Well, it sort of is a "super power". As you say, it won't teach you technique or musical taste, but it is a great help for improvisational music and composing.
I have played music for quite some time and have worked on my relative pitch a fair bit, and I still struggle to improvise what I think in my head, whereas a person with perfect pitch would do it effortlessly and perfectly every time.
The voice is the only instrument where you can "play" (sing) what note you think. So, the advantage of absolute pitch for improvisation is minimised.
However, AP would be advantage in vocal sight reading. With AP, you will never sing a wrong note, whereas a non-AP could make some mistakes, depending on how strong there musical ability/relative pitch is.
I am not sure shifting keys in singing would be hard for people with AP. Of course they would be aware of the exact new notes they would be singing whereas nonAP would simply thing "everything is X steps up/down" but relatively the same.
I don't think AP has an effect on tolerance to listening to a song in a different key, it is more your personal taste. I don't have AP, but I can tell when a song is in a different key from the original. I find it acceptable, so long as it is in tune. But I vastly prefer the original key simply due to familiarity. Also, some songs really do sound better in certain keys than others.
How so? I can definitely sing random pitches that don't conform to, say, 12-tone equal temperament. If I sing into a guitar tuner, I can make the meter move continuously from its flattest to sharpest position.
Their point is that there are dozens of instruments that also fit that criterion; i.e. the human voice is not the only instrument with that capacity.
Fretless sting instruments allow for continuous pitch modulation - that includes the violin family as well as others like pedal steel guitars, the Japanese shamisen, etc.
Certain wind instruments like slide trombones and slide whistles do the same.
There are also electronic instruments like the theremin or any synthesizer with a pitch bend wheel.
Audiation is a basic skill for any instrument. Accomplished musicians are trivially able to improvise complex melodies that they can play and sing simultaneously.
I'm a jazz guitarist who has developed the very bad habit of singing what I play while I improvise. Working hard to break it. But what I sing, and what I play is the same.
Being able to "think it, play it" is absolutely central to what I do when I improvise.
As a person without absolute pitch, here is my take on its utility. It does not help technique, does not help for sight read music, and does not grant musical taste or compositional creativity.
AP helps improvisation (mostly keyboard and strings, less so brass, and even less so woodwinds, I can explain later). Also, ease/speed of composition, allowing you to focus on the creative aspect of composing, or just simply composing more.
You can become a great improviser with relative pitch, but it is much harder, as you have to calculate the intervals between notes in real time, whereas AP spits out the exact note automatically for you.
You should ask your daughter if she would be interested in Jazz improvisation! That is where her AP would actually shine. We need another Stephane Grappelli! :D
I am a violinist myself, and although I can play every scale and arpeggio in the books, I still can't play freely what I hear in my head vs my fingers even after years of working on my real time relative pitch.
From the musicians I've met who have it most have actually highlighted the annoying aspects of it more than the useful aspects, in that they can find it bothersome to hear music they're familiar with played in different keys or offset from standard pitch.
I've never experienced any correlation between pitch sensitivity and improvisation skill in groups of trained musicians.
I play a lot of improv and normally it takes no more than 2 notes playing along to determine the key of the piece and relative pitches are very learnable.
That one has an extra layer to it. Many people with absolute pitch will start drifting as they get older due to physical body changes. I've heard the comment of "now everything seems out of tune and annoying". I'm not sure I'd like to experience that as a trade-off.
I am not really convinced having absolute pitch will make you a better improviser than someone who has good relative pitch.
In most jazz music you will have the lead sheet so you don't really need to know anyway. Besides that, you don't really need to calculate anything if you have relative pitch. If you practice enough it's instant. If I hear a note or chord followed by another note or chord I can tell you their relationship in real time. Anyone who has done enough ear training can. In fact, it's one of those things where you either know instantly or you haven't practiced enough. I was never really in an in between state.
I'd argue interval training is more valuable than absolute pitch in improvisation. It's rare you find yourself in a scenario where key is unknown and unknowable, especially playing with other musicians. Being able to hear and distinguish a minor 3rd from major 3rd is much more valuable.
