PPP157: Teacher Chat – Perfect Pitch with Brianne Lundberg and Cheryl Reeder

Brianne – The ability to hear a melody and transcribe it is a definite positive. Tuning an instrument in orchestra or even your voice in choir is much more accurate with perfect pitch. A ‘con’ to go along with that is the physical reaction one can have when their ensemble is not playing or singing in tune.

Another positive is my ability to read the score of a piece of music and being able to know exactly what it will sound like.  It is important for students with perfect pitch to learn and understand a value of how the notes relate to one another. The temptation is to hear every note individually but there is so much more depth when you can hear the relationship between the notes.

Cheryl – Having perfect pitch is fun! Sight singing is much easier, unless your accapella group has  gone flat and is singing between pitches; that’s very frustrating for people with perfect pitch.

This skill has served me well as I’ve accompanied various choirs. A ‘con’ when accompanying instrumentalists is reading their music, which is written in a different key.

Memorizing music is a bit easier with the ability to intuitively know what the next chord or harmony should be. 

A serious ‘con’ is playing on a piano that is out of tune. My expectation is to hear one pitch but an out-of-tune piano will not produce that pitch. That can be very frustrating for students with perfect pitch.