Do You Have Perfect Pitch?

weirdly accurate.

    Do You Have Perfect Pitch?

    Do I have perfect pitch?

    Probably not, and you are in good company. When Miyazaki, Makomaska and Rakowski (2012) tested 1,163 Japanese university students who were not music majors, only 3.6% named at least 95% of piano notes with no reference note, and more than half named fewer than one in five. Among music students it is far more common: 30.8% of the 117 Japanese music majors reached that level.

    This test uses the task from that study. One piano note sounds, anywhere from C2 to B6, with nothing to compare it to, and you press its note on a one-octave keyboard; only the note name counts, not the octave. There are 24 notes, each of the twelve names twice in different octaves, and every note is a new name more than 16 semitones from the one before, so the last note is no use as a ruler. After each answer you are told what it was, and a short scramble of off-key sound clears your ear before the next. If the first 12 look like guessing, the run stops there and is scored on those 12. Your share named exactly is placed in the study’s six bands and compared with the 1,163 students, and with guessing, which gets about 2 of 24.

    It is not a diagnosis and says nothing about how musical you are: most musicians can’t name a note cold either, and music mostly runs on relative pitch, hearing how notes relate to each other. One run of 24 notes is noisier than the study’s 60, so one note more or less moves your score by about 4 points. Phone speakers lose the fundamentals of the lowest notes, and nerves and tiredness move the result too. You need to know note names to take it.

    What the test measures

    One thing: whether you can name a single piano note with no reference note to compare it with.

    The task

    • Sampled piano notes from C2 to B6, the five-octave range of Miyazaki, Makomaska & Rakowski (2012)
    • 24 notes: each of the twelve note names twice, in different octaves; every note a new name and more than 16 semitones from the last
    • Answer on a one-octave keyboard; the octave is ignored, only the exact note name counts
    • You are told each answer; after a miss you hear your note, then the real one, and off-key sound plays between notes so the previous one can’t serve as a reference
    • Replay a note as often as you like; after 12 notes, a run that is plainly guessing stops

    Your result

    • How many notes you named exactly, and how many were a semitone off
    • Your band of % named exactly, and where it puts you among the 1,163 non-music students: “top X%”, or the share who are in the same band
    • The same bands for students with no lessons, with 2+ years of lessons, and for music students in Japan and Poland
    • Your count against guessing (about 2 of 24) and the odds it was luck
    • An Athos score, the measure from a 2007 study of 2,213 online volunteers, as a reference line
    • A grid of every note: tap one to hear what played and what you named, plus patterns such as a whole-ear shift or white keys versus black
    • A shareable card and a link that challenges a friend

    Before you start

    • You need to know note names: do re mi, or C D E
    • Sound on, headphones if you can; phone speakers lose the lowest notes
    • On an iPhone, switch off silent mode first
    • One to three minutes: 24 notes, or 12 if the run stops early

    Perfect pitch FAQ

    Is this test free? Do I need to sign up to see my result?

    Yes, it’s free, and there’s nothing to sign up for: no account, no email, no payment. Your result appears on this page the moment you finish, and you can share it or play again straight away.

    How do I know if I have perfect pitch?

    Try naming a single note with no reference note to compare it with. Perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch, is the ability to do exactly that; in Miyazaki et al.’s 2012 study, 3.6% of 1,163 non-music university students named at least 95% of piano notes. This test uses that study’s task and bands, so a top-band score is a strong hint, though one short online run is not a formal assessment.

    How rare is perfect pitch?

    Less rare than the often-quoted “1 in 10,000”, a figure Miyazaki and colleagues traced back and found was never actually measured. In their 2012 data, 3.6% of 1,163 Japanese non-music students, 30.8% of 117 Japanese music majors and 7.2% of 250 Polish music students named at least 95% of piano notes. The non-music students were in a music-psychology class, so probably a little more musical than the general public.

    How is the perfect pitch test scored?

    The perfect pitch test counts the notes you name exactly, octave ignored, and places that share in one of the six bands from Miyazaki et al. (2012), from 95–100% down to 0–20%. It then shows the share of 1,163 non-music students at or above your band, and the odds that guessing, which averages about 2 of 24, would match your count.

    Does starting music early or speaking Mandarin help perfect pitch?

    Early lessons seem to matter most, and the role of language is still open. In Deutsch et al.’s 2006 study of conservatory students who began music at age 4–5, about 60% in Beijing reached 85% on a 36-note piano test, against about 14% at Eastman in Rochester. But Miyazaki’s Japanese music majors, who don’t speak a tone language, reached the top band at 30.8% against 7.2% in Poland, and early piano lessons looked like the big difference there.

    If I can’t name notes, does that mean I have a bad ear?

    No. Most people, many musicians included, can’t name a note without a reference, and most music relies on relative pitch: hearing how notes relate to each other. Memory for pitch is often better than names for it. In Levitin’s 1994 study, 40% of 46 people sang a favourite song from memory at the recording’s exact pitch at least once, and untrained students can tell a TV theme’s original key from one shifted a semitone or two (Schellenberg & Trehub, 2003).

    Why did the perfect pitch test stop after 12 notes?

    The first 12 notes sounded like guessing: at most 1 named exactly and at most 4 within a semitone, where guessing averages 1 and 3. A run like that would almost always end in the bottom band after all 24 notes, so the result is scored on those 12 instead of asking for 12 more impossible answers. Someone who really names 30% of notes stops early only about 8% of the time.

    Where the numbers come from

    Bands and ranks are from Miyazaki et al. (2012), Tables I, II and IV; the headline rank uses their 1,163 non-music majors, the broadest group with a published distribution. Only bands are published, so ranks are by band. Athos et al.’s volunteers were self-selected, so their score is a reference line, not a ranking. The site does not publish its own players’ data.

    How the score works

    Pitch class, named exactly

    As in Miyazaki et al. (2012), a note counts as right only if you name its exact pitch class (C, C♯, D …), whatever the octave. A semitone miss is shown but not counted.

    Miyazaki’s bands

    The study published six bands of % named exactly: 95–100, 80–95, 60–80, 40–60, 20–40 and 0–20. Only the bands are published, so your standing says which band you are in and the share of a group at or above it, never a point inside a band.

    Chance

    With twelve names, guessing averages one in twelve, about 2 of 24. A one-sided binomial test gives the odds of your count by luck; 5 or more of 24 is p < .05.

    Athos score

    Exact answers plus ¾ for each semitone miss. Athos et al. (2007) drew their line for absolute pitch at 24.5 of 36 notes, 68%; it is shown as a reference, not a verdict.