Show HN: PitchTrail – Perfect Pitch for Kids

pitchtrail.app

8 points·theckel··3 comments

I have a similar app called BSharp on my phone that I try to get better at.

I'm using it with a smaller child, she loves trying to keep the notes going.

It is nearly incontrovertible that perfect (aka absolute) pitch is either 100% innate or picked up in very early childhood. A product like this could easily discourage kids from learning music.

It's also a well-established fact that many of the most famous musicians in history, from the Beatles to Tchaikovsky did not have perfect pitch.

Perfect pitch can even be a negative factor in one's musical training. For example, in musical theater, cabaret, and jazz, transposition is a necessary skill. Singers routinely ask the accompianist (on piano) to move the key up or down to match their vocal range. I have heard anecdotally that perfect pitch actually makes it difficult to transpose, because if you learned a song in a certain key, the transposed version sounds like a different tune.

Perfect pitch is a hindrance because it is an inability to perceive relative pitch.

However relative pitch people can hear perfect pitch with training. I can do this for the most part. I typically always start singing in the same key after years of practice and base my pitch off of that. At this point it's automatic for the most part. I always start my songs on middle G. And Bs are extremely distinct.

But I agree the obsession with perfect pitch on here is weird. I'm guessing someone saw a friend do a parlour trick and is convinced this is some great advantage. It's not.

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