Expert: David Froom - 11/12/2008

Question
hello, Im a music student and I am 20. I believe that I have a  very good sense of hearing tones, i am trying to develop the perfect pitch by myself because I believe that I really can and I must say that so far (less than a week of continous practice) I have gotten good results. i am not 100% accurate but everytime i try to sing or hum a C, i succeed almost 80% and when i do mistakes i dont; go further than a D or a B. Somehow I feel that I just need to recognize the difference between the C and the D.
 My question is what should I do next in order to improve my perfect pitch ability?

Answer
It seems you are practicing and achieving a good ability.  Beyond that, I think you don't need to work on this.  Rather, my view would be that you should work on your relative pitch as much as possible, working on all the generally practiced musicianship exercises, with the aim of being able to read orchestral scores with fluency, hearing them in your head.  Perfect pitch won't do this for you.  

I have perfect pitch, and I think it is overrated.  It is not a pre-requisite for greatness.  In fact, most of the best musicians I have met don't have it.

Acquiring perfect pitch is not something I believe is possible anyway.  The kind of perfect pitch most people with it have is like color recognition.  You hear a note and immediately, without thinking, just know what it is.  It is probably better described as absolute pitch memory.  It can be tuned up or down, according to one's surroundings.  Folks can't tell you the difference between A 440 and A 442, for example.  But if one lives in an A 440 world, anything within about 1/6 of a tone of A 440 will sound like an A.

True absolute pitch can be a nuisance.  I can't play out of tune pianos, for example. I can't play a guitar with a capo.  I can't sing in a choir that has gotten 1/2 step out of tune. I can't switch between saxophones (Bb or Eb) or clarinets (Bb or A or Eb) or trumpets (C or Bb or D) without going through the laborious process of learning the transposition.  

Also, past the age of about 50, most folks with absolute pitch start to lose it, hearing things consistently as being a bit flat (that is, my ear hears things a bit sharp).  I can adjust by "tuning" my ear up a bit.  But having spent my career as a musician relying on perfect pitch, it is now letting me down, and I am having to listen differently.  I can still hear things accurately in relation to each other -- but that's because I worked on that as well.

So you should work on general musicianship things:  play and sing exercises, dictation, transpositions/C clefs, score reading.  Ultimately, these are vastly more important.  Having perfect pitch won't improve these.  But these will make you a better musician.

David Froom