Only 1 in 10,000 people can do this!

My friends have perfect pitch. HOW?!
The full video is called - Can you guess this note? Perfect Pitch and Physics - on Youtube

Special thank you to our X-Ray tier patrons: Carlos Patricio, David Cichowski, Eddie Sabbah, Fabrice Eap, Gil Chesterton, Isabel Herstek, Margaux Lopez, Matt Kaminski, Michael Schneider, Patrick Olson, Vikram Bhat, Vincent Argiro, wc993219

Creator/Host: Dianna Cowern
Editor: Levi Butner

#shorts

[jsawhite]

When I was in highschool (yeah, back in the late 80's) in band, we had a kid who could do perfect pitch (could even tell if you were sharp or flat). He also said that when he heard a note he saw a color, and the color was very different between notes, so could easily differentiate them. I think it's called synesthesia. it was always so fascinating to me!!

[scottwarner]

I had a music professor with perfect pitch in college. A student in class was slamming his pencil against a music stand and saying "WHAT PITCH IS THIS MR. WRIGHT? WHAT PITCH IS THIS MR. WRIGHT?" over and over again.

He turned around, looked at the guy, sighed a little bit, then walked over the the piano. He stood there for a second while the kid stopped and laughed a bit. Then he played the exact pitch on the piano while looking so absolutely bored that the entire class burst out into laughter.

Good times.

[NaveedAhmedWaghani]

Get well soon Physics Girl! 🌸💐 the world needs you. We love you ❤️

[JanTGTX]

My girlfriend works on an ear training method for adults, and she's convinced that everyone with a basic understanding of pitch can learn absolute pitch. She entrained it herself by trying to sing a C every morning and evening for at least three months. At first, you may often be off, but the margin for error grows slimmer the more you do it. After you established your "inner C" or whatever reference note, you can slowly but surely figure out the other with relative pitch.

[xbrandix]

I really hope we get to see you feeling better and making videos, I am sorry to hear you are so sick but if you have to be sick, I am glad you have some amazing people by your side like your best friend, husband and mom. We're all rooting for you out here and hope you can get back to enjoying physics again really soon. 💕

[vathsa]

So sorry to hear what's going on with you. So heartbreaking. Hope and pray you get well soon. Life is unfair

[davidtatro]

Also, l have read that those who grow up in some Asian cultures are more likely to develop perfect pitch because some of their languages depend heavily upon microtonal inflections for meaning.

[MarcoAshford]

For anyone who still didn't know, she is really really sick right now. Wish her the best.

[pablobuenomendoza]

I played violin and viola from 4th grade until I finished my Masters degree. I've always been in awe of people with perfect pitch. This gave me a big smile. It is wonderful that super humans walk amongst us.

[matthasaname]

It can absolutely be learned! I had a teacher in college that released a CD that year that was a training aid for learning frequencies by 25hz increments. It was an audio engineering school and learning this skill aids in live sound feedback mitigation. He had "perfect pitch" but he would announce the notes by frequency, not by letter assignment. He taught himself this skill. It was so impressive.

[inthefade]

People lose perfect pitch as they age, or the pitch drifts. I've heard older musicians who've had this happen say it made them realize it was a crutch for them their whole life to have absolute pitch because it made them lazy. It's a fascinating subject.

[TalkingHands]

We all wish you'll get well soon!

[gusmoraless]

God let you recover your health Diana! Our prayers with you and your family

[markbernier]

I wish I could learn that. Talk to Rick Beato his son is insanely good at perfect pitch.

[jjaapp]

Obviously it's learned. There are more tones than just the notes we know. If you played a tone between the ones they know, you'd confuse them. They'd lean towards one or the other, or just admit it between them. A large part of it is the way certain people's brains process and recall information, so some people are just hardwired to be able to memorize sounds like that. I don't have perfect pitch in the way that they do and know the notes, but I can mimic sounds pretty accurately from memory.

[johncope]

That's neat Diana, 🤠 hope your well or getting better❤️

[gwenjulianna]

Learning to identify pitch is possible. I had to do it in music class as a performance major. It's not the same as having perfect pitch, but when you immerse yourself in music, you can learn to identify notes by just listening.

[MrMikekenna]

We miss your videos, have a lot of love for this channel, our hopes wishes and prayers are with you! You have done so much for children and science!

[ocudagledam]

This is learnable, at least to an extent. When I was in music school, in second or third year, we had an ambitious solfeggio professor who made us do exercises like this. She would also give us musical dictations, where she would play melodies (without harmony) on the piano that we would have to write down. As long as you're not absolutely tone deaf, it's a matter of practice.

[David_Goza]

I'm plagued by it. I'm pretty sure it's accurate pitch memory. I spent a lot of years filling the principal oboist's chair in orchestras, and if you give a gazillion A's for the orchestra to tune to, it gets to where you can recognize one. From there it's just a short leap to recognizing the relevance of that pitch within any harmonic context one hears an A in, and the key is thus easy to establish.

I say "plagued by it", because looking at transposed parts for woodwinds & brasses drives me to distraction: from the sight of the music one expects a certain thing, but then a different thing is forthcoming as sound. Maddening!