@Instrument Zoo I will....and I'm not even a singer, I'm a rapper / drummer / producer, but I decided I need to train my singing voice to be at least 80% as nice as my rap voice
@@proverbalizer I think rappers have a lot to benefit from singing. Rap is or at least can be very melodious too. If you not only have a nice rhythm but a nice melody to it too and just generally a nice sound/tone, that is just eargasmic. Strangely though I actually know a rapper who has a great singing voice and lovely pronunciation and a lovely tone/voce color but I most often hate his flow haha so it's to a high degree very subjective I guess haha.
As a musician, I have played enough music to develop tinnitus with a constant pitch that I can use as a reference to find other notes. Tbh its a pro strat
@@SoniaSharma-fm8ym i have tinnitus as result of a brain injury. all it's told me is that for a few years i was boosting around 5khz to the point of ear piercing to the rest of my friends xD
LOL yeah i don't think Rick has any inkling how awesome he really is 😁👌like a freak of nature right? LOL it's only logical his son _would_ have perfect pitch you see haha and how amazing is that. AWESOME!!!!!! This is one of the best videos on the topic i think I'll find anywhere so why look lol Thank you Rick... How many ways can you say all good things to you! And thank you!!! Yeah... Heart and soul... Let the angels roll like thunder moving mountains for you and yours. Amein.
I'm just going to put this out here as a precautionary statement. Some kids don't care about being musicians no matter how early you start them. If they have an ability, definitely HELP them grow it. Don't become toxic about it. Perfect pitch is being presented as a natural ability here, with the insinuation that not all people even have the possibility of developing it -even as children. That being said, many people without this, do very well in music, even fantastic and make a living doing it and loving it. It's about as important as being able to see gold color in the Ring Nebula. Only a very small number of people can, and only children. As you age you lose sensitivity in the sensors of the eyes. Don't forget to let your children visit scads of good astronomy sessions before they're 10!
I don't know why everyone's worried about perfect pitch. It doesn't inherently make you a better musician, composer, songwriter or person. If your songs aren't good, and you develop perfect pitch, your songs still aren't good. Now you know what key it's in though.
It doesn't hurt. Half the point of learning your music theory is so that you can identify mechanics of music quickly, thus giving you more time to get those ephemeral musical ideas out before they fade away like smoke in the wind. Likewise, perfect pitch is another "shortcut" that can help you to beat the devil before he steals what inspiration has gifted you.
@sebastian berg I agree with you. it really helps when you start to compose complex music. when you consider all the modes applied consistently, u can just actually compose it in your head very clearly/precisely. it's a similar thing with hyper realism painters to film color grading professionals, there are only few people who can identify specific hues/colors as accurate as pixels, could actually memorize the digital codes of these colors. there's absolutely no more mix and match or trial and error process. they just compose the colors in their heads and apply the color accurately.
I think people need to understand that many trained musicians can imitate perfect pitch without actually having absolute pitch. Having notes fixed in your mind means you’re still relying on relative pitch. Absolute pitch means that you don’t have to think about it.
exactly, that's what i just replied to the comment above yours. all these adults saying "i developed perfect pitch recently" just memorized the frequencies and honed their relative pitch, which you _can_ develop as an adult. they seem to be confusing it with perfect pitch because the difference is a bit unclear
@@cinnomixwh0t do you mean memorized frequencies and honed relative pitch. 😅 That means still no absolute pitcha according to you. Hate to disappoint you but it actually what is pitch all about. And no human is not a metal detector to determine 1hz frequencies
@@cinnomix Another thing that irks me to no end is people claiming they have synesthesia, but the way they describe it makes ZERO sense. I've read comments where people explained their synesthesia as "certain genres having colors, so drum & bass is purple." I immediately thought that was the stupidest thing I've ever heard because you can't line up genres with colors. The reason synesthesia works for notes is because the frequency of sound waves determine the pitch... like how the frequency of light waves determine color. THAT'S how it works and THAT'S how the correlations are made. Not "this song feels purple." That's hippie dippie third eye BS and literally tells you nothing about the music.
I don't have to think about about yeah to this guy I don't have it because I'm still learning how to play guitar.... Honestly it seems like he is con flating someone being non verbal and someone who does not speak English... If you can instaly understand music you have absulte pitch nomatter what funny noises you need to make to convince someone you do.
I started playing bass at 52, now 55. I'm not worried about perfect pitch, I'm just worried about trying to remember what I studied yesterday. learning something new at this age is tough but a passion. as far as hearing, I can still hear my wife yelling at me. all good.
You don't have to worry about remembering what you studied yesterday. The bit of your brain that needs it will have stored it. Like your wife's yell: I don't guess you had to study very hard to recognize that. I'm 61 and still love learning new things. If I have to do it a bit slower than 30 years ago, so what? In the end we'll all be dead and know nothing, but that's true for the young smarty-pants who make fun of us, too. Bass guitar? Contrabasso? Some other thing? Doesn't matter, just enjoy, my young friend!
people think if only they had perfect pitch they would be creative musical genius. Really, they should just start practicing their instrument and/or writing songs
I have perfect pitch and it helps but most of success comes from practice; while the perfect pitch is a neat trick it's only part of the overall scheme
Well of course, but that's only if we're talking about performance I believe (although arguable for string players). For composition though, AP does seem like an advantage.
Haha, I have PP & I don't feel like a creative genius. If I was, I'd be cranking out songs left & right. But as an orchestral player, I'm more used to playing other people's music. Being a creative artist to me is a combo of musical & artistic ability, as well as good songwriting & creativity if you're a song writer. I've also delved into that part of music making part of my life, but it's more challenging for me.
The father of a friend had perfect pitch and he hated it. One day when my friend was rehearsing w/ his band in the backyard, his father stormed all the way from the house, and yelled at the guitar player: "can't you just tune that damn B string right!? Jesus it's driving me nuts!" He left and they all looked at each other in disbelief. The guitar player got the tuner w/out a word, and it turns out the B string was a little flat for about 10%. The father coudl tell ALL THE WAY into the freaking house!! In the MIX!!! I'll take my unperfect pitch, thanks.
Does he play the guitar also :))? I have relative pitch myself and i can tell if a string is out of tune in relation to the other strings, or a refrence string. And I do frequently rage over a single slighty wrong string
Sometimes it obvious to even me, an amature. Like an (A), (C), (E) or (G). I could see how that would be annoying. :D Especially when people are terrible at singing. That's when it's really obvious. :D
First of all, LMAO! Secondly, on a much more serious note, I am an adult and I am in the process of developing Perfect Pitch. I've been using David Lucas Burge's Perfect Pitch Ear Training Supercourse. My abilities are not yet fully developed and I will probably never be as good as the child in this video (the kid is clearly a prodigy), but I'm getting better all the time.
@@burnmyuncle141 No, I meant actual Perfect Pitch. Again, I'm not nearly as fast as that kid, but I can hear a single note played on a piano or a guitar and tell you what it is without needing a reference note or having to compare it to other notes in my mind. BTW, the ability to identify a chord (as that child was doing at one point) has more to do with Relative Pitch than with Perfect Pitch. When he was identifying the name of the individual notes in the chord, he was using Perfect Pitch. When he was identifying the chord itself, he was using Relative Pitch. The two can complement each other, but they are distinctly different skills.
Interesting you say this. In my art classes I was always the one who could 'see' all the various colours...I could easily differentiate. I can look at a painting and in my head break it apart into the colour wheel. I can consciously see all the colours in one primary spectrum while sort of dulling out the others. I was never very good at learning the names of anything, including the names of musical notes, but I played piano from an early age. I sight read sheet music and while I know the basic names of the notes I was never able to learn the more complex language of musical notation. That is one reason I didn't pursue music. But in painting, after the secondary colours there really aren't set names for the mixes. At that point accomplished artists will know the names manufacturers give their tube paints, which will reference the subtle characteristics of that colour. This would be like a guitarist describing the difference between the same note played on different guitars. But notation for colour mixing is not only unnecessary it is ridiculous. Leave that to science.
@@seanarthur8392 would be interesting if you were a digital designer and were and some point be able to ascribe a perfect RGB value to any pixel color you see XD Would be a handy tool. no need for color picker apps
The beautiful thing about Art is how you use the colours and mix them I know no one who just knows all the colours names and is better than someone who doesn't but it will help knowing exactly the colour name you need so I guess that's good
I developed perfect pitch at 85 years old after a near death experience and I am also a rocket scientist and a professional luthier, so you're obviously wrong Mr. Beato.
Im an adult and I developed perfect pitch, bud. I can always name the note within 12 tries almost instantaneously. You will probably dismiss that as guessing, but I know what Im talking about. Sincerely, Easily offended, highly skilled, internet keyboard warrior.
My dog is harmonizing with the vacuum cleaner, the ambulance and the car alarm. He loves E minor chord. He also leaves the room when I don't play properly :D
I also harmonised with the vacuum cleaner! :D I used to see (hear) which other notes harmonised and which ones didn't, and I was so interested in the disharmonious (is that a word?) notes! I had forgotten about that, so thank you for jolting my memory! :)
first thing i said when he was reading it was "that's a logic fallacy" aka appeal to authority. Unless the "surgeon" is posting links to studies he needs to remove the whole neurosurgeon bullshit.
As a music teacher I get a lot of adults asking me about perfect pitch. Often many people confuse it with relative pitch. When I explain that, with practice, they can achieve a good enough ear to transcribe music and play what they hear they are usually satisfied. Perfect pitch is, as they say, overrated, at least for what most people want.
Salsa Blanca I would love it, over relative pitch, in order to not ever have to buy sheet music ever again. relative pitch wouldn't really help with more than 1 note being played at a time- you can't recognize an Abmb5 with relative pitch, only stuff like a D note going up to A.
That's not true... I don't have perfect pitch but if I hear an Abm7b5 chord, I'll instantly recognize it as a half diminished chord and maybe even the exact voicing I just won't know what key it's in unless I have a reference pitch. You don't need perfect pitch to play by ear although I'm sure it would make it easier
Kyle Windjack - same here. I was not born with a good ear. Most of the music I heard growing up with 60s rock my parents listened to - nothing complex. I had to train my ear myself. After graduating music collage, and years of playing and practice, I could hear extensions in chords. I still make mistakes with what I think I hear. I definitely don't have PP.
Dear sir. Only twice in my 66 year long life have I been fortunate enough to hear as thorough and reasoned an explanation as the one that you have presented here, and that was by a nephew of a Nobel price winning physicist, who explained quarks, which, like your presentation, left no questions unanswered. Your brilliant presentation is absolutely worthy of a TED talk. My hats off to you, Sir. BTW, I'm a composer, and I do not have PP.
Well, it's like having a handfull of close friends saying "hi" at the same time. You will know who's there because you are very familiar with their voices. At least it's like that for me.
I count to four or six in my mind, I don't know notes but I can play em, if you hear a chord just sound it out in your mind for example, Doo Doo do da. Then piece it together
Dylan’s understanding of chords, pitches, tones, etc is truly amazing. Hearing him identify and sing every note in a huge jumble of random notes is just awesome. That must be an incredible skill to possess, assuming the person who has it is actually interested in creating music.
"Dylan’s understanding of chords, pitches, tones, etc is truly amazing." No offense, but this is the same fundamental lack of understanding as the folks thinking they can learn perfect pitch at 30 years old. Perfect Pitch isn't an understanding, & it isn't a skill - it's an ability used unconsciously. You can't learn it because it's not something learned, it's a fundamental perception most people don't have post 6 years of age.
@@dividebyzero9530 You can't listen to a song if it's in a different key to the 1st version you heard, or you die. You can't sing or hum a song if you think it's in the wrong key, you either automatically know what it is, or if you haven't heard it in a while or have heard it only once or twice, you have to sit there and work out what key it is, or you die. If someone else sings without knowing the key, you die. And by die I mean extreme discomfort and pain.
Some of the greatest pianists and guitarists in the world never had perfect pitch. For heaven's sake Chuck Berry, or Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton or David Gilmour or Brian May or Slash or Kurt Cobain never had it and yet they had a great ear for music and created some of the most influential pieces of music in history...it's important to note that there's a lot of people out there with perfect pitch with perfect pitch yet it's only the chosen few that constitute the musical greats because they may be really good at naming notes and chords but have no specific flair at using them to make good music...what really matters is how you think about music and what you want your music to sound like, something that gives your music your individuality, and that my friend is what all the above legends have executed successfully and with breathtaking finesse
How do you know they got perfect pitch? You are guessing! Having or not having perfect pitch is irrelevant to whether or not one is a good musician. Your comment is ridiculous!
Now I know why my 10-year old son only knows 4 notes in perfect pitch after I put him to sleep with Justin Bieber's and Taylor Swift's songs when he was a baby..
When I was back in uni studying music, I knew a few fellas having perfect pitch. They hated it. Claiming that most music sounded out of tune to them. Im quite happy with my average relative pitch :-)
Bepi Visintainer - Yes. I sang in a choir with a woman who had perfect pitch, and she was always wincing. She could always tell when we had dropped in pitch (we weren't the best choir), and when anybody hit a sour note. I'm not sure why she put up with us!
@@sourisvoleur4854 I guess bad music is better than no music? Reading the other comments in this thread helps to explain why it's better to try and enjoy music as it is than make an effort trying to improve the music others make. It's really good to see your comments and remember that every blessing can be a curse, and also, while some people enjoy kicking others, it isn't necessary, the unintentionally inflicted pain probably outweighs what the assholes imagine they would like to inflict.
Fascinating! I wish my parents had known this. However there is one complication which you don't mention, which I think can have an effect on this process. If I understand you correctly, the exposure must (mainly) be of music in equal temperament, at a'=440. Thus, microtonal music and music of (say) other cultures not using our traditional western scale could interfere with this learning process. One also has to be careful about early recordings, as the speed was not completely standardized and many old jazz and even classical recordings sound well off-pitch when played at a standard 78 RPM. Also, as a harpsichordist and early music specialist, I hear and play music at different pitch levels. An "a" can be anywhere from 392 hz to 460 hz depending on the instrument, not counting "quint" pitch instruments. This also doesn't take into consideration unequal temperaments frequently used on keyboard instruments other than the modern piano. And a further complication, I probably did my own kids a musical disservice: In our home (both parents musicians), I might play a Glenn Gould or Wanda Landowska recording of the Italian Concerto, both at 440 with equal temperament, then go to my own harpsichord (tuned at 392, a whole step below modern pitch) and play the same work, which my kids now hear in Eb major in modified meantone! That kills the "Star Wars" pitch notion. To make it worse, other recordings I might play using antique instruments might be at 415, 430, other pitch levels. The famous Schnitger organ at Zwolle sounds a minor third above modern pitch! Another factor, although probably not a factor as it happens much later--when kids start to play French horn, trumpet, clarinet, or sax in grade school, the notes no longer match the pitches they produce. This took me a while to overcome when I started playing horn in 4th grade. Sorry this got so long-winded, but I thought this might be some useful food for thought.
Interesting points, but once a kid has developed a 12 tone perfect pitch microtones will also be easily identifiable as flattened or sharpened variants of those 12 tones. Regarding having a different tuning, I guess that might play more of a role, who knows!
