ToneGym Cafe

It astounded me when I was teaching solfege at Sydney Conservatorium that many of my students who had been playing piano since an early age had perfect pitch (or excellent relative) pitch. The piano is a machine, and makes tones independently of your ability to know what those tones will sound like (I thought). If you play a wind instrument, you can't play a note correctly unless you know what it should sound like (pitch and tone) because you have to shape your mouth to produce the pitch you want. Unfretted string instruments the same. Voice, absolutely!
So, it makes me wonder if perfect pitch is natural consequence of learning an instrument, any instrument or voice, from a very early age. What does the hive mind think?

6 props

Shani Berger
Mar 15

I once heard that perfect pitch is a skill that can only be acquired before a certain age. It can be developed by an early musical education, including serious piano lessons. You can even directly teach them perfect pitch, though they might curse you for it one day lol.

Then again, it's been a while since I heard it and I don't remember where I heard it. But I do find it makes a lot of sense

2 props

Matthias CJB
Mar 15

I guess you are right. This is also true for children growing up bilingual.
I studied psychology (and therefore a lot of cognitive neuroscience). It‘s hard to explain in short and English is not my mother tongue. But there are windows that close in early child development. Different languages (and dialects) have different phonetics. Every newborn has the ability to develop any language (with its phonetics) as mother tongue. We lose this ability to a certain extend while our brain develops (which is a good thing, because we specialise on the abilities we actually need). After that it’s hard to even impossible to achieve. (For example try to learn mandarin or Arabic without any accent (! that is the main point !) some get very close but often there are slight imperfections).

3 props

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