Perfect Pitch: Why Do People Lose It?

[@MateusVerde]

The good thing about not having perfect pitch is that you never lose it.

[@wizardito7741]

^this

[@simongab1]

Ahahah

[@calebgonzalez5850]

😂

[@1777DK]

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

[@MateusVerde]

@@1777DK 😥

[@craigkeyes5274]

I can name any pitch, I only need 12 guesses.

[@achenarmyst2156]

Try guessing microtones next 😁

[@briancase6180]

Micro pitches. That's irrational. (It's a pun.)

[@achenarmyst2156]

Would be interesting to hear Jacob identify Hertz frequencies after listening to random sounds.

[@PurpleJack89]

Also known as "statistical pitch" :D

[@Hjarialomar]

Me too, no perfect pitch but correct each time. For instance this one's Barry.

[@verstamp]

Rick saying that the guitar won't be in tune and then it ended up being perfectly tuned was the best laugh I've had today. Thanks Rick!

[@mal2ksc]

When he tuned the E I was already thinking "What, is this a floating bridge? Because that E sounds spot on". It did drift as he tuned the rest of the guitar, but when he went back to it, he hit the bullseye again. That just shows you that he was warmed up but wasn't sure about it.

[@smithjohn383]

Well, there you see, he doesn't have perfect pitch. Otherwise he would've know it was in tune.

[@hussledupgamejam]

@@smithjohn383 lol as soon as i heard him play that G chord i knew it was in tune.

[@DrRyman]

@@smithjohn383 I guess at 66 I am a unicorn because I could tell his guitar was in tune before he checked it to the piano LOL

[@tobiasseyb6592]

I once put on a new set of guitar strings and tuned them up without listening, just by feeling the tension. I was absolutely astonished when the guitar was almost perfectly in tune, only off ca. 1/8 tone - every single string! I guess after putting on strings for nearly half a century I may have gotten used to the tension... But I wouldn't depend on it on stage.

[@mrnelsonius5631]

Here’s a weird scary story: I’ve been in a band that toured nonstop several years until Covid. 250+ shows a year. One morning our lead singer listens to some music on his phone and says “something is going on with my phone, the music is out of tune”. I pop them in, it’s fine. Then we turn on the radio and he starts freaking out “it’s out of tune too”. We figured out that one ear was hearing music more sharp than the other ear (like a full semitone off). Obviously you can’t perform like that as a vocalist!! Turns out he had a bad ear infection and there was fluid trapped in one ear, and it was altering his ability to hear anything in tune at all. The ear infection got cleared up but for a day, his brain couldn’t hear music properly through his ears. Only time I’ve ever seen him really freaked out

[@vladimirbogosavljevic8039]

Yes it is happening . .. it happened once to me ... I also freaked out and started to panic bcs of unusual condition

[@Lalairu]

@@vladimirbogosavljevic8039 My god, that must be terrifying

[@mrnelsonius5631]

@Laik Tavuk Döner I think both, the ENT said this can happen when one ear is mechanically hindered by fluid filtering the sound going through it, your brain gets confused and doesn’t know which ear is functioning normally so you hear a different pitch from each ear. I’ve only ever had the “underwater” effect where high end is filtered out, but my friend heard the same pitch totally differently in each ear. He was testing it and said they were about a full semitone off from one another!

[@sahedthebutler8685]

I think i have same condition.. nowadays i hear my guitar sound really bad while my bandmate says i play it perfectly. I keep altering the settings for pedals and sending my guitar for intonation. Dang

[@mrnelsonius5631]

@@sahedthebutler8685 it’s worth checking with an ENT if it persists, but it can also be bad monitoring. If you have ear-plugs in on a loud stage/noisy room, you can hear weird resonant low frequencies that make everything sound out of tune, like you’re in the wrong key. Bass traps at live venues do this and they are the worst when the trap is the stage 🙃

[@andre495]

Rick, I'm 63, had a perfect pitch my whole life until into my fifties. I did not know that it is normal to lose it, so this video is a great relief to me! REALLY! And yes, my current mistakes also differ one or two semitones like you mention in the video. Amazing! Now l want to add something I have experienced too....curious if any other PP'er have experienced the same. Before my fifties it was very hard for me to improvise or compose. My whole life I was very jealous on jazzplayers etc. I could instantly repeat playing any song I heard on the radio, but improvising on it....no way. It simply was not there. Composing: the result went immediatly into an existing song. That changed with loosing my perfect pitch. Now improvising easily an hour on a good song...... composing songs: give me a good poet and two hours...... Anyone the same experience? Please react on this comment. I read in other comments that people are freightned to loose PP. No worries, playing with others hardly changed and I have exchanged it for something even more beautifull. Andre The Netherlands

[@QalinaCom]

but surely, you can adjust with age and just mane the note half step lower if you know that's how much you are usually off by. That's why I can't justify the money that Rick is asking for his app-he could just be adjusting himself and naming the notes he "feels" minus half step. Would love to buy the app, but it's just too much!

[@somethingabstractiguess]

I’m only 22 so I can’t confirm the gain of composing/improvising skills with the loss of perfect pitch (I still have my perfect pitch). However, I can confirm the difficulty of composing or improvising something original. In fact, when I used to try to compose more often, I would frequently write something and think it was original only to realize later that it was my brain subconsciously feeding me someone else’s work. Very difficult to know if something I write down is original and, when it is, equally difficult to come up with something truly unique that doesn’t sound similar to other pieces or melodies. It’ll be interesting to see where my ear and composing goes in the next 30-40 years…

[@shahaffiq5860]

What benefits having perfect pitch?

[@andre495]

@Play Thank you for the answer, but I don't really get what you mean with it...can you explain a bit more?

[@andre495]

@Play Perfect pitch has always been there, ever since I can remember. I guess it had something to do with my mother. She was always singing....also when I was unborn.....

[@jsauginas]

Fascinating stuff Mr. Beato! I have what is called “relatively poor pitch”.

[@scrim8635]

🤣

[@sherik233]

You are not alone!

[@MarcAbela]

I personally know people who actually have perfectly poor pitch, they win.

[@erniesmith2579]

😂 😂 😂 still remember the day after my third recorder lesson when my mom told me I didn’t need to go to the lessons anymore.

[@flonoiisana4647]

@@sherik233 I am here with you.

[@jmiclovesyou]

As an audiologist with perfect pitch, I’d like to argue that these older people losing their perfect pitch may actually have high frequency sensorineural hearing loss, which is typical with the aging population. Really what this means is that less of the overtone series, and therefore less pitch information is getting to the brain, making it more difficult to identify. It’s also not uncommon to have high frequency hearing loss after having a heart attack or stroke. It’d definitely be an interesting research topic. I’ll have to keep checking my pitch perception in the next 20 years to see if it deteriorates also!

[@guavanic]

Hello netizen! Quick question, if they (perfect pitch ppl) are getting high frequency hearing loss, would they still be able to identify bass notes without overtones correctly, or does the high frequency hearing loss cause their overall perception of pitch to drift? Thanks in advance

[@abaneyone]

You can't forget about tinnitus either. 👂🏽

[@douglasmcclure]

An interesting possible explanation. Any doctoral students out there? Here's a dissertation waiting to be written!

[@jmiclovesyou]

@Anne Day Yes, ischemia to the ear can devastate the outer hair cells, which are responsible for not only helping hear soft sounds, but also with pitch discrimination

[@jmiclovesyou]

@@guavanicIt depends from person to person and the extent of their sensorineural hearing loss. Bass notes means lower pitched fundamental frequency, and therefore the overtone series will be lower in frequency as well, which could result in better pitch perception. It would be interesting to see what sounds/instruments are most difficult to perceive pitch, and I'd argue things like the flute, with very few overtones compared to say, an oboe, would be much more difficult to perceive its pitch. I think timbre plays a huge role in this because the overtone content in a pitch absolutely helps identify it, and high frequency sensorineural hearing loss takes some of those overtones away.

[@bernardosantos8020]

Losing your perfect pitch must be the musical equivalent of an existential crisis

[@DannySullivanMusic]

lolll this comment rules

[@thomasschwent2574]

I don't know what I would do if that happened to me.

[@matiaslucasroger]

Men this comment is pretty accurate

[@fredherfst8148]

…or losing your voice control after being struck by the damn hormone storm called puberty. I'm still not over it at 74. It was traumatic.

[@plugprod]

Yes, it is…

[@mickhogan2490]

Very interesting. My son is an audiologist and has a great interest in brain plasticity. He's mentioned to me in the past that many double bass players' intonation goes out as they get older, and that it's recognised in modern medical science.

