Can You Find This Note?
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- Опубліковано 20 чер 2019
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Do you have perfect pitch? No? ...Are you sure? True perfect pitch is an incredibly rare ability, but according to research in music psychology, many of us may secretly have our own miniature version of it. Try singing a song you know well enough and you may just find that you're singing it in the correct key, even if you haven't heard it in days. So... why? And how? And what? And... who? Ok, that last one didn't make sense, but still, it's a fascinating result, and who knows? You might be one of the lucky ones who can do it.
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Script: docs.google.com/document/d/1V...
SOURCES:
link.springer.com/content/pdf...
www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas03dm/pa...
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Susan Jones
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And thanks as well to Corvi, Henry Reich, Gene Lushtak, Eugene Bulkin, Logan Jones, Abram Thiessen, Anna Work, Oliver, Jc Bq, Adam Neely, nico, Michael Fieseler, Rick Lees, Ben LaRose, Justin Donnell, rhandhom1, Dave Mayer, Thomás, Davis Sprague, Justin Aungst, Harold Gonzales, Paul Quine, Alex, Marc Himmelberger, Chris Borland, CodenaCrow, Nikolay Semyonov, Daniel Gilchrist, Arnas, Sarah Spath, Skylar J Eckdahl, billy roberts, Elliot Burke, Alex Atanasyan, Amlor, Greg Borenstein, Tim S., Elias Simon, Caroline Simpson, Michael Alan Dorman, Jerry D. Brown, Lauren Steely, Fabian, Nathan Petchell, Blake Boyd, Trevor, Michael McCormick, Lilith Dawn, Jonathan Beck, Dmitry Jemerov, Ian Seymour, Charles Gaskell, Luke Rihn, Rob Holton, Ohad Lutzky, Jon White, Kurtis Commanda, James A. Thornton, Benjamin Cooper, Kevin, Elliot Jay O'Neill, Elliot Winkler, Payden Nissen, Tom Evans, John Bejarano, Brian Dinger, Nervilis, Stefan Strohmaier, Adam Wurstmann, Kelsey Freese, Shadow Kat, Adam Kent, Max Wanderman, Lee Rennie, Richard T. Anderson, Angela Flierman, Mark Feaver, Tyler Lukasiewicz, Kevin Johnson, Brian McCue, Stephan Broek, Hape Company, Matt Giallourakis, Marcøs, Ryan Nicholls, ml cohen, Sylvain Chevalier, Darzzr, Roger Grosse, David Hardin, Rodrigo Roman, Francois LaPlante, Jeremy Zolner, Matthew Fox, Paper Coelacanth, Britt Ratliff, Koen Hoogendoorn, Tae Wook Kim, Eddie O'Rourke, Ryan, Jon Bauman, Vincent Sanders, John July, Volker Wegert, Paul Koester, Danny, Matthew Kallend, Patrick Callier, JH, Joshua Gleitze, Jake Lizzio, Ben Straubinger, Emilio Assteves, Alex Keeny, Alexey Fedotov, Charles Hill, Harry Hume, Valentin Lupachev, Joshua La Macchia, David Conrad, John Paul Welsh, Lisa Lyons, DSM, Gary Butterfield, Niko Albertus, Luke Wever, Elizabeth von Teig, Steve Brand, Rene Miklas, Connor Shannon, Chris Chapin, max thomas, Jamie Price, Kennedy Morrison, Red Uncle, Tiago de Caux, Toby M. Schreier, Daniel Garcia, Kirk Natoza, Doug Nottingham, Scott Howarth, Barendo, Smackdab, Nicholas Wolf, Ben Phillips, Hex86, Scott Nystrom, Douglas Anderson, ZagOnEm, Robert Beach, Todd Davidson, Fahzbehn, chaoticgeek, Lionel Dresta, veleum, and Kevin Boyce! Your support helps make 12tone even better!
Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!
Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) Personally, I've tried the All-Star test and while I've got it a couple times, I often come in a half-step flat. Not sure why. I do tend to do better with other songs I'm more familiar with, though, (Aqualung's my go-to test, and I can nail that starting line pretty consistently.) so I think I do have decent pitch memory, I just haven't spent enough of my life listening to Smashmouth which, as an online music communicator, feels far more embarrassing than failing the test would have. At least I got Africa.
2) Another piece of evidence that this ability may be more common than the results show is that, in both studies, participants who claimed to have perfect pitch didn't do great. Levitin's only involved 2, and they both consistently missed. (although one of them only did one trial, for undisclosed reasons.) The replication study did better, with 7 perfect-pitch participants, 2 of which had double-hits, but the other 5 all missed on both trials. Assuming these subjects were telling the truth, then, this implies that even people who do remember the right notes might choose not to sing them for one reason or another (Most likely to do with the range they're most comfortable singing in.) because they were never actually instructed to sing in the correct key. Alternatively, this could indicate that they _don't_ know the right note, which would further imply a separation of pitch labeling from pitch memory. depends, but again, tiny sample size.
3) One possible objection to these results is that subjects are using muscle memory, not pitch memory, to correctly sing the pitches of the songs. That is, they've sung along with it enough times that, when asked to reproduce it, they physically reproduce those phenomena without really accessing any information on the frequencies themselves. However, Levitin cites other studies that demonstrate that even trained singers have inaccurate muscle memory if you deny them the ability to hear themselves and correct, so it's unlikely that the general population would be able to consistently reproduce the correct pitch on muscle memory alone.
*whew* I wasn't the only one who sang a half-step flat!
Thank you for the great video. I didn't have the term "pitch memory" but it's what I rely on if I sing, say, A natural at 440 Hz, because I spent a decade tuning 'cellos and that pitch is riveted to my brain now.
I've noticed this... I think I even argued in the comments on Rick Beato's video about no one being able to learn perfect pitch. I think you'd need to find people with this ability to start with, but I'd like to see if, if you start with people who score well on this, if you can teach them perfect pitch by teaching them to compare a note name to a specific line in a song.
I sang in choir in school, and played baritone tuba. When I was 35 or so I picked up blues harmonica. It's not perfect, but on simple tunes I've never played I can often pick them out on the first try (usually it's kids songs and stuff, not in a specific key) but a lot of the songs I've worked on enough so I've played them out I can sing the first note more or less in key. It seems that from there, if I wrote down the first notes I could build a set of songs that would let me sing a pitch and know the name of the note. (I don't actually have to sing the note to get the pitch in my head). I suspect someone at my level (who didn't have ADHD!) could sit down and teach themselves perfect pitch... but they'd have to have that basic rough skill to start with.
I also sung all star a half step lower too, strange
Yup I was the same, a half-tone flat. I even opened up my tuner app on my phone and sure enough, I was singing an F. Still, not terrible.
I can confirm that nr.3 isn't really the case because I never have sung along to this song before. I did have a pretty vivid memory of it though thanks to the memes and I tried to focus on matching the pitch I sung with how I remembered it in my head. I ended up about a half step sharp.
I’ve used this effect to “teach” myself “perfect pitch”. I don’t have perfect pitch, but my friends think I do because I can produce notes and identify them on demand. But it’s not like I hear the first note of All Star and know it’s an F#. I hear the first note, and that reminds me of first note of the Tchaik violin concerto. Which I know is an F# because I’ve played it. When asked to sing an A, I think of the first chord of the Grieg piano concerto, etc. I know a few songs for each pitch class, and can check myself if I’m unsure of my answer. I’m not 100%, but I’m extremely close. It took a while to practice this, but it’s a cool skill and I’m glad to have it at 17 yrs old.
And because of this, I can tune instruments without a reference tone, which is also pretty cool
@@billyholtz9398 Cool I heard that how a lot of people with perfect pitch kinda start out as a child but then through being quizzed lost the middle man
I was going to ask if anyone had tried this method :).
