3 ms·

Uhh.... What? There's no guarantee that the song you hear ringing in your head after a certain time has passed is going to be in the original key, in fact there

Uhh.... What? There's no guarantee that the song you hear ringing in your head after a certain time has passed is going to be in the original key, in fact there's a very good chance (depending on your range) that you'll end up subtly transposing it to a different key when you try singing it in the shower apropos of nothing. This is by no means a guaranteed method to learn perfect pitch.

flyingcircus3 2y ago
I believe my claim of having perfect pitch stands on solid ground, and consists largely of what OP is describing. That's because I can demonstrate it. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the described method is a reasonable way to _acquire_ perfect pitch, but I do contend that what is described is a reasonable method of demonstrating and explaining one's perfect pitch. If you do have perfect pitch, that is reflected in the fact that you don't transpose the music you hear on in your head. This idea of recalling songs is an easy way to explain perfect pitch to others in a way they can easily try for themselves. If you can sing the first note to a song, and then afterwards you actually listen to that song, and you are actually in tune, then you have perfect pitch. That's a far cry from being able to name the note, or rattle off the notes in a chord, but in my view the mental recall is the true innate essence that undergirds every other component of the umbrella of perfect pitch.
- vunderba 2y ago
  Yeah I would agree that with proper practice (assuming you have a "locked in" song for every semitone in a scale) - that this could probably be extrapolated to being able to hear a random note on an instrument and then naming that note, and vice versa singing a given note on command.
  - flyingcircus3 2y ago
    An even easier method, which I was taught is interval training. The jaws theme is a minor second. Do re mi starts with a major second, and so on. Interval training is easier, imo, and would then allow you to memorize fewer songs with absolute notes.
    - vunderba 2y ago
      Yeah agreed. I did interval training as part of a sight singing class a while back.
sowbug 2y ago
The ability is common: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/singing-memory-unlocks-surprisingly-common-musical-superpower https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/singing-memory-u...
- vunderba 2y ago
  Interesting but prior studies in a more controlled environment show that the ability to recall a song in the correct key is only about 15%. From the article: "Psychologists wanted to study “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. So they asked people to sing out any earworms they were experiencing and record them on their phones when prompted at random times throughout the day. When researchers analyzed the recordings, they found that a remarkable proportion of them perfectly matched the pitch of the original songs they were based upon. More specifically, 44.7 percent of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, and 68.9 percent were accurate within 1 semitone of the original song. These findings were recently published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics." This study seems extraordinarily suspect because it's essentially relying on good faith that the person recalling this song hasn't just literally heard this song on the radio a few hours before that or in the morning, and now it's an "earworm." EDIT: The actual published paper makes it more clear how this study was done. Participants (N = 30, convenience sample) were surveyed at random times over a week and asked to produce a sung recording of any music they were experiencing in their heads. This is a little bit more reliable, but still hard to say how long this pitch perfect recall lasted from the last time that they actually heard the song.

flyingcircus3 2y ago

I believe my claim of having perfect pitch stands on solid ground, and consists largely of what OP is describing. That's because I can demonstrate it. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the described method is a reasonable way to _acquire_ perfect pitch, but I do contend that what is described is a reasonable method of demonstrating and explaining one's perfect pitch. If you do have perfect pitch, that is reflected in the fact that you don't transpose the music you hear on in your head. This idea of recalling songs is an easy way to explain perfect pitch to others in a way they can easily try for themselves. If you can sing the first note to a song, and then afterwards you actually listen to that song, and you are actually in tune, then you have perfect pitch. That's a far cry from being able to name the note, or rattle off the notes in a chord, but in my view the mental recall is the true innate essence that undergirds every other component of the umbrella of perfect pitch.

vunderba 2y ago
Yeah I would agree that with proper practice (assuming you have a "locked in" song for every semitone in a scale) - that this could probably be extrapolated to being able to hear a random note on an instrument and then naming that note, and vice versa singing a given note on command.
- flyingcircus3 2y ago
  An even easier method, which I was taught is interval training. The jaws theme is a minor second. Do re mi starts with a major second, and so on. Interval training is easier, imo, and would then allow you to memorize fewer songs with absolute notes.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    Yeah agreed. I did interval training as part of a sight singing class a while back.

sowbug 2y ago

The ability is common: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/singing-memory-unlocks-surprisingly-common-musical-superpower https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/singing-memory-u...

vunderba 2y ago
Interesting but prior studies in a more controlled environment show that the ability to recall a song in the correct key is only about 15%. From the article: "Psychologists wanted to study “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. So they asked people to sing out any earworms they were experiencing and record them on their phones when prompted at random times throughout the day. When researchers analyzed the recordings, they found that a remarkable proportion of them perfectly matched the pitch of the original songs they were based upon. More specifically, 44.7 percent of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, and 68.9 percent were accurate within 1 semitone of the original song. These findings were recently published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics." This study seems extraordinarily suspect because it's essentially relying on good faith that the person recalling this song hasn't just literally heard this song on the radio a few hours before that or in the morning, and now it's an "earworm." EDIT: The actual published paper makes it more clear how this study was done. Participants (N = 30, convenience sample) were surveyed at random times over a week and asked to produce a sung recording of any music they were experiencing in their heads. This is a little bit more reliable, but still hard to say how long this pitch perfect recall lasted from the last time that they actually heard the song.