I don't think Rick Beato directly said that music not tuned to the Western system (12 tone equal temperament) would interfere in the way that you described. For me personally, I would guess that interference is probably minimal, given the success of kids in bilingual homes. But I also think it's probably safer to be consistent in tuning.
having perfect pitch myself, i think what could be stressed more is the encouragement (and spreading of the information) that its actually not that hard to develop a relative pitch that with enough training becomes almost indistinguishable from perfect pitch in a musicians daily life. yes, you need ONE reference note at the beginning of the session, but thats it. you basically say this in your video too, but i think it could have been placed more prominently. ah well, monday quarterback brabbling on my part, pardon :) one more thing though: a phenomenon that is not talked about as often is the rather sad process of slowly losing perfect pitch with age. i initially thought of this as an urban myth (or a bedtime spook story of sorts ;), but this has now happened to 100% (!) of the people i know that have perfect pitch and are in their mid 40s or higher. the science behind it seems to suggest that this is because of the ever changing shape of our ears and the varying angles in which the soundwaves hit them as a result. im starting to experience it myself too, im now a fraction of a tone off. my "insticts" that used to be infallable have become a bit insecure, and at least for the first note that i hear, i need a moment to remind myself that my hearing is slightly detuned and i need to imagine the tone a bit deeper to be correct. it confuses the s**t out of me, sadly. i grew up with 440hz tuning, and it feels wrong now. i have an old piano in the studio that "hangs at 434", and when i sit there, hooray, im back to having infallable perfect pitch. now, for colleagues of mine, it has become a lot more extreme. and this is where *relative* pitch becomes a new meaning and importance. when youve been a pro musician your entire life, you usually have a very developed relative pitch, and that is what you then need to rely on in support of your used-to-be-perfect pitch. my father (also used to have PP) at age 80 is now a full halftone off. so the process in his brain is "i hear a tone, i transpose it in my mind one halfstep up, thats the note". which ironically makes it easier for him that it is for me with my micro detuning ;) anyway, you need the security that comes with trained relative pitch (especially maximum confidence with intervals, which can be learned as adult) because if you *used* to have perfect pitch, unlike somebody who just always worked with relative pitch, you have this internal conflict for every new note that you hear where your ex-PP says "that of course is a G" while your RP will say "this is a fifth over the B that you just heard, so its of course an f sharp". bottom line: relative pitch is super important even for people with perfect pitch. the good news is that, if you have perfect pitch, during the many many many years where your perfect pitch is fully intact, if you do play music, you unconsciously train relative pitch all the time as well, because of your constant awareness of all the notes you hear - awareness of their interval relationship to each other is then just a mere statistical process that your brain does. and its, thankfully, something you dont lose. like, my perfect pitch is now slightly f***ed because my "calibration is off" - but since intervals are independant of whether you hear 440 or 434 or whatever, you could still play me the weirdest intervals for a dozen years nonstop and i would still be able to identify all of them without ever making a mistake. so, that part of the "color palette feel" of hearing thankfully doesnt go away. rant over. sorry :)
wow, thanks a lot :) btw, we have talked before... actually, now that i think of it, i kind of fear that i have brought this up in the past already. so if im repeating myself, sorry for that :)
Your idea about the the changing shapes of the ears as we age are extremely important and a few years ago gave rise to a theory of mine that perhaps aged persons with less than perfect hearing do not actually need a hearing aid, but a plastic surgeon to alter the shape of their ears. I have tried altering my ear shapes a number of times and have actually been able to clearly hear many sounds that I can't hear normally. I would like to do more research on this idea.
zorglub667 That happened to me: I didn't know why people thought what I could do as a child was a big deal (from the ages of 6 until about 12) and could think up tunes in my head and write them on manuscript more easily than I could write. As I got older and puberty kicked in, I did the typical 'rebellious teen' stuff and moved away from music. Now the only thing that I can do musically is wince when something is sharp or flat: I used to play 5 instruments and now I can't even read music anymore...
spot on my friend...........I woudnt say i have perfect pitch BUT as you say about calibrating references im sure your aboulutly correct!......Im a musician and was around my grandfathers piano playing as a baby and carried that on into my own musical world........My point is that my piano (that was my grandads) is not set to correct pitch E.G. middle C is actually down to G but slightly sharp too.........BUT saying this i used to hear songs or films and climb onto the stool and find these songs with no problem at all.....this is why my grandfather used to love having me around when he played........we never talked about perfect pitch and we never discused the tuning of the piano and he actually taught me about middle C but obviously it was never true C at 440 HZ.......we in England also have a news program called " News at 10" and it samples big ben the bell out of the clocktower and that bell is not a true E its slightly sharp as i recall so I guess what im saying is there are so many other "Micro pitches" under sharps and flats that have been in the world i live in that it must be impossible to attain a perfect pitch when all these variables are considered.......would you not agree?......... i hope you both reply......thankyou
I started taking music lessons at 7 but didn't really start studying music until I was about 20, and then again at about 55. Even though I became movement impaired from a head injury in my late teens that prevents me from handling most instruments well, when I eventually found a instrument I could handle in my 50s, I was able to improv some very cool stuff. This video kind of explains how a movement impaired person could still have better than average improv ability. I love this YT channel!
@@mattbortz10 There's some really sophisticated rap out there. Really good stuff. It is a legit art form. And like all art forms, there's bound to be a lot of bad stuff and some really great stuff. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is a waste of someone else's time. There were countless bad to mediocre classical composers back in the day, but we remember the few good ones. There were only a few good ones compared to how many composers there were. Same thing nowadays. 75 years from now, we'll probably only be listening to the relevant/good quality stuff.
Hj O i don’t doubt that rap can be more sophisticated ,but i do feel most rap genres is more centered towards the lyrics instead of chords, melodies, etc, like how jazz is dear.
@@Sean-mc2wn Calling some one you've never met "dear" is extremely patronizing especially towards a woman. Not cool. Also, I'm a professional jazz pianist and am aware of this. The mansplaining is patronizing and insulting. To address my earlier comment, my point was that there's nothing wrong with doing something completely different even if you're not using one of your talents because rap is just as legit as jazz. Please stop being a jerk to people :-/
Hj O sorry, but the word “dear” has been a part of my day to day vocabulary for quite a long time. i use it for both girls and boys. also i dont mean to undermine rap as a genre, i respect it, i really do, but seeing the current state of rap, at least what the pop scene has shown. the skills taught by a jazz professional would be quite useless. unless someway he could do something to incorporate both genres, then i see no wrong with that. and as i said, i don’t doubt that there is a fusion genre of rap and jazz, but things like those are rarely popularized. and i don’t mean to patronize or disrespect in anyway
@@craigcasey8587 that is true! its working for me after doing a music Theory Course. It opens up a lot of avenues for Rick`s Son and that is good.Good on you Rick .
@James Javanovich yes i guess so, coz you will go to Softwares like Sibeliues and many others to do that Job for you.There are many ways to get to that point,but i love the fact that Nick set his son up for life. Love dat.
After daddy has bragged about him so much that the kid is full of unachievable expectations and a disappointment to dad. Maybe the kid just wants to play baseball. Dads a blowhard.
I saw Adam Neely talk about this phenomenon, and in all seriousness, it works for some people and doesn't for others. The issue is that the internal "pitch" from tinnitus isn't always consistent from day to day or even throughout the day, so people who have this ability have to recalibrate their ear all the time.
This man is right. I know, because I have a childhood friend that possessed this phenomenon. We grew up going to the same church and playing/singing music together. It was in my teen years that I remember my friend being able to tell me what note I was playing, humming, whistling...or if I was somewhere between the natural and the semitone. Yes I always checked on the piano. It's truly phenomenal.
I think the problem is that people put the word "perfect" in there... because now it sounds like that there is something you're always going to miss out on if you don't already have it.
@@CityKanin You sound like the type of person that shies away from their own dreams and then shits on all those with the ambition and grit to push forward.
Pitch if not as important as rhythm. If a song has a note that is not in perfect pitch it will not be noticed by most people but if it's not in perfect rhythm everyone will notice it
@@thedevilsadvocate5210 There is lots of music that is deliberately not in perfect rhythm. In reality both aspects are equally important. A strong melodic and harmonic structure will work over most, if not any, rhythm. While a strong rhythm will work for most, if not all, sets of notes. If you can combine both you've got a perfect piece of music. The key is creating a structure in at least one of the spaces and then making repeated references to it.
When I studied music formally, a really great music theory teacher once told us that perfect pitch was "tonal memory", no more, no less. You either have it or you don't. Interestingly, if you were taught on a piano that was a quarter tone flat, you memorized those tones as you remembered them, whether they were tuned to A 440 or one quarter tone flat or sharp of that. I had a tuning fork given to me that was used in tuning European pianos back in the day, and I always remembered that A as being flat of 440 cps. Having tuned thousands of pianos in my lifetime, I can tell you that having absolute pitch does not automatically make you a great piano tuner. The skill of piano tuning involves a process of learning simultaneous "beat" presences that are caused by various strings' partials, or overtones. You don't have to have perfect pitch in order to be a fine piano tuner. The public just makes ludicrous assumptions without having known the actual truth behind being an excellent piano tuner.
Maybe, think about it this way. Granted this would be my relative pitch at work but, it explains “tonal memory”. When I change strings on my guitar, I do them all at once so I can clean with the strings off and check the neck and other things, when I put the new strings on, I get all six pretty close in tension and I’ll think of a song that I know either starts on E,A, or D and use what I’m hearing inside my head as a reference note. I’ll tune the appropriate string to my internal reference note, then tune the rest of the strings using that one as reference. These three strings I can do that with very accurate results consistently the G&B not as accurately, close. Now I do it by remembering songs that I know start on those notes and I’ve heard a million times like “come as you are” by Nirvana, starts on a D. It’s an octave lower than the fourth string but I can still use that memory to tune it. E=Welcome Home by Metallica A=Back in Black by AC/DC. Lol don’t quote me on that. But it’s definitely an AC/DC song. I would never try to set the intonation that way, but it amuses people who watch me do it. With fresh, bright sounding strings, it’s easy because of the hours I’ve put in playing an instrument that was tuned to a tuner as opposed to just tuned to itself. It makes a difference I’m certain.
I learned mostly on flat or out of tune pianos, too. Interesting. That's probably why I can identify notes at least in what I think is relative pitch... if I hear a C, my mind goes to the first note in Billy Joel's "Prelude / Angry Young Man" and I will mentally hum it if that makes sense, to kind of run a checksum against that piece or another C, like the many many pieces I knew that were in C. A, well that's the root note of the first chord, the first note, etc, in same artists's "You May Be Right" in fact I just started humming an A, looked up A note on RUclips and it matched perfectly or within a cent from what I could hear. Is that perfect pitch or something maybe close to it? I also am bothered a lot when playing a bass guitar when I cannot get the same intonation as the bass player, considering it's some $150 Squier bass and usually to remedy it I'm not adjusting the truss rod and intonation adjustments on the saddles, but still. It makes me angry when it's just a little off. Other bassists I've asked about this have said they just don't hear the difference...
Officer Gregory Stevens Some instruments (I’m speaking guitars here, that’s where my experience is)just can’t be perfectly intonated. Every piece of wood is unique. Some people are unaware of any adjustments other than the action. To top it off, and I’d be curious as to the kid in the video’s perception of this, is the fact that we tune, in the modern age, using an equal-temperament or justified tuning, meaning all notes are equal distances apart. 100 cents. But, the true notes aren’t quite set up that way. If you use an older style tuning, such as pathagorean, your chords sound beautiful and harmonious in one area, but fall out of harmony when moved up or down in pitch. Basically, as you change frequencies, the fact that you can’t possibly double different numbers and expect them to align relative to one another is evident. For example, you have A=440, well A also equals 55, 110, 220, 880, 1760 etc, each octave that you go up. Since your other notes vibrate at different frequencies when they are in “tune” they double and triple at separate rates. The further you get away from the initial frequency, the more apparent this is to one’s ear. Using tunings other than “just” tunings leads to being out of tune when multiple instruments are being played, and also when several octaves are being covered. It only takes two full octaves. If you go from G up 24 half steps you’ll end up somewhere between F# and G if you’re not equally tempered. So, imagine a piano, a double bass, and a violin, can sound beautiful when in tune with a well tuned piano, but remove the piano and then add a Yamaha, or Casio keyboard synthesizer, and until you retune the other two instruments, it’s going to sound bad.
I have been blessed with perfect pitch. I'm 70 with tinnitus and can still pull it off. What's cool is I have an 18-year-old grandson who has it and is also so blessed. I got him into guitar, so now we have fun jamming together. I've played guitar and piano since I was 11 years old and added blues harmonica about 20 years ago. Music is a blast
How would you distinguish between someone who actually learned it then, if you're going to bring forth this argument? It's easy to rationalize about something once you've come to a decision about what's true beforehand.
@@BillyViBritannia that's fairly easy. If they learned it, then they can document their progress over the course of their learning journey. Which means there evidence of them starting out without perfect and progressively screwing up less and less until they have the performance of someone with perfect pitch. If someone discovered they had Perfect pitch then with little context everything it musical notes they would demonstrate perfect pitch but it might seem like to them they learned it cuz they learned the names of the notes.
@@aliasjon8320 there is actually evidence of such a thing but people name it "true pitch" and they say it's different from perfect pitch because you associate the pith with another familiar sound first. However that's what Rick's son was doing when he said "thats the superman note" so I'm not sure why people feel the need to differentiate those skills. It's neither a game changing skill nor impossible to learn.
Yup. I've got Pitch Perfect for two notes because those were my starting note in the Cmajor scale for the instruments I played as a kid. I can give you a perfect Bflat and F because I played Trumpet and French Horn as a kid. I can guess the other notes with great accuracy because of piano training, but couldn't, right off the top of my head, sing you any other note without taking some time to think first.
I must’ve developed my AP by luck of the draw. When I was eighteen months old, I developed benign relandic epilepsy, and got the rare form which caused learning delays. I couldn’t understand language, so I developed musical abilities instead. I would sing wordless melodies perfectly, and when I started piano at seven years old, I’d been asking for lessons for two years before that. I finally got caught up in language with everyone else when I was five, but I still don’t understand some subtle language nuances. I physically can’t learn other languages. Lastly, when I was nine, my technique teacher did the note-naming tests and I got it right every time. My epilepsy went after puberty, but I still have perfect pitch. It doesn’t go away even if I don’t use it. I can’t remember not having it. I wasn’t exactly born with it, but my brain went whack so I acquired it.
James, that's something to ponder, indeed. Maybe you would have loved music any way. What you went through served to sharpen the skills that allow you to accel at it. I have a sort of reverse story. I've loved music all my life. I started learning to play bass at age 15. This was 1985. Everybody wanted to be in a band. I wanted to write and play music. Famous rockstar would have been nice, but that wasn't my goal. I played with friends, with tapes, radio and eventually CDs. I would sit and play while watching TV. I loved it. I seriously considered going to a big city to pursue it further. Unfortunately, there were other things in store for me. I had a stroke in March of '92 at the age of 21, and lost control of my right side. Couldn't play any more. I play some now, but the use of my right hand is still limited. I also have trouble remembering things. Like how to play songs. I can't seem to retain things anymore. I guess you're brain trauma, made you the musician you are, while mine kept me from being the musician I wanted to be. God, fate, blind chance, the cosmos maintaining balance, whatever you may, or may not subscribe to the brain is super amazing and so fragile, at the same time. Play on for both of us.
How do you KNOW you weren't born with it, though? Most people who have perfect pitch don't know that they have it until the ages of roughly three to six; it all depends on when and whether the people around you notice that you have it or not (obviously, musically inclined parents will notice it earlier than those who aren't). Most kids will never be aware that they can or cannot name various notes on command before that age. You say that you discovered your command of absolute pitch at seven. This is a bit on the later side, but if the people around you weren't especially musically inclined, it's completely reasonable that no one would have noticed it until your piano teacher did when you started lessons. But just because it was discovered slightly later doesn't mean it was acquired later than birth. The fact is, unless someone sat down with you BEFORE you developed epilepsy at 18 months, and tested you to see if you had perfect pitch then - which would be a rare scenario indeed - you wouldn't know if you had it at that age or not. Indeed, I'm not sure how one would even diagnose it at so young an age, since most 18-month-olds (a) don't have the musical reference knowledge to be able to name the various notes, and (b) wouldn't have the language skills to be able to discuss the subject. You'd basically have to be in some sort of neuropsychology clinical study to know that at all at 18 months. I'm sure I've had perfect pitch since birth, but it wasn't discovered until I was four or five, when I started taking piano lessons. I'm not saying you don't have perfect pitch; I believe you probably do, if you can name notes instantly and/or produce them at will. I'm just questioning HOW you know you didn't have it since birth. :-) Cheers!
I have been watching your youtube channel for a while and wanted to thank you for all the amazing information you have given me. I do hope you don't mind me sharing some of your videos with my LinkedIn network. I always mention full credit to Rick Beato and his team.
As a follow up to this video, I think it would be useful if you could find people with perfect pitch and people with great relative pitch and give them to aural tests like you did to Dylan.
Rick, let's settle it here. I have a degree in audio engineering. I have been in the music business for over 40 years. I have taught more musicians than you have even heard of. I have worked with perfect pitch people and those who believe they have achieved it as adults. Here's is a very experienced conclusion: tones can be memorized, perfect pitch cannot. You are correct. Thank you for trying to tell others the truth about perfect pitch.
I completely agree with you. I think it’s how you’re born, I think it’s how your ear to brain neurons are constructed at birth and there’s no replicating that with practice
Check out an app called Clear Pitch, work with it for a week and come back to me. It may be that I (like most musicians) already had some fragmented form of absolute pitch, but never being a music reader I didn't have strong pitch label associations. Honestly, it's amazing how I can now recognise and recall pitches after only a few days with it. I'm in no way affiliated with the app or its developer.
@@noisyneil I am very familiar with that app and my students have others like it. I, too, recognize pitches after some practice years ago (before apps, LOL) but that is as Rick notes in his video: learned, not inherited perfect pitch as his son has. I can almost name notes as fast as Dylan but that took a lot of practice over years. It's just natural for him.
@@snowolvproductions9476 Incredible that you have developed the skill to that level! That, and my own recent experience puts paid to the titular claim of this video, doesn't it. Clearly it can be developed, as with anything, but the younger you start the more ingrained it is. I haven't ever heard Rick say Dylan was born with pitch recognition, but perhaps he was. I would assume it's akin to face recognition; a very hard thing to quantify, but we all (with rare exceptions) have it. I would suppose that pitch-label association isn't prioritised in our early development and we subsequently don't ordinarily reinforce those links as a matter of course. Regardless, it's a fascinating subject. My own modest goal is to be able to confidently recall individual pitches and identify key centres; identifying individual pitches in a flurry of notes isn't likely to be within my reach... although you managed it and I'd love to know how you developed the skill, if you wouldn't mind sharing. Is it a similar method to the app?
I dont understand why people get stuck on having perfect pitch... music is fun, expressing your emotions... just compose and play your favorite music... and dont worry about having perfect pitch.
Unfortunately if you want to progress seriously in music it becomes more and more a necessity. Actually I don't have not only perfect pitch but a well trained ears and it's becoming a huge problem to my musical growth.
I think there was a video from Rick that made a list of who is known for having it and not among great composers/jazz players. Anyway what I meant is "not only perfect pitch but a well trained ears (neither)".
Not sure where you've got that impression, but not having perfect pitch doesn't have any meaning regarding your progressions in music at all. Just take John Williams, who was mentioned in this video, for example: he doesn't have perfect pitch (as he stated himself, some time ago). Would you say he did not seriously progress as a musician/composer?
The fact that John Williams mentioned it means at least he's aware of the importance of the subject. As for why it's a problem: it's a problem when I'm taking an orchestral score and try to read/"hear" it in mind (that's much more important than you can expect if you're dealing/studying this kind of music), it's a problem when you're improvising and what you expect to hear is not what you actually hear (as a guitarist I found I rely much more on muscular memory and "usual patterns" than on actual accurate melodic decisions, that is probably less possible for a brass player, for instance) and even more important it's a huge difficulty when you're trying to imagine music outside of the usual tonal realm (something that Williams does a lot). It's not the same imagining a melody in C major versus Bbaugmented/Aaugmented triads (that have an amazing sound over a G bass...).
