Did Michael have Perfect Pitch?

Dan

Proud Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2014
Messages
326
Points
28
Location
Nottingham, England.
Hi everyone.

Michael's precision with his voice was incredible and unparalleled. He seemed to be able to sing anything, exactly on point. I was wondering if anyone knew if he had perfect pitch, or he just naturally practiced from doing it since he was so young?


~Dan~
 
Hi everyone.

Michael's precision with his voice was incredible and unparalleled. He seemed to be able to sing anything, exactly on point. I was wondering if anyone knew if he had perfect pitch, or he just naturally practiced from doing it since he was so young?


~Dan~

He couldn't sing everything in perfect pitch. From memory I can tell that he had at least problems with two songs, "Keep the Faith" and a Motown song which didn't make it on any album back then. I read about this somewhere long time ago, if I can find it I'll post it here.
 
Last edited:
Fuzball;4289703 said:
He couldn't sing everything in perfect pitch. From memory I can tell that he had at least problems with two songs, "Keep the Faith" and a Motown song which didn't make it on any album back then. I read about this somewhere long time ago, if I can find it I'll post it here.

Keep the faith has nothing to do with perfect pitch. The key was just too high for him which caused his voice to break in some parts. If he sung keep the faith during the Thriller Era he would have been able to hit those notes effortlessly.
I don’t know that other Motown song you’re talking about.
 
Hi everyone.

Michael's precision with his voice was incredible and unparalleled. He seemed to be able to sing anything, exactly on point. I was wondering if anyone knew if he had perfect pitch, or he just naturally practiced from doing it since he was so young?


~Dan~

Actually, it was a combination of his having a good pitch (in his genes) and the fact that he was practicing his voice pitch (precision) since his early years.

His long-time personal vocal coach Seth Riggs praised his pitch, and he also noted how important was for Michael Jackson to never stop training his voice as a complementary way for achieving a perfect pitch (they both spent countless hours where Seth Riggs was teaching him how to achieve a perfect pitch).

Also, as Teddy Riley put it, the voice is a muscle, and Michael Jackson knowing that he kept training his voice all the time for achieving a perfect pitch (precision) for his upcoming studio albums and also for his live performances.

His long-time engineer Bruce Swedien described (in his own book) his pitch as flawless.

Will.i.am (who was recording with him in 2006-2009) described his pitch as perfect.

American songwriter Glen Ballard (who worked with Michael Jackson on certain songs) described his pitch as expressive and great.
 
Actually, it was a combination of his having a good pitch (in his genes) and the fact that he was practicing his voice pitch (precision) since his early years.

His long-time personal vocal coach Seth Riggs praised his pitch, and he also noted how important was for Michael Jackson to never stop training his voice as a complementary way for achieving a perfect pitch (they both spent countless hours where Seth Riggs was teaching him how to achieve a perfect pitch).

Also, as Teddy Riley put it, the voice is a muscle, and Michael Jackson knowing that he kept training his voice all the time for achieving a perfect pitch (precision) for his upcoming studio albums and also for his live performances.

I don't think you understand what perfect pitch is.

''Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone.
Generally, absolute pitch implies some or all of the following abilities, achieved without a reference tone:

Identify by name individual pitches (e.g. F?, A, G, C) played on various instruments.
Name the key of a given piece of tonal music.
Identify and name all the tones of a given chord or other tonal mass.
Accurately sing a named pitch.
Name the pitches of common everyday sounds such as car horns and alarms.'' (Wikipedia)


You can't train perfect pitch....it's a god given talent. And perfect pitch doesn't mean that you can sing perfectly on pitch...it means that you can recognise a note (in a very short amount of time) without a reference tone.

Perfect pitch is a pretty rare thing. There are a few artists (even nowadays) who have it though. For example Charlie Puth:


Michael might have had it, but given the fact that he didn't really work with musical notes....he probably didn't know he did.
 
Last edited:
I don't think you understand what perfect pitch is.

''Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone.
Generally, absolute pitch implies some or all of the following abilities, achieved without a reference tone:

Identify by name individual pitches (e.g. F?, A, G, C) played on various instruments.
Name the key of a given piece of tonal music.
Identify and name all the tones of a given chord or other tonal mass.
Accurately sing a named pitch.
Name the pitches of common everyday sounds such as car horns and alarms.'' (Wikipedia)


You can't train perfect pitch....it's a god given talent. And perfect pitch doesn't mean that you can sing perfectly on pitch...it means that you can recognise a note (in a very short amount of time) without a reference tone.

