by Heidi Labron

Created on: April 22, 2008

Having perfect pitch is not a talent, it is something you are born with, without a doubt. Many people confuse "relative" pitch with "perfect" pitch, but we can look at the differences here to determine whether perfect pitch is innate or learned.

Perfect pitch is often referred to as the ability to produce a universally accepted note or pitch without any point of reference first. To explain this in more detail, someone with perfect pitch should be able to produce a note (to sing or hum, for example) that is simply named, and not played. There should be no note given beforehand, no music played whatsoever for reference, and the note that the person sings should be exactly right when a musical source such as a piano, plays that particular note. Keep in mind, this is very difficult, and not many people can produce a note on demand.

Many people think that this idea of perfect pitch can be learned, that through years of musical study or just from tuning your instrument, that one should be able to learn the exact pitch of notes, just through repetition. In some ways, they are correct. A musician, after years of practice and study, will most likely be able to produce a pitch that is very close to the one being asked, but more often than not, the exact sound will be slightly off. Yes, they may also be able to tell when a note is not tuned correctly, but that is not perfect pitch at all, but rather just a part of normal ear training and sound recognition relative to other notes.

What a lot of people mistake for perfect pitch is actually something called relative pitch. Relative pitch is what many talented musicians understand and can easily produce. Either music is played in a certain key, or a single note played and the person is asked then to produce another, unrelated note. This is easy to do with a frame of reference as simple as one note played first. (Whether they will actually produce that note in pitch is up to the skills of the musician. Will they be sharp or flat? Or will they find the note exactly?)

People who are born with both perfect pitch and relative pitch skills are not gifted or otherwise....they are just born to understand and hear music in a way that most of the world just will not. It is not a talent, but rather just something they can do, like breathing. No one thinks you have a talent if you can clap louder than everyone else. Perfect pitch is just something certain people can do.

Can you learn perfect pitch? Having taught music and been a musician for many years, I know that you cannot teach this particular skill. But, you certainly can enhance and encourage the art of listening and trying to stay on key exactly. Relative pitch is easier to teach and it is this form of listening that many musicians, whether professional or amateur, would do well to try to achieve.

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