Additionally, it's the intervals that give music its emotional content. For example, a minor third sounds "sad" while a major third sounds "happy". Absolute pitches are meaningless in this regard.
Playing a single note confers no meaning. It's only when subsequent notes are played that a context emerges, and music gains its emotional qualities.
For Jazz musicians, scales can be a curse. It depends greatly on what you're training yourself to do. If you're training yourself to play notes in order, that's what you're going to be able do. A more helpful thing to aim for might be to train yourself to "hear-it -> play-it" for every degree of a scale, preferably in random order so you avoid the "consecutive notes" thing. Or, maybe better (at the risk of side-controversy that's probably not worth hashing over here), "hear-it -> play-it" for every degree of a mode.
Exactly. You have to internalize the process of "calculate" so that it's automatic, and occurs without thinking. And for other processes as well. My favorite teacher and I used to refer to it as "moving things into muscle memory". We're guitarists, but I imagine the conceit transfers to other instruments as well.
> [...] but it is much harder, as you have to calculate the intervals between notes in real time [...]
Not necessarily the intervals between any two notes, but the note of interest in relation to the tonic. But still may require the relative position to be mapped (offset) to a specific note.
I don't have perfect pitch, just an average hobby musician, but I can immediately tell when an orchestra is tuned up or down (A 440Hz vs 441 or 442, or baroque, really low).
I also find out of tune music extremely distressing, and can't stand it. My ears actually have this weird "bleeding" sensation if I listen to out of tune music long enough.
Unfortunately I don't. I wish I did though. I have tried some training, to no avail. When hear a pitch I have no notion of uniqueness.
However, since I listen to so much music and tune my violin to A 440Hz every time I play, my ear knows when something is off even by a degree or two when listening to some European orchestras. And I think every musician hates out of tune music :)
There is a really cool phenomenon with some musicians who play instruments with a one to one correspondence between a pitch and feeling + fingering (so woodwinds, and sort of brass) that have played long tones for so long that they have internalized the "feeling" of a note and can (with a small delay) seem like they have absolute pitch. Really cool stuff. A youtuber called Saxologic dubbed this ability "Real Pitch". Really interesting video showing this in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4zo6POThHc
The skill you are describing is usually called “absolute pitch”—someone without absolute pitch cannot easily tell the difference between A=440 and A=432 in isolation (to say nothing of something like A=442).
> And I think every musician hates out of tune music :)
The notion of “out of tune” is different for people with and without absolute pitch. Someone with absolute pitch can hear something as “out of tune” just because it uses A=432 instead of A=440, whereas someone without absolute pitch will hear it as in tune. That is, more or less, THE characteristic difference between having absolute pitch and not having absolute pitch.
I don’t have absolute pitch. I’ll hear a guitar as out of tune if it is not tuned to itself. Like, if one string is flat relative to the others. However, if you tune a guitar to standard tuning in A=432, that sounds “in tune” to me. I think I have a decent sense of tuning—you can tune to equal temperament, and you can tune to just intonation, and I can tell the difference between the two. But I cannot tell the difference between A=440 and A=432.
The difference between 440 and 442 is exceptionally small, I’d be surprised if you could hear the difference in an A/B test.
With all due respect, I think you may be underestimating the amount of training that you would need. My sister has perfect pitch, but only really honed her skill at it after ~5 years of music theory/ear training classes. That was about when I learned to identify intervals by ear.
Singers also get "real pitch," I think, and in general, when you know the sound of an instrument's registers really well, it can be a hack for professionals to turn their relative pitch into "perfect pitch."
Also, FWIW most professional musicians I know can't tell whether their A is sharp or flat by a few cents (eg the difference between 440 and 442), but they can tell interval size immediately. The interval sizing tends to determine "out of tune" rather than the frequency of the A.
I have played music for quite some time and have worked on my relative pitch a fair bit, and I still struggle to improvise what I think in my head, whereas a person with perfect pitch would do it effortlessly and perfectly every time.