Perfect pitch is a pretty rare thing. There are a few artists (even nowadays) who have it though. For example Charlie Puth:


Michael might have had it, but given the fact that he didn't really work with musical notes....he probably didn't know he did.
Great post. What we can extrapolate is that Michael most certainly possessed Relative pitch. It's hard to say if he had absolute pitch given that he didn't know music theory and wouldn't be able to pick out individual notes. However an interesting story told by one of the engineers of HIStory, goes that they brought in a session guitarist and Michael sung much too soon note for note, chord for chord to the guitar player until they had the entire arrangement.
 
Last edited:
Actually, it was a combination of his having a good pitch (in his genes) and the fact that he was practicing his voice pitch (precision) since his early years.

His long-time personal vocal coach Seth Riggs praised his pitch, and he also noted how important was for Michael Jackson to never stop training his voice as a complementary way for achieving a perfect pitch (they both spent countless hours where Seth Riggs was teaching him how to achieve a perfect pitch).

Also, as Teddy Riley put it, the voice is a muscle, and Michael Jackson knowing that he kept training his voice all the time for achieving a perfect pitch (precision) for his upcoming studio albums and also for his live performances.

His long-time engineer Bruce Swedien described (in his own book) his pitch as flawless.

Will.i.am (who was recording with him in 2006-2009) described his pitch as perfect.

American songwriter Glen Ballard (who worked with Michael Jackson on certain songs) described his pitch as expressive and great.

I don't think you understand what perfect pitch is. perfect pitch is an innate born ability and that is not something that you can train. However what I think you're trying to get at is "Relative Pitch"
 
Themidwestcowboy;4289723 said:
Keep the faith has nothing to do with perfect pitch. The key was just too high for him which caused his voice to break in some parts. If he sung keep the faith during the Thriller Era he would have been able to hit those notes effortlessly.
I don’t know that other Motown song you’re talking about.
Oohhhh....damn that wouldve been something serious if it was on thriller!
 
Great post. What we can extrapolate is that Michael most certainly possessed Relative pitch. It's hard to say if he had absolute pitch given that he didn't know music theory and wouldn't be able to pick out individual notes. However an interesting story told by one of the engineers of HIStory, goes that they brought in a session guitarist and Michael sung much too soon note for note, chord for chord to the guitar player until they had the entire arrangement.

Michael definitely knew music theory. At least a little. Michael Bearden said that he knew all the keys of all his songs, knew all his scales and everything. There's no way that he started at the age of 5 and grew up in the music industry, listening to music, writing music, singing music, composing music, arranging music, collaborating with other musicians, recording music, producing music, mixing music and performing music without picking up at least a little music theory.
 
Themidwestcowboy;4289723 said:
Keep the faith has nothing to do with perfect pitch. The key was just too high for him which caused his voice to break in some parts. If he sung keep the faith during the Thriller Era he would have been able to hit those notes effortlessly.
I don’t know that other Motown song you’re talking about.


I think this was the key in which he was supposed to sing it.
That's a very high key....imagine him singing the last part in this key. :eek:

[video=youtube;1tO8s-_VlgU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tO8s-_VlgU[/video]
 
And then there’s always the difference between being able to reach that high and being able to reach that high while making it sound the way you want it.
 
ScreenOrigami;4289835 said:
And then there’s always the difference between being able to reach that high and being able to reach that high while making it sound the way you want it.

Exactly! It's also a lot harder to hit such high notes for such a long time (as Michael does at the end of Keep The Faith).
 
Oohhhh....damn that wouldve been something serious if it was on thriller!

You should listen to the small clip that was shared here on this thread that was originally recorded during one of Brad Sundbergs seminars. It sounds so much like thriller era mike
Michael definitely knew music theory. At least a little. Michael Bearden said that he knew all the keys of all his songs, knew all his scales and everything. There's no way that he started at the age of 5 and grew up in the music industry, listening to music, writing music, singing music, composing music, arranging music, collaborating with other musicians, recording music, producing music, mixing music and performing music without picking up at least a little music theory.

