The skill existed, of course, before there was a name for it. But at what point did people start to truly consider
perfect pitch (knowing that an A is an A, a B-flat is a B-flat, an F is an F, etc.) to be a “thing” worthy of its own name and attention?
Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament contains an acknowledgment of his “sense,” (his hearing) which he describes as having “once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of [his] profession ever enjoyed!” He may not have called it perfect pitch but he seems to be well aware of having some advanced sense of hearing, the loss of which was especially profound to him.
Scientific studies of absolute pitch appear to have commenced in the 19th century, focusing on the phenomenon of musical pitch and methods of measuring it.[14] It would have been difficult for any notion of absolute pitch to have formed earlier because pitch references were not consistent. For example, the note is now known as ‘A’ varied in different local or national musical traditions between what would now be considered as G sharp and B flat before the standardisation of the late 19th century. While the term absolute pitch , or absolute ear , was in use by the late 19th century by both British[15] and German researchers,[16] its application was not universal; other terms such as musical ear ,[14] absolute tone consciousness ,[17] or positive pitch [18] were also used to refer to the ability. The skill is not exclusively musical, or limited to human perception; absolute pitch has been demonstrated in animals such as bats, wolves, gerbils, and birds, for whom specific pitches facilitate identification of mates or meals.[19]
From Wikipedia.
There’s different kinds. Absolute pitch is when you can tell the note without a reference. Perfect pitch allows for some sort of non-musical reference – such as the reverberation of the room or pitch memory – where you can play the song back in your head in the key that it was written or recorded in. I can play back the sound of an oboe playing A440 for an orchestra to tune up in my head and be instantly orientated. I can do the same hearing a guitar being tuned, mostly standard, but I can hear other tunings as well. I can also hear when a stringed instrument plays an open string – it leaps out at me. As the music progresses all these things add up, and I’m usually orientated by the second note.
Thanks. If I may ask a follow up question, why are notes hard to recognize? We humans have no problem recognizing that orange is orange, blue is blue, nor do we have problems recognizing tone of voice (i.e., a flat yes and a questioning “yes?” are different intonations,) so why is perfect pitch so rare?
There is nothing natural about a note. The frequency that is called a note is arbitrary and varies in different systems. Moreover, the intervals we call notes are not exactly intuitive: “In modern tuning a half step has a frequency ratio of 12√2], approximately 1.0595.” And all these presuppose that western music conventions are being referred to, obviously something that came into existence only in certain parts of the world and in the last blink of an eye of human evolution.
I disagree with your premise. There are many people with a lousy sense of color, an underdeveloped sense of smell or taste, and even a lack of distinction of different vocal tones. Consider the number of shades of “white” at a paint store. Subtle differences in pitch (like 2-3 cycles per second) are like a 1db change in sound volume.
For most people, it’s just not anything that’s terribly important, and doesn’t provide an evolutionary benefit.
The earlier a child studies music lessons, the more like they are to develop perfect pitch.
Not to disagree with the previous posters, but to amplify what they wrote: It seems to me that this sense is very much like other skills, especially language. If you grew up with a language which lacks a particular sound, you’ll have trouble reproducing it, or even recognizing it. My favorite examples are the Hebrew or German “ch” (as in “yuccch”), or the throaty sound that made it hard for Anglos to spell the “Gaddafi” (Khaddafi? Qadaffi?). I hope no one calls me racist if I point out the problems people from India have with “m” and “b”, or Asians with “l” and “r”.
So too, those who listen to music merely for pleasure will probably be able to tell you whether a B is higher or lower than a C, but without a lot of practice, how do you expect them to name them? And forget about realizing that a middle C and a high C are the same note.
It’s like recognizing the letters of a foreign script. It takes experience to know whether that language is Russian or Greek or Arabic or Thai, and it’s a whole nother level to recognize the individual letters, even without knowing the sound of each letter.
I don’t know about racist, but in my opinion you are very misinformed. As a person of Indian origin, I am aware that people from different parts of India have pronunciation woes with different sounds just like Arabs or Europeans. I do not have any problems with “m” or “b” but I can imagine people in South India having a heavy “m” maybe even people of Eastern India. Most of other parts of India, have no problems with “m” or “b”.
Can you back up your claims on the “m” or “b” sounds, with cites or examples on youtube ? Also, when you say " people from India", which state of India are you referring to ?
Tagging #acsenray who may have some expertise in this context.
If you analog pitch identification to colour identification, then perfect pitch is like looking at a colour and saying “that’s pantone Warm Red, RGB(249, 66, 58)”. Which is quite different than saying “that’s Red”.
My (probably wrong) understanding was that the change from “Bombay” to “Mumbai” was at least partially because the actual sound of the first consonant is somewhere in the middle between m and b. But now that you’ve pointed it out, I guess I should have realized that there are regional accents, similar to those who might want to change “Boston” to “Bahstan”
Thank you for correcting me. (and if I’m now even further off-base, please say so.)
