People used to believe that perfect pitch (more correctly known as "absolute pitch") is a skill you either were born with (or maybe acquired as a young child) or not--that it couldnt be developed later on. But this has been proven incorrect! Studies show that even adults can learn absolute pitch. (Google for references: PMID 31686378, PMID 32513059, and PMID 31550277.)
The problem is, we dont yet know the best way to learn it. A study on Japanese children found that all of them who completed an absolute pitch training program (24 out of 26 children) succeeded at learning it, and the key for them was figuring out how to ignore the tone height (pitch) and instead start to hear the tone chroma ("colour") (see
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735612463948).
Based on this, we suspect that the tones pitch and also timbre are distractions obscuring the tones colour from you. If you can learn to hear past those distractions, you will start to isolate and memorize the unique colour of all 12 notes, and this is what will unlock your absolute pitch! This is why WhichPitch allows you to choose which notes you want to learn and then plays those notes using randomly selected octaves (different pitches) and instruments (different timbres).
A big problem with other absolute pitch trainers is that they tend to rely on training sessions where youre spending several minutes in a row doing dedicated training. This is less effective because after the very first note, you have a pitch anchor in your mind, so all subsequent note testing is relying more on relative pitch rather than absolute pitch. Plus, after a few weeks of using those absolute pitch trainers, people tend to lose motivation and stop doing the training sessions. WhichPitch is designed to work in the background and unobtrusively play notes during the times of day youve chosen. Each time it plays a note, it will push an answer notification a couple seconds later. (Dont look at the answer until youve decided which note you think it is!) This allows you to do hundreds of tiny absolute pitch training sessions each day without relative pitch getting in the way.
At some point, it will click and you will start to hear past the notes timbre and pitch and be able to isolate the colour of each note, and then at that point acquiring full absolute pitch is a simple matter of memorizing the colour of each of the 12 notes.
We dont yet know the best way to accomplish this, so you will have to experiment. Most people start with just 2 or 3 notes that are next to each other and then switch to different notes every week or two.
You may initially feel like it is impossible, but keep at it! Learning absolute pitch will take consistent effort over time, probably months rather than weeks, but the effort will be worth it to develop this superpower.
Wed love to gather some data on how long people of different ages take to acquire it, and also what your experience was like, so please share those details when you rate the app!
Technical notes (pun intended):
- The notes in this app use the A440 pitch standard with twelve-tone equal temperament
- The instruments sounds are physically modeled rather than sampled (meaning they are computer-generated sounds, not recorded real instruments) to avoid any imperfections that could give non-frequency-related hints about which note you are hearing
- Painstaking efforts were made to design the different instruments sounds to be as pleasing as possible, but, alas, not every instrument can sound as soothing as a harp
- The lower pitches may sound quieter due to limitations inherent in your phones tiny speaker drivers, but this will not interfere with the objective of the app