<story><title>Show HN: Perfect Pitch Ear Training</title><url>http://sergeykish.com/perfect-pitch-ear-training</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maxov</author><text>I agree, the scientific consensus appears to be that absolute pitch cannot be developed after a certain age, and that this age is related to the &amp;#x27;prime&amp;#x27; language acquisition ages. Tonal language speakers (e.g. Mandarin) have absolute pitch with higher frequency, possibly because their ears have needed to train to distinguish tones in this critical period.&lt;p&gt;As someone with absolute pitch, I should say I have not found it musically useful, and I would hesitate recommending people train for it even if it was possible. When I was learning to play jazz, it was actually a major crutch for me. For jazz especially, the modes, chords, progressions, and relationships between tones are really important and are what determines the &amp;#x27;color&amp;#x27; of what you&amp;#x27;re playing. Harmony in general is determined by the relationships between tones, not the absolute tones themselves (mostly - there are of course differences in sound playing three octaves up or down), and an ear for absolute pitch doesn&amp;#x27;t help much there at all.&lt;p&gt;I could use absolute pitch to identify chords and modes, but it didn&amp;#x27;t help me &amp;#x27;think&amp;#x27; about and play within them the way relative pitch does. A good ear for relative pitch, and an understanding of harmony go much farther.</text></item><item><author>biggieshellz</author><text>Semi-pro musician for 20+ years here.  You can&amp;#x27;t teach this.  My mom has perfect pitch, and I do not.  I can play a record and move the pitch knob to make it play a bit fast, and it will bother her enough to get up off the couch and change it back.  No matter how much ear training I do, that will never be the case with me.&lt;p&gt;I have very good relative pitch, and a highly trained ear, and that you &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; teach.  If you play me C, I can tell you what the other notes are based on that, and my internal reference for what C is persists for quite a while.  If you play me a song, I can hear what the chords are -- the color (major, minor, dominant, diminished, etc.) and the degree of the scale.  But that is all relative to itself.  If I hear the same song played in C, and then in Db, the two of them will hit me emotionally the same.  Whereas for someone with perfect pitch, I understand it can be different.  And for someone with perfect pitch and synesthesia, I understand it can be different still -- notes and keys are perceived as colors.  And while I can imagine what that might be like, there&amp;#x27;s no way for me to train myself to &lt;i&gt;be&lt;/i&gt; that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>castillar76</author><text>Yep. Classmate of mine in university had absolute pitch, and while it was useful for some things, it was a liability in several places. For one thing, she played flute: everyone tunes to the oboe, so if the oboist is a few cents sharp everyone&amp;#x27;s a few cents sharp and she spends the evening wincing while playing. Further, when we got to the &amp;#x27;ear dictation&amp;#x27; section of music theory class (professor plays a melodic sequence and you have to write it down based on the relative pitches), she made the mistake of letting on she had absolute pitch. From then on, the professor would say, &amp;quot;OK, this melody starts on F&amp;quot; and then start it on Ab instead, forcing her to do the relative calculations in her head. Didn&amp;#x27;t bother the rest of us, but drove her absolutely up the wall.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Perfect Pitch Ear Training</title><url>http://sergeykish.com/perfect-pitch-ear-training</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maxov</author><text>I agree, the scientific consensus appears to be that absolute pitch cannot be developed after a certain age, and that this age is related to the &amp;#x27;prime&amp;#x27; language acquisition ages. Tonal language speakers (e.g. Mandarin) have absolute pitch with higher frequency, possibly because their ears have needed to train to distinguish tones in this critical period.&lt;p&gt;As someone with absolute pitch, I should say I have not found it musically useful, and I would hesitate recommending people train for it even if it was possible. When I was learning to play jazz, it was actually a major crutch for me. For jazz especially, the modes, chords, progressions, and relationships between tones are really important and are what determines the &amp;#x27;color&amp;#x27; of what you&amp;#x27;re playing. Harmony in general is determined by the relationships between tones, not the absolute tones themselves (mostly - there are of course differences in sound playing three octaves up or down), and an ear for absolute pitch doesn&amp;#x27;t help much there at all.&lt;p&gt;I could use absolute pitch to identify chords and modes, but it didn&amp;#x27;t help me &amp;#x27;think&amp;#x27; about and play within them the way relative pitch does. A good ear for relative pitch, and an understanding of harmony go much farther.</text></item><item><author>biggieshellz</author><text>Semi-pro musician for 20+ years here.  You can&amp;#x27;t teach this.  My mom has perfect pitch, and I do not.  I can play a record and move the pitch knob to make it play a bit fast, and it will bother her enough to get up off the couch and change it back.  No matter how much ear training I do, that will never be the case with me.&lt;p&gt;I have very good relative pitch, and a highly trained ear, and that you &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; teach.  If you play me C, I can tell you what the other notes are based on that, and my internal reference for what C is persists for quite a while.  If you play me a song, I can hear what the chords are -- the color (major, minor, dominant, diminished, etc.) and the degree of the scale.  But that is all relative to itself.  If I hear the same song played in C, and then in Db, the two of them will hit me emotionally the same.  Whereas for someone with perfect pitch, I understand it can be different.  And for someone with perfect pitch and synesthesia, I understand it can be different still -- notes and keys are perceived as colors.  And while I can imagine what that might be like, there&amp;#x27;s no way for me to train myself to &lt;i&gt;be&lt;/i&gt; that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toolslive</author><text>There are several recorded cases of people acquiring perfect pitch late in life as a result of getting _tinnitus_. So what they do is learn the frequency of their &amp;#x27;ring&amp;#x27; and map everything from there. I guess some people would call that cheating.</text></comment>