I don’t have anything like perfect pitch. If you asked me to hum octaves of a 440-Hertz A, I’d be way, way off. But I do know which songs that I can hum in my head are in the same key. For example, it just struck me that the guitar lick just before the vocals come in on the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” is very similar to the intro to “Honky Tonk Women”. I wasn’t listening to either; I just summoned them up in my head. Humming both, one after the other, I could sense – somehow I just knew – that they were in the same key. So I checked. Yep, they’re both in G.
I applied this, um, skill once when I realised, only in my head, that the vocal for Cher’s “Believe” (hi, Bob!) can be laid perfectly over the instrumental track of “Be My Baby” (which she had sung B/Vs on when she was 16, fact fans). I didn’t have to listen to either. I just knew. It seems I don’t remember tunes alone, but also the keys they are in, so I can compare them against other remembered tunes and pick out ones that match. Anyone else? Everybody else?
I have to do this so it shows up on the right, right?
I was aware of it from a tweet.
I believe I’ve got relative pitch, Archie. I can sing a tune back to someone note-perfect, or recall a tune and sing it in the same key, etc as the original was. I can’t read music, and know nothing about chords, but play a bit of guitar by ear.
I’m also acutely aware if something is microscopically out of tune, or at a very slightly different speed to usual, and have very acute hearing. I suspect I may have mild Aspergers.
I’m now wondering whether everybody can do this, even if it’s not something they’ve ever checked or practised. We all can instantly recognise voices we know, which suggests we file away in our memories not just different accents and textures but also different pitches. For example, summoning up Jeremy Paxman’s voice in my head, I can tell it’s slightly deeper (lower-pitched) than Jeremy Vine’s, whereas its pitch is practically identical to Jeremy Clarkson’s. How and why do I know this?
Our visual abilities are equally spooky, though, but we take them very much for granted. We remember what thousands of people* look like, and are able to recognise them from a distance, at odd angles, and fleetingly. Is this pattern recognition available to hearing too?
*Not only people – I’m a keen bird-watcher, but not as keen as a friend who can identify a bird from the merest glance, or a couple of notes of a song. I can do the same with aircraft, though.
“Keen birdwatcher” – is there any other kind? I never read of “take-it-or-leave -it” birdwatchers, or “unwilling” birdwatchers.
Committed birdwatcher? Practising?
Born-again ornithologist?
Reluctant Birdignorer?
Birdignorer sounds like a town in a Nordic country.
“I’m a keen bird-watcher, but not as keen as a friend who can identify a bird from the merest glance”
Jizz. He can tell what bird it is by its jizz.
I was going to use that word, but there are people here who get over-excited by such loose talk!
It may be a bit of an urban legend, but the Royal Observer Corps may have had an acronym GISS – General Impression, Size and Shape – in the Second World War.
I can sing in tune, in a limited range, but I have no idea what notes I’m singing. Nor what I’m hearing, none at all, but I have what I suppose is a normal appreciation of what is out of tune, and off-key. When I was in Crap Band, our guitarist had perfect pitch, an awesome thing to witness. He could tune a guitar to concert pitch by ear. I can use a tuning fork, don’t need an electronic doohickey, but that’s as far as my musical ear stretches. So I’m inferior to you in this respect, Archie, if no other.
I can ‘hear’ the right notes in my head to tune the guitar to.
*twang* – ah, that’s good enough for jazz . . .
I’m a good enough singer to know when I’m off key but not how to avoid it. Years ago the band I was in used to start our set with Bad Company’s Feel Like Making Love. My first job on BVs was to hit the high harmony on the ‘lurrrrve’ at the end of the second line – it was a G, and trying it now I can still do it, on key, without accompaniment.
I heard somewhere that all football crowds sing common chants in the same key. Here’s a game – sing “Come and Have a Go If You Think You’re Hard Enough” (possibly not out loud, if you’re at work or on the bus) and then check your key here: http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/music/piano/
I’m in C.
Wow, chiz, that’s brilliant. I just tried it with “Blowing Bubbles”. Mine’s in C (the first note is the dominant, G). I checked on YouTube, and – ta-dah – so is the West Ham crowd’s.
