Perfect Pitch, Absolute Pitch, Relative Pitches, and more?

You have all seen it : Some with the ability to sing a perfect A-flat. Or someone who can say that a key of a orchestra is d$ minor.Or a video of someone smashing a bunch of keys on the piano, and with a participate in turn blindly and rapidly naming each of the notes in perfect order. Perfect pitch has been called the innate-ability to recognize a pitch as clearly you as a color. Something that is different at birth in that Brain, than with yours. Let me be clear : There is NOBODY that is born with perfect pitch or absolute pitch. What i mean, is the born ability to label the pitch on any instrument instantly - like you and I would recognize BLUE as BLUE. Shocking , but this is not a real thing. You have been lied to.

Let me explain. You did not know "Blue" until you were taught "Blue" in kindergarten, even though you could aways been about to see ALL colors. You could aways compare colors to be different we did not name any color until taught. Indeed, the definition of a color is a colloquial learned thing. Seeing a defined color as a color (Which blue is the real blue) has dramatically changed over the years and differs by culture. Also, how many named colors there are, differ across the world. Two things are important: 1) There is no scientific basis for a blue, until we defined it to be so. These categorization may have came from painters who went out to the world to reproduce what they saw by using material from the earth itself. All these color categorizations are taught and learned, written about and read about, refined can changed over the years. 2) Some have the ability to recall and compare very subtle different types of blues, by memory alone.

So now to pitches. Just as we can decipher different colors without training, we can decipher pitches at birth. But, the CATEGORIES of the naming is learned and non-stagnant concept. IS there a reason we have A as 440 cycles per second? No. There is no reason that we chose A as 440 accept that is what we general agree to over the years. The note A could be (and has been a little lower) and called Fred.

Just as some folks have refined skills in color identifications and recall (and begin to feel - some blues are different), some have refined skills for pitch recall. Typically this is identified and nurtured at an early age, or because it not deemed important, slips from ones ability. For instance, some kids who have repetitively listened to a lot of Disney songs, may now "know" the pitches of Disney songs. Ask them to sing a "Whole New World" or 'Colors of the wind" and they may sing them exactly in the recalled proper pitch. This skill can later be refined and with basic music-theory education, tied to Pitch Identification, or very complex chord identification.

This is Perfect Pitch or Absolute pitch.

Relative pitch is different.

There is something else. And its not relative pitch. I call it Memory Pitch. If i sing a note, can you sing it back to me? What if you wait 30 seconds. Chances are, you could. what about if i asked you to recite a poem for 10 minutes. Could you then recall it? Probably not. BUT - could you practice this skill -as you would golf swing? You can - do you think you could remember just 1 pitch for hours? Days? Weeks?

I believe you can, as I have. I can remember pitches for a LONG time. I don't see them as colors - but i can remember them for a LONG time - with out drift. I have had many many many years of singing the same song in the same key. Now I can remember a B-Flat, A-flat and F nearly forever (after not singing for 2 years, i could still reproduce those notes). Then I use basic interval music theory skills to find all other pitches to that.

I propose a name for this SKILL. Lets call it Acquired Memory Pitch.