December 8, 2025 • 15 mins
This is not about the movie(s). Amazingly, that didn't even occur to us before, during, or even immediately after recording this... This is about the ability some people have to identify or possibly produce exact notes, called perfect pitch, or natural pitch, or absolute pitch. Is it genetic? Is it learned? Are those nonsensical questions? We'll explain a bit of the research on perfect pitch (and relative pitch, which is technically different).
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Links and References:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast
Give the gift of supporting us as a one time donation, or as a sustaining member: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast
Links and References:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707634867#:~:text=Absolute%20pitch%20(AP)%2C%20also%20known%20as%20%E2%80%9Cperfect,musical%20tone%2C%20without%20an%20external%20reference%20pitch.
- https://www.huddlestone.es/en/perfect-pitch/
- https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/what-is-perfect-pitch
- https://www.musical-u.com/learn/perfect-pitch-is-not-magic/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why we Do what we Do Mini. I'm your
host Abraham, and I'm your host Shane. We are a
psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans and
(00:24):
non human animals do, and we release our full length
episodes on Wednesdays, but on Mondays, which if you're listening
to this on Monday then you know this. We release
these short episodes where we do just a quick dive
into a topic and then get out of there. So yeah,
we'll just want to talk about the thing that we
need to talk about so that we can be efficient
with our time. But I will say really quick, if
you are joining us for the first time and welcome,
(00:45):
I hope that you enjoy what you hear in this
discussion today, and if you are coming back, then thank
you for continuing to check out our stuff. And either way,
if you'd like to support us, you can join us
on Patreon, leave us a rating, and review, like subscribe,
tell a friend, and I will talk more about those
things at the end of this discussion. But we need
to get into it because we're talking about baseball and
the most perfect pitch of all time.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Obviously, this is well within my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, no, we're not. We're talking about perfect pitch for singing.
So you've likely heard of people who have what you
might call perfect pitch or maybe more accurately, absolute pitch. There,
I think is another term for this, which is actually
natural pitch. But anyway, these are people who can easily
recognize or produce specific musical notes. So, for example, you
(01:30):
could say, sing a B flat or make a singing
sound that was exactly a B flat, or if you
played a B flat on a piano or on a guitar,
they would be able to tell you what note it is.
And that's what that means when we're talking about perfect
or absolute pitch.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, and many consider this to be a characteristic feature
of the world's best musicians, or possibly even necessary to
be a musician at all.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Spoiler alert not huh.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, but we'll describe what we do and we don't
know about what it is and how it comes about, like,
because it's a pretty interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yes, okay, So perfect pitch, which as I said, is
also referred to as absolute pitch or natural pitch, It
is difficult to define for a variety of reasons, mostly
because as people have started talking about this idea of
perfect pitch, various researchers over time have disagreed on the definition,
and so they've defined it and measured it in different ways,
and so we are unclear how well how prevalent it
(02:26):
is and how much it exists, because some people call
one thing perfect pitch, and another than group of researchers
call it a different thing perfect pitch.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, and some define perfect pitches the ability to simply
identify a note that they hear. Some define it as
being able to produce notes. But this could be the
notes they're sung, or they could play it on an instrument.
Sometimes it's all of those things. So like that's kind
of where those discrepancies show up.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And that's just like you can just do it. Someone's
like sing an F sharp and they would just do
that thing or sing an A and they would be
able to sing that note, and if they played one,
they'd be able to tell you what note it was
that you played, no matter what octave it was in.
That's the perfect pitch. There's also something called relative pitch,
and that one's very similar. This one's being able to
(03:08):
identify or produce notes after you first have a reference notes,
so someone will play a note, and then from there
you would be able to sing, like if someone play
to see you could then sing an e because you
know the intervals between those notes. You just needed a
reference one. First, most people who talk about like really
high caliber musicians, they actually talk about this more because
(03:30):
if you can do this, like, you can pretty much
do anything that a perfect person with perfect pitch could do.
The only thing is they don't need the reference note,
but anyone else could like literally pluck a note on
a string, and then anybody else who has relative pitch
is good to go, Like it's one second longer to
do it than people who have like the ractural or
absolute pitch. And then there's also something called very fine
(03:51):
perfect pitch apparently, which is someone who can tell if
a note is even slightly over or under the exact
four hundred and forty hrtz stand reference note that is used.
