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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

Sort of the opposite, is there a way to train perfect pitch? I know it isn't supposed to be trainable, but I've dabbled in guitar for 10+ years and singing for 5+, and I'm at a point where I'll randomly hear a chord--nothing fancy, just a triad--and I suddenly place it in song with the same chord in the same key. I'm not sure if I'm actually matching pitch, or if I'm picking up on timbre differences.

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I watched a video once of an adult that taught himself perfect pitch. It turned out the way he learnt it was a little different than how a child might learn it as he had to use reference points in his mind and then use relative pitch to calculate the actual note. This would take him quite a long time compared to someone who had learnt it young who could tell you the note straight away almost without thinking. I can't find the video now but there are many other similar videos on YouTube.

Relative pitch can definitely be trained. And I've heard people with perfect pitch say that when they hear a note they just relate it to a known note. Though I don't know if that's true perfect pitch or a different means to the same end. Then again I've heard other musicians say that perfect pitch is like seeing colors. You and I just know red is red, they might just hear C is C.

I believe it's possible to infer pitch from comparison with memory like this.

The issue is that you need to remember a note in a song which sounds like the note you're hearing -- quite hard, given instruments/context/etc.

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