What Does Relative Pitch Mean to a Musician?

You may have seen musicians on streets playing seemingly random notes (but still sound awesome) or someone who can play a piece back after hearing it only once. Besides having great memory, these musicians usually have something called relative pitch. Having relative pitch means you can associate the intervals between two notes; for example, if an A and a C were played, you would know there are exactly one and a half steps between the two notes, likewise, a D and an F has exactly one and a half steps in between.

If you want to know whether or not you have relative pitch, just test yourself. First play through every single possible interval over a span of one octave so you know what they sound like, if you don’t already. If you do know the “steps” and “half steps”, then go use an interval tester and see if you can score above 95%. If you can’t score that well, don’t worry, developing relative pitch is very possible. Just be warned that this can take years if you’re not consistently testing and learning it!

To develop relative pitch, you can start off by associating every possible interval (over an octave to start) with something similar. For example, an A to an E is a “fifth” meaning there is exactly three and a half steps between A and E. The interval of a fifth sounds exactly like the beginning of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (the first two different notes). A fifth is also a perfect interval meaning your ears should favor this interval over something like minor 2nd; of course, this also means some intervals are much easier to associate than others. The theme from Jaws (the first two notes) is a minor 2nd and if the two notes were played together, it would sound funny. For a list of all the intervals and associate sounds, go here.

After you know the associations (this can take a long time) of all of these intervals, then start trying to get faster. You’ll want to get to the point that you’ll be able to hear any two notes (within an octave for now), no matter what length they’re played, and know how far apart they are. This will lead you to be able to play by ear, or, at least, much better than before. At this point, you can probably play by ear a lot of the simple pieces; eventually, you’ll be able to play much difficult things by ear as you get used to more and more intervals.

Of course, this is just a method that I think is helpful. There are many other ways you can learn relative pitch. For more information regarding that, check here.

Some people have something called perfect pitch; this is usually something you’re born with and very difficult (if not impossible) to train in a person. Having perfect pitch enables you to tell exactly what a note sounds like without a reference as opposed to relative pitch where you simply say how far apart the two notes are, no matter how what those two notes are. Note that perfect pitch is not necessarily better than relative and both have different uses (neither is required to be proficient in music). However, perfect pitch will certainly help you in developing relative pitch! So if you have perfect pitch, lucky you!