Not the dominant, I mean the fifth. Which is also the root of the dominant. But … er, anyway, it’s a G, okay?
it’s in D!
I can sometimes sing in tune but I can’t tell whether I’m doing it or not much of the time.
I also have problems telling whether any particular note is higher or lower than the one before. I can pick out on a piano the first few notes of, say, the theme tune to that old French TV version of Robinson Crusoe. The thing is, though, when I get to the end of the four or five notes I’ve managed to puzzle out, I can’t tell whether my hand should be moving left or right (or indeed staying in the same place) to find the next note.
I do know that there are some things I can’t sing however hard I try. There’s the bit that goes, “Working for the minimum wage” on Jackson Browne’s The Load Out. And then there’s the bit in Thunder Road where Bruce sings, “If you’re ready to take that lo-o-ong walk, from the front porch to my front seat”. Just can’t get those descending (I think) notes on the long Os.
But at least I know I can’t do it, right, so I can’t be completely hopeless?
“working for _that_ minimum wage” of course…
Aaargh! Robinson Crusoe theme. Earworm!
‘On White Horses’ is the only antidote to it. . .
Golden Brown I find very difficult to hum. Not the tune, the keyboard motif, cos it goes down when it ought to go up. Or is it vice versa?
Relative pitch is the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note by comparing it to a reference note and identifying the interval between those two notes. (Thanks Wikipedia)
So, given a starting note, and the exhortation to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, you know that the second note is the same as the first and third note is up a fifth.
Perfect pitch is when you can sing any note you’re asked to – A above middle C – bang, perfectly in tune. And by the same token, as someone said above, you can tell if a note is not perfectly in tune. Which must make life hell.
Our guitarist – the unfeasibly named Ned Youngman – could sing any note you named (within his considerable range). To this day, I have no idea why he was in The Band Of Shite with the rest of us.
Going back to Archie’s OP, my brain certainly tells me that Take It Easy and Honky Tonk Women are in the same key, but it also tells me that they’re both in C. Some random experimenting shows that pretty much every tune I choose to whistle comes out in C as well. Strange…something to do with the easy chords on a piano maybe? Or am I some kind of weird naive musical genius?
No.
@mousey Totally agree, perfect pitch must be hell, especially for choral singers. It’s perfectly common for choirs singing a capella to transpose into other keys to match the range of the singers better. If the music is telling you to sing in C and the conductor wants it in B, you’re constantly having to consciously adjust down a semitone. I was a boy chorister and incidence of perfect pitch is pretty high (though still rare) in that cohort – my friends who were so cursed used to find transposition really, really hard.
Most singers have a kind of acquired pitch, in the sense of being able to sing you a C on demand and get it near enough right, but that’s mostly through having a very clear sense of their own range. I do it by knowing that bottom G is more or less my lowest reasonable note and working from there.
I don’t have perfect pitch, but occasionally I play an electric keyboard and everything sounds wrong – it’s because someone has transposed the keyboard up or down a semitone or two.
I also think perfect pitch can be kind of acquired, after decades of playing music (see paragraph 1 above) – you kind of unconsciously know if the evidence before you (a keyboard, or a detuned guitar) doesn’t match what you are supposed to be hearing.
I use relative pitch constantly in my job (playing piano for Play School) – I’m always transposing songs for singers who are uncomfortable in the key they decided was OK half an hour ago.
Waiitagoddaminute here – you play piano for Play School??!! As a job?!
Er, yes…
Respect!!!!
Very true H.P.
The nonchalant bird watcher: great name for a Le Carré novel.
I was in one of my local shops yesterday, and as I walked around I became aware (so I thought) that a stereo somewhere in the shop was playing the intro to Shine On You Crazy Diamond – the long, slowly fading in keyboard chord. I gradually realised that there was no stereo, and I was actually grooving with a freezer cabinet. Remembering this thread, I wondered if it was at least in the same key as the real SOYCD. So, keeping the main note in my head,I hastened home, put Wish You Were Here on, and sure enough, it was bang on! The brain is weird.