So they're like really really fine discriminations for what that
pitch is.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right. This is also fascinating to me because I just
don't have any of this.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Sure, yeah, same, but however you slice it, it is
responding in some way to music, such the person with
absolute pitch, can respond with a higher than average level
of precision and find grain discrimination of those sounds.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
It's estimated that only one in ten thousand people have
absolute pitch.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So the important feature here is that the person can
discriminate these notes, these sounds and like very finally, yeah,
to like small variations.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
They can do this.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yes, So if you've heard of this, you probably imagine
if and you hear those numbers like one in ten thousand,
you're probably imagining this is purely genetic, right, like you
are born with this or you are not, But this
is just how some people are. And researchers had the
same question. They also wanted to know, is this just
something you're born with? Although disagreeing about how to define
(04:58):
and measure their variable of interest has made at somewhat
challenging to determine if it's something you're born with, But
that was one of their starting questions. So let's dive
into the idea that this might be something you're born with.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yes, So shrewd listeners may have picked up on a
few considerations. First of all, you have to be able
to detect musical notes to identify them, so you must
have some amount of auditory acuity. Second, you have to
have had some exposure to notes and ideally the names
of notes to be able to identify them in some capacity. Third,
the notes as we have created and identified them are
(05:31):
actually arbitrary and cultural. So different cultures have different notes
in different systems of music. Cultural practices are learned by definition,
So any reference to musical notes depends on the culture
in which you experience those notes.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And so all that is to say, like you might
be having a question like it's purely genetic. I'm like,
how easily this comes to You might be informed by genes,
but like your genes don't know what an a flat
sounds like. They might be able to more clearly pick
out different tones that you hear, like they might help
you like have that greater acuity, but like they don't
(06:06):
know what the notes are because we made up notes.
We just we just decided that those word notes. So like,
all that is to say, like those considerations that you
just listed are if you're trying to shoehorn in the
idea that this must be genetic, And I'm like, well,
but music is cultural, so it cultural is learned like
it is definitionally learned. It is a learned behavior. It
(06:29):
is not something that is genetic. So like you have
to have had exposure to those notes to be able
to then reference what those notes are. So like again,
capacity might be the better way to think about if
there is genes to the extent to which genes are involved,
but exposure is literally completely necessary for you to ever
(06:52):
develop this.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I love that we brought up the idea of culture
to cultural practices because that does depend. Like there are
different systems and different like the reids of music that
apply to culture. And it just kind of like how
ads are, Like they just they're they're very specific and
very cultural.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
All right, So we're back and so yes, like as
I said, obviously genetics have to be involved. You have
to have the capacity to determine the differences between those
notes and you and to be able to do this
with a high level of precision. So if your genes
have not given you the capacity to learn that, then
you won't learn that, but you so you have to
have the genes, but then you have to have the
(07:36):
opportunity to actually learn it as well, because there are
that has to be at least partially learned.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, So a nineteen ninety eight study surveyed six hundred
musicians and reported that forty percent of musicians who started
training before four years old were able to develop absolute pitch,
compared to only three percent of people who started training
at nine years old or later. So further, people were
four times more likely to develop absolute pitch if they
were born to a family in which other members also
had perfect pitch.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So, first of all, I don't know what happened at
the gap between four and nine years old, but those
are the two numbers that I saw reported, but taken together,
the authors essentially conclude that perfect pitch is genetic because
like people who start younger develop it, people who start
later don't. That to me is a very weird argument
to make from those data, and it might be primarily genetic. Again,
(08:23):
ensuring that, like the capacity is an incredibly important part
of the of whether or not this ever develops. But
they're missing an important set of numbers in there. So,
like they say three percent, only three percent of people
learned perfect pitch after they started training at the age
of nine years old or higher. They learned it three percent,
(08:44):
Like sure, those are people who did not demonstrate this
ability and then learned it and then you're telling me
it's purely genetic. I'm like, those are opposite things, the
things that you just said. And people were much more
likely to have perfect pitch if born into a family
that already had perfect pitch, which again means that some
people also had perfect pitch when they weren't born into
a family of people who had perfect pitch. So, like,
(09:06):
the extent to which genes play role is extremely unclear.
It's obviously important, but they're saying here like also, like
if you start before four years old, forty percent of
them develop it. I'm like, so forty percent of them
had a higher capacity to learn. It is what I'm
hearing in this particular case, because you're saying that if
they started later, they wouldn't develop. But if it was genetic,
(09:29):
it doesn't matter. It's not like our eyes learn to
become a specific color. Our genes program what color our
eyes are going to be, and then they just are.
