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As a professional classical musician, I come across people with "perfect" pitch all the time. I'm supposed to have it myself, but 20 years of professional playing, performing, rehearsing and general banter with colleagues have led me to the following conclusion.

There's no such thing.

I've reached this belief through several instances of differences of pitch opinion over the years.

For example, our modern keyboard is something called "equal tempered". Prior to the introduction of equal temperament, the keyboard scale was divided on acoustic, and not "equal" mathematical principles. Therefore, the further you got from playing in the "home" key - C, for example - the less tuneful, and pleasant to listen to, the piece would be. Bach wrote a set of 48 preludes and fugues to demonstrate the newly tuned keyboard.

But where am I going with this?

Quite simply, every note on the keyboard is out of tune. None of them are "true" pitches.

Therefore, there's no such thing as perfect pitch.

Another example demonstrates this - I work with a famous professional session choir on a regular basis, and more than one of our number has "perfect pitch". We frequently "read" very difficult music on little or no rehearsal, so this is almost a job requirement. However, there are so many disagreements on whose "pitch" is the most "perfect", and when a German singer joined a year or so back, whose "pitch centre" was A=448Hz, and not the more usual UK A=440Hz, the cat landed squarely on all four feet right amongst the pigeons. Another ex-choral scholar has "perfect pitch" almost a semitone flat (no doubt from doing all those church anthems in Baroque pitch...), which jars with my "perfect pitch" honed in youth orchestras where the instruments were mostly Japanese manufactured and naturally tuned "sharp". The arguments waste valuable rehearsal time, and the pub and curry house won't stay open indefinitely.

So what is "perfect pitch", then?

Quite simply, it's very, very good relative pitch. To test relative pitch, go to your piano, and play a note over and over. Go away and do something else, and periodically sing that note back to yourself, then go back and test it. How close are you? If after some hours you're still bang on the note without going back for a "refresher", then for most purposes, you'd be considered to have perfect pitch.

So back to the original question - can perfect pitch be taught? Well, yes, if you have a good ear and reasonable pitch memory. My "perfect pitch" is learned, and this is how I did it. On my bedside table is an A=440Hz tuning fork. Every night before I go to sleep, I play myself an "A" several times over. It took a month to have reliable "perfect pitch", although I still do it now to make sure it doesn't go away from me, as I actually don't think my basic pitch memory is that great.

So whether your a music major or a keen amateur musician, give it a go, and see how long it takes you to reliably learn "perfect pitch".

Learn more about this author, The Dormouse.
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