I am not a linguist and my understanding is that many cities in India had their names anglicized for the British rulers ease of pronunciation. While the Anglicized name was used in English, the name in the local language was also used in parallel.
So for example : Bombay was the name of the city in English but Mumbai was the name of the same city in Marathi (local language) and Hindi for 100s of years. In the last 30 years or so, many cities have reverted to the native name.
Some examples:
- Bombay → Mumbai
- Calcutta → Kolkata
- Cochin → Kochi
- Pondicherry → Puducherry
The closest example, outside of India that I know is Egypt. When using non English languages, Indians and Arabs call it Misr.
Let’s put it another way - “blue” is a pretty vague descriptor. There’s midnight blue, deep blue, Cubby blue, sky blue, teal, etc. We humans have no problem recognizing sky blue is blue in the same way we have no problems recognizing a low “C” is a low note. As someone else said
I don’t have perfect pitch - I can’t sing a middle “C” off the top of my head. I can, however, sing acapella and actually stay in tune, and even transpose some songs. I’ve done the Star Spangled Banner enough times, I sing the first few phrases to myself, changing keys until I’m happy. Once a song has started, I can tell when a note is sung off-key, but that’s either a “I know the song, and that’s wrong” or it’s “Hmmm. That note didn’t fit into the chord the instruments were playing.” The first is pretty common; the second less so and much more based on culture - Rock music tends to these progressions; European chamber music these progressions; Oriental music other progressions.
Yep. You’ve got perfectly good relative pitch. Like me (except that I really, really can’t sing).
If someone plays two notes together on a piano (or any other instrument that can play more than one note at a time), I can tell you what the interval is. I can do that because I know a bit, a very little, about music and theory and chords and intervals and all that, but even someone who doesn’t, who has a good sense of relative pitch, can recognize the intervals, even if they don’t have the vocabulary to name them.
Same. Although I can (I think) go a bit beyond that and say “that note isn’t in the scale in use – the player/singer either made a mistake or is intentionally using a note that isn’t in the scale for some reason.” Even if there’s no accompaniment - if it’s just one singer, or someone playing just a melody line on an instrument. You can probably do this too. And also I can tell if the sung/played note doesn’t harmonize with the chord other instruments are playing (which is actually pretty much the same thing, sometimes, as what I just described).
Point being, perfect pitch is nice, but it really doesn’t matter all that much. Unless you’re the concertmaster giving the A at a classical music performance. But otherwise, you can buy a perfectly good tuner for $20 at Guitar Center. Or even older tech like a pitch pipe or tuning fork.
Disclaimer: not really a music scholar, just enough knowledge to be a little dangerous. Realizing that middle C and high C are the same note is actually the easy part for most people. I have worked with many totally untrained musicians and kids, and never encountered anyone who couldn’t hear the essential unity of notes at one octave (or multiple octaves) distance.
Using a different note for the example: A above Middle C (A4), in standard Western tuning, has a frequency of 440. One octave up, A5, has a frequency of 880, exactly double. This doubling of frequencies is perceived as something like a unity even by people who’ve studied no music. (In other words, most people can hear that an octave is the “same” note.)
Whether an exposure to Western tuning systems is required for people to hear this intuitively, I don’t know. If you step outside of Western 12-tone standards, and look at (say) 300Hz vs. 600Hz, the functional “sameness” is still pretty easily perceived.
You can play around with this here:
https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
That may be, but note that I have seen one of those perfect pitch guys listen to someone tinkle a glass and immediately pick that exact pitch out on the piano keyboard, or reply immediately that it is between E and F and therefore he can’t.
It’s even more complicated, I think. For example, a piano is tuned using octave stretching and (depending on your pitch perception) you have to get used to that, ditto for different instruments and timbres, different tuning systems, etc. So there seems to be a lot to practice to really refine one’s supposedly perfect pitch.
Agreed with all of this, but my point was just that octaves in particular are perceptible as a “thing” even by untrained people, who would not be able to identify a fourth, a fifth, or any other interval. I’ll have to read up on stretched tuning though.
That isn’t a case of English people not knowing how to pronounce “Misr.” That’s just because English borrowed the Greek word for the country, itself borrowed from a word in ancient Egyptian. (Ironically, “Greece” isn’t what the Greeks call their country.)
Similarly, in French, Germany is called “Allemagne,” a word not remotely similar to the German “Deutschland.” “Allemagne” isn’t a different pronounciation, it’s a totally different word; it comes from the name of an ancient Germanic tribe, while “Deutschland” comes from an old German word meaning “people,” and “Germany” comes from a Gallic word for a different ancient tribe, the Germani.
Thanks, learnt something.