And those are like things that can technically change if
you're exposed to certain environmental conditions. But the point being that,
like if it's something you're born with, if it's purely genetic,
it just is like you don't there is not to
(09:50):
learn it. Yeah, there's not really a learning curve. It
just it just is like our digestive system works without
us learning, Like there are actually aspects of it that learning,
Like it's actually not one hundred percent genetic, but like
most of it works automatically, which means it's heavily heavily
governed by genetic programming, right, and we don't necessarily have
to learn anything specific, but like this one is specifically
(10:12):
saying that they learn it at a certain age more
easily than at a later age, which means they learn.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
It right, They learn it now.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
There might be some primarily genetic factors to it, like
the ability to hear bone structures in your ear, like
the fine discriminations, but the evidence also clearly shows that
some people do learn the skill. And like so many
things in life, genetics set the occasion, the environment shapes
the actual behavior. And I do think it's also important
note that, like it's possible that is, you know, I
(10:42):
think about that age gap from forty nine, and I'm like,
that person's been exposed to so many more noises at
that point in time, and they could have like potential
hearing loss as a result of loud noises and loud environments.
As somebody who is nearing forty, I know this to
be true, Yeah, because I have lost so much of
my hearing from concerts, So like, it would be more
difficult for me to learn perfect pitch because of those
life events that have kind of occurred too. So like,
(11:03):
it's just one of those things where it's like, yes,
genetics make it possible, but an environment shapes the actual behavior.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, you need the exposure to then have an opportunity
to learn it. So anyway, you might be thinking, like, well,
those people are super lucky who have perfect pitch. There
are advantages and disadvantages of course, kind of like everything.
Having absolute pitch does mean that you can easily produce
notes on key and perform with little opportunity for error,
So like that is an advantage, And another advantage is
(11:31):
you can tune an instrument with no need of referencing
another instrument or any kind of tuning mechanism. You could
just just do it from because you can recognize those pitches.
So like, there are things about it that people like,
but there are also some aspects of it that maybe
make it less desirable of a trait than you might think.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, it also means that you're acutely aware of when
notes are out of key, even slightly, and it can
make it difficult to listen to music without dissecting the
precision of each individual note. Further, people with absolute pitch
might struggle to recognize a melody if it is played
in a key or slightly off key that's different than
what they're typically used to or how they were trained.
You know, a lot of times I would imagine, and
(12:07):
this is just me kind of armchairing it for a second,
but I would imagine that somebody who has perfect pitch
is probably trained in music theory, which means they're trained
in certain music structures and stuff like this and how
music fits together. If you are trained to think that way,
then when you hear music that doesn't really follow music
theory in the same ways, it may be difficult to
appreciate or understand that type of music.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean if you imagine then hearing music
from other cultures, yeah, that have used different musical systems entirely,
you might have a hard time listening to that and
being able to appreciate the art that they are creating
because you can sort of only wrap your mind around
the culture that you're familiar with and how it works
(12:47):
and maybe not. Maybe like people who have perfect pitch
will disagree with me, but like that was one of
the things I found reported in here, is that people
may struggle with melodies and notes if they're different from
the sort of references that they're used to. Yeah, makes sense,
all right, that's what we have to say about perfect pitch.
If you have perfect pitch, we would love to hear
from you. You may email us directly at info at
wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or you can tell us about anything else.
(13:11):
You can even just say hi if you want to,
and that's totally okay. We look forward to hearing from you.
If you like to support us, you can join us
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early episodes, and I will read your name and the
list of people who support us in our full length episodes,
but in our minis I say thanks for doing the thing.
