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Perfect pitch is impossible to learn especially since I'm 19 years old but I have heard of people who developed perfect pitch on their instruments. For example, Aimee Nolte is able to listen to the piano and just know what the notes are, and Robert from the Living Piano states that he could tell what notes are being played on the piano and the french horn. but they cannot just sing an A off the top of their head like a person with perfect pitch can.

To practice this I've decided put time and effort into singing fixed chromatic solfege, scales, modes, chords, and Bach's 2-part inventions, both left and and right hand.

Do you think, being 19 years old, I will be able to develop this innate ability for the piano using this method?

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    I'm not sure whether you will be able to or not. I highly doubt it and to be perfectly honest, it's not super helpful from what I've heard. At the very least, it's definitely not necessary and doesn't really add much to your abilities at the instrument. What is much more helpful and useful is relative pitch. You could spend months training to develop absolute pitch, and if you miss a few days of practice, you could lose it. My advice...It's not worth the time, spend that time developing relative pitch.
    – Kevin H
    Commented Oct 19, 2018 at 22:25
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    Being able to identify the notes played on a certain type of instrument (or on your own specific instrument) because you play and/or listen to it all day long, is pitch memory rather than perfect pitch.
    – Your Uncle Bob
    Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 14:02

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It's a nice party trick, but not that helpful when it comes to playing piano, or music stuff in general. What are you going to do with it if you ever achieve that status? It can be satisfying being able to recognise a key for a piece - but then when you want to play it properly, you'll probably have to refer to the dots anyway.

My method was/is to sing what I think is a particular note, every time I walk towards an instrument - piano, guitar, etc. Then play that note. For me, it's C, but I consider it as the M3 of Ab. After several years , I'm spot on or 'in the crack' about 90% of the time - it gets done several times most days. The rest is either a B or a C#, so it's not too bad. But, what can I do with it even if it's perfect?

Playing certain (pop-type) tunes in several different keys with different bands hasn't helped cement one key with one song, fairly obviously.

Working on relative pitch is far more important, so I'd go, as Kevin H says, with that approach.

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  • I would disagree, I listen to piano music all the time, like theishter, animenz, paul barton. so instead of slaving away on sheet music i could listen to the recording multiple times instead. (accompanied by reading sheet music even) this can be very beneficial in a lot of ways.
    – Sky Star
    Commented Oct 20, 2018 at 14:02
  • when I'm referring to the dots is that I practice that piece for months doing hs & ht repetition for like 4 months until i can play it from beginning to end perfectly exactly how the teacher teaches me. all that time i spent practicing It's all muscle memory, I just end up paying attention to the skips rather than knowing what the notes are. the problem is i don't know the notes. if I have semi perfect pitch When I play, when reading sheet music or blind folded I know exactly what notes are being played same goes with listening to piano performance. this will help a great deal with memory
    – Sky Star
    Commented Oct 20, 2018 at 14:14
  • Still can't understand why you feel it's so important. So, in the middle of a piece, you hear 4 notes played simultaneously and can name them? If so, what advantage is it to you? And if you struggle with the notes, I still can't see how absolute pitch can help with names, apart from the academic exercise.
    – Tim
    Commented Oct 20, 2018 at 15:36
  • this discussion is not about what im gonna do with it but if I can develop it or not
    – Sky Star
    Commented Oct 20, 2018 at 16:06
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    what you don't feel is important to you is not always not important to other people
    – Sky Star
    Commented Oct 20, 2018 at 16:07
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"Perfect pitch" is one of those buzzwords that people throw about that I suspect doesn't really matter very much. Something non-musicians say in to imply that someone must be a musical genius, to whom everything comes effortlessly. It's not like that.

Sometimes I get an intuition about what key a piece I hear is, and sometimes I'm right. Sometimes I'm not. It doesn't bother me much if not.

However I have pretty good ears, can hear the intervals and harmonies in quite a lot of music and so on. If you tell me what the start note is, I could notate most melodies quite quickly by listening. If you sing me something I can usually play it back to you. I think that that is much more useful. I also work at being really well in tune, whatever instrument I am playing (not always with complete success).

Develop your ears and your ability to listen, don't worry about perfect pitch. It doesn't matter much.

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    -1 "Perfect pitch" actually has a very specific meaning that this answer completely fails to address.
    – user45266
    Commented Oct 4, 2019 at 17:14

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