I wish I had this video when my piano teacher at 12 was trying to train me into perfect pitch. Shoulda happened when I was 2 not 12. He graded my lessons, and I got an F. My dad grounded me until I made 4 As in a row (two months). Can you imagine being 12 and grounded because it’s impossible to have this thing you don’t have.
if he means "baby" as in actual baby i'd have to object. As long as ones brain is stiill in early development it should be possible.... and even still possible for adults with something liek Autism. Our brains stop developing around 22...... after that ur fucked.
I don't have it.. I've met one person.. Maybe 2 who have perfect pitch.. And I always chuckle a little when I hear people say they have it.. And I'm always eager to test it.. Because it's not until you meet someone who does have it, do you truly understand what it is.. Good video.. 👍
it's unbelievable that some people out there believe you can learn perfect pitch.. this is non-sense...you either have it or you don't. You can learn and practice and become a very, very good at recognizing relative pitch and with extreme dedication, you can memorize the notes...but once you stop practicing you will forget them... on the other hand. someone that was born with this aptitude can never forget as it is part of them.
Perfect pitch is a highly specialized, but practically useless skill. Love that little kid, Dylan, but people are not filling arenas to watch a person categorize sonic frequencies into alphabets. Relative pitch is what is valuable as musician- that is being able to play in tune with what you hear regardless of if the tuning is standard, non-standard, out of tune etc. If you can play by ear, play what you hear in your head, play in key and on rhythm with other musicians you can have a successful career in music. Great musicians don't need perfect pitch. Perfect pitch does not impress listeners, because they don't know if the musicians they are listen to have perfect pitch, unless someone conducts a test and tells them. They do know however if they have relative pitch, if someone is singing or playing off key.
Just hit up my epileptic homie for the sweet Valproate hook up - I’m boutta be a musical genius. Catch me by the freeway diagnosing the pitch of car horns.
Perfect pitch is over-valued. For music it's the relation of pitches, how they insinuate and challenge a tonal narrative, is what matters. relative pitch is where it's at, and anyone can learn it.
Scott Joplin had perfect pitch. He wrote his music away from a piano without any difficulty. Between that and tuning instruments (and correcting performers) is the best use you can find for it. However listening to music can be aggressive and abrasive when one feels the forks of off-key stabbing one's eardrums into submission. Not sure if it's worth it.
Itemtotem I’ve got AP and non-12-equal pitches don’t bother me. Without xenharmonic ear training, it’s very easy for the ear to make a 12-edo-like framework out of what you’re hearing.
but you got to admit, playing a piece of music after hearing it (or by memory) is a really nice thing. If you have perfect pitch, the relation of the pitches is natrual to you or not?
Fantastic (and true) observations Rick. I am a musician here in the UK who studied and worked at EMI electronics in the 1960's. As a young scientist I worked with the team that made the first brain scanner - I was the young engineer that made many of the components used in 'The EMI scanner' - a simple machine by modern standards. I also started playing guitar at the age of seven and although I have very good relative pitch I couldn't claim to have perfect pitch per se. However, my son William (now 27) does have it and I agree with your observations as to why babies do develop this skill . I started teaching William to sing when he was a baby - he also listened to a lot of jazz, classical and progressive rock from the cradle ( not that he had a choice in that!). He now is a professional musician and plays most instruments (stringed), drums and percussion. He also has a perfect tempo clock in his head - again from learning so early I believe. Between us we run a recording studio, build guitars and train and teach players to build, repair and play... Absolutely love your no BS youtube channel. Regards, Robbie
I don't have perfect pitch and I'm 51. I'm OK with that. I can hear notes and fish them out on the guitar. Now that I know that adults can never learn perfect pitch then I'm glad I didn't waste my time trying. I can use that time making music in Ableton Live.
Who needs perfect pitch? Relative-pitch is way more useful. Perfect pitch is useful only as a parlour-trick. In face you're lucky if you *don't* have it - all it does is preoccupy and annoy the sufferer when a choir is singing in perfect harmony but you can't help but notice that 'A' is not 440. As a jazz musician I can play any song in any key and know all the I, II, V, VI, VII 11ths 13ths, flat-5ths chord-changes, and so on, instantaneously. No need to read a chart. I can hear any tune a couple of times and play it in any key. It's ALL relative.
Well said; I agree entirely. I have great relative pitch and it's been very useful to me in all of my musical endeavours. Having said that, I do like it when I pitch a note within, say, a semitone, without any reference point.
I see where you're getting. Perfect pitch is sometimes a curse for me, and it's true that it's not as flawless as the kid in the video (seriously that kid is insane). I would say that having good relative pitch is as good as having perfect pitch, though, because the only difference between a flawless relative pitch and a perfect pitch is the amount of experience that was required in order to develop relative pitch. My siblings have pretty good relative pitch, and sometimes I like to show off a little by playing a song by ear. That's one of the good sides of having perfect pitch; once you have it at a young age you're already years ahead of someone with relative pitch.
It seems well-suited for the vocalist who sings an intro *a capella,* then has a band join him for the rest of the song. However, it might ruin a barbershop quartet singer who needs to sing in a different mode for each key. *That* takes a vocalist with perfect relative pitch and understands the harmonics and intervals of a capella chorus singing.
Dude, in the professional world, perfect pitch is incredibly useful. The guys I work with who have perfect pitch are always getting asked “what key is that” on the fly.
What an fascinating video. I had perfect pitch - as good as Dylan - until I was in my early 50s. Then it started drifting -around a semitone flat so if I hear an 'A' I think its A#, and it's become way less 'instant' probably because I have to mentally transpose everything now. Interesting about Bach. My favourite music when I was 2-3 was a record my parents had of the Brandenburg concertos. I started piano lessons at just 5, but only because I used to play it all the time way before that. I got my first violin for my sixth birthday. People are right to say it's a bit of a party trick and a mixed blessing though. It meant I couldn't play the guitar with a capo because it sounded completely confusing - eg. I'd play a G chord and it would come out E-flat or something. Music written for brass instruments is sometimes written transposed, with C instead of B-flat and that used to be confusing too. But there are big benefits too of course - you can fluently write down any music you hear, instantly analyse chords and harmonies, and I was the 'human pitch pipe' when I was a chorister at Winchester cathedral
Hi Rick, Great video! I think my case might be a little interesting to you though. I started piano when I was 8, but my mom played "high information music" from since before I was born, and I think my particular case is a bit weird. After hearing a song, I remember it in its original key, and I can sing it in its original key. In fact, when I was a kid I would get really annoyed when people didn't sing songs in the correct key. I still kind of do, actually. I can name any pitch I hear, in isolation, but I can't do it in context. It's not instantaneous though. Something about multiple notes confuses me. However, if I think about it for a little bit, I'll know the pitch. If you ask me to sing a note, I can. I also have a hard time naming notes. I focused all of my training efforts on relative pitch, and combined with what I could already do does the job, but yeah... So it seems like it's not a binary thing - maybe for some people, some parts of "absolute pitch" are retained into adulthood on various levels? Either way, there's much more important things for a musician to focus on than perfect pitch in my opinion. Would love to hear your thoughts!
Hey, I am a linguist too. Yes, I was impressed by the critical period discussion but, 2000 phonemes? Does that sound right to you? Sounds like a lot to me! Where did Rick get that figure from?
Hey i developed perfect pitch. I'm completely tone deaf so every note sounds the same to me. I just gave that note a name and now i can accurately name every note based off my own perception of it. Check and mate.
I don't have relative or perfect pitch, however people wrongly think I have perfect pitch. I can correctly identify notes until my brain gets "fried" from doing so. It's not instantaneous at all, it takes me a few good seconds with some notes more than others. However, I don't refer back to another note and base it off of intervals. I just have the pitches memorized. I think it's called "true pitch" or something like that. Also, my intonation is bad with some notes. That's also a dead giveaway.
I think it's called near-absolute pitch or sth like that. I heard of it in a different video... It's a more profound form of relative pitch as far as I know
@@megan8765 Either Adam Neely or Rick explained it somewhere. It's exactly what you said, you have memorized pitches which you can recall. That's the closest we can get to absolute pitch.
Does anyone else remember the advertisement for perfect pitch in all the guitar magazines of the 80s & early 90s? It was the goofiest looking thing. Rick your son is amazing, you taught him well, I love your videos.
I have perfect pitch and I don't understand why it is such a big deal....it's very annoying that everyone wants to test me like Rick did to the kid in this video. For me it's like someone pointing to an everyday object and asking me to name them. Imagine yourself saying "that's a car" "that's a toothbrush" "that's a door" and people gush at you. About 1/4 of my classmates in college (I was a music major) have perfect pitch and none of us find ourselves special, nor we think we are better musician than our colleagues are, just because we have perfect pitch. We still have to work hard to master our instruments. I am a clarinet major and I had a very hard time getting used to the fact that clarinet is a B-flat instrument. As a beginner I always fingered D when my teacher asked me to play C. I did this because I have perfect pitch. So having perfect pitch is not always so great. The only time I feel blessed by perfect pitch is when my students want to learn a pop song and I could jot down the notes right away for them to read. That's all. So stop wasting your time trying to acquire this "ability" and/or arguing with people whether it is possible to develop perfect pitch as an adult or even a child. It's more important that you have a good sense of relative pitch, which is totally trainable for sure!
I understand where you’re coming from, but when you have a gift that 1/10,000 ppl have (way less among English speakers) you have to understand why people find it so special.
but everyone can point out an object, and a very select few people can tell a pitch right off the bat. it's unique. i see what you mean, it's not all great for you personally but to a lot of us it's so cool. :)
You dont know the ability you have just recently i realize how beneficial it would be to develop this gift. It is like you are not born a body builder you have to lift weights the same thing with this gift you have to explore it and go beyond naming notes, like Dealan he actually can name all the notes within a chord he is beyond triads and inversions, but i bet he had to develop it, i am not talking about developing naming notes or acquiring perfect pitch i am talking about naming all the notes of complex chord beyond the factory gift God gave Dealyan. Developing the already acquired perfect pitch.
People who claim they developed Perfect Pitch as an adult -- actually had perfect pitch as a child, but were not exposed to music training. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if many people with natural (childhood) perfect pitch never, ever, ever developed it, and its simply there in the back of their head. For those very few, very lucky people, training could UNLOCK & formalize a skill their baby-brain acquired years ago, assuming they haven't been totally isolated from music. But it WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE to formalize in adults who did not already develop this unrefined-ability as a baby.
This claim is not falsifiable since if the perfect pitch was not discovered until adulthood there would be no way to know when it first appeared. So taking all cases where people first showed perfect pitch as adults, as evidence that they must have had it since childhood is really a self-fulfilling delusion.
It is possible for anyone to learn perfect pitch without any musical experience at any age. The reason why Rick Beato claims that only babies can develop perfect pitch is because babies cannot form complex thoughts. As we grow older, more and more life events happen around us and our brains record, process, and store these events as thoughts. Some thoughts we keep, and some we forget. What Rick did with his child was consistently drill music into child's head as a baby. As a baby, his child embodied those sounds because babies don't have to worry about life situations meaning they don't need to store thoughts. I doubt anyone can remember anything as a baby, because we cannot store thoughts as babies. His child adapted to music pitches as a baby. Why? Because babies can't think. They eat and sleep. That's it. As humans beings, we are evolutionary calibrated to adapt to surroundings and as we get older we develop a conscience to solve these problems for survival rather than depend on others. As we tend to get older, the conscience begins to develop and gets in the way of our "potential" because it limits our ability to focus specifically on one thing. We have over 50,000 thoughts per day and we start to form thoughts at the age of one. Babies have infinite potential at the infant stage because they have no thoughts. However, through meditation it is possible to clear thoughts, and develop the ability to gain perfect pitch. For example, Buddha was able to let go of all thoughts (if you believe in the concept of religion) and achieved enlightenment through meditation. Basically, let go of thinking. Feel the sounds of music with not only your mind, but also the body and don't think. It's really, really, REALLY hard to do this because we have adapted to thinking. We thrive on it. Like a drug. But if a person can achieve this, not only can we develop perfect pitch, but we can also create new pitches. The universe is still a mystery, and we have been able to disprove theories throughout history and time again and again. Don't ever let anyone tell you that something is impossible.
That sounds more like new age mysticism woo woo than anything else. Just because we want to believe that anyone can develop perfect pitch doesn't make it so. I have more confidence in the scientists who talk about brain plasticity and windows of opportunity than religious wishful thinking.
Rick, I'm writing this, because I want to encourage everybody that perfect pitch is not unachievable. But, saying that, because I belive - and I'm saying believing , not knowing, that perfect pitch, well, is a gift that anyone has. But .... [break] I was playing on keyboards since very early age. Since that time, it was natural to me, in the same way that we can name colors, to name a 'C' or an 'F#', whatever. Fast forward. At some point, I was teaching music theory at a college, and, to my surprise, I noticed that a lot of people were capable of singing (not playing) "Jump" in C, or whatever song, in the proper key. Without knowning, just unconsciosly. I believe, that this ability is given to anyone, but, very few peoply learn to name the pitches like we name the colors. When I watch you and your son, it's really impressive to see the easiness of naming the keys you hit. And, even more, to name the various parts of a complex chord, or a cluster. And I learned, that more people were able to do "perfect pitch" skills that actually performed on instruments that had an well defined association between instrument and pitch. Like, you're playing a piano, or a violin. I mean, not like playing a sax, with a couple of different tunings. Long story short, I believe, this is a perception we all have, but only few had the chance to keep it, keeping the association between sound and naming. While I was teaching music theory, I was deeply impressed by the ability of performing jazz players to be able to tell a e.g. Blab9b13 Chord in a millisecond. They also learned to associate a sound impression with an abstract word. As a musician with perfect pitch, it took me ages to tell the single notes, and to deduce the chord. But, this was like them understanding the picture while I was still struggling to tell the colors. For me, I learned, we all have that gift, it's just that it probably isn't supported that well, or it might not be required that much. So, to anybody desiring to have perfect pitch, I argue that you do have it. It's about listening to it. Which might be a fascinating journey. But you can do it.
Yes, you're right. Few years ago, I watched this video and believed he was speaking the truth. But now after a basic training I know everyone can learn perfect pitch. Infact, developing perfect pitch is mandatory for every student to be accepted in music colleges in my country. Those students just need to be training for several months before the entry exam. Don't know why this man still got many views. Guess not much people has music knowledge.
I have a guitar tuner. That is all I need. I have perfect recognition of when things are not in pitch and that is all a musician needs. So I guess I have perfect non-pitch.
@@Parrish_Muhoberac Also as noted very few people have perfect pitch. So for the vast majority this is not a problem and very slight minor pitch problems have no effect on our enjoyment and experience of music.
Perfect pitch is VERY helpful since you can hear a song and immediately know what's being played, which is a really powerful tool to have. Hearing transposed versions is actually really fun because it's like listening to a song from a new perspective. The biggest downside of having Perfect Pitch is not being able to play with a capo on guitar, because if you have a capo on the 3rd fret for example, and you want to play a G chord, you need to make an E finger shape, but your brain pushes you to make a G shape which will result in a Bb.
Definitely works for reading, I did it for my son but I couldn't do perfect pitch at the same time. I don't know how you could do it for maths though . . .
Great Video Rick! I believe you are right. I have wondered about this for many years. i had a friend when I was younger named Larry. He had absolute pitch. It always fascinated me. We were in high school together. He could literally play just about any instrument you could hand him. I was a beginner on guitar when he and I hung out back then. We started a band together. For some reason, he wanted to play drums. He was an incredible drummer, but I couldn't wrap my head around why he would want to play drums, when he had perfect pitch. Unfortunately he passed away several years ago, and I have tried for at least 20 years to teach myself perfect pitch with no success at all. However, trying to acquire perfect pitch DID help me to obtain a very good relative pitch. I can name most notes pretty quick, but I do need a middle C for reference...I felt like a failure for several years, but this video made me feel a lot better about myself...lol Thank you sir!
I don't know what I LOVE more Dylan's ability, your thorough explanation of AP and how one gets it, or all of the emotionally unstable people with fragile egos in the comments section freaking out that you told them they can't develop this one specific ability as an adult.
Perfect pitch is actually quite common, or rather I should say the ABILITY to have it, sadly you'll have to rely on your parents to teach it to you which is why it's rare lol
@@RobinEvans1234 He's actually said it in a video before that the perfect pitch Gene is consistent throughout half the population, but the actual skill needs to be developed vigilantly. Which is something very few parents do as most people aren't musicians or they aren't very heavily involved in it, futhermore, most parents won't force music onto their child, that is the cause of its rarity :)
@@alexloveday6430 I was actually listening to the vid as I was reading the comments, and it got to that bit strait after I dropped my inquiry, so I deleted my redundant inquiry and wished someone had played a lot more classical and jazz music at me when I was young.
@@RobinEvans1234 same wish tbh, but relative pitch is still more important and functions almost as fast depending on much you develop it ;) so don't give up!
The confusion is between describing different levels of perfect pitch. As an adult I learnt to identify notes but that's because I am able to recreate notes inside my head and match to them. I haven't experienced anything where its as trivial as recognising colours.
meanwhile I Have perfect pitch but I don't know all the funny names... And this guy c saying I don't have it becuase of that and I can't learn is just infurating.