We do really appreciate you. Thank you so much to
my team of people who help make this happen, especially
(13:32):
to Justin for his wonderful work and cobbling together the
ums and us and making my words turn into words.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Mostly if you were to just hear this podcast without Justin,
it just sound like garbledba yeah all time, And somehow
Justin puts it into sounds that sound like a language,
which is really very generous of him.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
A sentence shows up every now and again.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Exactly right. Otherwise, you can support us, I think I
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(14:12):
to be a podcast, and also just thanks for be
and you.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yes, we love you.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is there anything that I mester you'd like to add
before we wrap this one up?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
No, go listen to music.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
All right, A perfect pitch mini is and that was
my gross pitch. I hurt somebody's.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Else that was so upsetting. That was upsetting to me
and I don't even have perfect pitch.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
All right, Bye everyone, Bye, you've.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Been listening to Why we do what we do?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD wwdpodcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day. W
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why we Do what we Do Mini. I'm your
host Abraham, and I'm your host Shane. We are a
psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans and
(00:24):
non human animals do, and we release our full length
episodes on Wednesdays, but on Mondays, which if you're listening
to this on Monday then you know this. We release
these short episodes where we do just a quick dive
into a topic and then get out of there. So yeah,
we'll just want to talk about the thing that we
need to talk about so that we can be efficient
with our time. But I will say really quick, if
you are joining us for the first time and welcome,
(00:45):
I hope that you enjoy what you hear in this
discussion today, and if you are coming back, then thank
you for continuing to check out our stuff. And either way,
if you'd like to support us, you can join us
on Patreon, leave us a rating, and review, like subscribe,
tell a friend, and I will talk more about those
things at the end of this discussion. But we need
to get into it because we're talking about baseball and
the most perfect pitch of all time.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Obviously, this is well within my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, no, we're not. We're talking about perfect pitch for singing.
So you've likely heard of people who have what you
might call perfect pitch or maybe more accurately, absolute pitch. There,
I think is another term for this, which is actually
natural pitch. But anyway, these are people who can easily
recognize or produce specific musical notes. So, for example, you
(01:30):
could say, sing a B flat or make a singing
sound that was exactly a B flat, or if you
played a B flat on a piano or on a guitar,
they would be able to tell you what note it is.
And that's what that means when we're talking about perfect
or absolute pitch.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, and many consider this to be a characteristic feature
of the world's best musicians, or possibly even necessary to
be a musician at all.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Spoiler alert not huh.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, but we'll describe what we do and we don't
know about what it is and how it comes about, like,
because it's a pretty interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yes, okay, So perfect pitch, which as I said, is
also referred to as absolute pitch or natural pitch, It
is difficult to define for a variety of reasons, mostly
because as people have started talking about this idea of
perfect pitch, various researchers over time have disagreed on the definition,
and so they've defined it and measured it in different ways,
and so we are unclear how well how prevalent it
(02:26):
is and how much it exists, because some people call
one thing perfect pitch, and another than group of researchers
call it a different thing perfect pitch.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, and some define perfect pitches the ability to simply
identify a note that they hear. Some define it as
being able to produce notes. But this could be the
notes they're sung, or they could play it on an instrument.
Sometimes it's all of those things. So like that's kind
of where those discrepancies show up.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And that's just like you can just do it. Someone's
like sing an F sharp and they would just do
that thing or sing an A and they would be
able to sing that note, and if they played one,
they'd be able to tell you what note it was
that you played, no matter what octave it was in.
That's the perfect pitch. There's also something called relative pitch,
and that one's very similar. This one's being able to
(03:08):
identify or produce notes after you first have a reference notes,
so someone will play a note, and then from there
you would be able to sing, like if someone play
to see you could then sing an e because you
know the intervals between those notes. You just needed a
reference one. First, most people who talk about like really
high caliber musicians, they actually talk about this more because
(03:30):
if you can do this, like, you can pretty much
do anything that a perfect person with perfect pitch could do.
The only thing is they don't need the reference note,
but anyone else could like literally pluck a note on
a string, and then anybody else who has relative pitch
is good to go, Like it's one second longer to
do it than people who have like the ractural or
absolute pitch. And then there's also something called very fine
(03:51):
perfect pitch apparently, which is someone who can tell if
a note is even slightly over or under the exact
four hundred and forty hrtz stand reference note that is used.
