Perfect Pitch - Is It an Autism Thing?

[Sparticus]

I'm not sure about what perfect pitch means. But I have super sensitive hearing & if music is off key it hurts my ears. For whatever reason my brain is more visual. Music has always been important to my soul. But my brain is busy concentrating on other things & so I can't remember much about musical terms. In elementary school I was a very good singer until I hit puberty.

 

[Ereth]

I'll quote Aspieist so you don't have to scroll up:

Perfect pitch means you know if the sound is absolutely in tune--not sharp or flat-- and you know the letter name of the note--A through G and all the sharps and flats in between even if you can't see the sheet music. A person with perfect pitch can tune a stringed instrument accurately without matching something like a properly tuned piano or pitch pipe. Other instruments like the brass or winds require the player to physically adjust their lip tension to get a note exactly correct. Stringed instruments' tension can be adjusted by tuning pegs and also the placement of the fingers on the strings can raise or lower the pitch. Traditionally, the oboe is the instrument that all the other instruments in the orchestra match because it is considered the most difficult instrument to play in tune. "A" above middle C is supposed to vibrate at 440 Hz. Aspies are annoyed easily by anything that is "off" so an Aspie with perfect pitch will be in pain if the music is out of tune.

 

[total-recoil]

Curious as to how I fit in here. I really really upset a friend recently as I told him I can use and find chords without knowing what they're called or what key I'm in. This seemed to really upset him and he actually accused me of being a fantasist and telling outright lies. The friendship is in tatters (not that I'm partcularly losing sleep over that!!).
Anyway, I decided to google my situation and test myself to make sure I could put my money where my proverbial mouth was. It turns out from googling really this is no big deal and doesn't mean I have perfect pitch or am sort sort of savant. Lots of people play heavily by ear and scores of musicians can find chords on their instruments after hearing a record and trying to play along. The majority of good ear players can usually find a given chord without looking at chord charts to the songs they want to play but sometimes they may have to use a chart if they get stuck.
Sooo, I gave it a go yesterday. I took the Lennon song Strawberry Fields Forever and played the melody line on a single track and recorded it. I then set about finding the chords by ear. The change I noticed comes on the word "to" as in " Let me take you down cause I'm going to...." I found the root chord note by ear and then the rest was trial and error but I did get it bang on in the end. Yes, I have no idea what the chord is called or what key I was playing in. I'm sure I couldn't do this with every song I came across but I was pleased to find out I can play music without getting bogged down in theory if all I want to do is just play.
For fun I also had a go at a few Bond themes like Live And Let Die.

Perfect pitch means you know if the sound is absolutely in tune--not sharp or flat-- and you know the letter name of the note--A through G and all the sharps and flats in between even if you can't see the sheet music. A person with perfect pitch can tune a stringed instrument accurately without matching something like a properly tuned piano or pitch pipe. Other instruments like the brass or winds require the player to physically adjust their lip tension to get a note exactly correct. Stringed instruments' tension can be adjusted by tuning pegs and also the placement of the fingers on the strings can raise or lower the pitch. Traditionally, the oboe is the instrument that all the other instruments in the orchestra match because it is considered the most difficult instrument to play in tune. "A" above middle C is supposed to vibrate at 440 Hz. Aspies are annoyed easily by anything that is "off" so an Aspie with perfect pitch will be in pain if the music is out of tune. I don't have perfect pitch but I do have good absolute pitch. I can sing very well in tune with myself and others but I don't know if our "A" is exactly at 440.

 

[anne.bc]

I actually trained myself with the ability to recognize pitches in my "tween-early teen years". I would listen to the radio, find a song that started with a different pitch than the last, and I would find it on my piano. I eventually found a song for each note, except I didn't need songs for A and B flat. Those I'm used to because they are standard tuning pitches for orchestras and wind ensembles, but I also associate the pitch A with Evanescence's "My Immortal" for the "I'm" in the "I'm so tired of being here" phrase. It was 10 years ago, okay? lmao

The "Can" from the "Can this be true, tell me can this be real" in the first verse of Nsync's "God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You" is an F. An example of a C is that stupid high starting note of a famous bassoon solo in Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". An F sharp could be the "Some-" of the "somebody once told me" in Smash Mouth's "All Star". See? That's how I did it. My favorite band Avenged Sevenfold loves to play in D minor. A lot. Killswitch Engage loves C minor and most of their songs sound the same on one of their albums because of it. :laugh:

As for tuning, I already had a knack for it. If you see me making the cringy face, you'll know. :hot:

 

[total-recoil]