Don't know where this homophobia stems from Nor do I care. I believe Rock's point was simply to give an example of perfect pitch , which his son just happens to posses. It could have been anyone's son. Fortunately for Rick his son his son truly posses We should celebrate this and be happy for Rick. However, I sense insecurity on the part some regarding of which tells me if not others that they are themselves insecure with, first the their own selves, and secondly perhaps, just perhaps) their own a plack of perfect pitch. It also reveals for those making such comment, lack of forsite. If these people spent less time acting as a bitches and calling out others as bitches, they they would much happier for it they might achieve relative pitch and be grateful for that. PS. They might also find they have more friends and gigs. I don't care who they are they are only harm themselves ( personally, professionally, and their own possibility to acheive relative pitch. Again, I say iit dissent matter,you are, what you like to think of yourselves. This attitude in the end doesn't serve you or others.
Oliver Sacks discusses perfect pitch at length in Musicophila. He mentions a number of cases where a brain injury (the planum temporale is especially related to perfect pitch) affected pp in different ways, in one case shifting the individual's pp by 1 semitone! And although some individuals have gained (or lost) great musical abilities after a brain injury, he never mentions this ever resulting in acquiring perfect pitch. HOWEVER, in a different chapter on Musical Savants he describes someone with autism who became a musical savant at 16 (a late age for this) including the ability to reproduce complex chords, instantly reproduce melodies, AND perfect pitch!
i think mushrooms have the potential to rewire a brain and could be used to develop perfect pitch given the perfect training exercises and prior musical training. It would have to be through color/number Synesthesia and developing strong emotional,color, and shape relationships to notes. I think our brains already do subconscious statistical analysis of all data and it could be very possible to rewrite ur brain. The most important takeaway of this comment: it is important to remember that nothing is impossible just because someone has a lot of experience and has no evidence of something being possible. Yes, this youtuber is really good at music, but I dont believe anyone who says something is impossible. Especially something as simple as perfect pitch. Yes it is possible. No it has not been proven to this point.
I would be my bottom dollar that taking psychedelics (LSD in particular; possibly marijuana) would replicate the baby pitch phenomenon. Neurogenesis. Neural plasticity. That’s all LSD is about. New perspectives. By the way. When the kid identifies the pitch and Dad says yes.... I thought according to Dad that it is impossible for him to have perfect pitch as an adult. So how can he affirm that the kid was correct? As much is I think Rick is awesome, I do think this video is a showcase of trying to show how his kid is better than everyone else. No disrespect here the kid is very gifted.
Does having perfect pitch guarantee that you can write a timeless song? No. Does it guarantee that you can create a symphonic masterpiece? No. Does it give you an amazing singing voice? No. Perfect pitch is amazing but it doesn't guarantee anything other than being able to hear musical notes and keys instantaneously. So don't worry if you are an adult who doesn't have perfect pitch. It really doesn't matter.
That was my question. It’s interesting, but what is the benefit? Ability to play a piece right after hearing it? Still need to learn an instrument, right?
If someone with "perfect pitch" ability hears a 440 Hz tone and identifies it as "A", what happens if they're presented with 446Hz, or 453Hz or 459Hz? At what point does "A" become "A#"?
dhy5342 lol, I just did that with my voice.... I sang an A, then bended it one pitch at a time a few times until I got to Bb. My cat was napping, she picked herself up & came over purring.... So in my case, I get a happy kitty ☺️. She's used to music & sits in my lap purring when I practice my flute. To answer the question, once A goes over 450, it starts to sound more like a Bb to me.
Depends on what the musician is used to, and their inherent talent. Jacob Collier, being a few levels beyond perfect pitch, can also arbitrarily divide an interval into equal parts and sing them. (Search his name and "microtones"). But Aimee Nolte, who also has perfect pitch, is blown away by that ability and is pretty much reduced to the level of the rest of us when trying to hit the notes between the notes.
Jacob Collier's ability is pretty astounding, he cann't just hear what note something is, he can tell you fairly accuratly what the frequency itself is, and he can hear that a note is an A sharpened by about 40% of a semitone etc.. So the answer is, it depends on the musician. It's the same as colour - when does red become orange in a gradient?
somehow you hear them both. I'd say like, that is one heck of a Bb-ish "A" sound. Here's something that will blow your mind. Sometimes the relativeness is completely different than the note. I've transferred bad cassettes to CD and would be like, "why's that major 3rd (in A Major) sound like a D? That's totally a third it's totally in relationship to A, but I'm hearing a D. Evidently the bad A rounded to an A but the bad C# was closer to the D than the A was to the Bb. I don't know.
I taught myself perfect pitch in my late teens. I started with David Burge’s course, but after the first lesson I thought it was hogwash and I went my own way. Which was essentially what Dylan did. Each pitch was a prominent piece of a favorite song. For awhile it was tough to get the song associations out of head because they distracted me from the subject song. But over time it became automatic. Each pitch had its own color (similar to the circle of 5ths on a color wheel), its own emotion, and its own voice. For example “A” sounded like “Ack!” and sounded like “Broooom”. I would hear the squeak of a door and know it was C. Had I stuck with it I would certainly still have it. But life happened, and no time to be serious with music when you’re raising kids and working 10 hour days. There was a time I tried to improve, using some internet app where you could pick out chord notes. I got up to being successful with triads, which is better than I was as a teen. But then I got super busy again. And the app doesn’t exist anymore or I’d try it again now. So I think the reason adults typically can’t learn things like this, isn’t because they physically can’t. It’s because of too many other responsibilities and no time for the required freedom of mind.
I've had Dylan-style perfect pitch my whole life and, as a pipe organist, I find it more of a hinderance than an asset. Imagine playing historic pipe organs in Europe that are tuned differently. If you press a G, you might hear an F, F#, G, G#, or even an A or Bb, depending on the instrument. This is extremely disorienting, and I've had to fight my reliance on my perfect pitch to play these instruments well. I think it's much more useful to develop a good relative pitch.
Yeah, I knew a dude back in the day who had perfect pitch, he was a pain in the ass to work with, like if you played 1 chord and 1 string was slightly out of tune, he would immediately stop everything and tune the guitar, but I mean, no one in the studio could hear it, you needed a tuner to see it was actually 1 mil out of tune.
I'd like to know what "Dylan-style" is. I could google it, but I'm not going to. @Sel Poivre Perfect pitch isn't a talent, it's an ability. Talent is something you can learn and develop. Perfect pitch is something that is. Perfect pitch is as much a hindrance as it is a gift. @SN L Good relative pitch means that I can sing intervals like a Major third or perfect fifth really well, but I don't have perfect pitch. Relative pitch is the opposite of perfect pitch.
I think that's the biggest thing. Saying it's impossible to develop doesn't sit well with me. I think that if a kid can learn it most of the time, so can adults if they want to.The thing is, it's a bit overrated. Who REALLY wants to? Like not just for show but truly wants to? Very few people because once it's "good enough" (relative) it's useless to get perfect pitch.
Heres a point NOBODY brings up. EVER. I know professional sound engineers (the ones who get 250.00 and hour, drive a Tesla, and recorded a lot of seriously famous albums you have at home, not the "sound guys" who work for beer, lol)...they lose their minds of a guitar is out. But they CANNOT tell jack about drums. At all. I can tell you from across the room, what kind of drum, how big, what drum heads he's using, how big the sticks are, all kinds of stuff. He once asked he, "Why do people buy Roland V-drums? They're so expensive. What's the difference between those and the cheap ones?" He honestly couldn't tell the difference, but he claims Roland has a bit of a hum in every product, DI box or not. He can also hear phase, which I kind of can't and theres no money in it for me at this point yet. Answer: A, mechanically, Roland makes a VERY solid product if you respect them. I've got pieces that are 20+ years old. One cleaning or power supply replacement in that whole time. Cheaper products don't sound anywhere near as good from across the room, (they sound real fake) and they won't be around 20 years from now. It won't be worth it to fix them. An electronics engineer is 75.00 to just LOOK at it. Plus parts n labor. So, you want to spend 3 grand now for a VERY durable item that sounds and feels much better (they don't even easily get scratched) and just have to do it once, or do you want to do it 10 times over 20 years? I vote once.
@Gabzo Avro But its kinda not fair though, because if im a musician with no AP, and another musician with AP, and we try to write the same song, try to give the same theme and same emotions,, and we have the same exact characters and beliefs and physical appearance and experiences (VERY HYPOTHETICAL, I know), he will do it better than i ever can.. i know its not a competition but its not natural that this is the truth of the matter, philosophically..
I remember back when I was in college, I took a jazz class, the instructor ( Bobby Bradford, jazz trumpet master) stated that perfect pitch is only something one is born with. So there could be a bus driver who has never played an instrument could have perfect pitch. It makes sense that perfect pitch could (COULD) be developed as a baby, because it's a baby with a wide open brain and infinite cognitive possibilities. I believe that it could be DISCOVERED or realized in some adults, but it was always there to begin with.
I grew up learning piano, starting around age of 5, then played in school band, keyboard and percussion (mainly timpani). I dont know if that was a coincidence or not, but most pieces we practiced had the note E flat in the Timpani section. Over the 3-4 years of participating in band and tuning and playing on timpani the note E flat just stick to my head. At first i still need to tune timpani with keyboard, after about 2 years I find it much easier to just first find E flat and work my way to every notes. My band teacher once was mad at me because i wasnt tuning the Timpani with my keyboard. He was very passionate about music and everything being perfect. So i understood why he would be upset because he didnt want to hear the out of tune timpani section ruining the whole piece. He asked a trumpet player to play a A flat note and asked me what that was. Surprisingly i got it right. He thought i had perfect pitch and said "good for you". But deep down i know i didnt have it, because I sang E flat in my mind and found A flat. Nevertheless it was great hearing "good for you" from my band teacher in front of the whole band. Especially from him because i respected him a lot, not because he was being nice when we make mistakes. On the contrary he was very strict, short tempered and the facial expression he makes when one or two player is out of tune and i could almost hear him screaming inside. Anyways, just sharing personal stories. I immediately thought about my old band teacher when i was watching the video, even though i graduated almost a decade ago.
I had NEVER felt the need to develop perfect pitch, until this guy said it was impossible... weird.
do it and prove him wrong. let us know when you've got it
I guess that's one of the characteristics of humans which makes them the most superior race on this planet but also the most egoistic
@Instrument Zoo I will....and I'm not even a singer, I'm a rapper / drummer / producer, but I decided I need to train my singing voice to be at least 80% as nice as my rap voice
@@Parrish_Muhoberac You didn't understand what I was refering to
@@proverbalizer I think rappers have a lot to benefit from singing. Rap is or at least can be very melodious too. If you not only have a nice rhythm but a nice melody to it too and just generally a nice sound/tone, that is just eargasmic. Strangely though I actually know a rapper who has a great singing voice and lovely pronunciation and a lovely tone/voce color but I most often hate his flow haha so it's to a high degree very subjective I guess haha.
As a musician, I have played enough music to develop tinnitus with a constant pitch that I can use as a reference to find other notes. Tbh its a pro strat
Wowww.. Never thought of this🤨🤨🤔I too have developed tinnitus.
@@SoniaSharma-fm8ym i have tinnitus as result of a brain injury. all it's told me is that for a few years i was boosting around 5khz to the point of ear piercing to the rest of my friends xD
Sonia Sharma yea if it’s loud enough you can use it as a referebce
LIFEHACK
😀
While it's too late for me. I'm definitely writing this down on my "Things to do as a parent" list.
For sure!
Same
LOL yeah i don't think Rick has any inkling how awesome he really is 😁👌like a freak of nature right? LOL it's only logical his son _would_ have perfect pitch you see haha and how amazing is that. AWESOME!!!!!! This is one of the best videos on the topic i think I'll find anywhere so why look lol Thank you Rick... How many ways can you say all good things to you! And thank you!!! Yeah... Heart and soul... Let the angels roll like thunder moving mountains for you and yours. Amein.
I advice you not to do it, If you don't want your child to suffer as a musician
I'm just going to put this out here as a precautionary statement. Some kids don't care about being musicians no matter how early you start them. If they have an ability, definitely HELP them grow it. Don't become toxic about it. Perfect pitch is being presented as a natural ability here, with the insinuation that not all people even have the possibility of developing it -even as children. That being said, many people without this, do very well in music, even fantastic and make a living doing it and loving it. It's about as important as being able to see gold color in the Ring Nebula. Only a very small number of people can, and only children. As you age you lose sensitivity in the sensors of the eyes. Don't forget to let your children visit scads of good astronomy sessions before they're 10!
But should I tune my baby to 440 Hz or 432 Hz?
def 440
You can't tuna fish why would you tuna baby
Laughed so much, thank you.
451Hz.
@@Demonstray I'm sueing you
What about adults that act like babies? Can they develop 'perfect pitch'?
They'll develop into a perfect bitch 100%
They can. If they can forget everything first...
no
Very stable musical genius
@@247hdjazz it's a joke
You sir, just saved yourself $20 on a guitar tuner.. well played..
You don't have kids do you .... $20?? I wish kids only cost you $20 ....
@@Nautilus1972 na technically you don't have to pay anything to have a child
@@charliemarsh2957 hahahahahahhahhahahhahahahahha
@@charliemarsh2957 You gotta pay for it to not die or get taken away from you lmfao
No bro your cellphone has an app for it. You saved nothing
I don't know why everyone's worried about perfect pitch. It doesn't inherently make you a better musician, composer, songwriter or person.
If your songs aren't good, and you develop perfect pitch, your songs still aren't good. Now you know what key it's in though.
+CortMarshal Haha! Good point!!
it is really good for sight singing
i like your quote, Now you just know what shitty notes you put in
It doesn't hurt. Half the point of learning your music theory is so that you can identify mechanics of music quickly, thus giving you more time to get those ephemeral musical ideas out before they fade away like smoke in the wind. Likewise, perfect pitch is another "shortcut" that can help you to beat the devil before he steals what inspiration has gifted you.
@sebastian berg I agree with you. it really helps when you start to compose complex music. when you consider all the modes applied consistently, u can just actually compose it in your head very clearly/precisely. it's a similar thing with hyper realism painters to film color grading professionals, there are only few people who can identify specific hues/colors as accurate as pixels, could actually memorize the digital codes of these colors. there's absolutely no more mix and match or trial and error process. they just compose the colors in their heads and apply the color accurately.
I think people need to understand that many trained musicians can imitate perfect pitch without actually having absolute pitch. Having notes fixed in your mind means you’re still relying on relative pitch. Absolute pitch means that you don’t have to think about it.
exactly, that's what i just replied to the comment above yours. all these adults saying "i developed perfect pitch recently" just memorized the frequencies and honed their relative pitch, which you _can_ develop as an adult. they seem to be confusing it with perfect pitch because the difference is a bit unclear
@@cinnomixwh0t do you mean memorized frequencies and honed relative pitch. 😅 That means still no absolute pitcha according to you. Hate to disappoint you but it actually what is pitch all about. And no human is not a metal detector to determine 1hz frequencies
@@cinnomix Another thing that irks me to no end is people claiming they have synesthesia, but the way they describe it makes ZERO sense. I've read comments where people explained their synesthesia as "certain genres having colors, so drum & bass is purple." I immediately thought that was the stupidest thing I've ever heard because you can't line up genres with colors. The reason synesthesia works for notes is because the frequency of sound waves determine the pitch... like how the frequency of light waves determine color. THAT'S how it works and THAT'S how the correlations are made. Not "this song feels purple." That's hippie dippie third eye BS and literally tells you nothing about the music.
I don't have to think about about yeah to this guy I don't have it because I'm still learning how to play guitar.... Honestly it seems like he is con flating someone being non verbal and someone who does not speak English... If you can instaly understand music you have absulte pitch nomatter what funny noises you need to make to convince someone you do.
@@GreenBlueWalkthroughWhat does having perfect pitch have to do with playing a certain instrument? What are you even on to here?
I started playing bass at 52, now 55. I'm not worried about perfect pitch, I'm just worried about trying to remember what I studied yesterday. learning something new at this age is tough but a passion. as far as hearing, I can still hear my wife yelling at me. all good.
Rock that bass as fucking hard as you can man!
Get ya wife screaming like a death metal singer when ya play! ^^
like Chaney Crabb ;).
Have you tried turning your bass amp louder?
Love your reply, "Thomas" -- your great attitude has and will continue to carry you far!
You don't have to worry about remembering what you studied yesterday. The bit of your brain that needs it will have stored it. Like your wife's yell: I don't guess you had to study very hard to recognize that. I'm 61 and still love learning new things. If I have to do it a bit slower than 30 years ago, so what? In the end we'll all be dead and know nothing, but that's true for the young smarty-pants who make fun of us, too.
Bass guitar? Contrabasso? Some other thing? Doesn't matter, just enjoy, my young friend!
people think if only they had perfect pitch they would be creative musical genius. Really, they should just start practicing their instrument and/or writing songs
I have perfect pitch and it helps but most of success comes from practice; while the perfect pitch is a neat trick it's only part of the overall scheme
Well of course, but that's only if we're talking about performance I believe (although arguable for string players). For composition though, AP does seem like an advantage.
Yeah, music is as good as the time you put into it.
Haha, I have PP & I don't feel like a creative genius. If I was, I'd be cranking out songs left & right. But as an orchestral player, I'm more used to playing other people's music. Being a creative artist to me is a combo of musical & artistic ability, as well as good songwriting & creativity if you're a song writer. I've also delved into that part of music making part of my life, but it's more challenging for me.
Yeah, plus; a lot of musicians don't even know notes (mostly guitar players).
