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Perfect Pitch - Is It an Autism Thing?

wyverary

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
I have a heavily musical background, and early on I noticed that I had perfect pitch (the ability to tell the pitch of a note upon hearing it, and the ability to sing a pitch out of the blue). I wouldn't say it's a particularly useful skill; and, in fact, it has often been a hindrance.

I initially thought it was just a natural development arising from ear-training, which is something I always did religiously even though I wasn't too big on the practicing. But it turns out it's not particularly common, even among highly skilled musicians.

I do remember reading somewhere, though I can't for the life of me remember where, that perfect pitch is common among those with autism.

Does anyone have perfect pitch? Am I right in assuming it's a common autism trait?
 
I don't know anything about perfect pitch, but I don't think it's particularly correlated with autism. I've never heard that before, at least.
 
WOAH!!! Major Aspie clueless moment. I saw 'perfect pitch' & I thought you had taken up CRICKET & it seemed like an ...odd...thing for an Aspie to deliberately go out & do. My brain has absconded & it has yet to be found.
 
Perfect pitch means you know if the sound is absolutely in tune--not sharp or flat-- and you know the letter name of the note--A through G and all the sharps and flats in between even if you can't see the sheet music. A person with perfect pitch can tune a stringed instrument accurately without matching something like a properly tuned piano or pitch pipe. Other instruments like the brass or winds require the player to physically adjust their lip tension to get a note exactly correct. Stringed instruments' tension can be adjusted by tuning pegs and also the placement of the fingers on the strings can raise or lower the pitch. Traditionally, the oboe is the instrument that all the other instruments in the orchestra match because it is considered the most difficult instrument to play in tune. "A" above middle C is supposed to vibrate at 440 Hz. Aspies are annoyed easily by anything that is "off" so an Aspie with perfect pitch will be in pain if the music is out of tune. I don't have perfect pitch but I do have good absolute pitch. I can sing very well in tune with myself and others but I don't know if our "A" is exactly at 440.
 
I don't have perfect pitch... I'm more likely to be tonedeaf. Well, not really... I can tell if a note is off key, but I surely can't identify it being A, B or G. But then again, I tend to work with mostly digital or electronic tools for music making, thus I don't run into issues where things are off pitch. My synthesizer isn't out of tune ever. My guitar is, but I don't have to tune my electric guitar by ear either.

Perhaps I could train my hearing like that, but it surely didn't come natural when I got assembled.
 
I saw 'perfect pitch' & I thought you had taken up CRICKET & it seemed like an ...odd...thing for an Aspie to deliberately go out & do. My brain has absconded & it has yet to be found.

I know a thing or two about baseball, and I told myself wyv, living in Tennessee, won't care about pitching perfectly. She'll throw a football far :p

Or, maybe just like anyone in Nashville, sing her whole heart out in 'perfect pitch' :D

I get perfect pitch, but I need more musical training to know more notes consciously. :D
 
Oh, I know what perfect pitch is---thanks for defining it for the thread though, Aspiest----I just haven't read any studies or anything showing any particular correlation between it and autism.
 
Have no idea...but yes, I've always thought I had perfect pitch. Can't stand to hear someone sing whose pitch/key is slightly off. But then that might also be more related to my OCD. Interesting question though.
 
Perhaps that is a resounding "no," then. teehee!

Incidentally...The oboe tunes the orchestra not because of its ease or lack thereof of playing in tune, but because its tonal color (it projects well, with neither too few nor too many overtones) is easiest for other instruments to tune to.

:cool:
 
I think i have pretty close to perfect pitch, in that i can tell if a song is being played just a tiny bit fast or slow. When i was a kid it used to really upset me - especially if the music was a little slow on a cassette or something. And if the pitch was wavering a little - ugh. day ruined. Nowadays these things don't bother me (except pitch wavering, although not nearly as much as it used to), but i still notice them.

Like Aspiestj, i can't recognise whether or not i'm perfectly in tune with A=440hz or close without any reference point when singing or anything, but i usually get very close to it. Normally i'm just flat by a fraction. But like how i notice when recordings are being played fast or slow based on the pitch, if the performance isn't quite in tune with concert pitch, sometimes it just feels wrong to me if it's outside what i guess i would call the 'acceptable margin of error' in my head.

Also, i think that 'acceptable margin of error', to a lesser extent, applies to how in tune things are. If something is not absolutely perfectly in tune but it still feels good to listen to, it's fine. I hope other people understand what i'm talking about when i say "feel", because i don't really know how to explain it. It's connected with how the vibrations interact with one another and how my ear detects the interactions between the vibrations, i guess.
 
I have a heavily musical background, and early on I noticed that I had perfect pitch (the ability to tell the pitch of a note upon hearing it, and the ability to sing a pitch out of the blue). I wouldn't say it's a particularly useful skill; and, in fact, it has often been a hindrance.

I initially thought it was just a natural development arising from ear-training, which is something I always did religiously even though I wasn't too big on the practicing. But it turns out it's not particularly common, even among highly skilled musicians.

I do remember reading somewhere, though I can't for the life of me remember where, that perfect pitch is common among those with autism.

Does anyone have perfect pitch? Am I right in assuming it's a common autism trait?

