Daily Archives: April 10, 2018

Perfect pitch

Last night, this MetaFilter posting sent me down a rabbit hole: What makes this song great? with links to videos by Rick Beato. I listened to 2. The Police – Every Little Thing She Does is Magic and then found my way over to videos about perfect pitch:

Perfect Pitch: How Theory and Ear Training Work Together, in which Rick Beato explained how the taught his eight-year-old son Dylan, who has perfect pitch, music theory. Dylan has perfect pitch and can sing pitch perfect as well. (I won’t even mention his skills on the piano, which you can see in other videos.)

Rick Beato also has videos on what perfect pitch is and why you cannot develop it as an adult: Why Adults Can’t Develop Perfect Pitch and Perfect Pitch vs Relative Pitch: Which Is More Important?

It turns out you can lose your perfect pitch, though, as happened to vibraphonist Gary Burton after being “without a heartbeat for half an hour” and having been reanimated: Retiring The Mallets (NPR).

For good measure, here’s another little kid with perfect pitch, who probably doesn’t know the names of the notes yet, but can tell if someone is singing a song too high or too low: Claire and the Crosbys: Perfect Pitch Test! (5-year-old Claire vs Dad). Of course, you probably all know her from singing You’ve got a friend in me and from being on the Ellen Show multiple times.