[@Soumello]

So here is my case: My grandmother started teaching me when i was 2 the name of the notes. I started to develop perfect pith and I have it since today (Im 23). I can recognize groups of 2, 3 and sometimes 4 notes. But the thing is: I think (im not sure about that), that the piano i learned was out of tune (just a little bit). So sometimes I hear a note like Ab but i get confused if its Ab or A. All the white notes I recognize easily, Eb too but C# sometimes i hear C and F# i hear F. But its crazy for me because i started my ear training 2 years ago to develop relative pitch so i use both of then when im hearing music and sometimes i hear a note like C# and i think its C, but then i hear the REAL C and im sure its C, so i correct inside my mind that mistake(so the relative pitch helps me). Yesterday I listened to a song and i heard A but then I heard C but the relation between the notes were a perfect third, i was sure about de C but not so sure about the A, so i corrected inside my mind(A to Ab). But there are somedays that i feel that my ear is more 'in tune' then other days. This is my experience, i hope it helps someone =D

[@VoIcanoman]

Yup, that absolutely happens. There are many cases of people having "perfect pitch" with respect to the "wrong" pitch reference. However, human brains are remarkable. If you intellectually know that your PP is a bit flat - you hear an E and think it's 20 cents sharp or whatever because the E you learned was 20 cents flat - you can just remember roughly how "off" you are, and progressively re-train your brain. You are clearly already doing this. Of course, there are few benefits to PP - it may not be worth it to you to put this work in (unless you are actually intending to be a musician) - but I do think you have access to ALL of those benefits if you really want them.

[@Soumello]

@@VoIcanoman I totally agree with you, i think pp helped me many times, when i learned sight reading for example, i could quickly know when i was playing the wrong note, or when i started my ear training and i started to identify melodies and progressions, i think it helps because the relative pitch takes a while to develop, so the pp is the solution sometimes when you are still on the process. The only thing that i find dificult is that i dont think i have this sensibility to know that the note is 20 cents sharp or flat, i just hear the note saying to me: Fáaaa, i can do that when i have like 2 seconds to think about and then i say: ok this is Fá sustenido (F#), but sometimes when im hearing some quick jazz lines i dont have this time to think about it, but since im almost finishing my 3 year ear-training course, im starting to use more the relative pitch then the perfect pitch. OBS: the best ear training for people with pp is the KODALI method, i tried other methods but i found myself cheating using the pp to recognize intervals. I tried a method before kodali that the teacher played two notes and asked witch interval was that. The thing is that i used the pp to recognize the two notes.... I studied 6 months like that and i thought my ear was the best, but i could not sing any interval after that.

[@colejohnson8414]

Sometimes I'll hear the same song more than once (on different days), and something about it sounds sharper or flatter than I remembered it to be. This is usually the case with music on the radio. Some songs sound like they're a half step sharper or flatter than the original depending on how they were processed before being played.

[@hekk_tech5975]

im 70% deaf on both ears i love music, watching something like this is making me cry inside my soul but my curiosity overweighs my pain.

[@nfijef]

Theres still alot you can learn with 30percent, can you distinguish pitch at all (high or low ness)? But I feel ya.

[@LucasVenda]

aw man

[@PLNKYELLOWBLACK]

more power to you brother i hope something can change with your hearing, music is for everyone and im glad it can still touch your soul :) Heres to better tech for hearing

[@johnwest6690]

Opposite for me. This form is infinite, infinite pleasure, infinite pain, infinite torment, infinite power, infinite ecstasy. Yet the pleasure never outweighs the pain, the pain is all I feel. I see the pleasure, but I do not feel it. This is the form I was promised, but not the form I wanted. This is my punishment. But I will know god, for to know god, one must know the antichrist within himself. June 25th, 2021: The "Hearing God" Incident

[@Tubatoofpaste]

Some Australian researchers theorise that all children have perfect pitch and use this as well as other auditory elements to recognise their mother's voice. When they get older, it fades and usually disappears. They think that people who begin learning music early are more likely to retain this faculty. Also, some people have it acutely on instruments they play and experience but not as acutely on ones that are less familiar to them. I haven't lost my perfect pitch, which was very strong when I was younger, but it's fading. I think i might have first noticed this when I was about 60. And, like others, it is now regularly a semitone off. I can even be sitting watching someone play the piano and what it looks like is not what it sounds like! This is a great channel. You provide so many interesting topics and can speak about a heavy metal band with authority, but also you're not too shabby on the greatest musician of all time, JSB.

[@SafffOneee]

Probably related to how at birth babies can understand every language but over time only understand the parent's...something like that

[@jimi272]

That’s very interesting info! PP owner here too haha;)

[@vladimirbogosavljevic8039]

Mine is fading too .... Even im younger .... And yes ... It depends what you do when you re very young ... Pretty much the same with every other thing and abilities ...

[@murdo_mck]

I wonder if it is possible to retrain your mind to hear the correct pitch? After all you still have absolute pitch, it has merely shifted. I think that is what Oliver Sachs' patient did (Musicophilia 2007). It would take a lot of work - would it be worth the time you spend? Research in neuroplasticity has found our brains have an amazing ability to adapt, even in later life, but of course it happens slowly.

[@christianhenry4173]

@@murdo_mck you have to access a higher percent of your brain or it'll be difficult but not impossible. If you access atleast 9% of brain thinking it is possible to develop perfect pitch faster.

[@davcar23]

"He's playing all these notes and he doesn't know what they are" welcome to my world.

[@akshayde]

You merely adopted it. We were born in it!

[@DannySullivanMusic]

wow lol perfect comment

[@KaragozTheLow]

Oscar Peterson might still had his perfect pitch at that interview. Some of the shows recorded on tape can be played back or originally recorded at the wrong speed. Sometimes when tv tapes are copied to digital format their pitch shifts. This just needed to take into consideration (though he might actually lost his perfect pitch )

[@weber247]

He did say “close to it” so not really lost pitch but relative .

[@pault151]

@@weber247 Yes, it's quite unlikely that Cavett's studio feedback was exactly on a musical tone, it's just a random resonance. But also possible that Peterson's pitch might have started wandering, as well as that the tones may have varied some from recording. Later audio tech, like digital or BetaHiFi, had the frequencies locked to a standard so those are less likely to have wandered in playback. FWIW Cavett's voice sounded exactly like I remember it, and if it was shifted up or down by a full tone even those of us without perfect pitch might remember that it was different, but I'm not sure I could pick up a semi-tone in a voice.

[@adaetz1042]

Per your last point, a single semitone across the board actually has a huge impact on what a voice sounds like, particularly if it’s a recording/processing artifact rather than something natural like “morning voice” etc. Try messing around with a pitch shifting plug-in if you have access to one, it’s really interesting! Cheers :)

[@luf4rall]

I noticed that when I was transferring old christmas music recordings to digital for an older relative and then finding the recordings on youtube were actually played back at a faster speed. They prefered the original recordings.

[@tubehound69]

When I was a kid my parents had a tape deck that played slower than any other to where it was a half step flat. It bothered me.

[@patriciae5760]

Let me start by saying thank you for sharing your knowledge, skill and talent with so many. I was brought to your channel by a friend 4 years ago who linked to your first video on perfect pitch. Normally I don’t watch these things but I must have been bored that day...in any case I have no regrets. It’s very easy to get sucked down the Beato rabit hole. Dylan’s PP is far more developed than my own, which I know is due to all the early music theory exposure. Watching this video was absolutely terrifying. It was discovered that I had perfect pitch when I was 9, but earliest memory of it was when I was 5. As a blind musician (flute and piano), I rely on it too much. I guess if I ever needed motivation to learn braille music you’ve definitely given me more amunition. Thanks again for your awesome content.

[@HofTheStage]

This is why I love this channel, never knew you could lose your perfect pitch or that you can be off by a semi-tone at one point in your life. Thanks once again for some great info! I know 2 people in real life that have perfect pitch but I'm not that close to them to know more. However, I know at least 10 people that think they have it and I have no problem letting them know they are fooling themselves. It's like they just wanna be ''cool'' and have it. Anyway, I'm ok with my relative pitch, and I love the way you train it every morning, I might try that!

[@diebydeath]

It sounded like you spend your time smacking people down. Don't be mean to people if they're not trying to be posers. There are people who have the potential but simply haven't trained it (or their relative pitch) enough to demonstrate it

[@Shadezman76]

H of the stage. I totally get your point and as Rick has said you can't develop perfect pitch so one either has it or not. I've run into a few posers myself and it's sad

[@HofTheStage]

@@diebydeath I said that more like a joke, I just explained to some posers that perfect pitch is not learned. I'm all about relative pitch, but these people aren't even that good at that and they talk about having perfect pitch... Just saying that the term perfect pitch started to become a cool thing to say so people who don't understand it use it lightly

[@HofTheStage]

@@Shadezman76 exactly

[@sketchmoon3333]

honestly after playing for 15 years on a detuned piano (almost a halfstep down, and for 5-6 years almost a perfect semitone) i had some problems about my perfect pitch being “out of tune” sometimes.. i woul listen some songs and say “yes easy it’s in e minor” but it was f minor.. or i sometimes would rather recognise notes from songs tuned at 430hz... and i’m like 23

[@Guitargate]

I never knew this about Gary. So wild I took his course on improv and he’s hearing different tones than I’m hearing. Only on Rick’s channel!!

