Learn Perfect Pitch in 15 years

It was not easy or quick, and there were so many qualifiers that, for over a decade, I didn’t really think I “deserved” the label. But as I got older, those qualifiers started dropping off one by one, and today I’m convinced that I have perfect pitch. I describe my musical journey and thoughts on what perfect pitch “is”.

I started taking piano lessons at 5, and while I enjoyed it, I don’t remember it being an unbalanced part of my childhood. Our family moved two hours away when I was 9, and after a month of schlepping two hours each way to see my old piano teacher on weekends (God bless my mother!) she gave up and we switched to another more local piano teacher. I didn’t get along with this teacher, and ended up quitting piano a year or so later. Instead, I played clarinet through middle and high school, and the piano lessons resumed when I was 15, when my mother learned of another piano teacher from a friend of hers.

Sometime when I was ~12 years old, I remember surprising my clarinet teacher by correctly repeating some random notes that he played. He told me I had perfect pitch, but I didn’t think so, because I couldn’t name notes for any instrument other than the clarinet.

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