There is a soundtrack to my life, and I dream in perfect pitch.
When I wake up in the morning, if it’s not to an alarm, there’s nearly always a song in my head. This morning at around 6:30, it was “Hold On My Heart” by Genesis. When I woke up around 3am to go to the bathroom, there was another song I don’t now recall. Invariably, this song is playing in the correct key. It plays as I make my breakfast, as I take my shower. I can start singing it, if I’m careful. If I’m not careful, I might hum the wrong note, and then I get “stuck” in the wrong key, and might be uncertain I can find it again. To test this, I’ll sometimes sing a few bars in the shower and then start the track playing on my shower speaker. I’m always right. Not a semitone off. Not a microtone.
When I was a teenager, I recall going deer hunting with my dad. We would camp out in the back of his pickup truck, wake well before dawn, and trek through the barbed wire fences and into the woods with our hunter orange vests and deer rifles. We would find a likely location, one we had perhaps scouted out days before, and I would sit, back against a tree trunk, with a granola bar and a banana in one pocket (and extra shells in the other), a Thermos of coffee, and a view down a draw where a buck would hopefully wander, or be chased, through. And wait.
It would be quiet. Occasionally a rustle of leaves would pique my attention. But it was usually just squirrels.
In the long quiet spaces, my mind would sometimes fill with a song. If I listened really closely, I could actually hear the song in my head – the phrasing, the instruments, the voices. I practiced this. It was as if I was literally hearing the song. Sometimes I would get stuck on one line from the chorus, and it would repeat over and over. Faintly, but audibly.
I know what you’re thinking; that I fell asleep. I didn’t. I can still do this, if it is really quiet, and I have time to just sit and meditate. Which rarely happens these days.
I recall in high school choir, one of my favorite songs we sang was Shenandoah. It was an eight-part, a capella version, arranged by James Erb. (I didn’t know this, I looked it up on YouTube. Listening to this still gives me chills. Here‘s a moving rendition by the UNT A Capella Choir.) I sang second tenor.
Our choir had a tendency to drift flat on this song. Our director (I honestly do not recall if it was Trudy Tunnell or Sharon Owen that year – I think maybe we did it two different years) would play the first two notes, a major fourth, on the piano, to give us our starting pitch. One time in rehearsal, she played the notes a half-step higher than written. We stayed on key.
Afterwards, she asked the choir if we noticed anything different. I did. I knew from the start it was a half step higher. And I said so. I don’t recall anyone else noticing. Though I’m sure some did, they remained quiet. When we were invited to a joint recital with the Pittsburg (KS) State University choir, this was one of our selections. We sang it a half-step high. I have the recording somewhere.
Now, don’t ask me what key it is in. I don’t know. Ask me to sing an F, and I can’t do it. The MSSU Concert Chorale often warms up beginning on an F, and someone in the choir always sings the initial pitch. When I was there, it was never me. But ask me to sing the first bars of “We’ll Be Together” by Sting, and I will hear it in my head in the correct key. Starting with the synth horns and slap bass. If I can get the note out before someone sings or plays a different note, getting the wrong key stuck in my head, I’ll do it.
Sometimes when I hear a song in the background, or over some other distracting noise, like when I’m mowing the lawn with earbuds in, my ear will get “stuck” in the wrong key. I’m listening to the song, and it just doesn’t sound “right.” Or perhaps it does, but then something “clicks” and I notice that I head been hearing it in the wrong key, but then the key snaps in, and I’m good.
You know that song “Material Girl” by Madonna? Remember that high-pitched “ding-ding?” You know you remember. Bum–bah–da-da-dat-dat {ding! ding!}” That ding drove me crazy. I can hear it in my head right now, though I likely haven’t heard it with my ears in years. It’s flat! Not an entire semitone flat, but not in key either. It drives me crazy just thinking about it right now.
So, I don’t have perfect pitch, or “absolute pitch,” as typically defined. I cannot name the note of a pitch I hear. Ask me to sing middle C right now and I cannot. But ask me if I can sing the first notes of “Material Girl” right now, and I bet I can. [OK – I just sang that synth-guitar riff. Then I pulled it up on YouTube. And I was right. Just thinking of that terribly flat ding-ding put the song into my head and I can’t get it out. So in my head, I choose to play it in key.]
I know I have relative pitch. Wikipedia defines this as “the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note by comparing it to a reference note and identifying the interval between those two notes.” I can definitely do this. To this day, I still judge intervals using the songs Trudy Tunnell used to teach us in choir. Major third and perfect fifth were from the first three notes of the Marine Hymn. From the halls of Montezu-u-ma… Perfect fourth is Here comes the bride. Minor sixth is the theme from Love Story (Where do I begin?) And Some….where… o… ver the rainbow is an octave.
But this is more than simply relative pitch, isn’t it? The Wikipedia article on relative pitch references another characteristic called “tonal memory. “In music, tonal memory or ‘aural recall’ is the ability to remember a specific tone after it has been heard.” It goes on to say:
Tonal memory may be used as a strategy for learning to identify musical tones absolutely. Although those who attempt the strategy believe they are learning absolute pitch, the ability is generally not musically useful, and their absolute tonal memory declines substantially or completely over time if not constantly reinforced.
When listening to music, tones are stored in short-term memory as they are heard. This allows sequences of tones, such as melodies, to be followed and understood.
But if I can recall the key of a song I haven’t heard in years, and sing the correct notes without prompting, what I experience is more than just short-term tonal memory. Isn’t it?
What do you think? Can you do this? What do I have?
[Edit: An earlier version of this story attributed “Hold On, My Heart” to Phil Collins rather than Genesis. Oops.]
Rhapsodies in vivo 