Absolute and Relative Pitch

Absolute Pitch and Relative Pitch

     I was asked to play the National Anthem at a Texas Legends basketball game on my flute on March 5, 2014. So, I did that, and during the third quarter of the game, which I stayed through, a song played at a time out, I realized that I could somewhat accurately sense the notes. I could feel that I had gotten so used to certain vibrations from playing the flute for so long, that I could listen to the note being played, and reference the vibration, and know the note being played. I know this isn't perfect pitch, because I can't tell if a note is in tune or not, but I can tell what note is being played. So I'm going to talk about in this post how perfect pitch, being able to know exactly the note being played, and relative pitch, knowing the exact note with a reference point, work.

     First, I found that perfect pitch is mostly genetic. It being genetic means that it is learned through genes that you obtain at birth. It seems to be fairly rare in people. Early musical training is required for it to develop well, though. G# is a commonly misnamed note for many of those who have absolute pitch.  Perfect pitch dies off with age, though, causing people to lose their ability of absolute pitch naming.

     Having an absolute knowledge that I, myself, have the skill of relative pitch, I can say it isn't as accurate as absolute pitch. (I've never tested for absolute, but you know, it might be possible). If someone with relative pitch hears a note that they know, and then another note is played, they would know every note in the squence from that point on.

     I also found that absolute pitch is nearly impossible to learn as an adult. I know that learning is much more difficult as an adult because the frontal area of the brain has fully developed.

     This is probably one of the most interesting things that I've learned from doing blog posts so far.. Well maybe because I'm a band geek or whatever.. It interests me, though.

Here is an image of absolute pitch test results from a study.

     

Sources

http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/

I had done research on this topic before, memorizing the info, but not sites.