More interesting to me is the fact that many people with absolute pitch start to lose it in their 40s and 50s. This has happened to me too. What happens is that your pitch assessment often starts going sharp, so what you thought was a C was actually a B, say. For me the pitch assessment accuracy differs depending on the harmonic content of the sound: guitars and harmonicas are awful, but pianos and flutes etc. seem t…
Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
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Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#12I found the entire PDF on ResearchGate. I've played the piano for 50 years (I'm 55), and I do a lot of ear-training practice with software (Ear Master, etc) to keep myself sharp. I still don't have perfect pitch. Without hearing a reference note, I won't get it. In some ways, it's good. I keep my Bosendorfer tuned to A=443 and occasionally someone comes over whose used to the American A=440 and it bothers them. It do…
440 is actually an international standard, not American. >In 1939, there was an international conference held in London that resulted in a recommendation to use A = 440 Hz, as a compromise between the various tuning systems used at the time, some of which reached beyond 450 Hz. This recommendation was further supported by the fact that the BBC required their orchestras to tune to 440 Hz instead of 439 Hz because 439…
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#Current_concert_...
A lot of continental Europe uses A=443 today
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#13In my first class in college for a music theory course, the first assignment was "memorize A" (440Hz). Surprisingly, after several weeks of playing the tone and matching it verbally, I did learn A. Everything else from there is knowing intervals relative to A (like, C is a minor 3rd above A, or 3 half steps). Edit: there are tricks you can use for memorizing the intervals, too, like "Here Comes the Bride" is a perfec…
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#14Not sure if you can reach AP (which is not clearly defined anyway) but you can dramatically improve pitch recognition in general by practice.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#15Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#16My pitch recognition isn't bad but not particularly good either. When I play my mandolin, though, I can pick up small pitch differences on certain frets because I'm so used to associating finger position with frequency. Not sure if you can reach AP (which is not clearly defined anyway) but you can dramatically improve pitch recognition in general by practice.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#17Also, trained relative pitch is better than untrained perfect pitch. For instance, if my instructor played four bars of a four-part bach chorale on the piano (sixteen quarter notes, perhaps a couple of eighth-note passing tones), I could fully notate it within three repetitions, sometimes on first listen - if I were initially told what key it was in. Someone with untrained perfect pitch would be able to tell if the instructor was lying about what key it was in, but they wouldn't be able to notate it. So in that scenario, the only thing it's useful for is recognizing what key it's in. If I hadn't been told, I could have just notated it in C and then transposed it to the right key later.
I would later learn that being able to notate a bach chorale by ear is nothing compared to the kind of ear skills you need as a jazz musician - but again, there, perfect pitch isn't important or super useful. We learn chord relations - it's all relative.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#18Rick Beato provides a lot of (too much) context before explaining "Why Adults Can't Develop Perfect Pitch". [0] (Timecode link to Beato's point.)
Beato's video was featured on MetaFilter a couple of months ago. [1]
[0] https://youtu.be/816VLQNdPMM?t=364
[1] https://www.metafilter.com/175853/Why-Adults-Cant-Develop-Pe...
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#19This ability seems to fall somewhere in between relative and absolute pitch, and I'm sure I'm not the only one it is true for.
Re: Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
#20[0] I do realize they denote some frequencies