The father of a friend had perfect pitch and he hated it. One day when my friend was rehearsing w/ his band in the backyard, his father stormed all the way from the house, and yelled at the guitar player: "can't you just tune that damn B string right!? Jesus it's driving me nuts!"
He left and they all looked at each other in disbelief. The guitar player got the tuner w/out a word, and it turns out the B string was a little flat for about 10%. The father coudl tell ALL THE WAY into the freaking house!! In the MIX!!!
I'll take my unperfect pitch, thanks.
WoW that's story one is really good one :)
Does he play the guitar also :))? I have relative pitch myself and i can tell if a string is out of tune in relation to the other strings, or a refrence string. And I do frequently rage over a single slighty wrong string
If one string was off, instead of the whole band, it was relative pitch your friend's Dad was using.
This thread is getting educational!
Sometimes it obvious to even me, an amature. Like an (A), (C), (E) or (G). I could see how that would be annoying. :D Especially when people are terrible at singing. That's when it's really obvious. :D
A minute of silence for all the babies whose parents listen to reggaeton.
😂
Perfect pitch is when you throw a banjo out the window and you hit an accordion player.
LOL
grichard24 I love that.
Lmao 😂
, who falls on the bagpipes and breaks them.
yes
I have perfect pitch. I can usually guess the right one in 12 tries.
Thomas Yurik you’d still have to guess which octave
First of all, LMAO!
Secondly, on a much more serious note, I am an adult and I am in the process of developing Perfect Pitch. I've been using David Lucas Burge's Perfect Pitch Ear Training Supercourse. My abilities are not yet fully developed and I will probably never be as good as the child in this video (the kid is clearly a prodigy), but I'm getting better all the time.
Shadow Ax you meant like relative pitch or like you’re not serious
@@burnmyuncle141 No, I meant actual Perfect Pitch. Again, I'm not nearly as fast as that kid, but I can hear a single note played on a piano or a guitar and tell you what it is without needing a reference note or having to compare it to other notes in my mind. BTW, the ability to identify a chord (as that child was doing at one point) has more to do with Relative Pitch than with Perfect Pitch. When he was identifying the name of the individual notes in the chord, he was using Perfect Pitch. When he was identifying the chord itself, he was using Relative Pitch. The two can complement each other, but they are distinctly different skills.
Shadow Ax you forgot to type “I’m a neurosurgeon” before your rant :P
Same goes for recognizing colors. The ability to see and recognize every color in spectrum won't make you a great painter.
Interesting you say this. In my art classes I was always the one who could 'see' all the various colours...I could easily differentiate. I can look at a painting and in my head break it apart into the colour wheel. I can consciously see all the colours in one primary spectrum while sort of dulling out the others. I was never very good at learning the names of anything, including the names of musical notes, but I played piano from an early age. I sight read sheet music and while I know the basic names of the notes I was never able to learn the more complex language of musical notation. That is one reason I didn't pursue music. But in painting, after the secondary colours there really aren't set names for the mixes. At that point accomplished artists will know the names manufacturers give their tube paints, which will reference the subtle characteristics of that colour. This would be like a guitarist describing the difference between the same note played on different guitars. But notation for colour mixing is not only unnecessary it is ridiculous. Leave that to science.
@@seanarthur8392 would be interesting if you were a digital designer and were and some point be able to ascribe a perfect RGB value to any pixel color you see XD Would be a handy tool. no need for color picker apps
The beautiful thing about Art is how you use the colours and mix them I know no one who just knows all the colours names and is better than someone who doesn't but it will help knowing exactly the colour name you need so I guess that's good
It is more like saying the 579 nm is yellow and 561 nm is not.
That analogy has NOTHING to do with what was discussed in this video. ABSOLUTELY nothing!
Rick needs to make a 'perfect pitch baby training' Spootify playlist :D
I agree. I have a 2 yo and would like to know some tunes to throw at him. Being a metalhead, I don't have a good familiarity with classical or jazz.
@@chaos.corner he told you in the video. start listening again at 6:00
@@chaos.corner metal is actually influenced the most by classical music of all modern western music
just listen to jazz and classical music, that's it
@@chaos.corner listen to Tigran Hamasyan
What if I listened to every Pink Floyd album as a baby, do I have psychedelic pitch?
Nope, just a very happy childhood...
nah you'd just sleep a hell of a lot.
Zeuseides you become LSD
I listen to every classical music even before I was born but I can’t develop any pitch. Not even relative pitch 😂
I developed perfect pitch at 85 years old after a near death experience and I am also a rocket scientist and a professional luthier, so you're obviously wrong Mr. Beato.
David RF 😂😂😂😂😂
Is this sarcasm? If it's, it's an ABSOLUTELY hilarious comment... PITCH PERFECT!
David RF Hi, really interesting. Do you remember anything from your NDE? If so, would you mind to tell us a little bit about it.
Best,
Neno
Wait, I think you forgot that you also cured the common cold! Thanks, man!
Nazareno D'adamante They played Led Zeppelin there.
Meh, I'm going to develop perfect pitch tomorrow before lunch.
You can do it - I learned it yesterday while doing my morning shave. Piece of cake
ytlongbeach 😂😂😂
Hi people, it might be possible to use an app on your mobile to get this perfect pitch ability. In the future, just download it from the Matrix.
102 fastball
Im an adult and I developed perfect pitch, bud. I can always name the note within 12 tries almost instantaneously. You will probably dismiss that as guessing, but I know what Im talking about.
Sincerely,
Easily offended, highly skilled, internet keyboard warrior.
Note detection may evade you, but at least your joke comprehension is in tact unlike these guys who commented above lol
12 tries isnt 'perfect' pitch it's just guessing a note.
MrCrompz Are u sure you get the joke
@@Linzz_1213 sorry I realised later
I used to harmonize with the vacuum cleaner when I was 3 years old.
Ha! I WAS a vacuum cleaner when I was 3 years old.
My dog is harmonizing with the vacuum cleaner, the ambulance and the car alarm. He loves E minor chord. He also leaves the room when I don't play properly :D
I also harmonised with the vacuum cleaner! :D I used to see (hear) which other notes harmonised and which ones didn't, and I was so interested in the disharmonious (is that a word?) notes!
I had forgotten about that, so thank you for jolting my memory! :)
LOL! I used to do the same thing with the garage door opener when i was little.
I used to do it with the floor fan, with my face pressed right up close to the grill, lol.
(Nope, never had perfect pitch, though.)
From this day forth I'm starting all my comments with "I'm a neurosurgeon and..."
I'm a neurosurgeon and you failed at your own endeavor.
That would have made me laugh if you started that comment with the words "I'm a neurosurgeon and...". You epically failed at making your own joke.
@@watercolourmark Guess I won't be getting the coveted RUclips Comments Comedy Award this year. 😢
I'm a Brazilian neurosurgeon
first thing i said when he was reading it was "that's a logic fallacy" aka appeal to authority. Unless the "surgeon" is posting links to studies he needs to remove the whole neurosurgeon bullshit.
As a music teacher I get a lot of adults asking me about perfect pitch. Often many people confuse it with relative pitch. When I explain that, with practice, they can achieve a good enough ear to transcribe music and play what they hear they are usually satisfied. Perfect pitch is, as they say, overrated, at least for what most people want.
100% agree. Perfect absolute pitch is a good parlor show, but really not necessary in the real world.
Salsa Blanca I would love it, over relative pitch, in order to not ever have to buy sheet music ever again. relative pitch wouldn't really help with more than 1 note being played at a time- you can't recognize an Abmb5 with relative pitch, only stuff like a D note going up to A.
That's not true... I don't have perfect pitch but if I hear an Abm7b5 chord, I'll instantly recognize it as a half diminished chord and maybe even the exact voicing I just won't know what key it's in unless I have a reference pitch. You don't need perfect pitch to play by ear although I'm sure it would make it easier
Kyle Windjack - same here. I was not born with a good ear. Most of the music I heard growing up with 60s rock my parents listened to - nothing complex. I had to train my ear myself. After graduating music collage, and years of playing and practice, I could hear extensions in chords. I still make mistakes with what I think I hear. I definitely don't have PP.
PP helps you when you get lost with RP. and vice versa. that's the true power is the comparison.
Dear sir. Only twice in my 66 year long life have I been fortunate enough to hear as thorough and reasoned an explanation as the one that you have presented here, and that was by a nephew of a Nobel price winning physicist, who explained quarks, which, like your presentation, left no questions unanswered. Your brilliant presentation is absolutely worthy of a TED talk. My hats off to you, Sir.
BTW, I'm a composer, and I do not have PP.
@Powdered Soap is that an attempt at humor?
avdltd you dont got PP
@Powdered Soap you are the best person ever
perfect pitch is when you can instantly recognize notes and chew gum at the same time
ZeroFunctional I came here to kick ass and chew gum, is that close enough?
Duke Nukem had perfect pitch. True story...
Hey, I can do 50% of the task then!
... and I'm all out of gum.
Hahaha good reference.
I never get how people can hear every single note when playing a huge chord, especially a disonant one... Crazy and respectable
Well, it's like having a handfull of close friends saying "hi" at the same time. You will know who's there because you are very familiar with their voices. At least it's like that for me.
i can't name notes from memory and i don't think i have perfect pitch but i can pretty easily pick out all the notes in most chords
Jacob collier:
I count to four or six in my mind, I don't know notes but I can play em, if you hear a chord just sound it out in your mind for example, Doo Doo do da. Then piece it together
I think of it as similar to the ability to hear a sentence of words spoken...yet we have the ability to spell the sentence.
Dylan’s understanding of chords, pitches, tones, etc is truly amazing. Hearing him identify and sing every note in a huge jumble of random notes is just awesome. That must be an incredible skill to possess, assuming the person who has it is actually interested in creating music.
"Dylan’s understanding of chords, pitches, tones, etc is truly amazing." No offense, but this is the same fundamental lack of understanding as the folks thinking they can learn perfect pitch at 30 years old. Perfect Pitch isn't an understanding, & it isn't a skill - it's an ability used unconsciously. You can't learn it because it's not something learned, it's a fundamental perception most people don't have post 6 years of age.
Yeah, that out of tune squeaking is... not adorable :D
@@kgoblin5084 Very pedantic argument, but I see what you're saying. You know what OP meant.
just told my wife "we gotta have another kid"
J M great idea. Pitch it well.
That makes three of us haha
Good luck fellas
Most underrated comment, right here.
Your wife got a higher pitch again
Got 99 problems but a pitch ain't 1
Great comment!
Slim Shady forever xD
Don't worry you aren't missing out! It's an absolute pain in the backside.
@@emryswalton1802 Howso?
@@dividebyzero9530 You can't listen to a song if it's in a different key to the 1st version you heard, or you die. You can't sing or hum a song if you think it's in the wrong key, you either automatically know what it is, or if you haven't heard it in a while or have heard it only once or twice, you have to sit there and work out what key it is, or you die. If someone else sings without knowing the key, you die.
And by die I mean extreme discomfort and pain.
i developed perfect pitch by practicing my right arm throw
lol
Yeah, but there's a catch.
i was about to make the same joke but saw this and thought better
I married the perfect bitch.
Some of the greatest pianists and guitarists in the world never had perfect pitch. For heaven's sake Chuck Berry, or Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton or David Gilmour or Brian May or Slash or Kurt Cobain never had it and yet they had a great ear for music and created some of the most influential pieces of music in history...it's important to note that there's a lot of people out there with perfect pitch with perfect pitch yet it's only the chosen few that constitute the musical greats because they may be really good at naming notes and chords but have no specific flair at using them to make good music...what really matters is how you think about music and what you want your music to sound like, something that gives your music your individuality, and that my friend is what all the above legends have executed successfully and with breathtaking finesse
Great point. What is the value of it?
Hendrix may have had absolute pitch actually
@@tylerkeegan5615 Nah he didn't have it. Half of his records are out of tune.
How do you know they got perfect pitch? You are guessing! Having or not having perfect pitch is irrelevant to whether or not one is a good musician.
Your comment is ridiculous!
Now I know why my 10-year old son only knows 4 notes in perfect pitch after I put him to sleep with Justin Bieber's and Taylor Swift's songs when he was a baby..
Lol
😂
You are lucky those songs didn't put him to eternal sleep, just sayin'
My dad could only play one song.That was "Folsom prison Blues" All I know is E, A, and B.
they sing in their songs a lot of keys, not only in 4 notes
When I was back in uni studying music, I knew a few fellas having perfect pitch. They hated it. Claiming that most music sounded out of tune to them. Im quite happy with my average relative pitch :-)
Bepi Visintainer - Yes. I sang in a choir with a woman who had perfect pitch, and she was always wincing. She could always tell when we had dropped in pitch (we weren't the best choir), and when anybody hit a sour note. I'm not sure why she put up with us!
@@AspynDotZip I used to play slightly out of tune just for comedy's sake :-)
@@sourisvoleur4854 I guess bad music is better than no music? Reading the other comments in this thread helps to explain why it's better to try and enjoy music as it is than make an effort trying to improve the music others make.
It's really good to see your comments and remember that every blessing can be a curse, and also, while some people enjoy kicking others, it isn't necessary, the unintentionally inflicted pain probably outweighs what the assholes imagine they would like to inflict.
Think how happy you would be if you had none. You know, like the lady at karaoke that makes the dogs howl three blocks over. She always really happy.
Very true... They are wincing at every sound that is not in tune.. not only music, even a police sure for example
Sup, pitches?
VirKill Almasy stop causing treble
I’ll take a note
These puns are really falling flat.
frequently bassically perfect, dude! ;-))))
I love the internet and the interesting and funny interactions it allows.
Fascinating! I wish my parents had known this. However there is one complication which you don't mention, which I think can have an effect on this process. If I understand you correctly, the exposure must (mainly) be of music in equal temperament, at a'=440. Thus, microtonal music and music of (say) other cultures not using our traditional western scale could interfere with this learning process. One also has to be careful about early recordings, as the speed was not completely standardized and many old jazz and even classical recordings sound well off-pitch when played at a standard 78 RPM. Also, as a harpsichordist and early music specialist, I hear and play music at different pitch levels. An "a" can be anywhere from 392 hz to 460 hz depending on the instrument, not counting "quint" pitch instruments. This also doesn't take into consideration unequal temperaments frequently used on keyboard instruments other than the modern piano. And a further complication, I probably did my own kids a musical disservice: In our home (both parents musicians), I might play a Glenn Gould or Wanda Landowska recording of the Italian Concerto, both at 440 with equal temperament, then go to my own harpsichord (tuned at 392, a whole step below modern pitch) and play the same work, which my kids now hear in Eb major in modified meantone! That kills the "Star Wars" pitch notion. To make it worse, other recordings I might play using antique instruments might be at 415, 430, other pitch levels. The famous Schnitger organ at Zwolle sounds a minor third above modern pitch! Another factor, although probably not a factor as it happens much later--when kids start to play French horn, trumpet, clarinet, or sax in grade school, the notes no longer match the pitches they produce. This took me a while to overcome when I started playing horn in 4th grade. Sorry this got so long-winded, but I thought this might be some useful food for thought.
Valid points indeed David...
Interesting points, but once a kid has developed a 12 tone perfect pitch microtones will also be easily identifiable as flattened or sharpened variants of those 12 tones. Regarding having a different tuning, I guess that might play more of a role, who knows!
Dude...
I don't think Rick Beato directly said that music not tuned to the Western system (12 tone equal temperament) would interfere in the way that you described. For me personally, I would guess that interference is probably minimal, given the success of kids in bilingual homes. But I also think it's probably safer to be consistent in tuning.
If you could make A You Tube channel for that, it would be great!
having perfect pitch myself, i think what could be stressed more is the encouragement (and spreading of the information) that its actually not that hard to develop a relative pitch that with enough training becomes almost indistinguishable from perfect pitch in a musicians daily life. yes, you need ONE reference note at the beginning of the session, but thats it. you basically say this in your video too, but i think it could have been placed more prominently. ah well, monday quarterback brabbling on my part, pardon :)
one more thing though: a phenomenon that is not talked about as often is the rather sad process of slowly losing perfect pitch with age. i initially thought of this as an urban myth (or a bedtime spook story of sorts ;), but this has now happened to 100% (!) of the people i know that have perfect pitch and are in their mid 40s or higher. the science behind it seems to suggest that this is because of the ever changing shape of our ears and the varying angles in which the soundwaves hit them as a result. im starting to experience it myself too, im now a fraction of a tone off. my "insticts" that used to be infallable have become a bit insecure, and at least for the first note that i hear, i need a moment to remind myself that my hearing is slightly detuned and i need to imagine the tone a bit deeper to be correct. it confuses the s**t out of me, sadly. i grew up with 440hz tuning, and it feels wrong now. i have an old piano in the studio that "hangs at 434", and when i sit there, hooray, im back to having infallable perfect pitch.
now, for colleagues of mine, it has become a lot more extreme. and this is where *relative* pitch becomes a new meaning and importance. when youve been a pro musician your entire life, you usually have a very developed relative pitch, and that is what you then need to rely on in support of your used-to-be-perfect pitch. my father (also used to have PP) at age 80 is now a full halftone off. so the process in his brain is "i hear a tone, i transpose it in my mind one halfstep up, thats the note". which ironically makes it easier for him that it is for me with my micro detuning ;) anyway, you need the security that comes with trained relative pitch (especially maximum confidence with intervals, which can be learned as adult) because if you *used* to have perfect pitch, unlike somebody who just always worked with relative pitch, you have this internal conflict for every new note that you hear where your ex-PP says "that of course is a G" while your RP will say "this is a fifth over the B that you just heard, so its of course an f sharp".
bottom line: relative pitch is super important even for people with perfect pitch. the good news is that, if you have perfect pitch, during the many many many years where your perfect pitch is fully intact, if you do play music, you unconsciously train relative pitch all the time as well, because of your constant awareness of all the notes you hear - awareness of their interval relationship to each other is then just a mere statistical process that your brain does.
and its, thankfully, something you dont lose. like, my perfect pitch is now slightly f***ed because my "calibration is off" - but since intervals are independant of whether you hear 440 or 434 or whatever, you could still play me the weirdest intervals for a dozen years nonstop and i would still be able to identify all of them without ever making a mistake. so, that part of the "color palette feel" of hearing thankfully doesnt go away.
rant over. sorry :)
Best comment on this video. I would love to talk to you sometime. Please write to me at rickbeato1@gmail.com. Thanks!
wow, thanks a lot :) btw, we have talked before...
actually, now that i think of it, i kind of fear that i have brought this up in the past already. so if im repeating myself, sorry for that :)
Your idea about the the changing shapes of the ears as we age are extremely important and a few years ago gave rise to a theory of mine that perhaps aged persons with less than perfect hearing do not actually need a hearing aid, but a plastic surgeon to alter the shape of their ears. I have tried altering my ear shapes a number of times and have actually been able to clearly hear many sounds that I can't hear normally. I would like to do more research on this idea.
zorglub667
That happened to me: I didn't know why people thought what I could do as a child was a big deal (from the ages of 6 until about 12) and could think up tunes in my head and write them on manuscript more easily than I could write.