I stayed up last night till six a.m. as I was doing a cover of Here There And Everywhere from The Beatles Revolver. The first series of chords were easy but there were two I was having a real struggle to work out. It was beginning to feel hopeless but I persisted playing the melody line on piano and hitting bass keys slowly. Arpeggio often helps me. Then I got the first chord and the second eventually followed so I was pretty pleased. Since I had no idea what the names were I simply drew a diagram on a bit of paper. Really I'm quite happy I am slowly learning to be able to play songs just by ear. Melody lines are, of course, far easier so what I do is play the melody of the song I may want to work out and record this on channel one. So, on playback, there is then the job of working out all the chords.
Now an interesting song I messed with was And I love Her. If you listen to the original the background has this preset, clicky organ beat (not an actual set of drums) and a simple kind of arpeggio background but I did work on picking out the chords.
I should add I don't often try and redo songs as I prefer to try and develop my own songwriting but I definitely love to listen to artists and groups and try and learn from how they make their music. However, seeing as I'm gradually getting better at working out songs, I have thought to buying an electronic organ to learn as an instrument as opposed to the sequencing I do on synth. The prices of organs have really tumbled now that synths can do so much more at a fraction of the size but I think organs are kind of cool, especially Rock Organ.
Anyway, aside from the rambling I don't think I have perfect pitch but suppose I must have a decent ear which is enough for me to get by.

I actually trained myself with the ability to recognize pitches in my "tween-early teen years". I would listen to the radio, find a song that started with a different pitch than the last, and I would find it on my piano. I eventually found a song for each note, except I didn't need songs for A and B flat. Those I'm used to because they are standard tuning pitches for orchestras and wind ensembles, but I also associate the pitch A with Evanescence's "My Immortal" for the "I'm" in the "I'm so tired of being here" phrase. It was 10 years ago, okay? lmao

The "Can" from the "Can this be true, tell me can this be real" in the first verse of Nsync's "God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You" is an F. An example of a C is that stupid high starting note of a famous bassoon solo in Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". An F sharp could be the "Some-" of the "somebody once told me" in Smash Mouth's "All Star". See? That's how I did it. My favorite band Avenged Sevenfold loves to play in D minor. A lot. Killswitch Engage loves C minor and most of their songs sound the same on one of their albums because of it. :laugh:

As for tuning, I already had a knack for it. If you see me making the cringy face, you'll know. :hot:

 

[Axeman52]

I like working things out by ear too - it helps me to remember things in a musical way rather than remembering chord names and stuff. At the moment I'm playing in a classic rock covers band with some older musicians and most of the songs we do are ones that I just figured out on the spot at the practice because they are very simple songs (usually 3 chord riffs, 12 bar blues progressions etc), and I do the same with new songs we learn. I learn them by ear, and then often end up correcting the chord sheets everyone else uses.

In fact, that leads me onto something - Even though I really love making music, sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating for me to work with other musicians. If people are reading off chord sheets rather than listening, and don't know the chords they are reading are wrong, or if they are getting the accents in the wrong places so they aren't locking in with the beat properly, or playing in an inappropriate register that makes their part jump out too much or clash with another instrument, to name a few examples, it almost physically hurts. In addition, my single-minded focus on the music overrides my ability to consider that not everyone is capable of processing and interpreting the small details and understanding how instruments interact with each other in an arrangement in quite the same way that I can. And that's not a good combination.

 

[Daniel]

Even though I really love making music, sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating for me to work with other musicians. If people are reading off chord sheets rather than listening, and don't know the chords they are reading are wrong, or if they are getting the accents in the wrong places so they aren't locking in with the beat properly, or playing in an inappropriate register that makes their part jump out too much or clash with another instrument, to name a few examples, it almost physically hurts. In addition, my single-minded focus on the music overrides my ability to consider that not everyone is capable of processing and interpreting the small details and understanding how instruments interact with each other in an arrangement in quite the same way that I can. And that's not a good combination.

Working with other musicians is difficult for me, too! Your post helped clarify why for me. It's very, very hard to find people who have enough of a natural feel for rhythm and arrangements that works with your own.

I gave up seven years ago to focus on switching careers because I just didn't have the temperament for playing with bands. I also didn't have money or a car. But more so, I just didn't like the experience of having to make it all work.

The last bands I was in were with this guy who I'm pretty sure was an Aspie, looking back. He was very exact about how he wanted things, and I was fine with that because I could execute it, but I just didn't want to spend any more time with him. He was so into doing his own thing, and he was fixed about his principles as to what the band should be (artistically, that is) that when I thought about the future, I couldn't see it going anywhere with him leading it. (Imagine a young Robert Fripp without the genius.) And the rest of the band were all friends, and I was brought in because I knew them from way back.