I’m exactly like you. It’s called true pitch
"That is most definitely *not* a G! I thought this dude was a music theori-
Oh. I've been had."
Hahahaha
Yeah, a ultra flat g.
Baroque G
Wislian Nah. A=432. This is Alien Pyramid Illuminati Conspiracy confirmed.
(Sorry. Had to do it!)
As someone with perfect pitch, it triggered me so much at first when he did that lol
Sorry M'lord Shrek, I've failed the note, I beg your forgiveness...
You know your life is complete when you guess the first note of all star without perfect pitch😂
So my life is coplete now
I was a little less than a half step flat. (Maybe I was tuned to F# in 432 Hz, ooooooooooh my pineal gland is an octave of the sun)
*le wilde Adam Neely appears*
elwayfan01 do-do-do-do do-dodoo
You better hear that as the licc
*pokemon wild battle theme intensifies*
I'm not too familiar with all star, but I watch a lot of Adam Neely so I was able to find the right pitch
Me: Sings "Sooooo-mbody once told me ..."
12tone: "Alright, got that pitch?"
Me: "Errrr ..."
12tone: "Here is the correct note, how did you do?"
Me: "I don't knoooooow!"
“Levitan’s results were definitely significant”
> draws picture of normal model and indicates the mean
the statistician in me is twitching
I turned my pitch memory into perfect pitch by finding a song I knew well in all 12 major keys. When I need to find a note, I sing the song in that key. When I need to identify a note, I see which song it works with
That’s actually really cool. I’d like to see your list of songs in various keys!
I’ve only done this with 3 notes, A, C and E and able to recall them perfectly now. I want to learn more notes soon.
I listen to Neil Cicierga, so it's probably impossible for me to sing "All Star" correctly by this point.
SOME
@@bassgusta People call me the space cowbow
@@MrDuncanBelfast Wiki wiki
No, don't be a pessimist. It just means that literally any attempt to sing "All Star" is going to be correct.
This blew my mind when I actually got the note!
I remember noticing I have some form of pitch memory a long time ago.
I asked on a forum if I somehow had a mild form of perfect pitch and people were giving me shit and acting as if I was bragging.
I gave up on asking and looking for information back then, but this video gave me answers made me feel better about myself.
Now I know that, even if it's not that special, it is a thing and not random chance
Not related to the video but not making a mistake while drawing all this is very admirable
I think he records it at different times. He writes the script, then he draws, then records the audio. But not sure! :D
That is most definitely related to the video.
i'd noticed before that sometimes i would hear a tone and i would be like "hey i know that tone, it's the first note from this other song"
Same.
As a percussionist, it’s very useful to have songs we know that help us tune timpani on stage if you have a single note and have a good knowledge of intervals.
Dude frick, you just gave me the power of perfect pitch! I've listened to so many all star memes that the pitch, tone color and articulation of the beginning of all star are firmly nailed into my head. Combined with good relative pitch...
I can be the annoying one who tells you what pitch the microwave is beeping at!
I was a perfect 4th above, but when I tried it with "Hit Me Baby One More Time" I was spot on.
If you can get that, you can also get Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by the Eurythmics (they're both in the same key).
B
i'm now on my 13th song straight. nailing the key. this is wild. thanks for this.
Where can I find these tests?
Does this mean you have absolute pitch then?
Oh my god someone FINALLY PUT IT TO WORDS. Thank you. I've always known when a song's played in a different key than I recognize it, and I thought I was the crazy one.
so I've been singing my whole life and when we would focus on and practice different pieces we'd do it so much that every single one of us could pluck our starting notes out of thin air, or if we couldn't and started singing in the wrong key, we could tell within a bar or so if it was sharp or flat and by roughly how much. its not as easy when you haven't heard or sang along to that song in a while, so what im basically saying is that anyone can develop pitch memory if they listen to and sing along to their song of choice enough. Singing along is actually pretty important because muscle memory is more powerful than you think
I got it spot on for both All Star, Fix You, Would You Be So Kind, Sing, Don't Look Back in Anger, Mr Brightside and Never Gonna Give You Up, but not Chasing Cars or So What.