[@kevinhernandez5422]

Love the channel Mike!

[@shaneholbeck6697]

Hey Mike - Just wondering if you have perfect pitch or do you have have excellent relative pitch?

[@Guitargate]

@@shaneholbeck6697 Believe it or not my relative pitch is fair at best.

[@stephentyler4352]

Thank you Michael, for all you do! I’m sending you my gratitude from Canada. Best Regards, Stephen

[@johnvalentine3456]

Probably the reason Gary retired...

[@mhpart68]

My mom had absolute pitch. She was a concert pianist and studied with Abby Simon at Indiana University when I was a small child. Abby Simon taught me how to shake hands, which I remember to this day. I'll be 53 in March 2021. My mom started hearing pitches a half step low when she was in her early sixties. I used to teach voice and I would occasionally have a student that couldn't match pitch. I found that if I taught them the physics of sound, I could get them to match pitch, but if I tried to first teach them traditional relative pitch concepts, they would not improve or would improve very slowly. This was too small a sample to be scientific and it was not set up to be a study, but I recall that in the half a dozen of so instances where this happened, I successfully taught the students to match pitch. Of course they didn't develop absolute pitch and I'm not implying that they could have, but I always found it interesting that learning simple ideas about vibration - frequency and amplitude - allowed them to learn to match a pitch with their voice.

[@wiltisdabest]

Could you explain more in depth your method for teaching to match pitch. I ask because I know two people who play very well one guitar and one keyboard, both almost completely by ear and Thier tone and timbre is great, but they can't match pitch well singing. So they have the rp concepts down but just can't match well with voice.

[@drewkg14]

I am very interested in your teaching method. Can you elaborate?

[@mhpart68]

My answer above @Drew Graham was very long and you'll have to click "Read more" to see it all. Also, it occurred to me that I would emphasize the relationship between pitch and mass - more mass creates lower pitches and less mass creates higher pitches and specifically the same amount of mass produces the same pitch when it vibrates provided it can vibrate uniformly. I would then ask the students to make their vocal chords bigger or smaller, more accurately thicker or thinner, and although you can't really see or feel the vocal chords, you seem to be able to do this. And the relationship between energy and volume or amplitude was important too - it requires more effort to move bigger masses, but you have to be careful with concepts of effort with vocalists as there are a number of processes that have nothing to do with singing that one can do that feel very effortful and will simply ruin the quality and health of the vocal mechanism (don't hold your breath at all. Either be breathing in or singing. Don't hold your breath between breathing in and singing). In truth you can't really feel the "effort" of producing a lower note as compared to a higher one, but if you haven't accumulated sufficient breath to create pressure prior to initiating the tone, all of your notes will suffer, especially at the end of phrases. There is also the relationship between tension in the vocal bands, which is greater for higher notes, and the pressure needed to create an even vibration, so this is a complex subject. For the purposes of matching pitch though the mass/frequency/pitch and energy/amplitude/volume relationships can be explored. Again, is seems that what was happening was that what the student couldn't do conceptually they could do once they had a physical model even though it is not something they could feel in their throat. Forgive me for the length of my response and not remembering all of it in the initial answer. It's been 7 years since I've taught a voice lesson.

[@MegaByrds]

@@mhpart68 fascinating concepts! Thank you.

[@MrLuigiFercotti]

The issue In reproducing vocal tones accurately has to with what your voice sounds like in your head versus what it sounds like to the listener. For me, my voice sounds lower in my head than it is. Apparently this is due to conductive hearing transmitting lower frequencies more intensely than aurally. I can tell when someone is in or out of tune, but it’s difficult for myself.

[@hgstarsongs]

This is VERY interesting! Rick, it's like you crawled inside my brain. This is precisely what has happened to me. I once had perfect pitch myself. (I never had the ability to break down a cluster chord like your son, like Jacob, or like another girl who was in my class at Berklee, which I also attended for a few semesters. I was always envious of that high level of ability and thought those people must be mad geniuses!) That said, I was pretty good at being able to pick notes one by one out of the air and have them proven on the piano afterward. My mom even tells me (though that memory is way too foggy to recall) that when I was in first grade, I told the school music teacher that the piano was out of tune. I think it was off by a semitone. Of course, teacher went to Mom and was telling her this and was commenting on my perfect pitch. It's just something I had that I considered a luxury. Fast forward to the present - for at least...oh, gosh...maybe 5 or 6 years now, I've noticed my ability to sing a note by memory has dwindled considerably. In fact, when I do test myself, I'm...yep...usually 1/2 step off. I'm now 50 years old. I'm still good with being able to hear a note on the piano (my main instrument since age 5) and name it, but sing it from memory without that reference first? Not very often anymore. So strange. Your title captured my interest, but I was floored when you said "a half step off."

[@larrysaidman1004]

Right on! I lost my perfect pitch in my mid 50's. I was in a choir and got quite upset that they had changed the key of a song we had been singing---and hadn't told me. Except they hadn't! Losing it is like.....you always knew what 'red' looked like, and suddenly your told that 'red' is now 'yellow'. Oliver Sacks, if I remember right, talked about people who had reported losing their perfect pitch. And he stated that the loss reported was approximately 1 1/4 tones. And that's about what it is for me. I hear something as E when it's actually D. (I wish it were as simple as just 'transposing' it....but I never know for sure if I've already transposed it in my head when I hear it as an E.....in which case it actually WOULD be an E). So yes...I agree about relative pitch being so much more important. When you were doing that little exercise of naming all the notes using relative pitch, I had my 'perfect pitch' hat on and kept getting them wrong. But half way through I thought 'relative pitch'....and got the rest of them right.

[@PsytranceGOUGAS]

Rick, your relative pitch speed with it jumping in octaves is damn impressive.

[@absurdist5630]

Dude tunes his guitar faster by ear than me with a tuner.

[@gaelfaun2459]

Most shocking thing to be seen on video nowadays !

[@cristhiancamarena9534]

I tune it by ear too, it isnt that hard lol

[@benkutta6328]

@@cristhiancamarena9534 I think it is a really valuable ear training to do it in this way. (However sometimes I'm lazy and use cleartune ;-))

[@cristhiancamarena9534]

@@benkutta6328 well, dont use matching frets to tune it by ear, use an E chord, like the three upper strings is just an E min chord (however raise the third to tune them) then the rest is a fifth and an octave with the low E.

[@benkutta6328]

@@cristhiancamarena9534 Thank you! This makes sense :)

[@jgamb914]

I used to have perfect pitch but i blew my arm out

[@lukeabrahamsen-collins808]

Hahaha good one

[@dickmcwienersonIII]

Not funny dad. LOL

[@lukeabrahamsen-collins808]

@@leaveitorsinkit242 it's a joke pal

[@lukeabrahamsen-collins808]

@@leaveitorsinkit242 ok fine I'll explain it: He is making a joke that rather than pitch as in musicality he is saying as in baseball when you pitch the ball. So the joke being that he used to pitch well but he blew his arm out so it is somewhat ironic I guess.

[@jgamb914]

@@lukeabrahamsen-collins808 Thank you for explaining it in plain English for the folks that didnt get the joke. Peace...

[@zeronvt]

As a person with perfect pitch, somehow I can relate the story of Perfect Pitch and Relative Pitch to one of the lessons in life: No matter how special your individual self are, it's simply how you are to people around you that lasts.

[@renthehag]

I had absolutely ZERO issues with my perfect pitch until I started having severe chronic migraines when I was 25. I had to step back from playing piano for a few years because of my health issues and when I came back, I noticed my pitch had drifted down a half step. I was convinced it was my medication. I switched EVERYTHING around. It made no difference. I’m 33 now and it’s something I struggle with every day. I’ve noticed that sometimes if I “calibrate” my ear when I go to practice, as though I have relative pitch, I can hold onto my ear for the rest of the day. But it’s nothing like it used to be. I have to remind myself that my ear is a half-step flat.

[@Frahamen]

So my grandfather, the last decade of his live, always complained his left ear sounded a half step lower than his right ear. I don't think he had a perfect pitch, but he was a professional musician, so he might, and this reminds me off this.

[@ClockworkDave]

That's the real nightmare right there. Wow, that must have sucked mightily.

[@matrajao]

I'm 37 and already have this. But the weird thing is your brain adjust to it when hearing with both ears simultaneously, so you can't hear that your bad ear is off, unless when hearing with it isolated.

[@BigVine-m5i]

It's called diplicusis binauralis and it's caused by diabetes or pre-diabetes. Stop eating carbohydrates and it will eventually return to normal.

[@itznoxy7193]

If that was me I would carry one earplug and put it in every time I listen to music lol.

[@syzyphyz]

@@BigVine-m5i eating like an Inuit and dying in your 30s isn't a great solution, whole food carbs don't cause diabetes, likewise this keto trend is ironic given that the Inuit have genetic adaptations that prevent them from entering ketosis.

[@davidbrock6263]

I heard perfect pitch is when you throw an accordion in the dumpster and it hits a banjo.