Anyway, we had a few songs in that last band where we really locked, where we were all in the same pocket, and the arrangements worked, and it was great. After I left, they couldn't find another drummer who could play what they needed, and they folded. It's really, really hard to find good help!

I've since established another career, and I'm thinking about devoting energy to music again, but this time I'm going solo. I'm just going to make music for myself and work with the right people if they come along. I'm also going to read up on classical music theory and arrangement principles.

 

[total-recoil]

Interesting points. I would like to ask you guys a question and some feedback at this point as I found something interesting.
Lately I have come to realise that at this particular point in time I need to chill out a lot more and start covering songs written by other musicians whom I admire. Rather than take the view I used to have that you should only focus on writing your own material, I've come to see that doing covers helps you become a better song writer. Now this is the interesting part. I was working out the John Denver song Sunshine On My Shoulders and I immediately noticed this song is very close to Here There And Everywhere. So, what I did was take the whole piano structure of Here There And Everywhere and then played the melody lines of Sunshine On My Shoulders. And it worked. I was intrigued so I thought it was time to do a search on Google and see if Denver was a Beatle fan as I am and, amazingly, I discovered John had made his own recording of Here There And Everywhere in the year 1966. Sunshine came out in about 1971. Now, clearly, I'm not saying Denver just took this song and used it to make his own but suspect his song was inspired by McCartney (nice chord patterns rub off on you) and it turns out he has covered Let It Be and Mother Nature's Son as well:
Here are the two songs and if you feel they are similar in the first part, feel free to comment:
John Denver....Sunshine On My Shoulders !!! - YouTube
Here, There and Everywhere (Rare 1966) - John Denver - YouTube
Now, all of this led to some silly argument with a friend who is obsessed by chord charts and refuses to believe I can work out chords to songs by ear. He tells me if I do it that way I must be using the wrong chords (owch!). I started to check out the accepted chords and piano/keyboard YouTube versions of Sunshine On My Shoulders and discovered it was reduced to simple C and G strum change at the beginning. I thought it was boring that way on piano although perhaps on guitar it was fine. Above all, the way I play it is in some unknown key and I use a sequence of about 4 chords.
To cut a long story short, I can't quite explain how but am sure there is a connection between the two songs. I also concluded that one of the worst things you can do in music is try and exactly duplicate somebody's song chord for chord. It's possible to jazz chords a bit to get the same meaning and keep the song intact but add a bit of colour. So, really I just don't worry if my chords might deviate a tiny bit so long as they are in tune with the notes. And I told my friends I have no objection to learning the technical side of music but just think it's more effective to approach a song with new ideas and not to try and turn music into an exact mathematical formula. That is, for me that would take a long long time to learn to play whereas by ear it's much faster.

 

[total-recoil]

Ideally, it's best if you can do both. I think I can work out basic songs by ear but I couldn't tell you what the chords are called or what key I am in. My argument is that is really fine if you play by yourself for yourself but, on the other hand, it's hard on the band. I'm sure McCartney could listen to any regular song, work it out in about 10 minutes but also tell you what key it is in and, of course, that way he gets to direct the band around him. However, all of these points you make are crucial to a band. There has to be the right chemistry for an average band to be a great band. If band members don't totally co-operate there is no magic.
Another snag is when I work out a song the key I use is sort of random but that can make it hard on the singer as many of us need to sing in a certain key.
Possibly one problem I might have is I tried to stand on my own feet doing music so am probably at this stage a bit too strong willed to be in a band. However, I think I'm slowly mellowing and coming to admire more and more certain musicians and realise how much I could improve if I adopted a sharing attitude and a bit more give. It was a bit of an ego thing at first with me but I now think I could use other peoples ideas and sounds to blend in my own imput hopefully although the hard pill to swallow is you don't get all the credit as it's a group effort so essential you all connect in a relaxed atmosphere.

I like working things out by ear too - it helps me to remember things in a musical way rather than remembering chord names and stuff. At the moment I'm playing in a classic rock covers band with some older musicians and most of the songs we do are ones that I just figured out on the spot at the practice because they are very simple songs (usually 3 chord riffs, 12 bar blues progressions etc), and I do the same with new songs we learn. I learn them by ear, and then often end up correcting the chord sheets everyone else uses.

In fact, that leads me onto something - Even though I really love making music, sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating for me to work with other musicians. If people are reading off chord sheets rather than listening, and don't know the chords they are reading are wrong, or if they are getting the accents in the wrong places so they aren't locking in with the beat properly, or playing in an inappropriate register that makes their part jump out too much or clash with another instrument, to name a few examples, it almost physically hurts. In addition, my single-minded focus on the music overrides my ability to consider that not everyone is capable of processing and interpreting the small details and understanding how instruments interact with each other in an arrangement in quite the same way that I can. And that's not a good combination.

