12 Ways To Reveal You Have Perfect Pitch
Do you have perfect pitch? If you do, well done!
A lot of people can’t accept how good you are because of your perfect pitch. They might not like it if you tell them you have perfect pitch- they might think you are being smug, rude, or pretentious, even though you are definitely not being rude.
Here are some handy tips for you to be able to reveal that you have perfect pitch in a way that people will be able to accept:
1) Say that perfect pitch is not important: this is a great way of implying that it is important, and that you have it.
2) Nod sympathetically at the muggle-brained chumps who don’t have it. Even prisoners get let out into the yard sometimes.
3) Practise your surprised and bewildered face, the one that says “I have no ability to empathise with your fundamental human weaknesses.” This way, when some cloth-eared twonk can’t recognise a random note played on a piano at a social occasion, such as a dinner party, barbecue, or funeral, you will be ready.
4) If someone is trying to tune their instrument, sing the notes at them as loudly as possible. This will show that you have friends, and that those friends are the twelve pitches of the equal-tempered scale.
5) Be humble when people ask why it’s called perfect pitch, but don’t avoid the truth. Say something like, “it’s not really perfect, of course, but I can see why they call it that.”
6) Complain about “baroque pitch” and how much of a struggle it is for you to adjust everything down a semitone because being talented is more important than having a skill that required some effort.
7) If you are studying music at an institution, your aural classes are a great opportunity to subtly reveal that you have perfect pitch. The best way to do this is to achieve poor scores on your aural tests and tell everyone it’s because the questions themselves were in the wrong key.
8) Complain about old recordings, because they are also in the wrong key. You know this.
9) When visiting friends and family, make a special effort to name the exact pitches of various natural sounds, such as the boiling of a kettle, the clink of a wine glass, or the hurried footsteps of people walking away from you.
10) Complain about pianos. By definition, a piano can not be correct, at least not compared to you. They don’t call them “perfect pianos” do they?
11) Sing all the time. This will help you assume that singers always sing the correct pitches the way you do, and this will help you judge them whenever you hear them practising. Remember, singers have no other job apart from producing pitch.
12) If all else fails, talk about your perfect pitch as if it is a curse, especially when talking to the sort of bleary-eyed note-moaners who don’t have it. Say something like, “I’m so jealous that you can experience music without knowing what’s going on.”
Speaking of singers producing pitch: Choral Singer Just Loves Being A Choral Singer
I beg to differ with you on one little point: perfect pitch is not what I would call a talent. It’s more like a characteristic, like having brown eyes. Talent is something that enables you to do something more easily, unless you define perfect pitch as the ability to annoy people with greater facility. In that case, I guess you would call it a talent. Love the article! Keep on truckin”!!!
All those words and comments mean nothing. We see the proficiency of a musician only when he plays his music on his instrument. Imagine a top virtuose pianist with AP plays his composition for piano which is technically difficult at same level as scarbo from ravel and a virtuose guitarist with RP plays his composition ( i am not speaking about bending the strings or using electronic effects but the top advanced classical music theory) which our virtuose pianist needs 3 hands in order to play it on piano. If the compositions from both has the same level of complex harmonic structure with the same degree of musicality which musician is more creative than other ? Would you say pianist because he has AP ? Musical talent needs only a well developed relative pitch but it does not mean absolute pitch is bad. Is a car of formula 1 with 3 doors is better than other one with 2 doors? Comparing perfect pitch to relative pitch is also something like that. Of course absolute pitch musicians are able to copy the music of others much faster than musicians with relative pitch but this means nothing about the musicality.Lizst was the king of transcribing thanx to his giant AP but he could not create the most adventurous modulations from the history of music as Wagner who had only a normal degree of relative pitch. It is the same with Alban Berg. He composed the most complex atonal opera of history of music but he had only relative pitch. Finally i have to say that a well developed relative pitch is more than enough for being the best musician and please do not forget : A great show of a absolute pitch lasts maximum 10 minutes and has nothing to do with musicality but the length of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE (which is the culminant point of tonal music theory) is 4 hours and half. Of course perfect pitch is a great ability but has nothing to do with talent and musicality.
Yeah- Liszt probably did have a giant AP
Ul Khan, you do recognize that this article is satire, right?
I have perfect pitch, yes I do, discovered when I was two years old, and this made me laugh long, hard, and ruefully. I’m a pianist and a singer who sang a lot of early music, and I learned early (re #6) that I’d better shut my mouth about the difficulties Baroque pitch posed for me, because it just proved how lazy I’d been. Everyone else had learned their solfege and did just fine no matter what pitch we were singing in, while I’d never previously had to work at sight-singing because – ohmygosh, all you have to do is just look at the note and you sing it, so what’s your problem! – which works just fine until it doesn’t anymore.
I did not claim that RP is better than AP or vice versa. I hope you do not missunderstand me. I just hate the idea of considering AP as the REAL KEY TO MUSIC. This is a sign of a huge ignorance. Bach was the most advanced composer with his AP during barock period but Wagner had the same level of greatness during romantical period without AP. Of course AP is a great ability but not important for musicianship. Because we do not need it for creating great music or sounding wonderful during performing on the stage.This is the reason why the ear training exercises based on RP in music academies. I have no idea about your musicality but your problem is not important. If your AP disturbs you when you have to play barock gigs what you have to do is easy. You just do not take those barock pitch gigs and remain as a musician who is specialist for romantical and modern times. Is not life is too short for learning being the best in every field ?
I like both romantical and barock
Hahahahahaha!!!