[@Bacopa68]

Gotta have a viola in there too .

[@richardgratton7557]

David Brock It's an old joke but still funny😂

[@MetricJester]

I love Nashville Polka!

[@homeone4054]

And a pile of ukeleles (the bane of every beer festival in the UK....)

[@TavisAllen]

Geez! I suppose this where I get to be trendy and write: Weird Al Yankovic and Bela Fleck have entered the conversation.

[@cameronmccreary7697]

My mother had "perfect pitch" I however, always had "relative pitch." It hasn't changed in my 64 years on this planet but, I do have to practice with my hearing often.

[@Lessadenis85]

Hi Rick, I am an Audiologist and I believe the loss of perfect pitch is related to the loss of the hair cells in the Organ of Corti, in the inner ear. It leads to hearing loss and frequency discrimination problems.

[@randyt60]

Interesting... I am a Perfect-Pitch-Loss victim and I have major Tinnitus and hearing loss thru the 1K-4K range. I wonder if there's a correlation...

[@Lessadenis85]

@@randyt60 tinnitus and hearing loss can be addressed with hearing aids, but I not sure about the perfect pitch! It would be a nice research to be done. I’ve had great outcomes with patients suffering from tinnitus and hearing loss.

[@Lessadenis85]

@@randyt60 definitely there is a correlation

[@edlee3241]

I could name the notes till 5 years ago, but now I'm always thinking it's a semi tone higher than it really is...and I'm only 31..So might there be a problem with my ears?

[@ZarjaP]

I don't think this explains it. I have perfect pitch, which was discovered when I was very young. I'm now in my fifties and still have perfect discrimination between frequencies. (I've tested it, and I still score extremely high even on microtonal discrimination tests.) But if I sing or identify a random note "cold" without a pitch reference nowadays, I will nail it -- a half-step flat. On the other hand, if I give myself a pitch reference by just playing the piano a little bit in the morning, I'm pretty much "reset" for the day -- although not as 100% confident as I was in my younger days. It's definitely neurological, not physiological. (I do notice upper frequency hearing loss, but that has no impact on my pitch perception.)

[@Reeseington]

I don’t have perfect pitch, but I remember actively memorizing C, and having it down to the point to where I didn’t have to think about it to recognize it. After a while, I stopped “memorizing” it more because I had it nailed. Within a few months though, I started saying B was C. I wonder what psychological events take place in order to do that.

[@jroar123]

I lost half my hearing when I was 34 years old fro a virus. I adjusted the way I hear to compensate for the loss. It sounded off for a few years before it made sense. I’m 56 years old now and had to readjust my hearing once again back in the direction I lost my hearing.

[@bordershader]

Would you please elaborate on what therapy you undertook, either through personal experimentation or with professional intervention? I'm in this position right now. Thx.

[@BillyEilish]

Hey Rick, this was a very interesting video on a great subject. A similar phenomenon is when I am feeling tired, songs seem to be playing at a faster speed/tempo than they actually are. I've actually been working on songs and after a day of mixing and equalizing, I tell myself that the song might be recorded a bit too fast, but the next day everything seems fine. Would be an interesting topic!

[@kyraandamysdad]

Lifetime PPer here, and sure enough, somewhere around age 45 I started to be a half step off sometimes. What's weird is it was always exactly 100 cents off, never an in-between pitch. Now here's what's weirder! When I was a child, I could name pitches without a reference, but it was a slow and cumbersome process because I had to pause and think about the sound of middle C on my mom's piano, then compare it to whatever note I was identifying. Over time, I came to have more references I could call on, and eventually I didn't need them and could just call out pitches, Dylan style. Now that I'm "losing" my perfect pitch, I find that I'm often wrong if I just call out the pitch without thinking, but I can *still* conjure the middle C from my childhood piano or the A string of my violin, and get it right after all. So, did I lose perfect pitch. I'd say yes and no. I can still name pitches correctly, but I just have to go back to the way I did it when I was 11.

[@santiagogarcia9436]

21 with PP here, I practiced mine that way when I was 14 too! I would pick specific high vocal notes from songs I remembered the most and base my ear off of that, but now it's definitely instantaneous without any need for references at all.

[@MonsieurC64]

Same here. Starting to loose it, often a semi tone down, but if I focus on a middle C from piano, or E string on guitar in my mind, and "tune" back my brain.

[@amylaw3416]

Same. But for me it was A on my oboe. My mom's piano has not been on key since the 60s. It's a half step down now and needs to go another half step down. But I prefer it out of tune as to being consistently that wrong. Yes. She donated her 70 year old piano to my kids. They are excelling in piano. But we can not replace it while she is alive. My son also has perfect pitch and that piano makes us both nuts.

[@kyraandamysdad]

@@amylaw3416 is it that the piano is too frail to come up to pitch?

[@amylaw3416]

@@kyraandamysdad After time the sound board harp becomes a bit warped and the strings become "soured". I COULD get it reconditioned, but in this situation I do not feel that this piano is worth it. It wasn't the best to begin with, and my parents were extremely heavy smokers. The smoke damaged the wooden components of the piano. The keys are chipped. The pads are compressed. We just need to upgrade. Don't smoke. If nothing else it's bad for your piano.

[@TheodorEllefsen]

I dont have perfect pitch, but my pitch memory have become impressively accurate over det last couple of years! I havent really practiced it, but played, engaged and educated myself alot in music. I find this stuff so interesting!

[@geofjay2241]

Thank you so much for your videos. Your son's ear is amazing. I had perfect pitch when I was a boy (only one note at a time) and now that I am older I've lost perfect pitch and now "rely" on relative pitch...ironically I related to Jacob Collier. The music gene is very strong in our family! Thank you again for your wonderful videos.

[@iocomposer]

This has been happening to me lately and I've been really confused by it. I haven't been working on much music lately and I assumed it was a "use it or lose it" kind of thing, but this sheds a lot of light on what's going on. Thanks for making this video on such an obscure topic, Rick. I really appreciate it.

[@CaptainAmaziiing]

My piano teacher told my folks I had perfect pitch when I was 5 or 6 and started piano lessons. She may have been snowing them to get them to buy more lessons, but now I only have well developed relative pitch. I'm also 53 so I've had time to lose a lot of things.

[@valinhosvideos]

Im looking for this video for years!! I was born with perfect pitch and played by ear my entire life but a few years ago my ear is flat , just like you explained ! I go to the note for sure but its half above 😱 I gone crazy ! My play was afected too. I talked with my first piano teacher and he told me it was happening with him and some friends , I was more relieved because it seemed to be a normal thing. I tried to discipline myself, and concentrate my energies to understand what was happening to me and get my perfect pitch back. I tried to think always half above (lol) but not worked, because some notes was so clear to me and others dont. Totally crazy ! Thanks for the video ! Im your fan !

[@hamiltonloomis7648]

I too used to have perfect pitch, but interestingly, I lost mine in my early twenties, and I noticed I was starting to be a half step off, just like Rick said! (And many other comments) Many people have commented that it would be devastating to lose perfect pitch, however I feel like losing it was a BLESSING, not a curse... When I was a kid it used to drive me nuts when instruments and singers were out of tune, and it was like nails on a chalkboard. I just couldn't stand it. Now I hear the value of being out of tune, and all the imperfections that make performances human. It's almost as if my ear relaxed, in some sense, and now music is so much more enriching and meaningful. Anyone else experience this? For instance, there are certain singers who are consistently slightly flat, like Sam Smith for instance, and that's one of the elements that makes him sound so melancholy and emotional. I thought for a while that maybe this "shift" was a result of me maturing further as a musician, but it's awfully coincidental that this all happened right around the same time, so I'm sure that losing perfect pitch had at least something to do with it. And if so, I'm better off because of it. Perfect pitch, good riddance!!!

[@Jwellsuhhuh]

Yeah this is definitely the strongest argument for anti-perfect pitch gang… or just an excuse to keep our self esteem. I still agree that developing a very stable relative pitch and pitch memory of certain notes (and using deduction to find other notes) is still superior to perfect pitch

[@stevenrhodes915]

Spoken like someone who never had Perfect Pitch...

[@weronikawajrak2761]

I wish I could lose my perfect pitch so much... It's been horrible to my musical expression and perception of it. This year I'm graduating from secondary music school and every hour I practise the violin just hurts. I wonder why no matter how hard I try, just strings of letters appear in my head instead of feelings and emotions written as notes.

[@highstimulation2497]

things sometimes seem a half step off to me too, and I'm 47. they have seemed that way forever, though.

[@FlashRayLaser]

Cap.

[@realmishasegal]

I was studying at Berklee when Gary Burton was teaching there. In the first lesson (identifying the correct modes to be played against any given chord - very quickly,) he demonstrated this by having students shouting out random chords as he was flying through the piano up and down in the speed of light, not missing a note or a beat. I had a big argument afterwards, with a couple of the students. I stated that only a musician with perfect pitch could make these decisions at that speed. I never got to ask Gary about this. The answer came 40 years later when I heard that he (tragically) quit playing because he didn't have it any longer. P.P - Blessing or curse? That depends on the individual goals, of course... :)

[@JacobRobergeQC]

I have a good relative ear and similarly to people getting older, whenever I get very tired, my perception of pitch and tempo drifts, the more I'm tired, the more music seems faster and higher than it actually is, which means if I try to sing a note when tired, I will be off by probably a half-step down.

