Comment by jpfromlondon
13 hours ago
I've seen nothing to convince me that "absolute pitch" is anything other than relative pitch with excellent recall or persistent observation of pitch.
13 hours ago
I've seen nothing to convince me that "absolute pitch" is anything other than relative pitch with excellent recall or persistent observation of pitch.
I don't have perfect pitch (never trained in it) but I've played violin a lot (started in college) and I can hear the G-ness, D-ness, A-ness, or E-ness of a note. I do have to be actually trying to listen though, except for if they are G3, D4, A4, or E5.
So I have the latter, but not the former (i.e., no perfect pitch). The difference is, I can choose not to observe it. It reminds me of how I've studied Japanese for 15 years, but I can still sometimes choose not to read certain kanji if I glance at a legible word — the same is not true for English, if I see something even for a split second I've already read it.
I agree. I can tune a guitar to within a half a semitone of accuracy without reference just from knowing how the open strings are supposed to sound after 20 years of playing.
> knowing how the open strings are supposed to sound
well that's the whole question isn't it? If you know how an open string is supposed to have, that's what people call absolute pitch?
Most people without absolute pitch have some level of "pitch memory", but it's not comprehensive or reliable. For instance, if you ask people to sing a pop song, they're significantly more likely than chance to sing it in the original key.
I know the Super Mario Bros. theme starts on an E, so I can identify an unknown pitch by recalling that theme and comparing using relative pitch. But that's quite a slow and unintuitive process, and it's easy to make a mistake. People with absolute pitch just hear the pitch without having to "recall" a reference note to compare to like that.