- Think of a "Middle C" note in your head.
- Then play it on a virtual keyboard here and see if you were right.
Hint: If you don't know what a C is, without checking, try singing the first note from the Beatles song Hey Jude, which happens to be a C note. Hey = C, Jude = A. When you sing the word Jude in tune, your vocal cords are vibrating 220 times per second.
Set an alarm and try it once per hour and keep track of your results. Are you flat? Sharp? All over the place? Can you find some notes and not others?
I'm interested to hear your experiences, so leave a comment.
Elvis sings it in a different key. His version, if you can find it, (deleted by Youtube) still starts with Middle C, but then he jumps down to a different key. Weird.
Xeno's "Hey Jude" Method for Acquired Absolute Pitch
Day 1: After just one day of testing myself at random, here are my results: In about 10 tries today, I was correct about 4 times. I was sharp a few times, flat a few times. Each time I hit it dead on, I was shocked. The last time I tried today, I hit it and there had been a pause of 2 hours with no musical reference in the room, no humming in my head, etc. I really just pulled it out of the blue. Amazing. I'm in a fantastic mood about this discovery.
I could NOT memorize one note alone. I tried that for days once during a car trip and I drove my girlfriend at the time completely nuts. But it seems that two notes, especially from a song you know well, along with random quizzes throughout the day may be the key!
When you are wrong, compare the notes you sang wrong to the right ones. Pay attention to how they feel different.
There is, for me, now a growing subtle but powerful feeling I get when I hit the pitches and I just know for certain that I am singing Hey "C" -- Jude "A", -- Don't "A" -- Make "C" -- it "D" -- bad "G" ... and so on.
Tools: I recorded the first two notes of Hey Jude (using the virtual keyboard above) in the memo pad on my cell phone. This way I can test myself at any time during the day.
I'd like to build a little hand held device that quizzes me on notes and records my progress. That would make an awesome game for kids. It should show on a graph the notes you actually hit each time you tried and the amount of time since the last attempt.
Hey, if I can learn this, does that mean I AM one of those 1 in 10,000 people like Jason Mraz who genetically just has absolute pitch? Or does it just mean I cheated the system? The answer would be important because if it is not genetic, my method would work for many people. If it is genetic, this path I'm on would only benefit some people.
46 comments:
[...] Perfect (absolute) pitch test: Can you sing a C note out of the blue without a reference? [...]
I can't sing a middle C note out of the blue, but I can sing a B and an E (and control which octave) out of the blue. I think this is because I tend to sing songs that start with B or E. I don't think my case is genetic. A year ago, I wouldn't dream of being capable of perfect pitch of any kind.
Hope it helps. :)
I CAN sing an F sharp out of the blue :D HAHA. such a horrible note to start with
I can sing any note out of the blue practically any time, problem is im quite young so i cant control it...it tends to turn its self on and off, which can be a nuisance :/
^^
i can sing an a out of the blue because thats the note i tune to everyday in orchestra!!
I can sing a C out of the blue anytime, anywhere. Same with every other note, although it takes a bit longer for some flats (e.g. A flat)
For those who can do it, (and are correct if you check yourself against a reference tone), how did you pick up this ability?
I've been able to do it since I started learning music, so I guess I was born with it. If it makes a difference, I'm Chinese and they say our tonal languages make a difference.
but it gets better with training. I have good hearing so sure, I can sing a C an A out anytime, but the db ab is not easy..then again if I checked it up with my piano/instrument I could probably remember it and sing it out loud. I haven´t checked for over a year.
then again its sort of a matter of taste, because what it you don´t like to spontaneasly sing "hey jude" with a middle C but with a different key? I tend to do that, higher.
ONe important remark is that a middle C is really hard to hit in "hey jude" if you´re more of a soprano, or a girl. girls and boys often have different vibrato. I have to alter my voice if I would want to sing heyjude in middle c. but for paul it´s a comfy and natural tone.
so I tend to sing hey jude with an e i think.
the other really working tip is to learn the c-scale and memorize it, which you do when playing instruments. repeat doremifasolatido etc
I have had perfect pitch since I was very little. I thought that my brother was retarded because he couldn't guess notes on the piano, and he was 3 years older! haha
I can go beyond that though and notate chords and clusters of pitches with relative ease. That part probably comes from the fact that I was playing piano at a very early age.
I think that anybody can develop it. It is very similar to colors: I know that a color is blue, but a really good artist can tell what shade of blue it is, like how much green, how much white or black, etc. I think that everybody notices the difference in pitch when it is an extreme distance, like more than an octave...it's just that as you are required to remember a pitch down to the half-step, you need more training. It just takes a lot of paying attention to the notes; that Hey Jude technique is a good one!
Yep, I have perfect pitch so it doesn't matter what note it is. I have had many people test this on the spot and i have never been off. It's not bragging, believe me. It's actually annoying if you're in a chorus or an orchestra. With so many people singing or playing there are always bad notes. And I hear every one of them. People start to get pissed if you tell them and no one wants to sit next to you lol.