So they're like really really fine discriminations for what that
pitch is.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right. This is also fascinating to me because I just
don't have any of this.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Sure, yeah, same, but however you slice it, it is
responding in some way to music, such the person with
absolute pitch, can respond with a higher than average level
of precision and find grain discrimination of those sounds.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
It's estimated that only one in ten thousand people have
absolute pitch.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So the important feature here is that the person can
discriminate these notes, these sounds and like very finally, yeah,
to like small variations.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
They can do this.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yes, So if you've heard of this, you probably imagine
if and you hear those numbers like one in ten thousand,
you're probably imagining this is purely genetic, right, like you
are born with this or you are not, But this
is just how some people are. And researchers had the
same question. They also wanted to know, is this just
something you're born with? Although disagreeing about how to define
(04:58):
and measure their variable of interest has made at somewhat
challenging to determine if it's something you're born with, But
that was one of their starting questions. So let's dive
into the idea that this might be something you're born with.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yes, So shrewd listeners may have picked up on a
few considerations. First of all, you have to be able
to detect musical notes to identify them, so you must
have some amount of auditory acuity. Second, you have to
have had some exposure to notes and ideally the names
of notes to be able to identify them in some capacity. Third,
the notes as we have created and identified them are
(05:31):
actually arbitrary and cultural. So different cultures have different notes
in different systems of music. Cultural practices are learned by definition,
So any reference to musical notes depends on the culture
in which you experience those notes.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And so all that is to say, like you might
be having a question like it's purely genetic. I'm like,
how easily this comes to You might be informed by genes,
but like your genes don't know what an a flat
sounds like. They might be able to more clearly pick
out different tones that you hear, like they might help
you like have that greater acuity, but like they don't
(06:06):
know what the notes are because we made up notes.
We just we just decided that those word notes. So like,
all that is to say, like those considerations that you
just listed are if you're trying to shoehorn in the
idea that this must be genetic, And I'm like, well,
but music is cultural, so it cultural is learned like
it is definitionally learned. It is a learned behavior. It
(06:29):
is not something that is genetic. So like you have
to have had exposure to those notes to be able
to then reference what those notes are. So like again,
capacity might be the better way to think about if
there is genes to the extent to which genes are involved,
but exposure is literally completely necessary for you to ever
(06:52):
develop this.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I love that we brought up the idea of culture
to cultural practices because that does depend. Like there are
different systems and different like the reids of music that
apply to culture. And it just kind of like how
ads are, Like they just they're they're very specific and
very cultural.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
All right, So we're back and so yes, like as
I said, obviously genetics have to be involved. You have
to have the capacity to determine the differences between those
notes and you and to be able to do this
with a high level of precision. So if your genes
have not given you the capacity to learn that, then
you won't learn that, but you so you have to
have the genes, but then you have to have the
(07:36):
opportunity to actually learn it as well, because there are
that has to be at least partially learned.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, So a nineteen ninety eight study surveyed six hundred
musicians and reported that forty percent of musicians who started
training before four years old were able to develop absolute pitch,
compared to only three percent of people who started training
at nine years old or later. So further, people were
four times more likely to develop absolute pitch if they
were born to a family in which other members also
had perfect pitch.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So, first of all, I don't know what happened at
the gap between four and nine years old, but those
are the two numbers that I saw reported, but taken together,
the authors essentially conclude that perfect pitch is genetic because
like people who start younger develop it, people who start
later don't. That to me is a very weird argument
to make from those data, and it might be primarily genetic. Again,
(08:23):
ensuring that, like the capacity is an incredibly important part
of the of whether or not this ever develops. But
they're missing an important set of numbers in there. So,
like they say three percent, only three percent of people
learned perfect pitch after they started training at the age
of nine years old or higher. They learned it three percent,
(08:44):
Like sure, those are people who did not demonstrate this
ability and then learned it and then you're telling me
it's purely genetic. I'm like, those are opposite things, the
things that you just said. And people were much more
likely to have perfect pitch if born into a family
that already had perfect pitch, which again means that some
people also had perfect pitch when they weren't born into
a family of people who had perfect pitch. So, like,
(09:06):
the extent to which genes play role is extremely unclear.
It's obviously important, but they're saying here like also, like
if you start before four years old, forty percent of
them develop it. I'm like, so forty percent of them
had a higher capacity to learn. It is what I'm
hearing in this particular case, because you're saying that if
they started later, they wouldn't develop. But if it was genetic,
(09:29):
it doesn't matter. It's not like our eyes learn to
become a specific color. Our genes program what color our
eyes are going to be, and then they just are.
