by any means… but I’m somewhat at a loss to define it, because I don’t really know how other people experience music/tonality/pitch.
My major in college was vocal performance. We were taught that perfect pitch is something you are born with and relative pitch is usually learned.
My question comes with the issue of memory. If a person has a poor memory of where they are in the alphabet, does that mean he ot she does not have perfect pitch? Before man had a language that dealt with alphabet, were there no people with perfect pitch because there were no names for the sounds?
There may be some genetic component to the ability to develop perfect pitch, but I would say that it’s impossible to have the frequencies hardwired into the brain.
Perfect pitch is a phenomenon that has been recorded over centuries, but the scale used in western music has not remained the same over that period of time.
Our current twelve-note scale is very much a compromise crfeated to promote the ability to play one melody in different keys. To get one half-tone higher, multiply the current frequency by one plus the twelfth root of 2. When it was introduced, many rejected it because certain intervals sounded to wide or too narrow.
My point is that there is nothing innate or inevitable about the music system we use, so it can not be part of your genetic makeup, only the ability to develop a perfect pitch based on any scale system. My sister knew someone whose perfect pitch was off by a quarter tone over a whole piano keyboard.
Actually it is an E flat, you’re correct. One good way to test if you have perfect pitch is by having a friend mash a bunch of keys down on a piano without you looking and have you name all of the notes your friend pressed. You should be able to do that if you have perfect pitch.
It appears that all infants are born with perfect pitch, although not relative pitch:
http://www.news.wisc.edu/view.html?get=5819
http://www.theuniversityhospital.com/healthlink/mayjune2001/html/shorts/babyperfect.htm
From the second citation:
"Saffran’s lab developed a test to manipulate the pitches of songs to determine whether her learners were following absolute or relative pitch. The “songs” in this case are a continuous three-minute stream of bell-like tones, rather than real tunes that would be previously recognizable. After infants listen to the three-minute sequences, they then listen to segments of the song that are identical in relative pitch, but different in absolute pitch. "
I heard an interview on “Quirks and Quarks” about this research a while ago. Aparently adults tend to recognise exerpts from the songs just as well if they are slightly transposed.
I think the above cited articles support the contention that you “can” learn absolute pitch, (if every child is born with it) but that no one’s done it as an adult because it wouldn’t be worth the huge effort involved. Your brain previously decided it wasn’t important and made way for other things.
I also think that there is a range to this ability, and that everyone has bits and pieces of absolute pitch. I’ve frequently experienced the following phenomenon: I hear a note and I am very strongly reminded of an individual’s speaking voice, because everyone’s voice has a natural specific pitch or common range of pitches.