I completely agree with you, but i was talking more in the sense of being able to correctly tell what key a sound or note is in without having an accompanying instrument. Not even Prince had perfect pitch (he said so himself). I'd also like to stress that actually having perfect pitch does not mean that you can sing ON pitch perfectly. People often conflate perfect pitch with the ability to be able to sing perfectly in tune which is far from the truth.
I think this was the key in which he was supposed to sing it.
That's a very high key....imagine him singing the last part in this key. :eek:


Yeah, that piece of audio is incredible. He sounds like Thriller Era in that key. Unfortunately he was not able to reach those notes after the key change. I still want to hear it though.
 
Last edited:
I'd also like to stress that actually having perfect pitch does not mean that you can sing ON pitch perfectly. People often conflate perfect pitch with the ability to be able to sing perfectly in tune which is far from the truth.

Unpopular opinion in the era of autotune, but I strongly believe this should be a prerequisite for any professional singer. :D
 
Themidwestcowboy;4289838 said:
Yeah, that piece of audio is incredible. He sounds like Thriller Era in that key. Unfortunately he was not able to reach those notes after the key change. I still want to hear it though.

I thought it was Thriller Mike for a second! That’s amazing
 
Michael was very good with vocals. he had a wide range of vocals. do I think he always had them? from looking at his early stuff from when he was a kid. i would say yeah. but i think as he got older that pitch fade a bit.

like others said, some people are just born with that pitch. and in my opinion Michael had it until he got older. I say by the dangerous and history era that was when his pitch got lower. especially during the invincible era.
 
Michael was very good with vocals. he had a wide range of vocals. do I think he always had them? from looking at his early stuff from when he was a kid. i would say yeah. but i think as he got older that pitch fade a bit.

like others said, some people are just born with that pitch. and in my opinion Michael had it until he got older. I say by the dangerous and history era that was when his pitch got lower. especially during the invincible era.

There has been a little slight misunderstanding NatureCriminal7896. We are not talking about his vocal range. His vocal range decreased as he got older which is very natural phenomenon that happens to a lot of musicians. Where talking about a rare ability called "Absolute Pitch", often called Perfect pitch. It is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference note.
 
Themidwestcowboy;4289723 said:
Keep the faith has nothing to do with perfect pitch. The key was just too high for him which caused his voice to break in some parts. If he sung keep the faith during the Thriller Era he would have been able to hit those notes effortlessly.
I don’t know that other Motown song you’re talking about.

You're right. I've mixed it up with the keys. My bad, sorry.





edit:

I found them
The day had come for Michael to put the lead on 'Keep the Faith,' he sang the first and second verses, and then he disappeared. It was very unlike Michael. I found him standing in the corner of his office crying his eyes out. He was absolutely heartbroken, cut to the quick. I told him, 'Michael, it's not that big a deal, I'll just record it in the other key.' We'd tried two keys and, unfortunately, picked the wrong one. He was really upset. I told him, 'Michael, we've got to face this right now.' I called the synth player and programmer. I felt we had to get the right key and get Michael to face it before it turned into something ugly. I thought we'd have a major, major problem, I was visualizing headlines. I told him, 'Pull yourself together, face this now.' And it was late. I said, 'We're not going home until you've sung this all the way through. Then we'll go home and be able to sleep and continue.' That was scary. But he did it. He pulled himself together. We went in the studio, cut a whole new demo and recorded a scratch vocal all way through. A situation like that could have been a real block. We didn't leave studio till dawn.

- Bruce Swedien, January 1992

Michael himself was an enormous talent as a kid not yet in his teens, and I say this because the song [Label Me Love] I recorded with him I found to be in a tad too high a key. Initially, Mike had a problem adjusting his voice to the track but he figured a way to sing the lead without any changes to the key or the overall track. I was amazed at his natural ability to make it work, regardless of the circumstance.

- Clay McMurray, July 2009
 
There has been a little slight misunderstanding NatureCriminal7896. We are not talking about his vocal range. His vocal range decreased as he got older which is very natural phenomenon that happens to a lot of musicians. Where talking about a rare ability called "Absolute Pitch", often called Perfect pitch. It is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference note.

oh. i'm not good with music.
 
I think it was released on Come and Get it : the rare pearls ? or maybe you're talking about the demo evoked by Clay McMurray, which in this case isn't available

wow thanks for pointing me out to that compilation, I literally haven't heard anything yet on that album!
 
Found this in the September 1972 issue of Black Stars magazine, page 33:

8rBaVUA.png
 
Back
Top