The OffBeat #14: Imperfect Pitch

"Perfect" is just a party trick

People with perfect pitch can hum any note when asked. They can also hear a random note played and identify what it is. (Quick quiz: see if you can sing a middle C, then verify here.)

In my middle school, high school, and college bands, it was convenient having people with perfect pitch around for things like tuning and — well, that’s pretty much it.

The reality is, only 1-5 out of 10,000 people have perfect pitch. And it turns out a different concept, relative pitch, is way more useful.

Relative pitch is the ability — one most of us have, even if you don’t realize it — to recognize the relationship between notes. You may not be able to name a B sharp out of thin air, but you can recognize when, for example, the Friends theme song is in a minor key.

Here’s the thing: the names of notes don’t matter half as much as the relationships between them. The latter is a way more impactful part of our experience of music — writing it, making it, listening to it.

In fact, perfect pitch can even sometimes be detrimental to listening to and writing music because it can distract from relative pitch. And who cares what some theoretical ideal sound is, if you can’t gauge the intervals or harmonies among the notes?

As Tom Barnes put it in Mic:

People with absolute [a.k.a. perfect] pitch aren't ultimately as exceptional as our culture suggests. Naming the pitch of a refrigerator's hum is definitely a cool party trick, but it's not necessarily a tremendous boon to musical composition. No musician should ever feel discouraged because they don't share Mozart or Beethoven's perfect pitch. As Oliver Sacks points out, Wagner and Schumann both lacked it, and they got on just fine.

Here’s the lesson from a work and life perspective: perfection, even when theoretically possible, is not useful.

I loved Robert Iger’s memoir Ride of a Lifetime about his time as Disney CEO but his emphasis on the “relentless pursuit of perfection” really stressed me out.

What’s been most helpful in my evolution as a recovering perfectionist at work and at home has been this realization: not that perfection doesn’t exist, that perfect is the enemy of the good, that done is better than perfect, et al.; it’s that perfect isn’t helpful anyway. Why invest agonizing hours of energy and time towards something futile? You wouldn’t make that choice in any other arena.

We can’t all be the inimitable 5-year-old Claire Ryann Crosby. But, hey, it’s all relative.

Have a great week,

Allison