As I got older and puberty kicked in, I did the typical 'rebellious teen' stuff and moved away from music.
Now the only thing that I can do musically is wince when something is sharp or flat: I used to play 5 instruments and now I can't even read music anymore...
spot on my friend...........I woudnt say i have perfect pitch BUT as you say about calibrating references im sure your aboulutly correct!......Im a musician and was around my grandfathers piano playing as a baby and carried that on into my own musical world........My point is that my piano (that was my grandads) is not set to correct pitch E.G. middle C is actually down to G but slightly sharp too.........BUT saying this i used to hear songs or films and climb onto the stool and find these songs with no problem at all.....this is why my grandfather used to love having me around when he played........we never talked about perfect pitch and we never discused the tuning of the piano and he actually taught me about middle C but obviously it was never true C at 440 HZ.......we in England also have a news program called " News at 10" and it samples big ben the bell out of the clocktower and that bell is not a true E its slightly sharp as i recall so I guess what im saying is there are so many other "Micro pitches" under sharps and flats that have been in the world i live in that it must be impossible to attain a perfect pitch when all these variables are considered.......would you not agree?......... i hope you both reply......thankyou
Given that I’m a 53 year old kid that never grew up, there’s still hope for me 😁
eleven is too old for that
dooon't stop, beliiieeevin
@@sameasnow oh oh aaaaaaaahhhhhh!
I have perfect pitch. Unfortunately, the world doesn't have perfect catch.
BA DUM TSSSS
I did laugh!!
🤣
Yogis Berra had perfect catch.When u get to the throw,pitch it
I started taking music lessons at 7 but didn't really start studying music until I was about 20, and then again at about 55. Even though I became movement impaired from a head injury in my late teens that prevents me from handling most instruments well, when I eventually found a instrument I could handle in my 50s, I was able to improv some very cool stuff. This video kind of explains how a movement impaired person could still have better than average improv ability. I love this YT channel!
1) A kid develops perfect pitch
2) Shows off for a while and makes his parents proud as hell.
3) Switches to rap music.
Pretty much, what a waste of talent.
@@mattbortz10 There's some really sophisticated rap out there. Really good stuff. It is a legit art form. And like all art forms, there's bound to be a lot of bad stuff and some really great stuff. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is a waste of someone else's time. There were countless bad to mediocre classical composers back in the day, but we remember the few good ones. There were only a few good ones compared to how many composers there were. Same thing nowadays. 75 years from now, we'll probably only be listening to the relevant/good quality stuff.
Hj O i don’t doubt that rap can be more sophisticated ,but i do feel most rap genres is more centered towards the lyrics instead of chords, melodies, etc, like how jazz is dear.
@@Sean-mc2wn Calling some one you've never met "dear" is extremely patronizing especially towards a woman. Not cool. Also, I'm a professional jazz pianist and am aware of this. The mansplaining is patronizing and insulting.
To address my earlier comment, my point was that there's nothing wrong with doing something completely different even if you're not using one of your talents because rap is just as legit as jazz.
Please stop being a jerk to people :-/
Hj O sorry, but the word “dear” has been a part of my day to day vocabulary for quite a long time. i use it for both girls and boys.
also i dont mean to undermine rap as a genre, i respect it, i really do, but seeing the current state of rap, at least what the pop scene has shown. the skills taught by a jazz professional would be quite useless. unless someway he could do something to incorporate both genres, then i see no wrong with that. and as i said, i don’t doubt that there is a fusion genre of rap and jazz, but things like those are rarely popularized.
and i don’t mean to patronize or disrespect in anyway
This guy has a son and he has perfect pitch....so someday he will become a guitar tuner.....
You don't need to ???
kkkkkkk you slay me! that kid is on point.
@@craigcasey8587 that is true! its working for me after doing a music Theory Course. It opens up a lot of avenues for Rick`s Son and that is good.Good on you Rick .
@James Javanovich yes i guess so, coz you will go to Softwares like Sibeliues and many others to do that Job for you.There are many ways to get to that point,but i love the fact that Nick set his son up for life. Love dat.
After daddy has bragged about him so much that the kid is full of unachievable expectations and a disappointment to dad. Maybe the kid just wants to play baseball. Dads a blowhard.
Relative Pitch + Tinnitus = Perfect Pitch ;)
I saw Adam Neely talk about this phenomenon, and in all seriousness, it works for some people and doesn't for others. The issue is that the internal "pitch" from tinnitus isn't always consistent from day to day or even throughout the day, so people who have this ability have to recalibrate their ear all the time.
Yeah, I was joking. My tinnitus is actually a few octaves too high to use as a useful reference haha
Ahahaha
For many years it rang in F... worked to a degree... Its in A now
Right now my tinnitus is two notes. A B7 and a C8
This man is right. I know, because I have a childhood friend that possessed this phenomenon. We grew up going to the same church and playing/singing music together. It was in my teen years that I remember my friend being able to tell me what note I was playing, humming, whistling...or if I was somewhere between the natural and the semitone. Yes I always checked on the piano. It's truly phenomenal.
Well oops looks like I missed the train too bad I cant go back in time and tell my parents to play me some jazz
Obsessing over perfect pitch is like obsessing over high IQ. If you have it, cool. If not, cool.
I think the problem is that people put the word "perfect" in there... because now it sounds like that there is something you're always going to miss out on if you don't already have it.
It’s just the incessant need to be SPECIAL.
@@CityKanin You sound like the type of person that shies away from their own dreams and then shits on all those with the ambition and grit to push forward.
Pitch if not as important as rhythm. If a song has a note that is not in perfect pitch it will not be noticed by most people but if it's not in perfect rhythm everyone will notice it
@@thedevilsadvocate5210 There is lots of music that is deliberately not in perfect rhythm.
In reality both aspects are equally important. A strong melodic and harmonic structure will work over most, if not any, rhythm. While a strong rhythm will work for most, if not all, sets of notes. If you can combine both you've got a perfect piece of music.
The key is creating a structure in at least one of the spaces and then making repeated references to it.
When I studied music formally, a really great music theory teacher once told us that perfect pitch was "tonal memory", no more, no less. You either have it or you don't. Interestingly, if you were taught on a piano that was a quarter tone flat, you memorized those tones as you remembered them, whether they were tuned to A 440 or one quarter tone flat or sharp of that. I had a tuning fork given to me that was used in tuning European pianos back in the day, and I always remembered that A as being flat of 440 cps. Having tuned thousands of pianos in my lifetime, I can tell you that having absolute pitch does not automatically make you a great piano tuner. The skill of piano tuning involves a process of learning simultaneous "beat" presences that are caused by various strings' partials, or overtones. You don't have to have perfect pitch in order to be a fine piano tuner. The public just makes ludicrous assumptions without having known the actual truth behind being an excellent piano tuner.
Maybe, think about it this way. Granted this would be my relative pitch at work but, it explains “tonal memory”. When I change strings on my guitar, I do them all at once so I can clean with the strings off and check the neck and other things, when I put the new strings on, I get all six pretty close in tension and I’ll think of a song that I know either starts on E,A, or D and use what I’m hearing inside my head as a reference note. I’ll tune the appropriate string to my internal reference note, then tune the rest of the strings using that one as reference. These three strings I can do that with very accurate results consistently the G&B not as accurately, close. Now I do it by remembering songs that I know start on those notes and I’ve heard a million times like “come as you are” by Nirvana, starts on a D. It’s an octave lower than the fourth string but I can still use that memory to tune it. E=Welcome Home by Metallica A=Back in Black by AC/DC. Lol don’t quote me on that. But it’s definitely an AC/DC song. I would never try to set the intonation that way, but it amuses people who watch me do it. With fresh, bright sounding strings, it’s easy because of the hours I’ve put in playing an instrument that was tuned to a tuner as opposed to just tuned to itself. It makes a difference I’m certain.
Tonal memory is remembering what a certain pitch is. It's like having a photographic memory, only using pitches.
I learned mostly on flat or out of tune pianos, too. Interesting. That's probably why I can identify notes at least in what I think is relative pitch... if I hear a C, my mind goes to the first note in Billy Joel's "Prelude / Angry Young Man" and I will mentally hum it if that makes sense, to kind of run a checksum against that piece or another C, like the many many pieces I knew that were in C. A, well that's the root note of the first chord, the first note, etc, in same artists's "You May Be Right" in fact I just started humming an A, looked up A note on RUclips and it matched perfectly or within a cent from what I could hear. Is that perfect pitch or something maybe close to it? I also am bothered a lot when playing a bass guitar when I cannot get the same intonation as the bass player, considering it's some $150 Squier bass and usually to remedy it I'm not adjusting the truss rod and intonation adjustments on the saddles, but still. It makes me angry when it's just a little off. Other bassists I've asked about this have said they just don't hear the difference...
Officer Gregory Stevens Some instruments (I’m speaking guitars here, that’s where my experience is)just can’t be perfectly intonated. Every piece of wood is unique. Some people are unaware of any adjustments other than the action. To top it off, and I’d be curious as to the kid in the video’s perception of this, is the fact that we tune, in the modern age, using an equal-temperament or justified tuning, meaning all notes are equal distances apart. 100 cents. But, the true notes aren’t quite set up that way. If you use an older style tuning, such as pathagorean, your chords sound beautiful and harmonious in one area, but fall out of harmony when moved up or down in pitch. Basically, as you change frequencies, the fact that you can’t possibly double different numbers and expect them to align relative to one another is evident. For example, you have A=440, well A also equals 55, 110, 220, 880, 1760 etc, each octave that you go up. Since your other notes vibrate at different frequencies when they are in “tune” they double and triple at separate rates. The further you get away from the initial frequency, the more apparent this is to one’s ear. Using tunings other than “just” tunings leads to being out of tune when multiple instruments are being played, and also when several octaves are being covered. It only takes two full octaves. If you go from G up 24 half steps you’ll end up somewhere between F# and G if you’re not equally tempered. So, imagine a piano, a double bass, and a violin, can sound beautiful when in tune with a well tuned piano, but remove the piano and then add a Yamaha, or Casio keyboard synthesizer, and until you retune the other two instruments, it’s going to sound bad.
In college our music teacher taught us pitch recognition ans one would recognize colors.
I have been blessed with perfect pitch. I'm 70 with tinnitus and can still pull it off. What's cool is I have an 18-year-old grandson who has it and is also so blessed. I got him into guitar, so now we have fun jamming together. I've played guitar and piano since I was 11 years old and added blues harmonica about 20 years ago. Music is a blast
I think some people _realize_ they have perfect pitch as an adult and confuse it with having _learned_ it as an adult.
How would you distinguish between someone who actually learned it then, if you're going to bring forth this argument?
It's easy to rationalize about something once you've come to a decision about what's true beforehand.
@@BillyViBritannia that's fairly easy. If they learned it, then they can document their progress over the course of their learning journey. Which means there evidence of them starting out without perfect and progressively screwing up less and less until they have the performance of someone with perfect pitch. If someone discovered they had Perfect pitch then with little context everything it musical notes they would demonstrate perfect pitch but it might seem like to them they learned it cuz they learned the names of the notes.
@@aliasjon8320 there is actually evidence of such a thing but people name it "true pitch" and they say it's different from perfect pitch because you associate the pith with another familiar sound first. However that's what Rick's son was doing when he said "thats the superman note" so I'm not sure why people feel the need to differentiate those skills. It's neither a game changing skill nor impossible to learn.
@@BillyViBritannia Can I take a moment to acknowledge your cool username fellow code Geass fan
Yup. I've got Pitch Perfect for two notes because those were my starting note in the Cmajor scale for the instruments I played as a kid. I can give you a perfect Bflat and F because I played Trumpet and French Horn as a kid.
I can guess the other notes with great accuracy because of piano training, but couldn't, right off the top of my head, sing you any other note without taking some time to think first.
I must’ve developed my AP by luck of the draw. When I was eighteen months old, I developed benign relandic epilepsy, and got the rare form which caused learning delays. I couldn’t understand language, so I developed musical abilities instead. I would sing wordless melodies perfectly, and when I started piano at seven years old, I’d been asking for lessons for two years before that. I finally got caught up in language with everyone else when I was five, but I still don’t understand some subtle language nuances. I physically can’t learn other languages. Lastly, when I was nine, my technique teacher did the note-naming tests and I got it right every time.
My epilepsy went after puberty, but I still have perfect pitch. It doesn’t go away even if I don’t use it. I can’t remember not having it. I wasn’t exactly born with it, but my brain went whack so I acquired it.
The human brain is utterly amazing, and still such a mystery.
GreyMatterStew yep. I wonder if I’d be a musician at all of that medical accident hadn’t happened.
James, that's something to ponder, indeed. Maybe you would have loved music any way. What you went through served to sharpen the skills that allow you to accel at it.
I have a sort of reverse story. I've loved music all my life. I started learning to play bass at age 15. This was 1985. Everybody wanted to be in a band. I wanted to write and play music. Famous rockstar would have been nice, but that wasn't my goal. I played with friends, with tapes, radio and eventually CDs. I would sit and play while watching TV. I loved it. I seriously considered going to a big city to pursue it further. Unfortunately, there were other things in store for me. I had a stroke in March of '92 at the age of 21, and lost control of my right side. Couldn't play any more. I play some now, but the use of my right hand is still limited. I also have trouble remembering things. Like how to play songs. I can't seem to retain things anymore.
I guess you're brain trauma, made you the musician you are, while mine kept me from being the musician I wanted to be. God, fate, blind chance, the cosmos maintaining balance, whatever you may, or may not subscribe to the brain is super amazing and so fragile, at the same time. Play on for both of us.
How do you KNOW you weren't born with it, though? Most people who have perfect pitch don't know that they have it until the ages of roughly three to six; it all depends on when and whether the people around you notice that you have it or not (obviously, musically inclined parents will notice it earlier than those who aren't). Most kids will never be aware that they can or cannot name various notes on command before that age. You say that you discovered your command of absolute pitch at seven. This is a bit on the later side, but if the people around you weren't especially musically inclined, it's completely reasonable that no one would have noticed it until your piano teacher did when you started lessons. But just because it was discovered slightly later doesn't mean it was acquired later than birth. The fact is, unless someone sat down with you BEFORE you developed epilepsy at 18 months, and tested you to see if you had perfect pitch then - which would be a rare scenario indeed - you wouldn't know if you had it at that age or not. Indeed, I'm not sure how one would even diagnose it at so young an age, since most 18-month-olds (a) don't have the musical reference knowledge to be able to name the various notes, and (b) wouldn't have the language skills to be able to discuss the subject. You'd basically have to be in some sort of neuropsychology clinical study to know that at all at 18 months. I'm sure I've had perfect pitch since birth, but it wasn't discovered until I was four or five, when I started taking piano lessons.
I'm not saying you don't have perfect pitch; I believe you probably do, if you can name notes instantly and/or produce them at will. I'm just questioning HOW you know you didn't have it since birth. :-) Cheers!
GreyMatterStew Indeed! At least you still have your voice, right? I’ll play on, for you, myself, and everyone else who needs it. :)
I have been watching your youtube channel for a while and wanted to thank you for all the amazing information you have given me. I do hope you don't mind me sharing some of your videos with my LinkedIn network. I always mention full credit to Rick Beato and his team.
As a follow up to this video, I think it would be useful if you could find people with perfect pitch and people with great relative pitch and give them to aural tests like you did to Dylan.
This!
Rick, let's settle it here. I have a degree in audio engineering. I have been in the music business for over 40 years. I have taught more musicians than you have even heard of. I have worked with perfect pitch people and those who believe they have achieved it as adults. Here's is a very experienced conclusion: tones can be memorized, perfect pitch cannot. You are correct. Thank you for trying to tell others the truth about perfect pitch.
I completely agree with you. I think it’s how you’re born, I think it’s how your ear to brain neurons are constructed at birth and there’s no replicating that with practice
Check out an app called Clear Pitch, work with it for a week and come back to me. It may be that I (like most musicians) already had some fragmented form of absolute pitch, but never being a music reader I didn't have strong pitch label associations. Honestly, it's amazing how I can now recognise and recall pitches after only a few days with it. I'm in no way affiliated with the app or its developer.