I wonder how this differs between men and women - I reckon the vast majority of pop music I'm familiar with is sung by men and so is uncomfortable for me to sing at the "proper" key. That means when I'm singing it on my own without any reference to the original track, I'm likely to transpose it to a more comfortable key.
Yeah, range (and, by association, sex) is definitely a factor. The studies tried to control for that by allowing octave equivalence, but it's possible that people who can't sing it at the correct altitude might choose range closeness over tonal closeness.
I play All Star in G, so that's why the note was off for me.
I tried playing All Star in G quarter tone flat major
@@xuly3129Ha- you split the difference!
Memes, the DNA of perfect pitch.
YOUR LAYERS END HERE
Thank you! I've always been able to predict certain pitches exactly (the e string on guitar and the opening G note for Black Parade) but never considered myself to have perfect pitch.
I'm so glad to finally get some closure on this to be honest
Nailed it! I've actually used used this skill before when needing to sing an e by thinking of Billy Joel's The Stranger.
Banging tune!
This helps a lot! I've always wondered about it, because people tends to say that you either have or don't have perfect pitch, as in if you have perfect pitch you can identify notes as clearly as you could identify colors. It never was the case for me, but I can identify any notes by referencing them to a D, which I have the pitch memorised. However it's also much easier to do if I can sing out loud, meaning I might have just memorized how to sing it physically and I then use that note as a reference point. That video pretty much described what I could do. Thanks a lot!
Whenever someone mentions perfect pitch I just get a ready to get trolled with the wrong note name
It would be interesting to look at populations of people that grew up in a church or other religious setting with long term established songs. Hymns and choruses that were sung over and over for decades in a "special" situation.
It actually blew my mind when I realized that remembering songs in the key they were originally in isn't something that everyone can do. I remember my Intro to Music Theory professor telling us some bizarre anecdote about this one time he was driving somewhere with his wife and started thinking about some song, and it turned out his wife was thinking about it too, and he made a big deal about how they were both thinking about it in the exact same key.
I mean, the point of this story was that he thought this was evidence that there was some sort of psychic connection between him and his wife (don't ask) but the thing that confused me the most was his laser focus on the whole key thing, because surely if you're thinking about the same song by the same artist, you'll know what key it's in, right?
It wasn't until I was having a conversation with one of my composer buddies that I found out that some people just can't remember the key a song is in. It's funny that you used All Star as an example, because I literally asked them, "If I told you to sing 'All Star' by Smash Mouth, you might start singing it in a different key than it's actually in?"
I definitely don't have perfect pitch though, since I can't tell you what pitch a note is just by hearing it. There are some notes that I do know off the top of my end, but only because I've written songs in those keys and remember what the tonic sounds like. The first time I played Deltarune and heard "Field of Hopes and Dreams", there was a moment halfway through the song where I was like "Aha, this is in Bb major!" because I'm really familiar with Bb major (it's one of my favorite keys).
Anyway, really neat video!
Oh my god I can't believe someone made a video on it! I've been developing a pitch memory for years to the point where I can sound off notes with no audio prompt. It's not perfect pitch but i can tell the pitch of car horns and bus chimes. It really is a developed skill
I totally do this. Not perfectly, but pretty close. “Freebird” gets me G, and “White Room” gets me D, “what is hip” for E, “Brahms symphony #1 for C” and a few others
Yeah, I use this to develop a "perfect pitch" of sorts by having songs that I know well for each note. I'm not perfect at it but it usually works well.
Now you have All Star for F#
Tony Farris no, for my sanity I’ll use Subdivisions by Rush for F#
i got it wrong, i answered Gb :/
same. Gb is easier to write in because it has less flats than F#
@@NevertahnProduction wait what?
