Okay, I learned all about this in college, while taking up Sensation and Perception subject in Psychology. After a productive lecture of our professor, I fell in love with this new-found knowledge I acquired that day. The term is perfect pitch.

Being a music enthusiast that I am, I was really interested with this topic of discussion we had back then in school. And since Magic Sing is all about singing, might as well share this fancy piece of information, that is, perfect pitch.

Perfect pitch, a more common name for absolute pitch, is the capacity of a person to identify or recreate a musical note without the benefit of a known reference. It is “the ability to identify the frequency or musical name of a specific tone, or, conversely, the ability to reproduce a frequency, frequency level, or musical pitch without comparing the tone with any objective reference tone, i.e., without using relative pitch.” Naming or labeling of notes need not be verbal. Absolute pitch can also be demonstrated by other codes such as auditory imagery or sensorimotor responses such as reproducing a tone on an instrument. Therefore if a musician is from an aural tradition, unfamiliar with musical notation they can still show absolute pitch if allowed to reproduce a sounded note. Possessors of absolute pitch exhibit the ability in varying degrees. Generally, absolute pitch implies some or all of the following abilities: identify and name individual pitches (e.g. A, B, C#) played on various instruments; name the key of a given piece of tonal music; identify and name all the tones of a given chord or other tonal mass; sing a given pitch without an external reference; and/or name the pitches of common everyday noises such as car horns. (Okay too technical, I credit Wikipedia for that.)

A more concrete description in layman’s term, perfect pitch is when you hear the note ‘sol’ vocally produced and you can recreate the note by producing it vocally as well. Or, when a note is tapped in the keyboard while you hear it, you can easily say what note that is, and tap the note on the keyboard yourself. Also, people with perfect pitch can play by ear. When they hear a song, even if they are not particular with it, they can get the tune easily, or get the chords of the musical instrument played just by listening to it. I know a lot of people who has this flair and I’m always amazed by such talent they have, especially after I learned all about the technical but fascinating aspects of their ability.

So there. Hope you learned something new. Just wanted to share!