Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner My pitch is wandering...

Up until like last week I've had pretty good picth. I could identify any piece, sound, anything and correctly identify it's key. It came in handy. But lately my picth has been like tuned to hear everything in the key of C. Everything I hear and try to replay starts out in C. Why is this? It's odd. Any advice as how I can get it back to normal?

Do you mean that if you heard a piece in F, for example, you would guess that it's in C? Have you been improvising a lot in C before the problem, or something? Anyhow, it'll probably get back to normal in a week, or so. I wouldn't worry about it.

yeah, it will be in like f# minor and I'll still think it's in C minor.

don't ask me why this happened, I really don't know.

Then try some atonal music! No way you can hear that in C major hehe

lol

A similar phenomeon happens to me sometimes, in which everything I try to reproduce is a half-steap lower than in reality. For example, I will hum what seems like an E to me and it will actually turn out to be an Eb, or I will try to hum a D ant it will actually be C#, while other times I get it right on the nose.

A lot of people "loose" their perfect pitch when they get older (Richter is an example, Prokofiev is another). But, you are young, so
I would assume it should come back to normal soon. =D

I have lots of classmates who are perfect pitch... Almost all teachers in my conservatory are perfect pitch... It's just frustrating that I'm not perfect pitch... I envy you guys!

Actually there's a method of developing it, right?

Anyway, I'll ask perfect pitch people about your problem Joseph S!

Perfect Pitch really only helps with memory, because you can hear the phrase beforehand, know what notes they are, and then transfer it onto the keyboard. That's why when people with perfect pitch have a memory slip they can "hear" their way out of it, as opposed to those that don't.

Hi,
Good relative pitch is much more useful than perfect pitch, isn't it? I would think that perfect pitch would drive a person insane because so much about the world is out of tune.

HI everybody! JosephS. sorry can't help you much, but I've got another question about perfect pitch...

Can you have perfect hearing, but not perfect pitch? Cause that's what I have. YOu can play me any note and I'll say to you what it is (without peaking) - so now the people are like: You've got perfect pitch! Sing a G! Now, here's where the trouble starts, cause I hear the note in my head, but once I sing it, it doesn't sound the same - and don't say I can't sing, because I can.

Sometimes I think there's just a huge gap between my ears and my vocal chords?

Does someone know anything about this, because I'd really like to know about it!

PLEASE HELP!

Musical Greetings

Hi Ronel, I would say you have something called 'passive absolute pitch'. More info at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch

When I was a kid (a LONG time ago) my brother thought I had perfect pitch because he could play a note on the piano and I could identify it. But what really seemed to be happening was that I was recognizing the "voice" of each key due to the tuning and condition of the instrument.

Thanx a million, Antonius Hamus, you have given me the answer! The Passive absolute pitch describes me perfectly!

Now I have an answer to a question I've asked for a very long time - thanx again.

But I must say, I'm disappointed now that I know I'll never be able to do the singing thing...

By the way, how did you come on that information?
Are you also a passive absolute pitch guy?

Musical Greetings from South Africa

"By the way, how did you come on that information?
Are you also a passive absolute pitch guy?"

Nope. I would say I kind of inevitably stumbled upon it at the time when I was curious about musicality and its scarce occurrence.