Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Is my 5 year old developing Absolute Pitch / Perfect Pitch?

I wanted to ask the piano teachers about the development of absolute pitch. My 5 1/2 year old has been taking piano lessons for the past 6 months. At the last piano lesson she was doing a listening exercise out of her piano adventures level 1 theory book. She said something (I missed what it was) which made her teacher ask, "do you have perfect pitch?" So the teacher played a note and asked her to identify it, but she got it wrong and the teacher didn't pursue it further.

But later in the week I was playing around with her and was curious, so I asked her to identify some notes at the piano with her back turned. To my surprise, she was able to accurately and reliably name middle C-D-E-F-G without a point of reference. She is less accurate with A and B. She can sometimes get bass C and treble C, but generally below middle C and above treble C she seems to be just guessing.

The fact that she's good identifying at the notes in the five finger c scale that she heard so often in her My First Piano Adventures books probably shouldn't be surprising. But when adults display perfect pitch it seems they can identify a much broader range of notes, so I'm a bit curious why she can name some notes so well but not others. Maybe some of you have seen this ability emerge in your students and can describe it to me. I'm interested in it mainly because I'm a science nerd.

Questions for you piano teachers:
1) Is she displaying a form of absolute pitch? Or some basic precursor to it that is still developing?
2) Should I mention this to her piano teacher? Would this affect how the teacher works with her when it comes to ear training? Do you do anything differently for your students who have absolute pitch?
3) If we don't do anything to train notes beyond the ones near middle C, is she likely to learn those on her own?
4) Is absolute pitch actually useful for an instrument player to have? I seem to hear more about how it can be a hindrance than a benefit! So, should it even be trained?

Usually with perfect pitch you either have it or you don't.
She might be getting familiar with specific characteristics of certain notes on her own piano. You'd have to test her on an unfamiliar piano to know anything for sure.
And I don't know that perfect pitch is at all useful for pianists or other instrumentalists. Relative pitch, we need (and we can learn that). Singers find perfect pitch useful but not necessary.
She is definitely getting more oriented toward pitch and toward music and that is a good thing!

Heather,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I know relative pitch is far more useful. I am mainly interested in this from a scientifically curious point of view. I realize that it isn't critical for her to have it as a musician and may not offer any benefits.

As for trying it on different pianos, that is a good idea. I will probably just download an app to my phone to try that. We have a Roland digital so I don't think there are any strange nuances giving away the tones, but it is worth checking.

As a piano teacher ... rather than a violin teacher or vocal instructor, I would say perfect pitch isn't much of an advantage and in some cases can work against learning to play classical piano. I had one remarkable young student who came to his first lesson and played Fur Elise almost note for note. I was puzzled though by his exceptionally awkward fingering and asked about it. It turned out he'd never had a piano lesson in his life and had picked up this piece ... ALL of it ... by ear. Probably the most astounding natural ability I've encountered in decades of teaching.

However, he proved impossible to teach, since he didn't bother to learn to read the notes. He didn't need to in order to produce a reasonable facsmile of just about anything. But a "reasonable facsimile" isn't the way to learn classical music. One day in exasperation I ran a series of flashy sevenths under an improvised melody to demonstrate that "improvising" was a different kettle of fish. I turned around to see a look of awe on his face.

"Miss", he said, " You could play in a NIGHTCLUB ..."

I knew I'd lost the battle then and there. He really didn't want to learn classical music ... he really wanted to learn improvisation and jazz. And would be absolutely wonderful in the genre. With perfect pitch and the ability to improvise, he'd be a terrific musician. Just not a classical one! I promptly phoned his mom and told her that her boy was perfectly suited to another type of music and that jazz and improvisation was just as valid a way to make music as Classical. And it IS! He was one of the most naturally talented ... and delightful ... of all my students. But he had the natural tools for another musical path.

I wouldn't concentrate too much on ear. Your little one is about two years younger than I allow in my classes. But teaching her notes and basic fingerings would be the more important things. ( I just tested myself. I sang "C" ... and it was B flat on my piano ... possibly both of us are slightly out of tune. The only time my bad ear has impacted my musical life was in the Juilliard Chorus.)

Here's a link to that vocal disaster .... true story!

https://thehappypianoprofessor.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/my-juilliard-debut-lip-syncing/

Oops, that sounds like me ...