It's the same enharmonically.
NevertahnProductions no dude. Gb and F# major have the same number of accidentals. when it comes to guitar music, guitarists and bassists generally prefer sharp keys. F# is the way to go for All-Star.
Guys he was joking
Oh hell yeah, more music science/psychology please. This was awesome.
So that’s what this is! I don’t have anything resembling perfect pitch (I can pick out any given note if I think about it, just not straight away), but somehow I still remember every piece I’ve ever heard at pitch (ie. I either remember it in a specific key or not at all, even after not hearing it for years). I’ve been calling it “relative pitch + a good memory” but I guess it’s more like an extreme version of this.
I’m a guitarist so I can hear the notes in my head by thinking of a song that I can play that contains those notes haha
I’m a pianist/violinist and same. Since I’ve done it so much I can recall notes A, C and E perfectly without thinking of a song, I can just hear the notes normally.
For some reason this came to my mind. We all don’t know how to explain calculus, but if you can catch a ball thrown to you, you know calculus. Because you know how to calculate the calculus needed to catch the said ball in you mind, doesn’t mean you can explain the calculations in calculus language, only in the way that makes sense to you. I don’t know why this came to my mind.
Was so confused when you said it was a G hahahaha
I get your suffering. The worst happens when people discover you have perfect pitch and start testing you 😒
Vitor Santos or relentlessly messing with you lol
@@VitorSantos-dh1jr absolute*
That was an extremely interesting video.
A bit of good science practice is always a good thing !
Thanks for making it.
Was bang on! Glad to hear some official science on pitch memory.
Can be a terrible curse though,say new accompanist only knows the song in a different key I'm always surprised how much it throws me off. I can't label pitches without cross referencing in my head
"Fly Me To The Moon".
I see what you did there. Get in the hugging robot, Shinji.
IT WAS REMOVED IN THE NETFLIX VERSION! >:(
I got the Sinatra version, aka, the only one that matters.
oh wow this explains my understanding of pitch! i know only what e-flat sounds like because of a song i did in chorus several years ago and i learned notes through this sort of labeling
I’ve always had a really good pitch memory, to the point where one time I was at a choir festival and the end of class bell (just a digitally-produced note) was the same pitch as the first note of one of the songs we had been singing (The Ground by Ola Gjeilo!! Gorgeous piece, one of my faves of all time). I can’t have been the only one to notice that, but a bunch of my friends were impressed about it. They were asking me if I had perfect pitch and I was like “I don’t think so?” I knew it was a G because I had been reading the sheet music all day, but the thought pathway my brain took was “Frequency->Song->Pitch” rather than “Frequency->Pitch” Kind of an interesting distinction, and it makes me much more appreciative of how cool and lucky it is for people with absolute pitch to have that innate talent rather than it being learned.
Idk why but I can't remember the pitch of the first note by thinking of it directly, but when I thought of the word "well" as in "well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming" (which I know is the same note by relative pitch) I can remember the pitch perfectly. Probably because my ear is more in tune after listening to the first verse so I remember the pitch of the first note of the second part better.
I remember discovering this about a year ago. I do karaoke a lot and I started doing Tool's "The Pot" quite often, which is quite difficult (for many reasons) but mainly because the song begins with vocals only without any instrumental context. This meant I usually spent a few minutes before my song came up listening to the beginning and really focusing on the pitch that Maynard sings right at the start, so that when I got up on stage, I knew I would hit the right note from the start. However, after singing it a few dozen times, I noticed that when I listened to it for preparation, I began anticipating the correct note already, and nowadays I can almost always start singing "the Pot" in exactly the right pitch. It's great to know that it was probably this levitin effect!
I do not consider my self to be a singer or have perfect pitch but as I was singing “some” the piano note came in with the exact same note and I felt very good about myself😂
Same 😀
Actually to get the note I tend to sing the highest comfortable note in my vocal range and then I remember the interval and voilà.