And those are like things that can technically change if
you're exposed to certain environmental conditions. But the point being that,
like if it's something you're born with, if it's purely genetic,
it just is like you don't there is not to
(09:50):
learn it. Yeah, there's not really a learning curve. It
just it just is like our digestive system works without
us learning, Like there are actually aspects of it that learning,
Like it's actually not one hundred percent genetic, but like
most of it works automatically, which means it's heavily heavily
governed by genetic programming, right, and we don't necessarily have
to learn anything specific, but like this one is specifically
(10:12):
saying that they learn it at a certain age more
easily than at a later age, which means they learn.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
It right, They learn it now.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
There might be some primarily genetic factors to it, like
the ability to hear bone structures in your ear, like
the fine discriminations, but the evidence also clearly shows that
some people do learn the skill. And like so many
things in life, genetics set the occasion, the environment shapes
the actual behavior. And I do think it's also important
note that, like it's possible that is, you know, I
(10:42):
think about that age gap from forty nine, and I'm like,
that person's been exposed to so many more noises at
that point in time, and they could have like potential
hearing loss as a result of loud noises and loud environments.
As somebody who is nearing forty, I know this to
be true, Yeah, because I have lost so much of
my hearing from concerts, So like, it would be more
difficult for me to learn perfect pitch because of those
life events that have kind of occurred too. So like,
(11:03):
it's just one of those things where it's like, yes,
genetics make it possible, but an environment shapes the actual behavior.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, you need the exposure to then have an opportunity
to learn it. So anyway, you might be thinking, like, well,
those people are super lucky who have perfect pitch. There
are advantages and disadvantages of course, kind of like everything.
Having absolute pitch does mean that you can easily produce
notes on key and perform with little opportunity for error,
So like that is an advantage, And another advantage is
(11:31):
you can tune an instrument with no need of referencing
another instrument or any kind of tuning mechanism. You could
just just do it from because you can recognize those pitches.
So like, there are things about it that people like,
but there are also some aspects of it that maybe
make it less desirable of a trait than you might think.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, it also means that you're acutely aware of when
notes are out of key, even slightly, and it can
make it difficult to listen to music without dissecting the
precision of each individual note. Further, people with absolute pitch
might struggle to recognize a melody if it is played
in a key or slightly off key that's different than
what they're typically used to or how they were trained.
You know, a lot of times I would imagine, and
(12:07):
this is just me kind of armchairing it for a second,
but I would imagine that somebody who has perfect pitch
is probably trained in music theory, which means they're trained
in certain music structures and stuff like this and how
music fits together. If you are trained to think that way,
then when you hear music that doesn't really follow music
theory in the same ways, it may be difficult to
appreciate or understand that type of music.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean if you imagine then hearing music
from other cultures, yeah, that have used different musical systems entirely,
you might have a hard time listening to that and
being able to appreciate the art that they are creating
because you can sort of only wrap your mind around
the culture that you're familiar with and how it works
(12:47):
and maybe not. Maybe like people who have perfect pitch
will disagree with me, but like that was one of
the things I found reported in here, is that people
may struggle with melodies and notes if they're different from
the sort of references that they're used to. Yeah, makes sense,
all right, that's what we have to say about perfect pitch.
If you have perfect pitch, we would love to hear
from you. You may email us directly at info at
wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or you can tell us about anything else.
(13:11):
You can even just say hi if you want to,
and that's totally okay. We look forward to hearing from you.
If you like to support us, you can join us
on Patreon. There you get bonus content, ad free content
early episodes, and I will read your name and the
list of people who support us in our full length episodes,
but in our minis I say thanks for doing the thing.
We do really appreciate you. Thank you so much to
my team of people who help make this happen, especially
(13:32):
to Justin for his wonderful work and cobbling together the
ums and us and making my words turn into words.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Mostly if you were to just hear this podcast without Justin,
it just sound like garbledba yeah all time, And somehow
Justin puts it into sounds that sound like a language,
which is really very generous of him.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
A sentence shows up every now and again.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Exactly right. Otherwise, you can support us, I think I
was mentioning I was on those. You can leave us
a rating and a review that helps people find us,
like and subscribe, and of course tell a friend because
word of mouth is very important and spreading about the
goodness of podcasts. And we do appreciate anything you are
willing to do. So thank you so much for listening
and for any contribution that you make to us continue
(14:12):
to be a podcast, and also just thanks for be
and you.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yes, we love you.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is there anything that I mester you'd like to add
before we wrap this one up?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
No, go listen to music.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
All right, A perfect pitch mini is and that was
my gross pitch. I hurt somebody's.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Else that was so upsetting. That was upsetting to me
and I don't even have perfect pitch.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
All right, Bye everyone, Bye, you've.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Been listening to Why we do what we do?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD wwdpodcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day. W
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