Hey everyone!

Greetings on my on-call weekend, where I have 2 pagers (who we pharmacists call “bleeps”) sitting next me, waiting to jumpscare me whenever they choose to!

For this issue I want to play a little musical game…

But before we start playing..

I want to share a story:

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Like most of you, I’m a big fan of music, and I honestly can’t imagine how life will be without it.

I began playing the piano when I was about 10, and among this I had to practice my scales for my graded exams.

Every Friday, me and my brother would play High School Musical on DVD to mark the start of the weekend after school. It came to the song Breaking Free, the most loved song at the time.

With every week passing, I got pretty much used to this song.

Then one Christmas, we were gifted with a NOW CD (i.e. NOW 65), and featured the same song.

But it sounded…

Different.

Same lyrics, same instruments, same Troy & Gabriella, same Zac Efron & Vanessa Hudgens..

But different sound.

It was mainly the pitch that was concerned.

The DVD had a higher pitch than the CD.

I made this my hypothesis, and used my musical practice to test it out on my little Casio keyboard.

From the scales and pieces with experience, I started to detect the patterns in the pitch, starting with what piano key corresponds to which sound, and particularly vice versa by ear - what sound corresponds to which key signature.

The patterns were there..

And then I started using these to conduct the experiment.

I played the CD and pressed the piano keys closest to the pitch of the track.

If any of you are musical, it started in C minor and modulated to D minor.

I repeated this a couple of times to confirm, and I believed it to be a match.

Then I turned to the DVD, played the same song, and played the same piano keys when I was listening to the CD.

But it didn’t match the DVD song.

It was actually higher in pitch.

I was about 11 at the time, but it took until 15 for my high school music teacher to diagnose me with perfect pitch.

At that point, I was thinking:

“Can’t anyone detect changes in music, it’s right there in front of them.”

I told this to my friends at choir, and every time they are shown the same tracks with a discrepancy in pitch…

They didn’t seem to detect it….even without musical experience.

I was completely surprised.

How could anyone not notice?

And that was where I started..

and still continue to uncover the mysteries of how we perceive things, and why some people perceive things differently.

I firmly held and still do to this day…

That ANYONE can have perfect pitch.

They just need to work on their memory of the musical sounds, and have the perspective that anything can play music.

And the on-call bleeps sitting next to me are certainly no exception.

(So far haven't get bleeped yet, phew!)

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Now let’s get into the game.

We’re going to test your hidden musical pitch recognition ability.

Using the on-call bleeps themselves

We’re going to play 2 rounds.

For each round I will play you the deafening sound of the on-call bleep.

Your task is to guess the pitch from the bleep:

C, D, E, F, G, A, B

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🥊 ROUND 1

For this round I will give you a virtual piano to help you with this.

Feel free to familiarise with the keys.

(If you are not familiar with the piano, you can click on the “letter notes” tab to show the notes)

Now here is the on-call bleep.

What pitch/note is being played?

​Round 1.mp3​

Play the clip as many times as you like and you can use the piano to guide you.

Horrible sound, wasn’t it?

The answer is…

👀

F

What we’ve tested is your relative pitch.

This is identifying the observed note with the help of a reference note, in that case being the piano with so many reference notes to compare to.

You might see this with a capella groups, who may use a pitch pipe to give the starting note directly, or a pitch fork which gives a single note that can be deviated if needed.

And now here’s where the real test comes in at Round 2.

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🥊 ROUND 2

Now I’m going to play you the same bleep but at a different pitch.

To make it more challenging - Try NOT to use the piano

Again what pitch is being played?

​Round 2.mp3​

The answer is…

👀

D

This actually tested perfect pitch or absolute pitch, where there was no reference to compare to.

If you got the right answer, consider yourself having perfect pitch!

If not, don’t worry, remember..

I still hold firm to the belief that anyone can do it.

It just needs a bit of memory practice on one part.

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What can you do with perfect pitch?

So you can see that perfect pitch allows you to identify musical sounds..

Not just in music itself, but also with non-musical objects!

Which you could say with the on-call bleeps.

But identifying notes can lead into something creative..

Like mashing it up with another song of the same key..

For example, this is a song I use in my YouTube videos, and I decided to mix it up with the bleep itself!

Enjoy..

​On-call song.mp3​

Try practicing mixing up with some of your favourite songs.

Potentially with one of your top Spotify Wrapped songs!

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So how do we perceive music and detect patterns?

This has been researched quite intensely, but the findings are remarkable.

But you’ll have to find out next week!

Thank you for playing!

Have a great week

Mark x

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