Show HN: PitchTrail – Perfect Pitch for Kids

6 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by theckel

2 Comments

AstroJetson

2 hours ago

I have a similar app called BSharp on my phone that I try to get better at.

I'm using it with a smaller child, she loves trying to keep the notes going.

danbmil99

3 hours ago

It is nearly incontrovertible that perfect (aka absolute) pitch is either 100% innate or picked up in very early childhood. A product like this could easily discourage kids from learning music.

It's also a well-established fact that many of the most famous musicians in history, from the Beatles to Tchaikovsky did not have perfect pitch.

Perfect pitch can even be a negative factor in one's musical training. For example, in musical theater, cabaret, and jazz, transposition is a necessary skill. Singers routinely ask the accompianist (on piano) to move the key up or down to match their vocal range. I have heard anecdotally that perfect pitch actually makes it difficult to transpose, because if you learned a song in a certain key, the transposed version sounds like a different tune.