What is perfect pitch? The ability to identify or recreate a musical note absolutely without a reference is called perfect pitch. The ability allows a musician to perform many skills, including tuning an instrument, singing any note at will, or transcribing very quickly and in the correct key. Recognizing and recreating musical notes are slightly different skills but many people who have perfect pitch are good at both. You can read more about this at: perfect pitch software.

Perfect Pitch Theory

The answer to the question is not a matter of “what?” but more a question of “how?”. It is quite simple to explain what perfect pitch is but how do these musicians recognize the different notes and their supposed individual characteristics? How does the ability work and what are the “qualities” that people say separate the notes? Most people can perform quite amazing feats of aural recognition, such as recognizing the characteristics of many different friends’ voices and some great musicians do not have perfect pitch. What is it about these elusive differences that makes it so we cannot all hear them?

Firstly, there are some fundamental principles of acoustics, which we need to know to answer these questions. To start with, tonal sounds from any source contain fundamental frequencies of the notes being played as well as harmonics of those frequencies. Harmonics are sometimes referred to as overtones and are always present. Even if a single sine wave tone is generated and output to a speaker, there will be harmonics in the sound. This is because of the physical nature of waves to create other waves. Harmonics of a single note frequency are multiples of that frequency. When you play an A440 on your instrument, the sound you hear is made up from 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz, 2200 Hz, and so on. In most cases, the fundamental (440 Hz) contains the most energy and the energy of each harmonic decreases as you count up them, although this is not always the case with every instrument. Incidentally, the second harmonic is the same as the “first overtone”.. This article will use the terminology of harmonics to avoid the confusion.

Each instrument has its own harmonic levels, or “spectrum”. For example, a clarinet has a strong fundamental with stronger odd harmonics than the even ones. Examining the spectrum of a particular guitar, however, reveals that its 6^th and 7^th harmonics are louder than the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th.

Obviously, the harmonic spectra are different. Otherwise, the instruments would sound the same. The harmonic spectrum of a tonal sound is what gives it its own timbre, as well as noise components. The reason we can easily distinguish between instruments is that they have varying harmonic spectra. More information can be found here: perfect pitch training.

In summary, the unique “quality” or timbre of a tonal sound is always determined by its harmonic levels.

When it comes to perfect pitch, we can say that there are “qualities” that distinguish the notes and musicians recognize these differences in timbre to tell the notes apart. A composer may write a piece in F sharp if it is to be uplifting but will possibly choose E flat for a more sorrowful piece. So how does this fit in with the harmonic spectra of the notes when we know this to be determined by the instrument? Well, the shocking, but obvious truth is that there is no physical difference in “quality” between the different notes. If there were, there would be no mystery to perfect pitch and the differences would have been physically measured already. The differences between notes is only perceived by people, because of the particular resonances and frequency response of the human ear.

Like a microphone, the human ear can hear some frequencies better than others and contains certain parts, which are able to resonate strongly at particular frequencies. The ear will respond differently to the various harmonic components of any tonal sound. We hear some frequency components as louder than others when they actually have the same loudness.

The response of the ear is seen on an Equal Loudness curve and is the same for everyone with good hearing. The most sensitive frequency is 4000 Hz. A sound of 30 Hz must be almost a million times as powerful to be perceived the same.

A series of resonating components make for resonances in the ear. There is a resonance at about 3000 Hz due to the auditory canal. Other considerations are the vibration of the eardrum, the bones in the middle ear, and the complex behavior of the cochlea.

The equal loudness curve is just one example of the non-linear frequency response of the ear. The ear is always exposed to many different frequencies and there are many complex phenomena at work. For example, when one frequency masks another and how this depends greatly on the values of these frequencies.

So What is Perfect Pitch?

In conclusion, perfect pitch is about the perceived spectra of the harmonics of the notes. On the one hand, there is the physical harmonic spectrum of a tonal sound. On the other, there is an internal spectrum from the response of the ear. The brain is extremely sophisticated and, in those who have perfect pitch, can detect the spectrum caused by the ear and distinguish it from that of the instrument. The harmonics of the notes are not given nearly as much attention in musical training as the fundamental tones and intervals, which leads to perfect pitch being very rare. Learning the skill of perfect pitch is about learning to listen to the harmonics of tonal sounds, which is certainly achievable. More information can be found here: what is perfect pitch?

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