This reminds me of the "airball" phenomenon. There was a study done a few years ago about the "airball" chant done at basketball games, and it revealed that, regardless of the arena, the chant was not only always done in unison, but with the same notes - F-to-D - being used. Pretty amazing. www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-09-24-mn-49383-story.html
I've had close to perfect pitch memory for as long as I can remember, and this video taught me that although I don't have the pitch labeling ability, my pitch memory definitely is a real thing and worth practicing. Thank you!
Great video and I would love to see videos on higher prime-limit just intonations!
I cant sing but i got that allstar note perfect, hell yea
I was a tritone out for all star but then i remembered that ive listened to the bach chorale all star in c more than the original lol
I wonder if all the slightly pitched down/up versions on UA-cam to defeat copyright matching confounded more recent efforts.
(I was within a half step of the correct note, go me!)
I leaned how to do this in marching band in school because my friends and I would play pop songs by ear when we didn't have proper arrangements. However, I played Tenor Sax and focused on harmonies and bass lines, I don't always remember the melody pitch right away.
I'm a former 'cello and guitar player. I sang a natural F. I am humbled.
I'm a guitarist, and I dont have relative pitch, absolute pitch, or perfect pitch. I sang an F#. I'm pleasantly surprised?
@@ROARMAN1231 Relative pitch isn't like perfect pitch where it is something you have or you don't. Relative pitch is just a skill you learn as you become more experienced and put in practice.
This was scary, I don't know "All Star" that well, but I had the correct note in my head. Eek.
I have pitch memory. Never heard of if but known for a long time
Daniel Levitin’s book Your Brain On Music is really good btw
Another great vid! I most definitely don't have perfect pitch, but did get the 'Some' note of Smash Mouth, I'd never given this topic any thought until now, but I also always get the 'Let' note of Carly Simon's Let the River Run, don't know what that note is, didn't know the 'Some' note of Smash Mouth before this vid - now all I need to do is find songs where I can do this for each note in chromatic scale, find out what all these notes actually are and then - perfect pitch here I come!!!! :)
1:03 As someone with absolute pitch, hearing a note and being told it's a note a semitone different fucks with my brain and makes me want to scream. So you got me. 😂 Adam Neely did a similar prank on his video on the subject and it literally made me squirm in my seat.
Justin Sanner I suggest you never time travel to Europe while A=? varied all over
"Start singing All-Star"
_immediately starts thinking of the chorus instead of the first verse_
F
Fascinating stuff. I had noticed before that when I work a song out by ear from my memory of the song ( ussually simple diatonic pop) that the key I played in would ussually turn out to be correct.
I've always been able to remember melodies and such. I guess I have great pitch memory, just never learned to label them.
As somebody who nearly exclusively listens to classical music, I'm just proud of myself for remembering part of that All-Star song you were referring to, even though I didn't know how the song started so unfortunately couldn't test whether I have perfect pitch (don't think I do though).
Tfw you're a tritone away
I don't have perfect pitch, but I listened to a bunch of those solfeggio things and I notice that each note has a distinct “colour” or “identity” to it that makes me recognize it. I still can't put the note labels on the pitches, but I can copy a pitch accurately when I hear it. Definitely sounds like pitch memory to me.
I have a hard time remembering the names of the pitches but i can hear any song in my head.... its getting it back out where i have the difficulty.
Wow I actually think I have this. I have an entire album of songs that I can hum the starting note of with no context. When I tried to hum the starting note of All Star I sang an entire whole step below it as well which lines up with your last point.
This matches my personal experience. There are starting notes to songs I know very well I can consistently nail, but I don’t have perfect pitch.
Maybe the issue of the participants singing flat could be solved if they were given an instrument like a theramin and asked to reproduce the pitch on that. It would remove the barrier of having to physically be able to sing the note, but they still wouldn't be able to guess based on prior knowledge of an instrument's notes.