Did you ever figure out *how* to get someone like this to read? I mean, I'm trying, but I'm invariably listening (to my internal representation of the music), instead of reading, after the first run-through.So my reading ability progresses *very* slowly, if at all. I'm sure I frustrate my teacher to no end!

I can't imagine a scenario in which having "perfect pitch" would be an advantage, as a pianist (or as anyone, really, but that wasn't the question). As pianists we encounter all kinds of circumstances out there that we can't control in terms of intstruments and their state of being in (or out ) of tune, and even varying pitch levels. The pitch A does not always equal 440. I would think that to have a rigid pitch level engrained in one's brain would drive that person nuts... especially as a pianist/keyboardist.

But... some people do have exceptionally strong pitch memory... and that IS something that I think you either possess or not. Can it be trained? Surely it can be encouraged. And if it were my child, I wouldn't.

JH

I have a four year old daughter with absolute pitch. She's always had it, I believe.

It has come in handy for playing by ear and improvisation, which she loves to do but she is also very good at reading. Her sight-reading is much stronger than mine and I had 4+ years of lessons.

Thus far, she hasn't complained about pianos being out of tune. What she does complain about a lot is people's singing. She can't stand people singing badly off pitch and that has led to some social issues.

It's a gift and a curse, as they say.

Littlebirdblue,

What age did your daughter begin studying music? And how did you first recognize she had absolute pitch? I suppose many consider age 5 to be early to start piano, but yours started even younger. I've been reading about the theory that everyone starts out with AP as an infant, but if we don't associate language or symbolic labels to various tones during an early critical period, we lose that ability.

Luckily, like you I have not found that having a "good ear" has in any way affected my child's reading abilities. Her teacher does not teach pieces by rote, and at lessons she can often sight read the next pieces they are working on without too many mistakes. Not to say this is a difficult thing to do at the beginner book level, so maybe problems could arise at a later stage.

I myself am a horrible sight reader but I do not have absolute pitch. I've always relied on relative pitch as my crutch.

JH, yes, I would think so too. But it doesn't seem like everyone with perfect pitch is being driven nuts all the time. I think the term "perfect pitch" is a bit of an overstatement or misnomer. Apparently people with perfect pitch can also be mistaken or adjust to different tuning. Interesting article here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/2013/06/24/how-perfect-is-perfect-pitch/

Thanks for the link - I'll have to check that out. I do think that the idea of "perfect pitch" is fascinating one - and I agree with you that "perfect pitch" or "absolute pitch" are sort of misnomers, because they imply that there are "perfect" or "absolute" pitches to begin with... which there aren't. Pitches - what we label them and at what frequency is totally a cultural construct. Fascinating stuff. Can't wait to read the article about how people with "perfect pitch" deal with the phenomenon of varying pitch levels.

JH

Perfect pitch (which is nothing more than long term pitch memory) can be trained. Diana Deutsch has found that it is much more prevalent in people who speak a "tone language" such as Chinese, where meaning is partly dependent on pitch.

Is it useful? I know singers who specialise in contemporary music who are very happy to have perfect pitch. A singer must hear a note correctly in her mind before being able to sing it: it's so much easier and faster to learn a new piece if you have all the pitches available in your head. It can be handy for conductors and composers, too.

Most of the people I know with "perfect" pitch are not rigidly fixed to a certain pitch level such as A 440: they easily adapt to A 439, 442, 443 or somewhere near. They may be uncomfortable with a group playing on period instruments at A 415, though.

I wouldn't make a big deal of this one way or another. If your daughter shows an aptitude for perfect pitch it's certainly possible to develop it consciously, but I don't think the possible advantages warrant spending lots of time on it. She may go on developing it anyway, or she may lose it: either way it doesn't matter.

There are much more important aspects of musicianship that any musician should work on: relative pitch, harmonic sense, rhythm, phrasing...

Yes, "perfect" pitch is not really possible, because
A440 itself is an arbitrary frequency the musical world
decided to use. You can see frequency standards are
a relative new phenomenon, with pitch before the 19th century varying wildly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch_standards_in_Western_music


And even with A440 as the standard, you would have to
measure someone with supposed "perfect" pitch against an
atomic standard, and be zero cents off, which would be impossible.

My daughter started taking violin lessons shortly after her 3rd birthday and her sense of pitch was evident from the beginning.

