Perfect pitch - a blessing, but also a curse.
It’s difficult to mention having perfect pitch without coming across as boastful. Yet, it’s also hard to talk about it negatively because most musicians could only dream of having it.
What is it?
Perfect pitch is the rare ability to hear a note and instantly know which note it is. For example, one could press middle C on the piano, and someone else with perfect pitch could identify it as middle C without even looking. In recent years, the concept of perfect pitch has been more so popularised by notable artists such as Charlie Puth, who is constantly demonstrating his ear skills in videos like this.
The Benefits
In the context of music, it’s clear that having this sort of ability would be incredibly beneficial. You could listen to a song and immediately know the key and chord changes, effortlessly map out melodies and harmonies, and play along or jam to any song on the spot. In everyday life, it becomes a really quirky skill once you realise your blender churns at a pitch of E flat, or that the public train beeps G4 when the doors close. I say this because these are some of the things I am grateful enough to be able to experience. Aspects such as transposing, vocal - correcting and song - writing have become much easier, and everyday sounds have become more intriguing.
However, without making it seem like a first world problem, I want to de-glorify the notion of having perfect pitch. Here’s why I believe perfect pitch has slowed down my growth.
The Drawbacks
For many years being pitch perfect interfered with my singing. In particular, it created a big mental barrier for my ability to hit higher notes with confidence. Although I could easily measure my lowest and highest comfortable chest notes (D2 - C4), it also meant that I would instantly know the exact singing range for the vocals in any given song. This would have been beneficial if I had a bigger range. However, most of the time these vocal ranges objectively extended well above mine. Because my brain would constantly remind me this - that my voice couldn’t reach high enough - I would feel put off, discouraged, or ‘not ready’, to sing.
For example, because I knew the chorus of Budapest by George Ezra began on a belted F4 (not a very high note), I would either have to strain my vocal chords, or flip to a weak falsetto to even reach it, completely disregarding the tone. For a majority of songs ranging from pop to rock to rnb, I would struggle to match the male registers. Naturally my voice is deep, but I never understood how many of my friends - mostly non musicians - could casually sing songs that I could barely reach. I knew my chest voice couldn’t comfortably push past a certain note without breaking, which in my mind meant I wouldn’t be able to sing any song with lyrics above that same note. It’s a limiting belief I’ve had for far too long.
I would compare it to a short person who really loved basketball but could barely dunk, even though taller, untrained people could do so with much less effort. I know that height is a physically limiting factor, unlike the vocal chords which are trainable, but even as a multi-instrumentalist I’ve always found singing to be undoubtedly the most difficult skill to progress in.
Having perfect pitch also means there’s an undying thirst for musical certainty. Sometimes on the radio I hear a song that’s perhaps a quarter tone higher than it’s supposed to be. For almost everyone this wouldn’t be an issue, let alone noticeable. However, as trivial as it sounds, for ears that demand perfection, my mind doesn’t rest knowing that the song’s key is slightly sharp - or worse, placed exactly between two semitones. It simply sounds wrong to me. Yes, I have been there, agonisingly trying to figure out whether a song was in G minor or G half-sharp minor.
This is the song I’m talking about. Does it sound off to you?