@@noisyneil I am very familiar with that app and my students have others like it. I, too, recognize pitches after some practice years ago (before apps, LOL) but that is as Rick notes in his video: learned, not inherited perfect pitch as his son has. I can almost name notes as fast as Dylan but that took a lot of practice over years. It's just natural for him.
@@snowolvproductions9476 Incredible that you have developed the skill to that level! That, and my own recent experience puts paid to the titular claim of this video, doesn't it. Clearly it can be developed, as with anything, but the younger you start the more ingrained it is. I haven't ever heard Rick say Dylan was born with pitch recognition, but perhaps he was. I would assume it's akin to face recognition; a very hard thing to quantify, but we all (with rare exceptions) have it. I would suppose that pitch-label association isn't prioritised in our early development and we subsequently don't ordinarily reinforce those links as a matter of course. Regardless, it's a fascinating subject. My own modest goal is to be able to confidently recall individual pitches and identify key centres; identifying individual pitches in a flurry of notes isn't likely to be within my reach... although you managed it and I'd love to know how you developed the skill, if you wouldn't mind sharing. Is it a similar method to the app?
Honestly stfu
I dont understand why people get stuck on having perfect pitch... music is fun, expressing your emotions... just compose and play your favorite music... and dont worry about having perfect pitch.
Unfortunately if you want to progress seriously in music it becomes more and more a necessity. Actually I don't have not only perfect pitch but a well trained ears and it's becoming a huge problem to my musical growth.
Dont get too down, most of the greatest jazz giants didnt have perfect pitch
I think there was a video from Rick that made a list of who is known for having it and not among great composers/jazz players. Anyway what I meant is "not only perfect pitch but a well trained ears (neither)".
Not sure where you've got that impression, but not having perfect pitch doesn't have any meaning regarding your progressions in music at all.
Just take John Williams, who was mentioned in this video, for example: he doesn't have perfect pitch (as he stated himself, some time ago). Would you say he did not seriously progress as a musician/composer?
The fact that John Williams mentioned it means at least he's aware of the importance of the subject. As for why it's a problem: it's a problem when I'm taking an orchestral score and try to read/"hear" it in mind (that's much more important than you can expect if you're dealing/studying this kind of music), it's a problem when you're improvising and what you expect to hear is not what you actually hear (as a guitarist I found I rely much more on muscular memory and "usual patterns" than on actual accurate melodic decisions, that is probably less possible for a brass player, for instance) and even more important it's a huge difficulty when you're trying to imagine music outside of the usual tonal realm (something that Williams does a lot). It's not the same imagining a melody in C major versus Bbaugmented/Aaugmented triads (that have an amazing sound over a G bass...).
I wish I had this video when my piano teacher at 12 was trying to train me into perfect pitch. Shoulda happened when I was 2 not 12. He graded my lessons, and I got an F. My dad grounded me until I made 4 As in a row (two months). Can you imagine being 12 and grounded because it’s impossible to have this thing you don’t have.
But you DID eventually get it. Perfect pitch disproved.
@@nycholaus and from what exactly did you deduce that?
I'm fairly sure it was relative pitch, not perfect pitch. They're similar but not the same
That's what happens when you have narcissistic parents.
if he means "baby" as in actual baby i'd have to object. As long as ones brain is stiill in early development it should be possible.... and even still possible for adults with something liek Autism. Our brains stop developing around 22...... after that ur fucked.
I think people are mistaking perfect pitch with a great ear. They are two different things!!!!
I don't have it..
I've met one person.. Maybe 2 who have perfect pitch..
And I always chuckle a little when I hear people say they have it.. And I'm always eager to test it..
Because it's not until you meet someone who does have it, do you truly understand what it is..
Good video.. 👍
O Xemangas ,.....as if perfect pitch means awesome musicianship. I agree with you !!
i agree
it's unbelievable that some people out there believe you can learn perfect pitch.. this is non-sense...you either have it or you don't. You can learn and practice and become a very, very good at recognizing relative pitch and with extreme dedication, you can memorize the notes...but once you stop practicing you will forget them... on the other hand. someone that was born with this aptitude can never forget as it is part of them.
Perfect pitch is a highly specialized, but practically useless skill. Love that little kid, Dylan, but people are not filling arenas to watch a person categorize sonic frequencies into alphabets.
Relative pitch is what is valuable as musician- that is being able to play in tune with what you hear regardless of if the tuning is standard, non-standard, out of tune etc.
If you can play by ear, play what you hear in your head, play in key and on rhythm with other musicians you can have a successful career in music. Great musicians don't need perfect pitch. Perfect pitch does not impress listeners, because they don't know if the musicians they are listen to have perfect pitch, unless someone conducts a test and tells them. They do know however if they have relative pitch, if someone is singing or playing off key.
Just hit up my epileptic homie for the sweet Valproate hook up - I’m boutta be a musical genius. Catch me by the freeway diagnosing the pitch of car horns.
@Ross May your comment gave me an aneurysm.
Did it work?
Perfect pitch is over-valued. For music it's the relation of pitches, how they insinuate and challenge a tonal narrative, is what matters. relative pitch is where it's at, and anyone can learn it.
Yep.
Scott Joplin had perfect pitch. He wrote his music away from a piano without any difficulty. Between that and tuning instruments (and correcting performers) is the best use you can find for it. However listening to music can be aggressive and abrasive when one feels the forks of off-key stabbing one's eardrums into submission. Not sure if it's worth it.
Itemtotem I’ve got AP and non-12-equal pitches don’t bother me. Without xenharmonic ear training, it’s very easy for the ear to make a 12-edo-like framework out of what you’re hearing.
this! relative pitch is love
but you got to admit, playing a piece of music after hearing it (or by memory) is a really nice thing. If you have perfect pitch, the relation of the pitches is natrual to you or not?
Hi I myself have perfect off pitch.
I too have that skill
🤣🤣💕
You can't learn this skill as an adult either, and I too have it, unfortunately.
@Decimator Omega why?
Fantastic (and true) observations Rick. I am a musician here in the UK who studied and worked at EMI electronics in the 1960's. As a young scientist I worked with the team that made the first brain scanner - I was the young engineer that made many of the components used in 'The EMI scanner' - a simple machine by modern standards. I also started playing guitar at the age of seven and although I have very good relative pitch I couldn't claim to have perfect pitch per se. However, my son William (now 27) does have it and I agree with your observations as to why babies do develop this skill . I started teaching William to sing when he was a baby - he also listened to a lot of jazz, classical and progressive rock from the cradle ( not that he had a choice in that!).
He now is a professional musician and plays most instruments (stringed), drums and percussion. He also has a perfect tempo clock in his head - again from learning so early I believe. Between us we run a recording studio, build guitars and train and teach players to build, repair and play...
Absolutely love your no BS youtube channel. Regards, Robbie
Robbie Gladwell so cool that you work on music with your son. Very inspiring!
Son of a pitch!
I don't have perfect pitch and I'm 51. I'm OK with that. I can hear notes and fish them out on the guitar. Now that I know that adults can never learn perfect pitch then I'm glad I didn't waste my time trying. I can use that time making music in Ableton Live.
Who needs perfect pitch? Relative-pitch is way more useful. Perfect pitch is useful only as a parlour-trick. In face you're lucky if you *don't* have it - all it does is preoccupy and annoy the sufferer when a choir is singing in perfect harmony but you can't help but notice that 'A' is not 440. As a jazz musician I can play any song in any key and know all the I, II, V, VI, VII 11ths 13ths, flat-5ths chord-changes, and so on, instantaneously. No need to read a chart. I can hear any tune a couple of times and play it in any key. It's ALL relative.
Well said; I agree entirely. I have great relative pitch and it's been very useful to me in all of my musical endeavours. Having said that, I do like it when I pitch a note within, say, a semitone, without any reference point.
Same with me--I have relative pitch and it has been invaluable in learning music to sing in choirs.
I see where you're getting. Perfect pitch is sometimes a curse for me, and it's true that it's not as flawless as the kid in the video (seriously that kid is insane). I would say that having good relative pitch is as good as having perfect pitch, though, because the only difference between a flawless relative pitch and a perfect pitch is the amount of experience that was required in order to develop relative pitch.
My siblings have pretty good relative pitch, and sometimes I like to show off a little by playing a song by ear. That's one of the good sides of having perfect pitch; once you have it at a young age you're already years ahead of someone with relative pitch.
It seems well-suited for the vocalist who sings an intro *a capella,* then has a band join him for the rest of the song. However, it might ruin a barbershop quartet singer who needs to sing in a different mode for each key. *That* takes a vocalist with perfect relative pitch and understands the harmonics and intervals of a capella chorus singing.
Dude, in the professional world, perfect pitch is incredibly useful. The guys I work with who have perfect pitch are always getting asked “what key is that” on the fly.
What an fascinating video. I had perfect pitch - as good as Dylan - until I was in my early 50s. Then it started drifting -around a semitone flat so if I hear an 'A' I think its A#, and it's become way less 'instant' probably because I have to mentally transpose everything now.
Interesting about Bach. My favourite music when I was 2-3 was a record my parents had of the Brandenburg concertos. I started piano lessons at just 5, but only because I used to play it all the time way before that. I got my first violin for my sixth birthday.
People are right to say it's a bit of a party trick and a mixed blessing though. It meant I couldn't play the guitar with a capo because it sounded completely confusing - eg. I'd play a G chord and it would come out E-flat or something. Music written for brass instruments is sometimes written transposed, with C instead of B-flat and that used to be confusing too.
But there are big benefits too of course - you can fluently write down any music you hear, instantly analyse chords and harmonies, and I was the 'human pitch pipe' when I was a chorister at Winchester cathedral
Hi Rick,
Great video! I think my case might be a little interesting to you though. I started piano when I was 8, but my mom played "high information music" from since before I was born, and I think my particular case is a bit weird.
After hearing a song, I remember it in its original key, and I can sing it in its original key. In fact, when I was a kid I would get really annoyed when people didn't sing songs in the correct key. I still kind of do, actually.
I can name any pitch I hear, in isolation, but I can't do it in context. It's not instantaneous though. Something about multiple notes confuses me. However, if I think about it for a little bit, I'll know the pitch. If you ask me to sing a note, I can. I also have a hard time naming notes.
I focused all of my training efforts on relative pitch, and combined with what I could already do does the job, but yeah...
So it seems like it's not a binary thing - maybe for some people, some parts of "absolute pitch" are retained into adulthood on various levels?
Either way, there's much more important things for a musician to focus on than perfect pitch in my opinion.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Time to get some valproate and a bunch of avant-garde jazz albums
Lmfao I was wondering why I didn't see any comments about that part
No jazz. Don't do it
I am a linguist so I can confidently say, someone did their homework! well done!
Hey, I am a linguist too. Yes, I was impressed by the critical period discussion but, 2000 phonemes? Does that sound right to you? Sounds like a lot to me! Where did Rick get that figure from?
I too am a cunning linguist.
@@djcsr I'm sure you visit this channel for the licks.
Hey i developed perfect pitch. I'm completely tone deaf so every note sounds the same to me. I just gave that note a name and now i can accurately name every note based off my own perception of it. Check and mate.
now that's what I call relativIST pitch
Can you make a video to prove it?
would be very funny and saddening to watch
I would, but it would mostly be shouting, followed by some crying, followed by some more shouting.
Sounds great. Invent some awesome names for your notes as well
I don't have relative or perfect pitch, however people wrongly think I have perfect pitch. I can correctly identify notes until my brain gets "fried" from doing so. It's not instantaneous at all, it takes me a few good seconds with some notes more than others. However, I don't refer back to another note and base it off of intervals. I just have the pitches memorized. I think it's called "true pitch" or something like that. Also, my intonation is bad with some notes. That's also a dead giveaway.
I think it's called near-absolute pitch or sth like that. I heard of it in a different video... It's a more profound form of relative pitch as far as I know
@@delta61 huh, never heard of that name
@@megan8765 Either Adam Neely or Rick explained it somewhere. It's exactly what you said, you have memorized pitches which you can recall. That's the closest we can get to absolute pitch.
Does anyone else remember the advertisement for perfect pitch in all the guitar magazines of the 80s & early 90s? It was the goofiest looking thing. Rick your son is amazing, you taught him well, I love your videos.
Totally remember that goofy looking guy in those ads in Guitar Player Mag...HAHA!
David Lucas Burge. He still sells that course.
I bought the book used! Interesting, but not extremely helpful.
@@simpleeye7950 👍
yes i bought that course and it was excellent ear training,
I have perfect pitch and I don't understand why it is such a big deal....it's very annoying that everyone wants to test me like Rick did to the kid in this video. For me it's like someone pointing to an everyday object and asking me to name them. Imagine yourself saying "that's a car" "that's a toothbrush" "that's a door" and people gush at you. About 1/4 of my classmates in college (I was a music major) have perfect pitch and none of us find ourselves special, nor we think we are better musician than our colleagues are, just because we have perfect pitch. We still have to work hard to master our instruments. I am a clarinet major and I had a very hard time getting used to the fact that clarinet is a B-flat instrument. As a beginner I always fingered D when my teacher asked me to play C. I did this because I have perfect pitch. So having perfect pitch is not always so great. The only time I feel blessed by perfect pitch is when my students want to learn a pop song and I could jot down the notes right away for them to read. That's all. So stop wasting your time trying to acquire this "ability" and/or arguing with people whether it is possible to develop perfect pitch as an adult or even a child. It's more important that you have a good sense of relative pitch, which is totally trainable for sure!
Yuju Ti Dude, being able to write down the notes immediately to any song is freaking awesome. Have a balloon. 🎈
I understand where you’re coming from, but when you have a gift that 1/10,000 ppl have (way less among English speakers) you have to understand why people find it so special.
but everyone can point out an object, and a very select few people can tell a pitch right off the bat. it's unique. i see what you mean, it's not all great for you personally but to a lot of us it's so cool. :)
oh, i understand. only you have the right to waste time.
You dont know the ability you have just recently i realize how beneficial it would be to develop this gift. It is like you are not born a body builder you have to lift weights the same thing with this gift you have to explore it and go beyond naming notes, like Dealan he actually can name all the notes within a chord he is beyond triads and inversions, but i bet he had to develop it, i am not talking about developing naming notes or acquiring perfect pitch i am talking about naming all the notes of complex chord beyond the factory gift God gave Dealyan. Developing the already acquired perfect pitch.
People who claim they developed Perfect Pitch as an adult -- actually had perfect pitch as a child, but were not exposed to music training. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if many people with natural (childhood) perfect pitch never, ever, ever developed it, and its simply there in the back of their head. For those very few, very lucky people, training could UNLOCK & formalize a skill their baby-brain acquired years ago, assuming they haven't been totally isolated from music. But it WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE to formalize in adults who did not already develop this unrefined-ability as a baby.
This claim is not falsifiable since if the perfect pitch was not discovered until adulthood there would be no way to know when it first appeared. So taking all cases where people first showed perfect pitch as adults, as evidence that they must have had it since childhood is really a self-fulfilling delusion.
It is possible for anyone to learn perfect pitch without any musical experience at any age. The reason why Rick Beato claims that only babies can develop perfect pitch is because babies cannot form complex thoughts. As we grow older, more and more life events happen around us and our brains record, process, and store these events as thoughts. Some thoughts we keep, and some we forget. What Rick did with his child was consistently drill music into child's head as a baby.
As a baby, his child embodied those sounds because babies don't have to worry about life situations meaning they don't need to store thoughts. I doubt anyone can remember anything as a baby, because we cannot store thoughts as babies. His child adapted to music pitches as a baby. Why? Because babies can't think. They eat and sleep. That's it. As humans beings, we are evolutionary calibrated to adapt to surroundings and as we get older we develop a conscience to solve these problems for survival rather than depend on others. As we tend to get older, the conscience begins to develop and gets in the way of our "potential" because it limits our ability to focus specifically on one thing. We have over 50,000 thoughts per day and we start to form thoughts at the age of one. Babies have infinite potential at the infant stage because they have no thoughts. However, through meditation it is possible to clear thoughts, and develop the ability to gain perfect pitch. For example, Buddha was able to let go of all thoughts (if you believe in the concept of religion) and achieved enlightenment through meditation.
Basically, let go of thinking. Feel the sounds of music with not only your mind, but also the body and don't think. It's really, really, REALLY hard to do this because we have adapted to thinking. We thrive on it. Like a drug. But if a person can achieve this, not only can we develop perfect pitch, but we can also create new pitches. The universe is still a mystery, and we have been able to disprove theories throughout history and time again and again. Don't ever let anyone tell you that something is impossible.
That sounds more like new age mysticism woo woo than anything else. Just because we want to believe that anyone can develop perfect pitch doesn't make it so. I have more confidence in the scientists who talk about brain plasticity and windows of opportunity than religious wishful thinking.
@@extendmedia4062 You're fucking stupid. It's been proven time and time again by SCIENCE that adults can't develop perfect pitch. You're wrong.
@@oakleysierney1918 I am tone deaf I must have grew up in a sound proof box
Rick,
I'm writing this, because I want to encourage everybody that perfect pitch is not unachievable.
But, saying that, because I belive - and I'm saying believing , not knowing, that perfect pitch, well, is a gift that anyone has. But ....
[break] I was playing on keyboards since very early age. Since that time, it was natural to me, in the same way that we can name colors, to name a 'C' or an 'F#', whatever.
Fast forward. At some point, I was teaching music theory at a college, and, to my surprise, I noticed that a lot of people were capable of singing (not playing) "Jump" in C,
or whatever song, in the proper key. Without knowning, just unconsciosly.
I believe, that this ability is given to anyone, but, very few peoply learn to name the pitches like we name the colors.
