Perfect pitch

[papyrus]

Fellow dudes/dudettes,

I'm wondering how many ppl on this board have perfect pitch. For those that do, do you find that it helps you in learning and memorising new pieces? Once these are learnt do you rely on it still, or do you mainly just use finger memory?

I myself have perfect pitch, but whilst I find it helpful for my singing (and sometimes extremely painful when the a member of the ensemble is going flat), I don't use it in my piano playing - for some reason my brain just doesn't think in absolute terms regarding pitch and the piano keys.

[comme_le_vent]

the legendary ed has perfect pitch.
i dont. but i have looked into it.
the reason some people develop perfect pitch and some dont, is to do with the age at which you start music, because when you start young, your ear is nore 'naked' and has had no experience with relating pitches, so it learns to hear in a different way - it learns to hear individual identities in the pitches themselves - whereas people without perfect pitch can only go by relating pitches.

its importance/benefits have been researched, but i believe it is a relatively unimportant thing to have- i dont think wagner, berlioz or tchaikovsky had it.

marc-andre hamelin believes though, that it helps you have a more organised musical mind, and he believes it helps in large pieces with key relations etc.

[papyrus]

Yeah, I started piano quite young.

Although early exposure to a tuned piano (or another instrument) definitely helps, that's not all there is to it. It's actually just a kind of 'pitch memory', and it's been shown that you can learn perfect pitch even if you're an adult.

And I see that some ppl are unsure about what perfect pitch is in another thread... I had a similar experience. I didn't know what it was either until I was around 16, and then discovered that I had it. Can't help but think that if I knew of such a concept earlier I would've used it to improve my learning process.