I noticed that when a certain note is played I can immediately attach to it songs that begin with that note. I was wondering if: 1 - I have the potential for perfect pitch 2 - Is there a way to check if you have the potential for perfect pitch, rather than perfect pitch itself?
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1You say 'a certain note'. Do you mean that there is just one note that this works with?– TimCommented Sep 19, 2015 at 18:16
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1What if the song is played in different keys by different groups? Anyway, it's easy to test perfect pitch. face away from the piano while a friend plays single keys. If there's any doubt in your mind, you don't have perfect pitch.– Carl WitthoftCommented Sep 19, 2015 at 19:22
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3It may be possible, without any musical training at all, to have perfect pitch; yet be completely unable to do the blind piano test - because you don't know the names of the notes.– TetsujinCommented Sep 20, 2015 at 9:40
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@tetsujin I disagree, perfect pitch is specifically the ability to consistently match tones with their corresponding symbols and names in music even if the name may be different based on language. In addition to the ability to sing the corresponding tone when presented with the name or symbol.– Jay SkylerCommented Sep 23, 2015 at 9:17
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1@JaySkyler That does not seem correct - hearing and instantly abstracting any pitch to the note A would be the ability to suppress perfect pitch and impose a system of relative pitch. If you can hear any frequency and tell what name it has (along with the system you are using : i,e, equal tempered A=440), then THAT is perfect pitch. If you are working from a reference tone, then you are not using perfect pitch at all. Where we define the cutoff for 'when you last heard a note' is rather arbitrary and leads me to believe tinnitus makes perfect pitch much easier.– Darren RingerCommented Sep 23, 2015 at 20:36
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2 Answers
Many musicians can tell intervals, i.e. guess what a note is once they have been told the name of another note. That's relative pitch.
A smaller group can often start some songs on the correct note. This happens with songs they hear or practice often typically. And they will occasionally make mistakes. (I am in that category: I will get the start note of some songs right more than half of the time; when I am wrong, I am usually off by a tone or so, and sometimes I am completely off.)
Very few can systematically start a song on the correct note, or, given a note, tell instantly which song starts with that note. In my opinion, the last step of telling the name of a note as opposed to naming correctly, effortlessly, which song starts with that note is not a requirement to perfect pitch: knowing the note name is a detail that you can master easily if you already have associations to each note without thinking about it, and that last skill isn't related to your ear per say.
For example, if you can almost always sing a C because your favorite song starts with a C and from there you derive the relative interval to, say, an A, and can then sing that A pretty accurately, you have a good ear, but not perfect pitch.
In your case, you say you associate "certain" notes to its song. If you never get that wrong, you are closer than most to perfect pitch. But until you have an association of each note sound to a correct representation of that note, be it a song name or note name, you would not have what is called perfect pitch as far as goes my understanding of perfect pitch.
People with perfect pitch will be able to name quickly all the notes of a melody they hear effortlessly. They don't have to think about intervals between any of these notes. You may still have a way to go for that; most are :-)
By the way, there are some methods to help people acquire perfect pitch, and they do start exactly with what you do: being able to associate sounds to concepts: songs you know, colors, textures, etc. so all of this is a continuous spectrum... A friend of mine got very near perfect pitch with that approach so people have a margin for improvement: it doesn't have to be a gift though it can be just that.
Yes. Your potential for perfect pitch is very high.
Take care of your ears (you can go to loud shows but if you are close to huge speakers be sure to have earplugs). The little fibres/hairs in your ears are lifetime friends so take good care of them.
Calling out songs that blend well is a great skill and should you ever want to become a DJ you'll probably master the crossfade.
However, understanding the interval is more vital to musical success than "absolute pitch" recall, and honestly there is probably not such a thing as "absolute" pitch thanks to relativity.
Study how string length and octaves are related and your musical intuition shall steadily improve.
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