[@johnsrabe]

Rick, what’s the part two? Once these guys lost perfect pitch, how did they adapt?

[@legacyShredder1]

He hires a guy to come in everyday after sound check and tunes everyone down 1/2 step.

[@RickBeato]

They use my ear training course :)

[@theredshirts7245]

You accept that the world conspired to tune everything 1/2 step sharp

[@paulypoobrain2929]

@@RickBeato haha! Ya gotta respect the hustle.

[@flonoiisana4647]

@@RickBeato lolol Good plug!

[@MiguelCatalaoMusic]

This is a known issue. I first knew of it because of Allessandro Barrico's book, where the town's maestro starts losing his Perfect Pitch and goes mad because he can't find the note on his head on the piano and the church's bell. The loss of his perfect pitch was to him like loosing his musical soul and ultimately his mind! The maestro was so creative, and moved the whole town with him in his musical escapades. A very fun one (something that could come out of John Cage's head) was the Human Organ, where he assigned different pitches to a bunch of people each one with a cord connected to a carrillion machine. He then would play the carrilion keyboard and expect people to sing their assigned note when they felt the pull in their wrist (wich would almost never work)! A wonderful book with wonderful characters!

[@jorgerodriguezsierra7593]

One thing is IMO inaccurate, I’m not an ENT surgeon but this change in pitch may be due to arthrosis of the bone chain in your middle ear, it happens to everyone and is a part of aging like presbicia for vision, with training this people can reteach their brain to have perfect pitch.

[@SyncdAlien]

That is fascinating, Jorge! Good information!

[@1badsteed]

@Anne Day both could be true.

[@jmiclovesyou]

Otosclerosis, as you described, and as @Anne Day mentioned, is a conductive hearing loss. This can affect the amount of high-frequency information accessible to the cochlea and therefore the brain, but typically will not degrade the person's ability to discriminate pitch, given enough volume to overcome the conductive hearing loss. Degradation of the cochlear hair cells, sensory loss, can absolutely distort the signal before it gets sent to the brain to be processed.

[@FlyMIfYouGotM]

@Anne Day Is it possible the underlying cause of the loss of perfect pitch has something to do with the reduction in neural signal transmission speed in the brain? Part of the reason I am wondering this is Rick's interview of Gary Burton and how he lost his perfect pitch after being put on a Heart/Lung machine. Years ago it was discovered, through the use of before and after FMRI brain scans, that just like, "Chemo Brain" after Chemo Therapy, there is considerable alteration in brain function after this medical procedure. As far as I can tell, they have never determined why this happens as blood flow and oxygen levels are maintained throughout the procedure. One of the side effects of aging is the slowing of signal propagation through the neural circuitry in the brain. That is part of the reason for slowed reaction times and reduced cognitive ability. Is it possible that people with perfect pitch have developed neural circuitry that is very frequency/time sensitive. If that time/frequency response curve were altered by slowing down signal propagation times, that could mess with the deeply embedded neural algorithms, (acquired in infancy or very early childhood) used to decode these signals. If this is what is going on, could this theory be easily tested by administering a safe drug that would temporarily slow down neural transmission to simulate what happens with aging? Since higher frequencies probably require faster neural response times, do people with perfect pitch begin to loose higher frequencies first? If so, this could be a subtle indicator that this could be part of the underlying mechanism behind perfect pitch.

[@DannySullivanMusic]

agreed dude. totally right!

[@robsdeboer]

Thank you for this, Rick! I was like Dylan as a kid. Now I'm 49 and I've noticed this "drift" over the last couple of years. I had a feeling maybe I wasn't the only one... this was good to hear!

[@KevinORourke25]

I'm sure Rick drinks Dos Equis beer because he is The Most Interesting Man In The World. GREAT video. Kevin O'Rourke

[@timelwell7002]

As a piano tuner, I can tell you that having a strong sense of RELATIVE pitch is highly advantageous, whereas having perfect pitch is a distinct DISADVANTAGE. This is because, from time to time, I am asked to tune pianos (and other keyboard instruments) either above concert pitch, or below. (In Concert pitch, A5 = 440 Hertz). Pianists who often play with a sax prefer tuning the piano a little above, say A5 = 443 or 444. People who play period instruments (harpsichords, spinets, forte-pianos etc) will want their keyboard instrument tuned below concert, say A5 = 430, or lower still, to match what USED to be set as concert pitch for a given music period (Baroque, etc). Interestingly, many modern orchestras tune a little above concert pitch in order to achieve a brighter string sound - although quite why they don't ask makers of violin and viola strings to slightly increase the string gauges I don't understand - because this would have the same effect.

[@jimi272]

I have perfect pitch and don’t see any disadvantage. If anyone has perfect pitch, it depends on how they learn to use it. Can they also develop relative pitch in parallel? So that they can play a session tuned downwards? Most can’t do this thing, and then think that it sounds wrong... but if you can adjust the perfect pitch, no problem...

[@gregorycampbell7921]

yawwwnnnnnnn

[@vladimirbogosavljevic8039]

@@jimi272 there are disadvantages , if you re rounded by common or less sensed people .... Im tuning guitar and guy is telling me im wrong ... Or different ocassions ...

[@timelwell7002]

@@jimi272 Are you a piano tuner? If you're not, then of course having perfect pitch is not really a problem. However, if a piano tuner has perfect pitch and is required to tune the piano either above or below pitch, then tuning the piano to this other pitch becomes extremely difficult, because their brain is demanding that they tune to what they know to be PRECISELY the correct (current, concert) pitch. Capish?

[@darkswan80]

Same for singers. If you sing Early Music and have perfect pitch it becomes extremely difficult to pitch correctly to the instruments because you feel like you're always out of tune. So... I'm happy that I have a good sense of harmony and relative pitch but I don't have perfect pitch 😉

[@bigrig4385]

Rick saying he was tuning Eb instead of E is a result of his 90's grunge binge.

[@stratjed]

yup ! what is with the grunge love ? do not get it .believe its cuz its where he made his coin.

[@chipmcdip8629]

@@stratjed there’s nothing to get it’s all about taste

[@markpaul3898]

A lot of the 80s rock bands were tuned to Eb as well.

[@jorisev]

Jimi Hendrix used to tune to Eb and if it was ok for Jimi, it's ok for me

[@Celatra]

@SiLLy SiiLiiNdur all non mainstream music is emotional. black metal is emotional too.

[@groovinhooves]

My favorite relative pitch exercise is 'given the following named note [note struck and named], identify the resultant harmony (as well as name the other notes and their structural function - root, third, thirteenth what have you) [more notes struck]' where the named note can be in any voice, maybe it's the bass note, maybe it will be an inner voice, etc.

[@davidgregory49]

Since I was a young boy I could always tune up & the pitch would always be spot on.. fast forward to my sixties and now I am half a step down which drives me nuts! Great video as always Rick !

[@andrealvares5148]

I remember how adults were upset because you said they would never have perfect pitch on those videos back in 2016.

[@iforgotmyname2739]

And they still don’t.... you can’t develop perfect pitch once you’re older than like 5

[@blakederby3932]

@@iforgotmyname2739 That's not necessarily true, it's extremely rare to develop it in all cases, but it's not impossible for someone older than 6 to develop it. There is more research on this outside of Rick Beato, though I think he is great.

[@BrianLarney]

As Rick states in the video, work on ear training and learn relative pitch if you weren't blessed with perfect pitch. The truth is I do not have perfect pitch, nor at 5' 6'' will I ever be a pro basketball player. We must accept certain limitations. :)

[@MrJdsenior]

And now they all DO! (not).

[@johnsrabe]

Brian Larney, don’t give up on your dreams! ;-)

[@lucaferlisi2486]

This video terrifies me. I have perfect pitch and I discovered it randomly when I was about 11 (even if my parents already knew it but I forgot). During middle school I was able even to recognise much randomly chosen notes at a time, and I played guitar everyday. Now, since it's been a lot that I have been playing guitar consistently or studying music theory (I still find hard to read a pentagram because I've always gone by ear), I notice my pitch has become a bit rusty. It's not that I can't recognize notes anymore (I still can very quickly), but I find slightly more difficult to recognise a large group of notes. Maybe it's just that I haven't been training a lot lately. If you can see this comment and answer, thanks a lot in advance.

[@nepumuc4364]

Exactly the same here, PP - scared to death now...