I was born with it and so was my dad.
Hi DeeDee,
Thanks, this inspires me to get back to trying to learn perfect pitch. I can usually sing a C and then I quickly can find A, F, then from there down a 1/2 step to E, then A, D, G, B, E for tuning a guitar.... but I don't instantly recognize any pitches yet when I hear them.
I can sing all pitches most of the time but can't really control it. I don't think what I've got is genetic - had a lot of practise very early and have a good sense of tuning.
[...] I’ve posted about perfect pitch previously: correcting wrong learned notes, paul mccartney making girls scream, absolute pitch test. [...]
it's genetic in my family. my grandfather has it. but ofcourse then again, i did say the notes in my head along to ode to joy in c major a LOT as a kid when i played it on piano so maybe i picked it up that way.that is if the phenomena isn't genetic, which i recon it is.
that's learning relative pitch, man
I can get all of the notes in hey jude and can sing a C, but whenever someone asks me what a note is, I can't get it. Is there any way to improve this?
i have perfect pitch but i dont think i was born with it. maybe its because i have been playing the piano since i was 3. i actually only officially knew that i had perfect pitch around 2 years ago when i was practicing my grade 8 aural with my teacher.
I'm sure it's a time-saver for you, but I have to say I'm not real fond of the computerized voice. ,
I've discussed this with a friend of mine who has perfect pitch, and we both think that the "colors" argument is invalid. Sure, a good artist can find a distinction between shades of colors, but it is also true that everyone's vision is different and what I call "red" another person may call something different. The same thing can apply to pitch. One person with perfect pitch's A could equal 440 but another perfect pitch possesor's could be 442; just like certain orchestra's tune sharp. As far as acquiring it, there is someone at my school who spends a lot of money on that and he has been doing it for a year and a half and he has been unsuccessful. I can sing a Bb almost flawlessly, which i attribute to the fact I play trombone and have tuned to it for 8 years, however I'm not very successful if there is some other music playing, especially if it's in another key. I've heard this as a semi-common thing among instrumentalists. However, I know of people who have transcribed ridiculous John Coltrane solo's that have really good pitch, but not perfect pitch, so that provides a strong counter. I believe it to be a human anomaly that is different for everyone because that is just the way some things are. That conclusion can be frustrating for some who want answers (particularly those who want to be able to obtain it, but those people will have to cope.
If you have absolute (or perfect) pitch, then you can hit ANY note, not MOST. Also, those programs are not worth anyone's money, they are scams.
This, so far, sad to say, matches my experience. With practice rehearsing the note during the day, I can find a C most of the time. At times I pick a C# as a C, at times I pick a B as a C. But when other music is on in another key, or when I sing for or five other notes for a while, I lose the C, or it shifts down to a B and I don't realize my error.
It still feels that I could internalize the notes with practice, but it seems like a long road. I wonder if self hypnosis would help....
I did learn to sing the notes of a guitar as if they were a song and now, given a C, I can hit C down to A, down to F, down to E, then drop down an octave to the low E, then tune my guitar E A D G B E, no problem.
I think it's definitely something that is learned early on, though perhaps some people are more genetically inclined to it than others (like any other ability). I started playing the piano at about 8, and have a decent ability to name notes based on the C scale, but not sharps/flats. I think that's because when I started learning piano, I associated a 'character' with each note - C was in the middle, balanced, solid, followed by G which was also a pretty 'safe' note. Then came E and A (somewhere between 'safe' and 'scary'!) and finally D, F and B, all seriously dodgy, unbalanced notes.
I can't name sharps or flats very well, because I didn't ever associate any particular feeling with them (except perhaps that they were all uniformly even more scary than the scariest of the scary notes!)
Yes, because it is the tritone to c major. So sorry! but good job with it anyways!
I found out a few years ago that I had perfect pitch and ever since, people have been bugging me (how do you memorize the pitches?) I don't know. it just happened.
It was so funny to me, because I have any "C" that you could ask for from C1-C7 memorized, but only because I can sing them! To me, it's weird, because if someone asks me to identify a note for them, then I'll simply go ahead and listen to the note and then compare it in my head to another note which I had memorized (they are: C, D, B-flat, A, and E-flat), but it can take me up to 4 seconds just to give you the note. So, it's more pitch-memorization to me (however, it's long term, seeing as I haven't been wrong on a middle C in...well...ever).
WagnerLover, awesome. Was there a time when you memorized the notes you do know, and if so, how did you do it?
I think it's genetic too
I have it, so does my dad, his mum, and her dad did, though now we're back seeral generations.
I also agree it's possible to teach yourself very good relative pitch too
Did you have any special early training or music lessons before age 7?
I am of the opinion that at least part of AP can be learned. The only thing I have to prove this, though is my own experience. I have had passive AP for as long as I can remember, but I managed to learn the active component. This was done through a lot of sight-singing and solfege (specifically fixed-do). It must be taken into consideration, though that I was less than ten when this was done.
