Why you DON'T want Perfect Pitch

Summary by Krater

Adam Neely explores absolute pitch, explaining the four ways humans perceive pitch, how absolute pitch is linked to tonal languages and early musical training, why some people lose it with age, and why relative pitch may actually be more useful for musicians.

From the video

Answers: Why do some musicians not want absolute pitch?

• absolute pitch
• relative pitch
• tone languages and pitch perception
• aging and pitch perception
• color analogy for pitch perception

What it concludes

• Musicians with absolute pitch fare worse at perceiving the transpositional identity of the same melody than musicians without absolute pitch.
• People who speak tonal languages and people who start musical training in early childhood are more likely to develop absolute pitch.
• Absolute pitch is learned in early childhood and cannot be learned as an adult.
• Absolute pitch can degrade and shift by a semitone or more as people age past 45.
• Absolute pitch can become annoying and get in the way of musical enjoyment when it shifts with age.