There are a few other students in her teacher's studio who are around her age. Starting music lessons around age 4 seems rather normal where we live. I'd say half of her friends are learning at least one instrument.

Yes, perfect pitch does "evolve" over time. Give it some time and let it grow naturally. Don't force it.


It depends on the teacher. I have perfect pitch, so I do know how to work with kids with perfect pitch. The ear training is a little bit different. In actual music-making, relative pitch is vastly more important than perfect pitch.


I venture to say yes. I do have one younger student right now who is slowly developing perfect pitch. His hearing is way above his playing ability right now, so I'd have to wait a year or two to give you a more definitive answer.


Let's just say there's a lot of myths out there about perfect pitch, most of which come from people who don't possess it. One poster in PW actually told me that people with perfect pitch shouldn't be teaching piano, period, so that goes to show you how ignorant people can be when it comes to this topic.

My biased opinion is that, sure, go for it. Train. But I wouldn't call it "training" for perfect pitch. Rather, let your child grow into it. Naturally. Nurture this gift.

Just to chime in about singers: having perfect pitch as a singer is a detriment. The few students I've had with perfect pitch were so focused on being in tune that they over-listened to themselves and would correct to make it sound in tune to them. However, the problem was they would not be able to not listen since we don't hear ourselves the way we actually sound. Making one's own adjustments based on sound when they don't know what actually sounds good is a huge problem in singing. None of the professional singers I know have perfect pitch.

IMO, perfect pitch is a great parlor trick, but not very useful in most applications.

Relative pitch is often learned quite easily by singers because they get so accustomed to how a note in a song feels that they can usually start a song on the same pitch every time unaccompanied.

As a conductor I've worked with a number of professional singers who had perfect pitch, some very fine voices among them. I don't think their perfect pitch had either a detrimental or a beneficial effect on their voices: for them it was just a useful short cut when sight singing and learning new pieces, particularly atonal ones.



That's not relative pitch, it's perfect pitch: the memory of a particular note. Relative pitch is about recognising the intervals between notes, without having to know what the actual pitches are. A singer with very good relative pitch can sight sing by following the intervals, once the initial pitch is given.

I'm with you, littlebirdblue. I believe in early exposure to good things, and that music lessons can be fun if you find the right teacher and a playful method. But the local conservatory in my area only starts suzuki violin at 4, and traditional piano only at 6. I feel lucky to have found a teacher who works well with little kids and would start her at 5. She loves the lessons and approaches them with a level of unabashed joy that only very young children are usually capable of displaying.

Thanks AZNpiano, interesting to know that you've seen it evolve over time. This was the aspect of it that most baffled me--that she's showing definite signs of AP, but not all the signs of it--because the popular concept of perfect pitch is that it is an all or nothing thing. But as you mentioned there's a lot of misconceptions when it comes to perfect pitch. I will mention it to her teacher and see if she wants to train it, and I'll be fascinated to watch the skill change over time, whether it improves or diminishes. As she gets older, she'll be exposed to more tones, like when she ventures into the black keys, but at the same time she'll also be passing that critical period when they're supposed to lose the ability to learn tones.

So far the consensus seems to be that it is not useful, unless as MRC suggested, you are a singer learning atonal pieces. While I get that it is not as useful as relative pitch, I am still surprised that nobody can point out any more musical benefits from AP!

My daughter literally runs to her teacher to give her a big hug every time she sees her so I know what you mean.

I'm glad that you found the right teacher for your daughter.

+1 to what you say. I think of it as just a good memory for pitch.

I have had "perfect pitch" for a lifetime - I did start piano at 4 yrs of age.

In the student choirs I belonged to when young, the conductors often asked me to "hold" the group on pitch when singing a capella (or sometimes even accompanied!) when they were wandering sharp or flat. Often it was impossible to do - I knew I was right, but too bad! I was the one who sounded wrong.

having PP is not a problem. It can be useful - I have always been able to tune my violin to any of the pianos I usually play with before hearing a note from it. And ear tests were a snap on exams.

I suspect I would be bad as a piano tuner?? I cannot fathom what a tuner does with all of those harmonics and overtones, stretching intervals etc. Depending upon what I am playing, I can hear the instrument "pulling in and out" of pitch as it reverberates. And the occasional interval is just never "right."