Perfect Pitch Test
This perfect pitch test plays a random piano note and asks you to name it, with no reference note first. Twenty notes, three levels, and a score for every note.
Keys: C D E F G A B answer, add Shift for the sharp, R replays, Space starts and goes to the next note. Change the mode or level to start over.
Your result
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How to take the perfect pitch test
This perfect pitch test plays a random piano note with no reference tone and asks you to name it, 20 notes per test at three levels, then scores every note, so you can see whether you really name notes or guess. Press Start. A piano note plays. Tap the note name on the keys under the display, and the test tells you whether you were right and which note it was. Press Next note to hear the next one. Replay plays the note again as often as you like, because the point is naming the note, not remembering it. After 20 notes you get your score and a table of how often you named each note correctly, in this test and across all your tests on this device.
On a computer, the letter keys C D E F G A B answer, Shift plus a letter answers the sharp (Shift + F is F#), R replays, and Space or Enter starts the test and moves to the next note.
Pick a level. White keys only plays C D E F G A B around middle C. All 12 notes adds the black keys. All 12, three octaves plays notes from C3 to B5, so you cannot lean on how high or low the note feels. Only the note name counts, not the octave: F#3 and F#5 are both F#.
Perfect pitch and relative pitch
Absolute pitch, often called perfect pitch, is the ability to identify or re-create a given pitch without the benefit of a reference tone. That is what Perfect pitch mode tests, which makes it an absolute pitch test: nothing plays before the note, so you cannot work it out from another note.
Relative pitch is different: it identifies an interval, the distance between two notes, directly by its sound. Switch to Relative pitch mode and the test plays C4 first, then the note to name. Now you can hear "that was a perfect 5th above C" and answer G. If your perfect pitch score is near chance but your relative pitch score is high, you hear intervals well, and that is the skill ear training builds.
How rare is perfect pitch?
Nobody knows exactly. The Wikipedia article Absolute pitch says its frequency in the general population is not known: a figure of 1 in 10,000 is widely reported but may not be accurate, and a 2019 review (Carden and Cline, Psychology of Music) indicated a prevalence of at least 4% among music students. The same article reports that absolute pitch is considerably more common among people whose early childhood was spent in East Asia.
It also reports that most absolute pitch listeners tested identified the white-key notes of C major more reliably, and except for B more quickly, than the five black-key notes. That is one reason the test starts with a white-keys level.
What your score means
Guessing gets some notes right. With 7 possible answers, blind guessing averages 1 in 7, about 3 of 20. With 12 answers it averages 1 in 12, between 1 and 2 of 20. A score well above that on the all-notes levels, repeated over several tests, means you are naming notes, not guessing.
Look at the per-note table too. An answer one semitone off (C# for C) is a near miss, closer than the score shows. If one or two notes are always right, check whether they are notes you hear every day, such as the open strings of an instrument you play. Take the test with headphones in a quiet room, and do not hum a note you know before you start: that turns it into a relative pitch test.
Train your ear from here
Relative pitch is a skill you can practice. Use ear training to learn intervals and chord qualities by sound, the tone deaf test to see how small a pitch difference you can hear, the online piano to check any note you are unsure of, and the tone generator to play any single frequency, such as A4 at 440 Hz.
More for singers: Vocal Range Test · Pitch Detector · Ear Training · Tone Deaf Test · Note Reading
Questions
Do I have perfect pitch?
Take the test on the All 12 notes or three-octave level a few times, with no note heard beforehand. Consistently naming most of the 20 notes, far above the 1 or 2 you would get by guessing, suggests absolute pitch. A few right answers are normal for anyone.
Why is there no reference note?
Perfect pitch means naming a note without a reference. If the test played C first, you could work out the answer from the interval, which is relative pitch. Relative pitch mode does exactly that, so you can compare the two scores.
Does the octave count?
No. The test asks for the note name only, so F#3 and F#5 both count as F#. The three-octave level plays notes from C3 to B5 so that the height of a note gives no hint.
Can I learn perfect pitch as an adult?
It is debated. The Wikipedia article on absolute pitch reports that adults with relative pitch can learn a "pseudo-absolute pitch", and that a 2019 study found two of six adult participants reaching accuracy and response times statistically indistinguishable from people with lifelong absolute pitch. Relative pitch, naming notes from their distance to a known note, is a skill you can practice with ear training.