[@lucaferlisi2486]

@@nepumuc4364 well, now I've discovered it is sort of a use it or lose it skill. Since I haven't been listening to any music except for slipknot in a range of a month, I've come back to the music I like and I am starting to feel my ability again. I would never forgive myself if I eventually lost it

[@VoIcanoman]

I'm actually not that scared. I have PP as well, and I'm in my late 30s, so presumably, I'll start to lose it in maybe a decade (at the earliest). But if it drifts with time, slowly becoming flat...you can intellectually correct for this, and "re-learn" the pitches. Presumably the difference in real pitch vs. what you perceive is the same no matter which of the 12 tones (or the register they're in) is playing...so at any given time, you'll be a fixed amount off. Every year, just figure out how much you're off at that time, and add in the correction. I mean, I'm not saying that one should neglect their relative pitch, nor do I think having perfect pitch is so essential (billions of people and millions of musicians live without it and they're fine), but we're USED to it, and while it would be disorienting to suddenly be wrong, to have our brains lying to us...at least the lying is predictable! It would be worse (for me) if I had active absolute pitch, because I think the above technique would be harder to do when singing notes. But my passive AP, wherein I can name any note that is played without a reference, is safe...as long as the degeneration of the ability is consistent. And it seems to be.

[@nepumuc4364]

@@VoIcanoman Thanks for this answer, got stuck in a real crisis after this video. What do you mean by "re-learning"? I'm not being afraid really to lose the ability to do party tricks - I'm in great fear that there will be so much confusion every time I play piano, I might have to stop (or at least won't be able to really enjoy it anymore). Srsly, I'd rather go blind than that!

[@VoIcanoman]

@@nepumuc4364 By re-learning, I mean, you can (with some work and practise) change the expectation of sound in your brain. You already have PP - you know what the notes should sound like. When you start being wrong about that, your brain still "knows" the notes and their relationships to each other...it's just off by a predictable amount. And you'll get used to that, used to being off by that fixed amount. You'll know, before you even touch a key on the piano, that your brain expects the wrong note, and by how much it is incorrect, and I really do think you can re-train your brain so that it expects the right note again. All you'll have to do is actively TRY to adapt in this way. Think of it this way...what happens at present when you sit down to play at an out-of-tune piano (one which has every note off by about the same amount)? Is it disorienting? At first, yes (I should know - the piano I play the most hasn't been tuned for awhile, and it is about a semitone flat). But after you play a few sessions, you get used to it. You come to expect the notes you're getting. The only difference is, in the future, the piano will be in-tune - you'll be the "out-of-tune" entity!

It's harder though to train relative pitch while having absolute pitch, because your brain instantly tries to go for the absolute method. I could follow the ear training test in the end, but only because my brain instantly switched to "absolute mode" and once it's on, you cannot simply switch it off (at least for me..). Also there are different levels of perfect pitch. Mine was never that fast as Jacob Collier, but I am still able to recognize chords, individual notes and scales. I tried to train it, but you cannot simply upgrade it. I eventually started to appreciate it for what it is and I don't try to change it anymore. :-)

[@josephsantiago69]

I just want to leave a comment saying that your videos have helped me out a lot in my guitar playing. Always great to learn something new even when you’ve been playing for a long time now. Keep killing it with the great content. 🤘🤘

[@mikebonomusic428]

Rick, I am honestly so relieved to have come across this video. I'm 30 and discovered I had perfect pitch when I was 5. No trouble tuning guitars, can hear huge chords, hear some microtones etc... the last 2 years I have started hearing things a half step off... So if it's an Ab I'll interpret it as a G. It's not all the time but it has definitely happened several times now where it's been incredibly alarming and disorienting. It's also slowed down my processing of notes, whereas I used to instantly know what the notes where. In certain ways it's helped my improvising, because I'm less analytical of a chord when playing free for example, and I'll just try to play to the "sound". It bums me out on some days, but I've made peace with it. Do you know of anyone having experienced the loss of perfect pitch, or the start of the loss as young as 30? Thanks for the great content!

[@evelynleone7773]

Same here, I'm 28 and I started noticing it about a year ago... I keep reading comments of people in their fifties, so it's a bit comforting to know I'm not the only one who's experiencing this before 30 :)

[@edlee3241]

@@evelynleone7773 I have the same, I used to hear the notes, but now I'm a half-step of sometimes

[@teddysalad8227]

That’s what I’ll tell people when I sing off key. I lost my perfect pitch.

[@malupaural1494]

Last time I was so early Henley hadn't blocked the video yet

[@SepticFuddy]

And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for these meddling boomers!

[@delliott74]

Thanks Rick! After having perfect pitch all my life, I’ve gone down a semitone too! Soooo frustrating. My daughter was learning piano on an old family piano that was a semitone down. I knew what she was supposed to be playing and i think my ear (brain) has re-learnt the pitch. Could also be approaching the magic 50 mark too. Just need a follow up video on regaining perfect pitch!

[@eleanormacchia]

I’m a classically trained musician; specifically a singer. I thought I was losing my mind and would have to stop singing altogether! I wasn’t aware that this was possible. I happened to stumble upon this phenomenon of perfect pitch loss in a video on “Nebula” last night. One of the examples you used was a clip from that video. I began to remember noticing that this was happening gradually in the last few years. I thought it was from depression or stress. I even alienated a few friends because I was so sure I was right and they were wrong. The saving Grace of this newly found awareness is that I immediately started working on my intervals and my pitch recognition improved in as little as a day. I’m relieved that I’m not crazy but sad that my pitch doesn’t work any more and is causing me confusion and self doubt. I’m really gonna start plugging away at the relative pitch training so I don’t lose my musical life altogether. I now have a language and understanding of what’s happening to me and how I can remedy most of the problem and not be consumed by anxiety and confusion. Thank you for this!

[@LucasVenda]

good luck on that (:

[@flapjackson6077]

I was fortunate enough to see Gary Burton play a solo performance in Johnstown, PA 20+ years ago. I was then fortunate enough to meet him, as he happened to be sitting at the table next to me and my wife at a dinner following his concert. I hadn’t heard of him before then, but his vibraphone skills made me plenty aware that he must be a well known musician. I commented to him that I was amazed at his performance, and he engaged me in conversation for the next five minutes. Very nice and gracious guy. I was tickled to see him mentioned in this video.

[@EclecticHillbilly]

For me, perfect pitch is a case of can't lose what you never had.

[@xXAjaxXx]

I imagine that Gary Burton story is going to keep some musicians up at night, it sounds like a nightmare..

[@MarcosVinicius-xh8ih]

Rick, I've attended Rock in Rio in 2013 and one of the bands was way, way louder than the safe limit should be. After that festival I noticed that every sound I heard was half step higher than it should be. After researching a bit I found there was something to do with pressure in your ears or something like that. After one month things went back to normal, and I wonder if the same thing that happened to me isn't the cause of what you talked about in your video (I mean, something in your ear, not your brain). Anyway, great video as usual.

[@demiangonzalezpetrich9166]

So interesting as usual. For what I learned from my psychoacoustics class in college, the pitch memory is based in the basilar membrane (that works like a mic diaphragm). Each freq excites the diaphragm in a singular point, and this organ transduce the stimulus into electric signal. Makes sense that with time, the hole organ deforms and we get different electric stimulus with the same source signal. Glad that I have relative pitch. Cheers

[@PIOU13]

OMG, thanks so much for this. I am 55 years old, started piano at 3, and knew I had perfect pitch at 7. But about 10 years ago, had noticed that my perfect pitch had migrated down by "1 semi-tone" exactly as you describe. I thought it might have been as I had to play on a few out-of-tune pianos in my 30's. I have to say, it was an insult to say the least! But the reality is it didn't affect any of my abilities other than, touching a single note to clarify my thoughts. If I had played the piano earlier in the day, I would retain my pitch all day, like a reset button, however, if I didn't for a few days, chances are, I would be off a semitone. None the less I can still write a song entirely in my head and run to the keyboard without a second's delay and play it. No need to work on my relative pitch, as I guess that was already locked in. If anything, it has helped me, as I can adapt to an out-of-tune instrument.

[@rebeccahart791]

I had that same thought that it was from my parents’ out of tune piano!!!!

[@ericfebvre3271]

Same thing for me... Even if I less and less practice the piano, I listen to music a lot, and often the same songs I love repeatedly... It helped me to restore absolute pitch (took me 1 year)

[@DUANEYAISER]

This should be a KZbin crossover with Ryan George: Perfect Pitch Meeting.

[@artemlyubchenko3022]

- So how did you develop perfect pitch? - Oh, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

[@andrejacques9688]

Perfect Pitch is Tight

[@ninodjuras]

Wow wow wow wow

[@phattyj811]

Why does this guy have perfect pitch? Because. That works!

[@Marta1Buck]

the first ever person who invented perfect pitch

[@coreybrouwer172]

Rick! You're an amazing educator. Thanks for your tireless work to share this information with us all. I'm blown away by your work ethic and consistency. I've been watching since 2016.

