Embrace The Suck

Perfect Pitch is one of the milder forms of autism; it can actually be detrimental to the development of musical skills, particularly those of the ensemble variety. If you have decent relative pitch, you can hone it and improve it; perfect pitch you have to learn to ignore, for the sake of playing in tune with others. Don Henley’s relative pitch sense is famous; his Eagles bandmates called him “Guano”, by which they meant “ears of the bat”, the literal translation being, “batshit”. By some accounts, including mine, perfect pitch is a nigh useless parlour trick, unless you tune pianos for a profession, but even there, I see troubles ahead, because of ‘stretch tuning’. Perfect pitch is helpful for singers and violinists; guitarists should steer clear and embrace the suck of frets and uncertainty.