When I watch you and your son, it's really impressive to see the easiness of naming the keys you hit. And, even more, to name the various parts of a complex chord, or a cluster.
And I learned, that more people were able to do "perfect pitch" skills that actually performed on instruments that had an well defined association between instrument and pitch.
Like, you're playing a piano, or a violin. I mean, not like playing a sax, with a couple of different tunings.
Long story short, I believe, this is a perception we all have, but only few had the chance to keep it, keeping the association between sound and naming.
While I was teaching music theory, I was deeply impressed by the ability of performing jazz players to be able to tell a e.g. Blab9b13 Chord in a millisecond.
They also learned to associate a sound impression with an abstract word.
As a musician with perfect pitch, it took me ages to tell the single notes, and to deduce the chord. But, this was like them understanding the picture while
I was still struggling to tell the colors. For me, I learned, we all have that gift, it's just that it probably isn't supported that well, or it might not be required that much.
So, to anybody desiring to have perfect pitch, I argue that you do have it. It's about listening to it. Which might be a fascinating journey. But you can do it.
Yes, you're right. Few years ago, I watched this video and believed he was speaking the truth. But now after a basic training I know everyone can learn perfect pitch. Infact, developing perfect pitch is mandatory for every student to be accepted in music colleges in my country. Those students just need to be training for several months before the entry exam.
Don't know why this man still got many views. Guess not much people has music knowledge.
I have a guitar tuner. That is all I need. I have perfect recognition of when things are not in pitch and that is all a musician needs. So I guess I have perfect non-pitch.
@@Parrish_Muhoberac Also as noted very few people have perfect pitch. So for the vast majority this is not a problem and very slight minor pitch problems have no effect on our enjoyment and experience of music.
Watching that video I randomly sang a note, saying "C". Went to my keyboard, was actually an F#. Can't be farther...
Do you have a transpose button?
First case of absolute imperfect pitch in the world!
Where you can't name the actual note but you can name the farthest one from it
Literally the Tritone 😂
Hey if you consistently had polar opposite pitch, could be a use for that lol
"The secret is hypnosis" "If it's a secret why did you tell everyone ? " Dat rhetoric, like the entire video.
Maybe we just need to learn a new way to teach perfect pitch
When i become a father on future i will work on this with my son as a baby.
this will probably work with math and reading too.. create a genius .
Perfect pitch is VERY helpful since you can hear a song and immediately know what's being played, which is a really powerful tool to have.
Hearing transposed versions is actually really fun because it's like listening to a song from a new perspective.
The biggest downside of having Perfect Pitch is not being able to play with a capo on guitar, because if you have a capo on the 3rd fret for example, and you want to play a G chord, you need to make an E finger shape, but your brain pushes you to make a G shape which will result in a Bb.
Definitely works for reading, I did it for my son but I couldn't do perfect pitch at the same time. I don't know how you could do it for maths though . . .
Haha, I have this notion that if I ever have a kid, my wife will be hearing classical music from the 4th morth of pregnancy, like it or not.
Same Here ✌💙
I love how your son has the “really dad? Again?” I just want to go play outside .....😂
Kids love the attention tho
Great Video Rick! I believe you are right. I have wondered about this for many years. i had a friend when I was younger named Larry. He had absolute pitch. It always fascinated me. We were in high school together. He could literally play just about any instrument you could hand him. I was a beginner on guitar when he and I hung out back then. We started a band together. For some reason, he wanted to play drums. He was an incredible drummer, but I couldn't wrap my head around why he would want to play drums, when he had perfect pitch. Unfortunately he passed away several years ago, and I have tried for at least 20 years to teach myself perfect pitch with no success at all. However, trying to acquire perfect pitch DID help me to obtain a very good relative pitch. I can name most notes pretty quick, but I do need a middle C for reference...I felt like a failure for several years, but this video made me feel a lot better about myself...lol Thank you sir!
I don't know what I LOVE more Dylan's ability, your thorough explanation of AP and how one gets it, or all of the emotionally unstable people with fragile egos in the comments section freaking out that you told them they can't develop this one specific ability as an adult.
Perfect pitch is when one throws an accordion into a dumpster and it lands on a banjo.
I've heard that, and yet I still love the banjo, lol!
Ohh Me-Owww LOL
I love these instruments , but still funny.
Thank goodness no bagpipes were harmed!
Nope. Bagpipes have to be involved!
It's funny how Perfect Pitch is very rare, yet about 50% of the commenters here claim to have it. :)
Perfect pitch is actually quite common, or rather I should say the ABILITY to have it, sadly you'll have to rely on your parents to teach it to you which is why it's rare lol
@@RobinEvans1234 He's actually said it in a video before that the perfect pitch Gene is consistent throughout half the population, but the actual skill needs to be developed vigilantly. Which is something very few parents do as most people aren't musicians or they aren't very heavily involved in it, futhermore, most parents won't force music onto their child, that is the cause of its rarity :)
@@alexloveday6430 I was actually listening to the vid as I was reading the comments, and it got to that bit strait after I dropped my inquiry, so I deleted my redundant inquiry and wished someone had played a lot more classical and jazz music at me when I was young.
@@RobinEvans1234 same wish tbh, but relative pitch is still more important and functions almost as fast depending on much you develop it ;) so don't give up!
@@alexloveday6430 Yes, relative pitch gets the job done.
What have YOU DONE TO YOUR SON !!!
I wish my parents had done to me :(
I have done the same with my son 11 years ago, Started at 2 with little games.
@@calrich768 what do you mean?
The confusion is between describing different levels of perfect pitch. As an adult I learnt to identify notes but that's because I am able to recreate notes inside my head and match to them. I haven't experienced anything where its as trivial as recognising colours.
meanwhile I Have perfect pitch but I don't know all the funny names... And this guy c saying I don't have it becuase of that and I can't learn is just infurating.
that kid is incredible!
@Grundle Munch ???
@Grundle your lack of neurons is incredibly pathetic
Don't know where this homophobia stems from
Nor do I care.
I believe Rock's point was simply to give an example of perfect pitch , which his son just happens to posses. It could have been anyone's son. Fortunately for Rick his son his son truly posses
We should celebrate this and be happy for Rick. However, I sense insecurity on the part some regarding of which tells me if not others that they are themselves insecure with, first the their own selves, and secondly perhaps, just perhaps) their own a plack of perfect pitch. It also reveals for those making such comment,
lack of forsite. If these people spent less time acting as a bitches and calling out others as bitches, they they would much happier for it they might achieve relative pitch and be grateful for that.
PS. They might also find they have more friends and gigs. I don't care who they are they are only harm themselves ( personally, professionally, and their own possibility to acheive relative pitch. Again, I say iit dissent matter,you are, what you like to think of yourselves. This attitude in the end doesn't serve you or others.
Grundle Munch Like you Omg!
Oliver Sacks discusses perfect pitch at length in Musicophila. He mentions a number of cases where a brain injury (the planum temporale is especially related to perfect pitch) affected pp in different ways, in one case shifting the individual's pp by 1 semitone! And although some individuals have gained (or lost) great musical abilities after a brain injury, he never mentions this ever resulting in acquiring perfect pitch. HOWEVER, in a different chapter on Musical Savants he describes someone with autism who became a musical savant at 16 (a late age for this) including the ability to reproduce complex chords, instantly reproduce melodies, AND perfect pitch!
I'm being serious when I ask if anyone has tried to train for perfect pitch under the influence of hallucinogens.
i think mushrooms have the potential to rewire a brain and could be used to develop perfect pitch given the perfect training exercises and prior musical training. It would have to be through color/number Synesthesia and developing strong emotional,color, and shape relationships to notes. I think our brains already do subconscious statistical analysis of all data and it could be very possible to rewrite ur brain.
The most important takeaway of this comment: it is important to remember that nothing is impossible just because someone has a lot of experience and has no evidence of something being possible. Yes, this youtuber is really good at music, but I dont believe anyone who says something is impossible. Especially something as simple as perfect pitch. Yes it is possible. No it has not been proven to this point.
I would be my bottom dollar that taking psychedelics (LSD in particular; possibly marijuana) would replicate the baby pitch phenomenon. Neurogenesis. Neural plasticity. That’s all LSD is about. New perspectives.
By the way. When the kid identifies the pitch and Dad says yes.... I thought according to Dad that it is impossible for him to have perfect pitch as an adult. So how can he affirm that the kid was correct?
As much is I think Rick is awesome, I do think this video is a showcase of trying to show how his kid is better than everyone else. No disrespect here the kid is very gifted.
Chris Indermuehle memories are retained on psychedelics
alextheskaterdude07 I don’t get your point, Rick is playing the piano
Does having perfect pitch guarantee that you can write a timeless song? No. Does it guarantee that you can create a symphonic masterpiece? No. Does it give you an amazing singing voice? No. Perfect pitch is amazing but it doesn't guarantee anything other than being able to hear musical notes and keys instantaneously. So don't worry if you are an adult who doesn't have perfect pitch. It really doesn't matter.
That was my question. It’s interesting, but what is the benefit?
Ability to play a piece right after hearing it? Still need to learn an instrument, right?
It's a great trick to impress the ladies tho
What about true pitch
@@shabzone Don't forget the funky basslines.
Hello Rick, I'm a Sicilian janitor and I play the drums.....
Okay?
I'm a Brazilian neurosurgeon
Here's the biggest takeaway from this video: Dylan is a dope kid.
Yep, he's the coolest person on RUclips as far as I'm concerned
I'm really impressed with him. He grew up in a perfect environment and the kid has already a successful career ahead!
If someone with "perfect pitch" ability hears a 440 Hz tone and identifies it as "A", what happens if they're presented with 446Hz, or 453Hz or 459Hz? At what point does "A" become "A#"?
dhy5342 lol, I just did that with my voice.... I sang an A, then bended it one pitch at a time a few times until I got to Bb. My cat was napping, she picked herself up & came over purring.... So in my case, I get a happy kitty ☺️. She's used to music & sits in my lap purring when I practice my flute. To answer the question, once A goes over 450, it starts to sound more like a Bb to me.
Depends on what the musician is used to, and their inherent talent. Jacob Collier, being a few levels beyond perfect pitch, can also arbitrarily divide an interval into equal parts and sing them. (Search his name and "microtones"). But Aimee Nolte, who also has perfect pitch, is blown away by that ability and is pretty much reduced to the level of the rest of us when trying to hit the notes between the notes.
Jacob Collier's ability is pretty astounding, he cann't just hear what note something is, he can tell you fairly accuratly what the frequency itself is, and he can hear that a note is an A sharpened by about 40% of a semitone etc.. So the answer is, it depends on the musician. It's the same as colour - when does red become orange in a gradient?
Thats what he was saying about the "buckets". An "A" is the tones that are in between a B and an A#.
somehow you hear them both. I'd say like, that is one heck of a Bb-ish "A" sound. Here's something that will blow your mind. Sometimes the relativeness is completely different than the note. I've transferred bad cassettes to CD and would be like, "why's that major 3rd (in A Major) sound like a D? That's totally a third it's totally in relationship to A, but I'm hearing a D. Evidently the bad A rounded to an A but the bad C# was closer to the D than the A was to the Bb. I don't know.
I taught myself perfect pitch in my late teens. I started with David Burge’s course, but after the first lesson I thought it was hogwash and I went my own way. Which was essentially what Dylan did. Each pitch was a prominent piece of a favorite song. For awhile it was tough to get the song associations out of head because they distracted me from the subject song. But over time it became automatic. Each pitch had its own color (similar to the circle of 5ths on a color wheel), its own emotion, and its own voice. For example “A” sounded like “Ack!” and sounded like “Broooom”. I would hear the squeak of a door and know it was C.
Had I stuck with it I would certainly still have it. But life happened, and no time to be serious with music when you’re raising kids and working 10 hour days. There was a time I tried to improve, using some internet app where you could pick out chord notes. I got up to being successful with triads, which is better than I was as a teen. But then I got super busy again. And the app doesn’t exist anymore or I’d try it again now.
So I think the reason adults typically can’t learn things like this, isn’t because they physically can’t. It’s because of too many other responsibilities and no time for the required freedom of mind.
I've had Dylan-style perfect pitch my whole life and, as a pipe organist, I find it more of a hinderance than an asset. Imagine playing historic pipe organs in Europe that are tuned differently. If you press a G, you might hear an F, F#, G, G#, or even an A or Bb, depending on the instrument. This is extremely disorienting, and I've had to fight my reliance on my perfect pitch to play these instruments well. I think it's much more useful to develop a good relative pitch.
Such a stupid thing to say for real... What would some people do to have this talent...
Faith Matters what do mean by good relative pitch?
Yeah, I knew a dude back in the day who had perfect pitch, he was a pain in the ass to work with, like if you played 1 chord and 1 string was slightly out of tune, he would immediately stop everything and tune the guitar, but I mean, no one in the studio could hear it, you needed a tuner to see it was actually 1 mil out of tune.
I'd like to know what "Dylan-style" is. I could google it, but I'm not going to.
@Sel Poivre Perfect pitch isn't a talent, it's an ability. Talent is something you can learn and develop. Perfect pitch is something that is. Perfect pitch is as much a hindrance as it is a gift.
@SN L
Good relative pitch means that I can sing intervals like a Major third or perfect fifth really well, but I don't have perfect pitch. Relative pitch is the opposite of perfect pitch.
@MegaMech. "Dylan-style" is in the video. It's the presenter's son (Dylan) instantly naming notes without a moment's hesitation.
a lack of perfect pitch does not mean someone cannot be a good musician. It would be nice to have it but it's not the end of the world if you don't.
I think that's the biggest thing. Saying it's impossible to develop doesn't sit well with me. I think that if a kid can learn it most of the time, so can adults if they want to.The thing is, it's a bit overrated. Who REALLY wants to? Like not just for show but truly wants to? Very few people because once it's "good enough" (relative) it's useless to get perfect pitch.
You just need "perfect relative pitch".
Heres a point NOBODY brings up. EVER.
I know professional sound engineers (the ones who get 250.00 and hour, drive a Tesla, and recorded a lot of seriously famous albums you have at home, not the "sound guys" who work for beer, lol)...they lose their minds of a guitar is out. But they CANNOT tell jack about drums. At all. I can tell you from across the room, what kind of drum, how big, what drum heads he's using, how big the sticks are, all kinds of stuff.
He once asked he, "Why do people buy Roland V-drums? They're so expensive. What's the difference between those and the cheap ones?" He honestly couldn't tell the difference, but he claims Roland has a bit of a hum in every product, DI box or not. He can also hear phase, which I kind of can't and theres no money in it for me at this point yet.
Answer: A, mechanically, Roland makes a VERY solid product if you respect them. I've got pieces that are 20+ years old. One cleaning or power supply replacement in that whole time.
Cheaper products don't sound anywhere near as good from across the room, (they sound real fake) and they won't be around 20 years from now. It won't be worth it to fix them. An electronics engineer is 75.00 to just LOOK at it. Plus parts n labor.
So, you want to spend 3 grand now for a VERY durable item that sounds and feels much better (they don't even easily get scratched) and just have to do it once, or do you want to do it 10 times over 20 years?
I vote once.
@Gabzo Avro But its kinda not fair though, because if im a musician with no AP, and another musician with AP, and we try to write the same song, try to give the same theme and same emotions,, and we have the same exact characters and beliefs and physical appearance and experiences (VERY HYPOTHETICAL, I know), he will do it better than i ever can.. i know its not a competition but its not natural that this is the truth of the matter, philosophically..
@@Icepacalapse Perfectly summarized.
Well I sure won't be getting brain surgery in Brazil.
Please don't, don't came here to do anything at all LMAO
They’ve killed more people than most
wars with failed ass enhancement procedures. So yeah, as the comment says lol - avoid it for virtually anything.
Poe underrated comment
You don't need brain surgery to know he was bullshitting lol
Hi everybody, it is doctor Rich Riviera!
The "hehehe" sound you made to represent the start of the second email from the Brazilian doctor was the highlight of the video. :)
Not trying to be snarky and condescending.
Benjamin Button has something to look forward to.
I remember back when I was in college, I took a jazz class, the instructor ( Bobby Bradford, jazz trumpet master) stated that perfect pitch is only something one is born with. So there could be a bus driver who has never played an instrument could have perfect pitch. It makes sense that perfect pitch could (COULD) be developed as a baby, because it's a baby with a wide open brain and infinite cognitive possibilities. I believe that it could be DISCOVERED or realized in some adults, but it was always there to begin with.
I grew up learning piano, starting around age of 5, then played in school band, keyboard and percussion (mainly timpani). I dont know if that was a coincidence or not, but most pieces we practiced had the note E flat in the Timpani section. Over the 3-4 years of participating in band and tuning and playing on timpani the note E flat just stick to my head. At first i still need to tune timpani with keyboard, after about 2 years I find it much easier to just first find E flat and work my way to every notes.
My band teacher once was mad at me because i wasnt tuning the Timpani with my keyboard. He was very passionate about music and everything being perfect. So i understood why he would be upset because he didnt want to hear the out of tune timpani section ruining the whole piece. He asked a trumpet player to play a A flat note and asked me what that was. Surprisingly i got it right. He thought i had perfect pitch and said "good for you". But deep down i know i didnt have it, because I sang E flat in my mind and found A flat. Nevertheless it was great hearing "good for you" from my band teacher in front of the whole band. Especially from him because i respected him a lot, not because he was being nice when we make mistakes. On the contrary he was very strict, short tempered and the facial expression he makes when one or two player is out of tune and i could almost hear him screaming inside.
Anyways, just sharing personal stories. I immediately thought about my old band teacher when i was watching the video, even though i graduated almost a decade ago.