Pro guitar teacher her. TLDR: Pitch skills are incredibly hard to reliably improve. Inability to vocally reproduce pitch is a reliable filter for limited music

Pro guitar teacher her. TLDR: Pitch skills are incredibly hard to reliably improve. Inability to vocally reproduce pitch is a reliable filter for limited musical talent, _but_ it should always be used together with other filters because on its own, it produces some very important false positives. Your teacher was being lazy filtering students based on just that filter. He was probably trying to discourage you from continuing to study with him. That's cruel, the opposite of what a good teacher should be, whatever your abilities. You being able to catch the right frequency, but not being able to reproduce it by voice is very rare, but not unheard of! Anecdotal evidence: I had a friend at music conservatory with perfect pitch hearing, and zero pitch control of his vocal cords. Our professors came to this conclusion in very early screening. Another interesting to know is that there are incredibly many pro musicians who have less than optimal pitch recognition. I'll tell you even more: most are bad at recognising chords, let alone imagining them. I can tell, because I'm in the top decile of pro musicians on this. And before you think I'm bragging, I'll admit I'm situated much lower when it comes to fine motor skills...