What is Perfect Pitch?
This blog post is written by Samson Lui, a jazz guitarist from Hong Kong who studied with Bryan for over 3 years before going to Leeds Conservatoire in 2018-2021.
Perfect pitch is a rare ability that allows people to easily recognise any musical notes without reference. There are a couple of things that people who possess perfect pitch can do, such as: Figuring out different pitches on different instruments, identifying the home key of songs, and hearing pitches of ordinary objects such as trains’ humming, ambulance horns and so on.
According to an article published by Scientific American, it is estimated that only 1 to 5 people out of 10000 have perfect pitch, but that number increases to 100 to 1100 people when only musicians are surveyed. Moreover, genetics and language also play a part in determining whether people can have perfect pitch.
Why is perfect pitch useful?
There are a few advantages that people who have perfect pitch will enjoy. For instance, transcribing music is easier for people who have it, as it would take less time for them to figure out the pitches of the material that they are working on.
Also, it is particularly useful in jam sessions, as people are often not familiar with the songs that they are playing in those sessions. People with perfect pitch can figure out the key of the song and chords related to the key to improvise accordingly.
Moreover, people with perfect pitch can tune their instruments without a tuner, which is very useful when there isn't a tuner around. For example, the legendary rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix couldn’t afford a tuner when he was younger, so he used his perfect pitch to tune it.
How to find out if you have perfect pitch
One easy way to figure out if you are one of the lucky people who has perfect pitch is using this website to test yourself! You can also adjust the difficulty to challenge yourself if you find the basic test is too easy. However, it is more likely that people don’t have perfect pitch after all, so what should we do?
Well, no need to fret! Although perfect pitch is useful in learning music, it is not necessary for us to be able to study music well, and we certainly don’t need perfect pitch to enjoy music! (Sometimes people with perfect pitch will actually enjoy music less…more on that later!)
How to practice relative pitch
Continuing from the section above, how can we harness the power of perfect pitch without actually having it? The answer is by practising relative pitch. Relative pitch is basically the same ability as perfect pitch, where you will be able to identify musical notes, but the only difference is that you will need a reference note to be able to do it.
There are a few ways to practice relative pitch, such as learning and familiarising the intervals between notes, finding songs for your reference pitch and singing notes along with an instrument to memorise the notes.
For more advice, please contact Bryan as he will be able to guide you on how to acquire the skills of relative pitch and unlock your full potential at playing the guitar!
The drawbacks of having perfect pitch
While it might seem that it is all sunshine and rainbows for people that have perfect pitch, it is certainly not the case as there are also quite a few disadvantages for people who have it.
To start off, everyone with perfect pitch will lose the ability to identify notes effortlessly at some point in their life. Citing from a YouTube video from Rick Beato, he mentioned that most if not all people with perfect pitch start to have their frequencies shifted down by half a step when they start getting older.
Secondly, listening to music might be less enjoyable for people with perfect pitch when the music is out of tune. This is because they can instantly identify when the music is out of tune, hence they will feel uncomfortable when they are listening to it, and they might even make other people feel uncomfortable as they might point out that the performer is out of tune.
Thirdly, having perfect pitch does not automatically make them a good musician, as they will also have to go through ear training like everyone else and figuring out the intervals in order to utilise their gift.
My experience with perfect pitch
I started my journey in music when I was very young, and my first instrument was the piano. This was particularly useful because the piano has a fixed pitch instead of instruments such as the violin and trumpet, where the player has to tune the instrument themselves. Because of this, I developed my perfect pitch by learning and listening to the piano, but I didn't know I had it until a while later.
However, when I figured out that I had perfect pitch, it didn't make me enjoy music more, as I was still young (around age 8) and I didn’t have my own taste of music yet; I was just playing western classical and traditional Chinese music. It did make my life easier though, as I didn’t find the aural homeworks that I had to do very challenging and I was able to do more of what every kid loved to do: Playing video games! Although many people in my school were envious of my ability, I didn’t cherish it that much as I only saw it as a way to ace my exams.
My relationship with perfect pitch stayed that way until I started having lessons with Bryan when I was 17. Bryan influenced my music taste dramatically and I started to get into jazz more and more, and he made me start to appreciate and to be grateful for my ability of perfect pitch.
Over the few years of having lessons with Bryan, he taught me the fundamentals of jazz theory, such as chord tones, substitutions, scales, and most importantly the method of transcription. This unlocked my ear completely and I was able to identify a lot more than just single notes, to complex jazz chords with multiple extensions.
Moreover, I realised that I could transcribe materials quicker than other people, hence my vocabulary improved a lot more and my playing started to get more genuine and organic. In addition, when I got comfortable with playing jazz, I started to go to jam sessions when I was studying in Leeds Conservatoire (formerly Leeds College of Music) and I found out that even when I have never played the tune that someone called, I can just listen for a while to figure out what key the tune is in so I can effortlessly jam along with the other musicians, which is amazing!
All good things have to come to an end though at some point, as I am fully aware that I will lose this amazing gift when I get older. The only thing I can do is to make the most of it and practice as much as I can before the inevitable arrives!
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