Great video! This very much describes my experience. Are there any resources that explore how to develop “latent absolute pitch” as an adult?
One thing I've heard (from an early RadioLab episode, if I'm not mistaken) is that people who speak tonal languages do this better. In particular, if you analyze the pitches of the same person speaking the same word in Mandarin Chinese, even weeks and months apart, they'll say it at the same pitches, even though what's important is just the "shape" of the pitch and general placement in your vocal range (rising, falling, high level, and a sort of checkmark shape that's usually abbreviated into a low level) rather than the absolute pitch. Though I guess, in turn, I don't know what would happen if you got an English-speaker (or any other nontonal language speaker) to read the same sentence a few months apart.
One way to work around the singing issue is to give the subject a piano/keyboard and ask them to find the first note they hear in their head on the keyboard. It might take them a few tries for them to find the note they hear in their head, but they wouldn't have to rely on their own voice (or lack thereof).
Eg., in my case, since I don't remember All-Star well enough to get the first note, I'd choose Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac, and try to find the first sung note on a keyboard. I'd hunt around a bit, make note of the song and the result, then compare it to the song to find the actual first sung note.
Then I'd get a sample size of about 10,000 people from all different backgrounds, ask them what their favorite song is, have them find a particular note, and then record the differences.
Also, more than one song in each case would work better, say ten songs per test subject.
You would have to eliminate musicians in general; their results would skew the test.
I don't think this would work and I'll tell you why. Once they hit the first note their memory of the correct note would be 'spoiled', for lack of a better word.
Example: I can tune a ukulele perfectly by ear, unless it's too far off to start with. After hearing all the wrong notes I can never seem to find the right one
this works!
as for "stars" i'm probably too old for smash mouth, but i nailed it with the carpenters!
that's probably also thanks to my sonic youth, because on the cover it was the same key, as i just checked.
;p
What I find interesting is I'm a trained sing of well over ten years and I sang a perfect 5th
how is that interesting?
Neat -- this explains why, although I don't have absolute pitch, I had to work out the Baroque pieces I like on the piano a half-step flat or else my head cramped up.
I learned music late in life for most musicians, I was well into high school when I started getting into it, yet I have developed this version of perfect pitch over the past few years. I can't name the notes, but I know what they are and can recreate them vocally.
This even works for all the songs I can remember from before I knew music. Somehow the pitch of those songs were preserved in memory, even without the ability to recall them.
Can you make a video about Dean Town of Vulfpeck, or in general just Vulfpeck, I think it is a noticable and worth to listen group.
I was a perfect 5th above with all star, but then I tried it with multiple songs that I know really well and I was spot on with most of them. I've noticed this before when I have a song stuck in my head, then I listen to it and it's in the same key. This is super cool.
I have listened to all star a lot so I managed to get the right pitch. I also use other pieces and songs to match other pitches and it always works out because of that.
I failed the note because I could only hear the "Bach Choral" version of the song, which starts with an F.
Welp
that version messed me up too lmfao
I started a third too high but just because I thought the line started differently than it actually did. If he had asked me what the second note was, I would have been right.
I'd be interested to see what the results would be of a large trial using instrumentalists, singers, and non-musicians. In particular, it would be interesting to see how instrumentalists and singers compare when singing the first note of something they've learned on their instrument. I know I can often pick out the first note of something I'm working on after a while without a pitch reference, but I wonder how much of that is pitch perception and how much is muscle memory.
I live a very sad life of singing every note about 1.5 steps off in either direction depending on the initial pitch. It's frustrating because I have tried and tried and I can't seem to fix it, and If I sing along to any song, people look at me weird 'cause I'm singing it wrong.
Once on a driving trip, my brother and I simultaneously hit the same pitch, randomly beginning the same song out of the blue.
Sang something close to an F#2
Also
"Rare ability" mfw I know 4 people who have it. Two are drummers for goddsakes--what do they need to tune??
