Ear training
Perfect pitch test
Can you name a note just by hearing it? Ten notes on the piano, each after a quick jumble of notes so the last one can't help. Pick the note you heard.
Use headphones or a quiet room. Ready?
About perfect pitch
Most people, and most musicians, hear music by relative pitch: the distances between notes. That's why you recognise Happy Birthday in any key. Perfect pitch (absolute pitch) is the rarer ability to name a note with no reference at all, as if each note had its own colour. It isn't needed to play well: plenty of great musicians don't have it.
Relative pitch can be trained at any age, and it's the more useful skill: our ear training page practises intervals and chords.
Good ears? Put them to work. Ivory listens to you play the piano and tells you what's off: a note that's missing, a hand that lands late, a chord that's uneven. Then it shows you how it should go.
Questions people ask
What is perfect pitch?
Perfect pitch, or absolute pitch, is the ability to name a note (or sing one) without hearing a reference note first. It's rare: estimates are around 1 in 10,000 people, more among musicians who started very young.
What's a good score on a perfect pitch test?
Guessing gets about one in twelve right. Scoring 9 or 10 out of 10 suggests perfect pitch; a score in between often means a good memory for one or two notes, or good relative pitch.
Can you learn perfect pitch as an adult?
Studies suggest adults can improve at naming notes with practice, but true perfect pitch usually develops in early childhood. Relative pitch, hearing the distance between notes, can be learned at any age and is more useful for most musicians.
Why does the test play a jumble of notes first?
So you can't work the note out from the last one. Hearing the gap from a note you already know is relative pitch, not perfect pitch.