Hacker News Reader

I think they are different things. Knowing the sound of a perfect fifth is not perfect pitch, but relative pitch. One could transcribe a piece of music from memory with just very good relative pitch, with the caveat they probably will transcribe it in the incorrect key.

View on HN

Are you saying that you think perfect pitch and absolute pitch are different things? They are synonyms, cf. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch .

If you're saying that perfect pitch and relative pitch are different things in that it isn't as if perfect pitch is better than relative pitch, then yeah, I absolutely agree. The hacks that I mentioned involve perfect pitch specifically, but transcription ability like you mention is probably tied most to one's sense of relative pitch, even if one has perfect pitch.

Oops! I clearly need to read better. I thought I read relative pitch vs absolute/perfect pitch. Sorry about that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com