Funny you post this because just this year, I noticed that three of my friends were able to sing songs that they were familiar in the right key almost every time. One was a trained musician but just wasn’t familiar with note names, one had some experience with music but also didn’t know the note names, and one had no experience with music at all. Meanwhile, I, someone who’s been doing music all my life, almost never guess the pitch right.
I didn’t think anyone might have trouble with this. I’ve just gone off and tested myself in about 10 songs and gotten it right every time. Maybe because in my head i can essentially play the music on its own, maybe because i sing along with songs i like a lot. For me it’s very easy
I personally could not test it with your mini trial there. But what I sometimes experience is when I’m semifamiliar with a song and try to sing it I can’t find the right starting note. And when Iater check I find out that I was lika a halftone off and tried to over correct when I started new.
I have almost perfect pitch memory, but terrible pitch labeling. As a musician I have a few friends with true perfect pitch and it's like freaking magic. I can play chords on a piano and they can identify the chord and each note that's part of it in moments
Trumpet was my main instrument growing up so I’m usually off by the 1½ step from B flat to C when asked to identify or hum a note. 😅
Really cool video.
it'd be interesting to see a follow up that includes timbre.
I play guitar, and I've noticed a lot of experienced guitarists can recognize the tones associated with guitar strings, but only *on* a guitar.
Aimee Nolte has something very similar, except it's the piano for her. Essentially having perfect pitch, but only for one timbre, is called instrument-specific absolute pitch, or "true pitch."
A couple of notes that I use for pitch memory:
Bb - Don't Stand So Close To Me (Sting), and also the "I want my MTV" part from "Money for Nothing"
F - The 20th Century Fox fanfare
Thanks for adding another one to my repertoire!
oh. its like how ive tuned my guitar so many times that it sticks in my brain and i can just hum the notes with no context
My relative pitch is so-so (I’m working on it), but I have great pitch memory, so it does help when recognizing whether or not a certain pitch is in key from the first note.
I learned by myself on the morning bus that everyone sings All-Star a half-tone flat. At first I thought it was because of its unusual key (6 sharps!).
I feel a big part that was over looked with pitch memory was the timbre of the music. I think the main reason people are able to remember the pitches of their favorite song has more to do with the memorization of that songs specific timbre and that the memorization of the pitch is a by product.
I realized while doing the test that whenever I try to recall a song, I almost always sing a fourth down (or a fifth up if the song is lower in my vocal range)
I definitely can remember pitches like this. I can figure out the key of songs if I have a couple seconds to remember a piece that I know well. I can also use this to sing pitches that I want, again it just takes a second to recall the pitch.
I can't imagine that this is too uncommon as I know that at least two of my immediate family members know if a song is not in it's normal key (like it being pitched on UA-cam to attempt avoid copyright claims) and will start a singing a song in the key in which they heard it.
I’ve always had a good ear, in my intro to theory class I was getting 100% on all of the aural tests. I think I might have this pitch memory type thing because I definitely don’t have the pitch naming, but I do feel uncomfortable and can very quickly identify when a not I am playing or hearing on my instrument is a bit off, (I play trombone so some slide positions are very rough), at least besides notes in second and third position because as I was learning the instrument I learned those sloppily and so I hear them out of tune and have a hard time playing them in tune. But I have been very good at blending and tuning in chords because of my experience as a second trombone player in my high-school jazz ensemble, where we had lots of funky chords, and I would get notes on non perfect intervals. My ensemble intonation is amazing for that reason, but when I play solo I fall into my own pitfalls of mishearing the pitches I should be playing.
So I guess I really do have to spend time relearning a couple of my pitches so I know how they should sound, so I don’t keep placing them incorrectly. (Also partly muscle memory because slide positions are 100% muscle memory.)
Hold on... spontaneous hippocampal neurogenesis was first discovered 16 years ago. Maybe someone should try to learn PP as an adult... Not me, I was 1.5 steps above the real note when I started Allstar... Awesome content and frequency lately. Keep Rockin'!