As soon as I saw the title of this topic I thought "WOWOOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOAH!!". The relatable-ness for me is completely uncanny. I have perfect pitch too. It's slightly weird too because my mum is 0% musical and my dad plays piano but doesn't have perfect pitch and doesn't have any hidden gifts. My grandad was the same as my great grandad. And apparently my great great grandad played violin. But I'm the first to have perfect pitch.
 
I have perfect pitch. Not sure if its because of AS, but it does make you hyper sensitive in all sorts of ways, including sound. Perhaps it makes you more intune? Meh. :)
 
WOAH!!! Major Aspie clueless moment. I saw 'perfect pitch' & I thought you had taken up CRICKET & it seemed like an ...odd...thing for an Aspie to deliberately go out & do. My brain has absconded & it has yet to be found.

CRICKET?! My American pride...OUCH!

I saw your brain the other day, and I hate to tell you, it's halfway to Mexico by now.
 
I think i have pretty close to perfect pitch, in that i can tell if a song is being played just a tiny bit fast or slow. When i was a kid it used to really upset me - especially if the music was a little slow on a cassette or something. And if the pitch was wavering a little - ugh. day ruined. Nowadays these things don't bother me (except pitch wavering, although not nearly as much as it used to), but i still notice them.

Like Aspiestj, i can't recognise whether or not i'm perfectly in tune with A=440hz or close without any reference point when singing or anything, but i usually get very close to it. Normally i'm just flat by a fraction. But like how i notice when recordings are being played fast or slow based on the pitch, if the performance isn't quite in tune with concert pitch, sometimes it just feels wrong to me if it's outside what i guess i would call the 'acceptable margin of error' in my head.

Also, i think that 'acceptable margin of error', to a lesser extent, applies to how in tune things are. If something is not absolutely perfectly in tune but it still feels good to listen to, it's fine. I hope other people understand what i'm talking about when i say "feel", because i don't really know how to explain it. It's connected with how the vibrations interact with one another and how my ear detects the interactions between the vibrations, i guess.

I'm very similar to this when it comes to perfect pitch. I have the innate ability, but it's fairly raw. Like, I know the tones, but I haven't worked them all into my memory, if you know what I mean. Like, I can always hear A=440 HZ because of my old metronome, which would emit an A for tuning. I will never forget that tone. My first tonal instrument was the guitar (started on the drums), so my tone memory is partial to the standard-tuning open chords--I can always identify an A, C, D, G or E upon hearing it.

I had to teach myself to lighten up about hearing songs in the "wrong" key, once I learned that no one else cared or seemed to notice. I used to have a bad habit of "correcting" the key if I was singing along with someone.

I can also "feel" an acceptable margin of error for particular notes/keys. Back in the days of audio cassettes, I was tolerant of "slow" tape players, but I had zero tolerance for hearing a "sped up" tape. A bit flat was okay, but not sharp.

I can also get lazy about it, especially with guitar tuning. Over the past few years, I've made myself be more disciplined about ensuring that my guitar is in tune with A=440 Hz. Not good to be sloppy about that if you're playing with other people.
 
Slightly speeding up the tape for mastering was pretty common in the early seventies, I think. I know that the Allman Brothers did it for Eat a Peach, as did Eric Clapton for Layla. I am a fan of period performance, and while it is typically a half-step or whole-step reduction, I have occasionally heard it just a quarter-tone below modern pitch; so while it still throws me off, I have become more tolerant of it.
 
I so agree with the sped up tracks that drives me nuts! I hate it when they do that on youtube but mostly on the radio.
I miss having pitch control on my turntable I liked slightly slowing it down
 
Slightly speeding up the tape for mastering was pretty common in the early seventies, I think. I know that the Allman Brothers did it for Eat a Peach, as did Eric Clapton for Layla. I am a fan of period performance, and while it is typically a half-step or whole-step reduction, I have occasionally heard it just a quarter-tone below modern pitch; so while it still throws me off, I have become more tolerant of it.
Yep, there are a lot of old recordings where the pitch is varied - this never bothered me because that's how I was used to hearing that particular recording. It was when I was hearing it at a different speed than what I was used to hearing that it bothered me. This is why I liked CDs when I first heard them - they always played at the exact same speed. But the problem was, if a CD skipped, that was meltdown inducing. My brother still makes fun of me for that...

I can also "feel" an acceptable margin of error for particular notes/keys. Back in the days of audio cassettes, I was tolerant of "slow" tape players, but I had zero tolerance for hearing a "sped up" tape. A bit flat was okay, but not sharp.

I can also get lazy about it, especially with guitar tuning. Over the past few years, I've made myself be more disciplined about ensuring that my guitar is in tune with A=440 Hz. Not good to be sloppy about that if you're playing with other people.
I was more tolerant to fast tape players than slow ones. But they both really bothered me. That still bothers me a little but just isn't a big problem for me anymore.

I'm really picky about my guitar tuning and I tune with Jack Endino's method, which is documented in sufficient detail here: Jack Endino: Guitar Tuning Nightmares Explained
 
In the movie "Take the Lead" (Antonio Banderas), they take the base part of a popular song and overlay the top part of another song, moderate the speeds of both so they match, and wallah, a new version they could dance to! I found this quite clever.

But back to the original question, no, I do not have perfect pitch (much to the great annoyance and pain of my violin teacher, hehe).
 

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