V.com weekend vote: Do you have perfect pitch?
One of our Violinist.com discussions this week - Would you tune to 444? - made me think once again about the topic of perfect pitch.
First, let's define "perfect pitch" (or "absolute pitch") - it's the ability to identify or re-create a given musical note - without the benefit of a reference tone.
That last part is key; if you can identify or re-create a pitch with a reference tone, then you have "relative pitch." Perfect pitch is uncommon in the general population, but more common among musicians. Relative pitch is quite common for musicians.
I do not have perfect pitch, but I do have relative pitch. However, when asked about tuning to 444, I do think it would feel too high, even though I might not be as bothered as a person with perfect pitch would be. Generally, an A ranges from 440 to 442 hertz (hertz being a measure of sound wave vibrations per second), with 443 being considered rather outlandishly high (but the Berlin Phil apparently does tune to 443). I play my fiddle enough to sense if the "A" just feels too low (having to tune to an ancient organ for a church gig, for example) or too high (like 444 would be!).
But alas, it doesn't mean I have perfect pitch. For example I took the Classic FM test and failed! A person with perfect pitch would effortlessly get 100 percent because for that person, hearing the pitch of a doorbell and is as simple as identifying a family member's face: "That's Mom. That's an A."
So for this week, please participate in the vote, and then in the comments share your thoughts on perfect pitch, relative pitch, and whether you think an A=444 would drive you crazy!
You might also like:
- You can play in tune without a chromatic tuner: Ringing tones explained
- Close, But Not in Tune: Creating the Habit of 100 Percent Accurate Intonation
- Seven Creative Ways to Work on Intonation
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Replies
I only got 2/4 on the ClassicFM test, confirming what I knew, that my pitch is relative.
I don't have perfect pitch - in music or in baseball.
Though the test said I‘ve got perfect pitch I‘m really in doubt about that-I think I‘m good at guessing :-)
I'm in the process of developing relative, but perfect is a no go apparently.
I also got 2/4 on the Classic FM test.
I thought that “perfect pitch” meant tossing a viola into a dumpster without hitting the rim! :-D
Ok, seriously, I basically have perfect pitch on a good day, with the right phase of the moon. Ok, close to 95% of the time I do but sometimes if I turn on the radio in the middle of a piece I might think “is that D or D flat?” And this for me goes to the 444 issue. If everyone always tuned to 440 or indeed 444, my batting average would go up further. (Don’t even get me started on 415!)
There are degrees of perfect pitch. The highest rung is when you put your forearm down on a piano and create lots of tone clusters and someone quickly and without hesitation can name each note. That’s very rare.
I voted “perfect pitch,” although I know my relative pitch sometimes takes over. I’m quicker to recognize chords and musical keys - like D Major, g minor, A Major - than I am to identify individual musical tones. To me, it’s like voice recognition or telling colors apart.
I couldn’t find the Classic FM test from the link, so I searched on “test for perfect pitch” and found this one instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFX94ZYHklg
I scored 8/10. The 2/10 I missed were in the lowest octave of the piano and sounded to me like 2 or more notes played at once. Possibly this was the overtone effect or distortion in the digital audio recording.
A=444 wouldn’t drive me crazy, but I don’t like it. I keep my electronic tuner set to 440. I can tolerate 442 if I need to tune that high - it still sounds like A to me; but I don’t like anything higher, and I don’t like going below 440.
The radio tone at the top and bottom of the hour is 440 on some networks. I can accurately anticipate in my mind how it will sound - before it sounds.
During workouts, with about 95% attention on the muscles, I have the remaining 5% on the background music, nailing down the key of each song the best I can. The last time I had a trainer, he knew I could do this and even tested me on it more than once. I was ready for him - with the right answer.
I don't have perfect pitch, but my pianist dad did, and he put put it to use in surprising ways.
Fun fact. When I was a kid, he taught me to sail, and sometimes fog would roll in when we were out on the water. In those days before GPS, one would rely on foghorns to estimate ones position. On the nautical chart, they are indicated by period, for example, the lighthouse at the entrance of L.A. Harbor emits two blasts over a period of 30 seconds. If you hear it nearby that's about where you are.
But it's not that simple. Ships in the fog also use their foghorns, there can be other fixed foghorns nearby (in this case, the one on Point Fermin) and the fog itself reflects and distorts sound in weird ways.
So, with his perfect pitch, my dad would jot down the "note" of each foghorn, such as F-sharp, next to the indication on the chart. That provided extra accuracy in fiinding our position.
Like Anne, I guessed my way to a perfect score, but I don't have reliable pitch identification skills in real life.
I thought that I did not have perfect pitch, however when in france even more disconcerting than them driving on the wrong side of the road and speaking a foreign language was that orchestra tuned to 444
I certainly don't have perfect pitch, only relative pitch. However, I have no trouble identifying exactly a 440 A or 441 etc. But everything else is by comparison to that initial note, the A. i.e. I can work out other pitches with some effort in my head, but not with the ease someone with perfect pitch can, nor instantly in a cluster of notes. And of course playing a piece in A major but telling me it's D major doesn't bother me at all as it would with someone with perfect pitch.
I have relative pitch. BTW, I gather that string quartets often tune sharp for brightness, which would presumably mean A441 to A444. Is this often the case?
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July 13, 2025 at 02:35 AM · I have a degree of relative pitch, but I can sometimes sense "too high/too low"--I think I would feel 444 as high. For me timbre has a lot to do with it. I can often pull a remembered pitch out of thin air-- i.e. I can hear/sing a song or piece in the key it's written in--but I wouldn't be able necessarily to call the names of pitches. (Though sometimes I can tell if it's in a flat or sharp key!)