What Is Perfect Pitch – Relative Pitch?

Good morning, this is Duane. We’re doing a series on music theory called “Good Stuff You Really Ought to Know About Music” and it all involves musical theory or musical reality, I’ll say, that musicians really need to know.

The issue I’d like to take up today is perfect pitch – relative pitch. Perfect pitch is the ability for your ear to hear a note and know exactly what that note is on the keyboard or otherwise. For example, if you heard that note, and you had perfect pitch, you could identify that as a B right away. I do not have perfect pitch but I have good relative pitch.

Relative pitch, on the other hand, is the ability to, once you know what one note is, then to identify where the other notes are from that. For example, once I know where a B is, then I know where F sharp is or where D is or where E is or B flat or whatever. It’s relative. In other words, I can go there from that original pitch.

My granddaughter does have perfect pitch. By the way, there’s only about 1 person in 10,000 that has true perfect pitch. A lot of people think that, they think cousin Jimmy has perfect pitch. It’s not, it’s probably not true in most cases. I know there’s some cases because I have one in my family. I’d like to say she got it from me but since she’s adopted from Korea, so I don’t think  so.

Anyway, we discovered it when she was about six years old. We were sitting around the dinner table with some friends and people know I have a good ear. A song was playing and they asked me what key that was in. I said, hmmm, I think it’s a D. My granddaughter, Elizabeth, who was six, looked at me kind of puzzled, and I said, “What’s up?” She said, “That’s not D. That’s C sharp.” “Really?”

I promptly went to my Yamaha grand piano and played it, and by golly, she was absolutely right. Immediately, of course, I was hooked. I said, “Let me play some other notes for you and you tell me what they are.” I played A flat, D, B flat, E flat, etc. She had no problem at all picking them out. That’s perfect pitch.

Some musicians have perfect pitch but not many, and it’s not imperative. You don’t have to have perfect pitch to be a good musician but it really helps a lot to have relative pitch. In other words, I would know really what I was doing on the keyboard or in music, I think, if I didn’t have good relative pitch because once you know one note, then you can identify the others.

For example, once I know where C is, then in my head I can count up a fourth, C, D, E, F, and I know where F is, or where a fifth is, C, D, E, F, G, and so on, or B flat, and so on. It’s worth your while to train your ear to develop relative pitch. You do that by playing one note and thinking the scale probably. After you play one note, then in your mind, can you pick out where A flat is? Can you pick out where A is or E flat is, and so on? You can train yourself to do that. That’s the difference between absolute pitch and perfect pitch.

Thanks for being with me and if you enjoy these little mini-series on music theory, come on over to Play Piano and sign up for our whole entire series. Thanks for being with me and we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the same video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rujaBopSOLg&feature=youtu.be

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