[@alexanderlai9160]

Thank you so much for making this video! I had searched for more information some time ago and never found much out there on this topic. I have a different hypothesis though: musicians DON'T actually lose their perfect pitch! So I'm in that transition period, I've been perfect pitch since the age of 5 and now in my forties, everytime I hear classical music, everything always sounds sharp by almost a half step. However, if I start playing piano again (several hours a day for a week), my brain can actually calibrate to the "sharp"-ness and I begin to hear perfect pitch again in that "sharp" key. If I stop playing again, I go back to thinking everything sounds sharp. So I think what's happening is, as you get older, the ear starts making everything sound sharp (a similar effect to paintings done at the end of a painter's life have a different hue because the older painters stop seeing blue). When I try to calibrate the "A" in my mind to what I hear coming from my own voice or the piano, it ends up matching "A flat". Now I was never as talented as your Dylan, I always had difficulty hearing dissonance and complex chords. But here is an interesting phenomena to consider. If I heard a tone in between 2 half step notes, I sometimes had difficulty telling you even which 2 notes were closest to that tone, sometimes even confusing it by a 4th or 5th interval! If I heard a perfectly tuned piano, the notes sounded as clear as I could see the keyboard. But when someone sung the notes, unless they hit perfectly, I had to really think hard, and I was frequently wrong. When I listened to music with nonstandard/historically accurate baroque tuning, I pretty much lost my perfect pitch. So this is my hypothesis (which would be interesting for you to test out if you ever get the opportunity). If you find someone who claims to have "lost" perfect pitch: Take a song that they are familiar with, and using software, detune the pitch until it matches what they hear in their mind. My hypothesis is that musician will instantly hear perfect pitch again! Perfect pitch is merely being able to recognize these 12 tones of a scale that just happen to be arbitrarily tuned to A-440hz. When the ear starts to hear sharp, then the person can no longer recognize the tones and seems to have "lost" perfect pitch. However, these tones are completely arbitrary. And if you are able to calibrate to one set of tones, you should be able to calibrate to another set of tones. And if the musician who "lost" perfect pitch has difficulty recalibrating to the new tones they hear, this would be another interesting experiment to consider: get a keyboard that is able to modulate tones and detune to the "key" that matches what the musician remembers. Then slowly over several weeks (and a lot of piano practicing), modulate the keyboard back to standard tuning. I'm convinced that the musician will be able to recalibrate to standard tuning. My other hypothesis is that as musicians get older, they also practice less. If they continually hear the tones of standard tuning daily, I don't believe that a person who has perfect pitch will ever lose it. But it's just a hypothesis, and one that I would like to believe.

[@DoofenSpyroDragon16]

I believe your hypothesis! Also very interesting, if that starts to happen to me one day, I’m gonna try the “familiar song” technique you talked about. I’m honestly fearing losing my perfect pitch because it’s so handy!

[@alexanderlai9160]

@@DoofenSpyroDragon16 An interesting update to this post 2 years ago. As of 9 months ago, after about 10 years of losing my perfect pitch, I gained my perfect pitch back at nearly the same accuracy as when I was young except... it is now exactly 1/2 step off. So whatever I am hearing now, I just tell myself to lower the note by a 1/2 step and it matches perfectly, haha. I should listen to all my favorite classical recordings and see what it does. I don't know if you have the same experience, but I feel like the key of the song makes a difference (even though I know the key is arbitrary). Like the higher number of flats and sharps somehow imparts a certain complexity to emotion, so perhaps something in A minor seems to connote simple sadness while something in G sharp minor might be more depression. Something in F major might be joy, while something in A flat major might be contentment. Anyways, I'm enjoying it while it lasts, because I fully expect to lose my perfect pitch again as I get older. I really do think you can train yourself to keep it, but unfortunately, with other hobbies and responsibilities, I won't be able to do that project until retirement, haha. But DO NOT fear that you will lose your perfect pitch. It will ALWAYS be there, you just might need to work a bit to keep it! Pretty much exactly like everything in life.

[@DoofenSpyroDragon16]

@@alexanderlai9160 I’m quite a bit younger so I’ll try not to worry about it now, I’ll just continue to use it 😃 that is an interesting observation and I agree, if you’re exposed to music every day and you keep working at it, it’ll never truly go away. But that’s my thinking.

[@catherinegray1367]

I could cry discovering this video. I was an advanced classical pianist as a child with a teacher I had outgrown. FF to age 13 when I started with Professor Beverly Nero at (CMU) Carnegie Mellon University and I must have done something to trigger that I had perfect pitch. Beverly shrieked, "Go stand in the corner!" So I got up and did. "What's this note?" Me: answers correctly, as I'm staring at the wall. This continued until she finally exclaimed, "You have perfect pitch!?" I had no idea what that was. I just knew I could play anything on the piano because I could read music AND knew what the notes were. FF to 56, my BD of last week. I've been lamenting that I'm losing it mind- I can tell you the more note, but I'm off EXACTLY one half-step. Every. Single. Time. Now I've had to mentally transpose, knowing that I'm CONVICED IT'S A "C" when it is a B, or a C sharp. I had convinced myself I must have never had it. I feel slightly vindicated and crushed all at the same time.

[@ihsahnakerfeldt9280]

Couldn't you just adjust your perception by a half step? For a lot of people it seems like losing PP means it gets transposed by some fixed margin which you can work with. Now waking up and finding out you have no idea what's being played, ie completely losing all pitch memory must be devastating and I hope you don't have that

[@andrewsantopietro3526]

nah everyone else just keeps getting higher and higher and we don't tell the older people is all.

[@pablojlascano8322]

sounds like the story of bagpipe tuning... every year a tiny bit higher.

[@Goetterdaemmerung86]

@@pablojlascano8322 Yeah, now some of them are at 487hz, yikes. My ideal pitch is around 470-480

[@GabrielFerCav]

This sounds like something Smarter Everyday or Veritasium would find intriguing to investigate.

[@tsptrevor]

I've had perfect pitch right up until about three years ago. Exactly the same thing has happened: down a half-step. I've managed to re-train my brain up a half step but it's taken a very conscious effort. It started like relative pitch--since I knew exactly what a middle c sounds like, I found myself having to sing that for reference at first, and slowly I've been able to rework things back to where they were almost 100%. Beforehand, hearing a note was like seeing the colour red and just knowing it's red.

[@SorooshMhs]

So this is why bands like Metallica tuned down to Eb in later albums...

[@honjon666]

Lol

[@SonicDeath]

I think Metallica generally played live either a half or whole step down to accommodate James Hetfield's voice. Not sure what they do on their studio stuff nowadays as I haven't kept up with their output.

[@binilgn5941]

Sonic_Death It was a joke

[@SorooshMhs]

@@SonicDeath Load and Reload were almost entirely in Eb

[@Zigarius1123]

Metallica downtuned, but not in normal ways. They detuned like half of a half step that way people couldn't copy their sound. Also if you go to rocksmith on pc you'll notice that it never sounds right or in tune. Granted these are custom tracks that users make, it's still the same thing.

[@davidbrown5152]

Excellent video. Watching your videos is like having a musicologist at my disposal. Rick, you always seem to answer my musical questions with all your videos.

[@aldoelmusico]

Hi Rick, greetings from Chile! Love your channel, and i have a story about precisely what you're talking about in this video. Turns out i kind of have perfect pitch. Haven't trained to the point where i can recognize complex chords, but there it is. The thing is when i say "kind of" is because when i was a kid there was this piano at my house (my folks still have it, german piano from aproximately 1915, wonderful sound), and this piano was not played for a very long time. Well, long story short, when we got this piano the strings were, well, a little rusty, not in the literal way, so they had to keep them tuned in 430 for a couple of years. I think you know the rest by now. It took me years (and have not been completely successful) to hear an actual C and not a B. So what i did was to turn to other memory "banks", like songs, and i "correct" my diapason, sort of speak. Very, very interesting topic, i have to say. Thanks for your videos, always a pleasure to watch them. Big hug!!

[@guitarmagic]

My dad’s perfect pitch shifted at about age 70. He had a heart surgery and didn’t play much for a while. When he went back to the piano, it was a half step out. Just like that.

[@Genshi]

Whew! So it's not just me... I've always had perfect pitch since I was a young kid. Was able to hear any song and play it on any instrument (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards) just by ear, without ever having any music training. I could also name notes easily including environmental sounds (like machine hums, clock chimes, etc.) Nowadays, not so much, and I thought something was wrong with me or I'm just out of practice... but nope, I'm just old now (about to turn 57.)

[@thebellbrothers3279]

But how did you know how to name certain notes? Did you have to learn the notation first to be able to connect them with the sounds?

[@Genshi]

@@thebellbrothers3279 I don't read notation at all, but I know the notes of the Piano keys, so if I hear a C# for example, I know what that sounds like based on having played a C# on the piano (or Guitar, etc.)

[@braunhausmedia]

I'm 65. Just tested my perfect pitch. Still there, thank God.

[@nepumuc4364]

NIce to hear, I really wonder if you do know others who also didn't lose it? As a young guy, being constantly afraid after watching this, it would be relieving to hear so!

