Pitch Perfect

Samo, a school known for its music and arts programs, has people with all sorts of special abilities. Some students can read a piece of music perfectly after seeing it for the first time; other students have synesthesia, a condition that allows them to visually see colors and lights that correspond to the sounds they hear. But one of the most useful talents of all, and one that definitely merits bragging rights in the Samo music program, is “perfect pitch”. Perfect pitch allows people to accurately identify notes and the key a song is in simply by hearing a note or a tune. It is a phenomenon experienced by around one in every 10,000 people and many famous musicians throughout history, from Mozart and Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson, have had perfect pitch. Having perfect pitch can be both a blessing and a curse. Many people use it to become better musicians, and train their ears to be able to recognize any key and improvise on scales and chord progressions. On the other hand, it can provide a severe annoyance, for example, in the Innovation Building, the bell rings in the key of F#, but in the rest of the school, it rings in E. The different frequencies of these notes conflict and drive most people with perfect pitch insane. Elevators and electricity humming, people talking in a minor key and car horns differing in frequency are absolute nightmares for people with perfect pitch.Perfect pitch is mostly innate, but can be trained and honed in, as can a similar condition called “relative pitch”, a condition in which a person can hear a note that they hear on a regular basis (usually a tuning note, such as an A, F, or B flat), and then place the note they are hearing in accordance to the tuning note. Many people are unsure of whether or not they possess this ability, and many people find out late in life that they have either perfect or relative pitch. There are even tests that you can take to help you determine if you have it or not. Here at Samo, many people with perfect pitch are in our midst. Emery Kerekes (’17) is a cello player in the Samo Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, as well as a singer in the Madrigal Ensemble. According to Kerekes, he has known he had perfect pitch since he was in the first grade. In music class, his teacher would play random notes on mini-xylophones and he was able to name each note. Kerekes believes that having perfect pitch makes him a better musician. “Being able to ‘visualize’, so to speak, certain chord progressions without actually having them played to me allows me to finely tune anything I play or sing so that it fits in just right with the context,” Kerekes said. He also uses his perfect pitch to help others adjust their instruments and voices to sound better as a unit. “[People] don't really treat me differently. However, I do find that I get asked many more questions about musical matters than I did before they found out,” Kerekes said.Another musician at Samo who has perfect pitch is Alyssa French (’17), a piano and percussion player in the Samo Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra. “My mom is a piano tuner, so she had a ton of tuning forks (forked metal prongs that resonate with a set pitch when you strike them against something) lying around,” French said. “When I was three or four, I would hit them against something when my mom asked me what note it was I answered correctly and could tell because it just sounded like it.”According to French, having perfect pitch is somewhat of a hinderance to her in terms of everyday occurrences. “The innovation bell annoys me so much, especially when both bells sound at once,” French said. “Sometimes electronic metronomes throw me off [because] of the pitch they beep at. When my elevator was repaired, it hummed a half step higher than before and it was highly unsettling.”Alyssa uses her ability to help her tune timpanis in the middle of pieces with ease, as well as to pinpoint individual players’ parts in ensembles and to tell which one of them is playing wrong notes, so they can adjust. She also says that her friends abuse her perfect pitch. “Mostly they hum a note and ask me what it is, or ‘test’ me by playing random notes and telling me to guess which notes they are,” French said. Needless to say, of all the amazing talents and skills that SAMO students have, perfect pitch is one of the most intriguing, and is surprisingly common among us. If you think from reading this article that you, too, might have perfect pitch, take the test below and test yourself! https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=1aW1gCkZGrg