Lorelei
I believe absolute pitch is genetic but I think you can achieve something similar to it with just loads of practice. I wasn't born with it but occasionally I can sense and know what key a song I hear is in and then instantly play it in the same key on the piano. I've also noticed that for some reason it tends to be pieces in the keys of C, D, A, Eb and Bb. These are also the keys that I improvise in alot so I think I recognise them because I've become so familiar with them.
I've always been able to pick out middle C on the piano blindfold, so suspected I may have latent perfect pitch. HOWEVER, when only the white keys are used I now think the semitone between E and F gives me a subconconcious clue to make C stand out.
So over the past week I've tried to teach myself absolute pitch. I've used "Absolute Pitch" software, carried around a C tuning fork and listened to a recording I made playing all the Cs on the piano in turn. Using the Absolute Pitch software I can easily pick out every time "C" is played - although I stuggle a bit with the higher octaves. I can now identify middle C from a random set of piano notes are played (including the black keys) 95% of the time.
I can also whistle C quite reliably - but I'm not ALWAYS correct. Does this mean I don't have absolute pitch? Well I don't think so, because I think most who comment on this forget that in addition to having the genetic ability, you also need to LEARN what the notes sound like before you can identify them ie even someone 'born' with absolute pitch (whatever that means) would still need to learn the arbitrary letters we have given them AND the slightly less arbitrary way the Western world has carved up the octave into 12 equal spacings (OK so it's a logarithmic progression).
This is the hard part, because unlike anything else you might learn, there is no way to DESCRIBE a note accurately to yourself - other than vaguest high-low terms. By definition, there is NO reference point and NO way of checking if you are correct before you test it. Even whistling well-known tunes I can sometimes get sharp or flat. Again, does this mean I don't have perfect pitch and again I think not necessarily since the number of times I get it right is well beyond what you would expect if I only had good relative pitch.
Most descriptions also tend to ingnore that it must surely be much easier to identify a piano note (ie picking 1 from 12 - repeated for the octaves) than pick a precise frequency from mid air to produce that note close enough to be considered correct??
I would like to hear the successes and tips of others
Before anyone corrects me, this should have read...
"the semitone between E and F gives me a subconconcious clue to make C stand out" should have read "the semitones between E and F and between B and C gives me subconconcious clues to make C stand out"
I think a singer has a natural note they hit when they open their mouth and just blurt out, "La la la laaaaaa ..." In my case, it's always "F" below middle-c, without fail, every single time. Having a genetic propensity to hitting perfect pitch probably does not start with the mathematical equation on a keyboard, although with training, it may appear to be just that.
Danny, interesting theory! I'll on try recording the first note that comes to me using my iPhone over the next few days. When I get 100 la la la's, I'll make a chart and see if you are right.
Good points and I've had similar thoughts. Seems there must be some brain wiring that does the correct pattern recognition of very similar vibration rates to allow distinguishing of different tones, irrespective of octave.
Apologies - several instances of 'hear' I seem to have typed as 'here' - I know better than that but somehow that doesn't translate into my typing!
Interesting, thanks. Got me inspired to get back to my own experiments, which I'd given up on.
Well...I don't know. It's just something that comes very naturally to me. I actually don't know the exact point at which I developed this skill, since I have never in my life sung out of tune. When I was six, for example, I would sing opera in the soprano range, and it would always be in the same key. It didn't register that it was special until I heard other people start to sing. I learned how to remember a sound, I guess.
You could always just try to memorize C...then there's no more problems and you can just go up the scale when needed to get your note.
The worst is when they THINK they're right, and you just have to go "Noooo...you're a major second sharp buddy, that was an F, not an Eb". People really do hate us with perfect pitch, don't they? What is itjealousy? I've learned to ignore how bad people sing, and just concentrate on my part. The only time I'll comment is when I seriously want to murder someone for screwing up everytime (e.g. I had to tell this girl off for singing a solo in C when the song was in D-flat...*shudders*).
I'm thirteen and I just found out I have perfect pitch two days ago...but I'm not very good lol I need to hone myself to recognize notes faster.
Awesome Ted, Make good use of your gift. I wish I had it!
Yes i can sing a C out of the blue without a reference. Yes I do have Perfect(Absolute) Pitch. I have had Perfect Pith my whole life. The awesome part is that i am 14 years old.
Yes I can, but I do have perfect pitch. I'm seventeen and I didn't discover it, my mother did when I was five and could reliably sing a middle C on command. I don't really count it as a gift, just something I can do. Recently I was studying a piece in a music lesson which was at baroque pitch, so the notes on the recording did not match the notes on the manuscript - totally screwed with my brain. My own personal take on it is simply that it's a memory thing. From the first time I learnt the names of notes I matched pitches to them and they just stuck. But I also have a near-photographic memory, so I'm not sure how helpful that theory is to other people.
If it helps, my aunt has perfect pitch, and my little brother too. But nobody else in my immediate family.
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