[@DannySullivanMusic]

haha! pro

[@tjs114]

I had perfect pitch until I was 40, when I had a jaw fracture repaired. I went flat by 15 percent, after about six months I adapted and regained it, but I think I actually adjusted in my head- like people have to learn how to wear bifocal glasses without feeling nausea. At 51, I can feel it sliding again. An audiologist will tell you it relates to hearing loss of high frequency, but I think it might really be related to changes in bone density in the skull and jaw. I think it is like the tuning of a drum head- our skull changes and we process the sound different. Totally obscure thing I've noticed over the years. People who have any musical training tend to be able to identify an E cold. I don't know why, and the rest of the notes are scattershot; but identifying E seems to be one of the easiest to do. I wonder if E just resonates with bone in such a way that we just *know* it.

[@MAGNUSERNST]

I've just seen a veritasium video where it is explained that older people tend to overestimate passing time. So time moves faster than they think it does. So if a pitch is nothing but a specific frequency, the perceived frequency for older people is lower if they overestimate the time in which the sound waves arrive in their ear which would lead to a lower perceived pitch.

[@NorthernKitty]

I've always been a half-step sharp when trying to recall notes. Without a reference note to go by, if someone asks me for a C, I sing a C♯. If they ask for a D, I sing an E♭. I'm in my mid-50's now... based on what you said about people losing a half-step in their 50's, can I look forward to perfect pitch soon? 😋 That would be cool!

[@fingerstyledojo]

I can also identify notes with 100% accuracy but if I try to tune my guitar/violin im ALWAYS a few hz flat. Probably somewhere between 430-435.. idk why it happens

[@grahamsmith2390]

''I was playing all the right notes, but not necessarily... in the right order'' (Eric Morecambe 1926-1984)

[@pauchalo]

I'm a professional pianist in my 40s and I've had perfect pitch since I can remember. My daughter as well, so maybe it could be genetic? Anyways, I work mainly with singers and I've always observed that when I'm listening to music being sung with actual words, the language tends to interpose my perception of pitch and it somehow gets more difficult to identify. In instrumental music I can identify every note instantly, even at a really high speed (faster than I could possibly articulate afterwards). Also, I've found in the last years I confuse sometimes half steps, like he said in the video.

[@corianderwolfgangrainbeaux]

Thank you for making this video!!!! I’m 45, and I’m about a 1/2 step off. I literally thought I was losing my mind.

[@randyt60]

Wonderful presentation Rick, thank you. Explains much. As a life-long perfect-pitch possessor I too have noticed the loss of that function. (I'm 61 now) The huge indicator to me when this loss started happening was that where I was always 100% sure what note I was hearing, I now find myself not sure at all - almost feels like I'm guessing. I'll have to do a controlled test to see if it's 1 semitone down as your Theory suggests. To me it was always just about the "certainty". My relative pitch is still as strong as ever but where pitching a note used to be as black & white as... well, determining black from white, it's now like trying to figure out whether it's pink or magenta. Horribly disconcerting, I must say... I wish I'd known about this eventuality earlier in my career.

[@turtlezinthesky]

With everything I've learned about perfect pitch, I actually feel perfectly content to just have strong relative pitch

[@RemyTrahant]

Awesome lesson, Rick and super-inspiring and I use the Beato ear training program every day!

[@aussiebloke609]

I remember when I first realised my perfect pitch was slipping. It was pretty unsettling to realize that improv was going to be a whole lot harder, especially when playing with someone else who was also riffing loosely on a theme. Relative pitch certainly helps, but it's just not as intuitive as instantly knowing the note I needed without thought or planning. That said, having it for a while was better - in my book, anyway - than never having known what it's like. :-)

[@marylouleeman]

Oh, goodie. Another Beato vid. I was missing them. Here, I get to learn more about music. This makes me happy. Personally, I am glad my Mom gave us kids piano lessons when we were young. She also gave me music appreciation lessons, whatever those were. I still remember some of it. My appreciation grew from classical and 1950's singalongs to rock and roll when White Port and Lemon Juice arrived on the scene in 1958 or so. Then the wonderful 1960's and all those "trips" to the Haight Ashbury. We lived just across the bay. So I have had a wonderful musical life of sheer enjoyment. Somewhere in there I became friends with Dizzy's close friend Ramona and she needed another gal to accompany her while she listened to all the guys are various gigs around the Bay Area. Wow! One night we went to a concert in SF because she wanted to see their homie, Woody Herman. She used to refer to Lalo and we went to see a lot of movies which I now realize was part of all this for her. I was relatively clueless. We were both housewives with children in Contra Costa. Now, today, years later I am finding just today material on Lalo and watched the sweet little Part 1 bio about his roots in a classical music family in Argentina and then his move to Paris and later to the USA to join Dizzy. Oh, and my childhood piano teacher was an Italian woman with two daughters married to a butcher out here who had been a concert pianist in Italy at the age of only 18!! So I have been truly blessed in my life, not remembering it all except just now I cannot leave out how I was there at the St. Mary's College gym when the fabulous four Brubeck classic performed for an audience of less than 100!! just before they hit, also 1957 or 1958. Amazing! and now I can really enjoy the wonderful Beato. Thank you, man, and a big thank you to my God. Ain't it great??!!!

[@terrymiller111]

12:25 I think you should also add that after so many years of music composition, performance, and formal education, that you can anticipate many chord progressions of most pop music.

[@Gitfiddle]

Sounds to me like perfect pitch is more of a curse. Can you imagine walking into a gig and feeling like you’ve never heard a correct note in your whole life because you lost perfect pitch?

[@gargaduk]

I don't think you lose it suddenly, more like very gradually over time.

[@fisk0]

@@gargaduk one of the anecdotes in the video seemed to be about a pretty sudden loss after hospitalization. But also, if it was gradual, shouldn't the people he talked to be on a spectrum within that semitone, instead of all being either perfectly on pitch or a semitone off?

[@plugprod]

It’s a blessing and a curse…

[@jaymueller2418]

Rick, read about "pump head" in patients who have had cardiopulmonary bypass. Huge numbers of cognitive changes.

[@rockstarjazzcat]

On the physical possibilities, I’ve had physical dysfunction where the eardrum mechanism moves slower than bone conduction. I’d hear the middle of the keyboard as if through a ring modulator. Scary and spooky as heck.

[@2leftfield]

I too have experienced the phenomenon of having perfect pitch and then "losing" it. I have a theory as to why this happens, and I think it has to do with the structure of the inner ear and how our brain interprets pitch from the ear signals. Various hairs are located along the length of the cochlea (the coiled inner ear), and the brain distinguishes pitch by how different sound frequencies stimulate the various hairs in different locations. In the case of people with perfect pitch, the brain cannot only tell the relative relationship of the various frequencies from this information, but can also assign an absolute reference to each pitch that we hear as tonal "color". As we age, this absolute reference is still there (in my experience), but it shifts downwards, so that tones sound sharper to me than before. (This has happened for others--Dimitri Shostakovich complained when he was old, that "orchestras are playing sharper and sharper." ) I would posit that the ability of my brain to interpret the information has changed not at all, or very little, but that with age, the dimensions of my inner ear have changed, just as my face has acquired wrinkles, etc. This subtle change is enough to shift the information sent to my brain from the cochlea hairs, and so I hear everything a bit higher than before. I first noticed this change in my late 40's, and now, at age 70, it is quite pronounced, over a semi-tone so far as I can tell. I have also noticed that if I block my nose and increase the air pressure in my sinuses ("pop" my ears), this causes a temporary shift in the pitch of music until the pressure is released. The pressure increase probably alters the dimension of the cochlea slightly, which is enough to change the perceived pitch to my brain. This correlates with my thesis that an age related change in the inner ear dimensions is responsible for my absolute pitch perception changing.

[@Sirvalorsax]

Great video. I've known a lot of people who have had problems with perfect pitch and being flooded with too much pitch information. They all, in my opinion rely too much on it though. I don't know if they can selectively turn it off. Interesting to know that they lose it after a while

[@TheCopyHolder]

The loss of perfect pitch certainly COULD be an ear rather than a brain thing. As everything in the body ages it tends to lose elasticity. Both the hairs in the ear that harmonize with a pitch and their root whose enervation actually conveys the info of a tone lose their elasticity.

[@badafrican8035]

Yeah which may affect the electrical pulses or information to the brain

[@RC32Smiths01]

Pitch has always fascinated me! Such a great and interesting topic.

[@marksadventures3889]

"Shameless plug" - hey if you can't do it on your own channel rick it's a bit of a poor do! Good stuff, i think i lost mine at 14. I had to learn to rely on the charts after that, bummer! Good stuff.

[@DeeKnow]

I didn't mean to come here. KZbin just started playing this in the background. I enjoyed this. Good content.

[@TBSSPILOTviews]

Right on point again...definitely been experiencing occasional excursions. It does surprise you once you notice. Especially playing fretless. Sounds great while playing through monitors, then start hearing all kinds of weird stuff on playback through different speakers. Usually tune relative, but technique can also throw a twist in there. Gotta keep working it...