 

[Aspieistj]

My first BS was in Music Education. Part of our education was practicing reproducing rhythms, single line melody, harmony, chords and chord progressions. The class was called ear training and people who were good at it definitely could reproduce someone else's music accurately. This type of training was called Dictation. We were supposed to reproduce what was played by the teacher accurately. The more complicated the rhythm or music, the longer it took to get everything correct. A lot of good instrumentalists and singers were not outstanding at ear training. They were great technicians and not great musicians, but did very well playing and memorizing printed music. Playing by ear definitely does not require perfect pitch--only being good at ear training. My mother, and many others people I knew, could learn a melody and then put their own harmony to the tune. It used to drive me nuts because I knew my mother was often changing rhythms, melodies and harmony and even the key the music was written in. If I had the sheet music I would make her look at it and show her where she was going wrong. She never gave a damn! She said she liked her was better. I believe she just never had learned ear training and didn't want to feel less than perfect. Another thing, I am an Aspie and she wasn't. I strive for accurateness and perfection and she frequently dismissed my criticism by saying her way was good enough.

 

[total-recoil]

Actually I definitely do what your mother was doing but, after dwelling on this a bit, I opted to go with the flow. I do not usually reproduce a track in the same key as the original. The key is something that will just happen automatically as I try to get a hold of the tune. Another "major" discovery (pardon the pun) I made was that somehow I can recreate a song and use chords of my own (that still work and make the song just as readily recognised). I call this "jazzed".
Now, the other day I decided to play The Lonely Man on piano. This was the theme tune for the seventies TV series The Incredible Hulk. Usually I randomly fiddle with keys till I get a hook into the song and the key doesn't bother me too much but I started my version around G Minor. I found the first half of the song not too difficult but the latter part pushed me. I was fiddling with two chords trying to figure out if they were bang on and one of the final chords was just an improvisation of my own that I thought just worked and didn't alter the song, just gave it a tint. Apparently jazz players do this a lot so I just let it roll and recorded what I had. Finally I played my track to someone and she said, yes, that's the sad song song from the TV series and she seemed to like it. Then I played the original and, sure, the delivery was a bit different. But, yes, the same song in essence.
Point is, I agree you can if you choose make an absolute duplicate of another track but personally I don't have an issue with minute changes using improvised chords so long as the song remains intact.
By the way I read the other day John Lennon wrote Imagine in one key but it went out on record in another key (the latter key being much trickier to play).

I don't have perfect pitch... I'm more likely to be tonedeaf. Well, not really... I can tell if a note is off key, but I surely can't identify it being A, B or G. But then again, I tend to work with mostly digital or electronic tools for music making, thus I don't run into issues where things are off pitch. My synthesizer isn't out of tune ever. My guitar is, but I don't have to tune my electric guitar by ear either.

Perhaps I could train my hearing like that, but it surely didn't come natural when I got assembled.

My first BS was in Music Education. Part of our education was practicing reproducing rhythms, single line melody, harmony, chords and chord progressions. The class was called ear training and people who were good at it definitely could reproduce someone else's music accurately. This type of training was called Dictation. We were supposed to reproduce what was played by the teacher accurately. The more complicated the rhythm or music, the longer it took to get everything correct. A lot of good instrumentalists and singers were not outstanding at ear training. They were great technicians and not great musicians, but did very well playing and memorizing printed music. Playing by ear definitely does not require perfect pitch--only being good at ear training. My mother, and many others people I knew, could learn a melody and then put their own harmony to the tune. It used to drive me nuts because I knew my mother was often changing rhythms, melodies and harmony and even the key the music was written in. If I had the sheet music I would make her look at it and show her where she was going wrong. She never gave a damn! She said she liked her was better. I believe she just never had learned ear training and didn't want to feel less than perfect. Another thing, I am an Aspie and she wasn't. I strive for accurateness and perfection and she frequently dismissed my criticism by saying her way was good enough.

 

[wyverary]

Actually I definitely do what your mother was doing but, after dwelling on this a bit, I opted to go with the flow. I do not usually reproduce a track in the same key as the original. The key is something that will just happen automatically as I try to get a hold of the tune. Another "major" discovery (pardon the pun) I made was that somehow I can recreate a song and use chords of my own (that still work and make the song just as readily recognised). I call this "jazzed".
Now, the other day I decided to play The Lonely Man on piano. This was the theme tune for the seventies TV series The Incredible Hulk. Usually I randomly fiddle with keys till I get a hook into the song and the key doesn't bother me too much but I started my version around G Minor. I found the first half of the song not too difficult but the latter part pushed me. I was fiddling with two chords trying to figure out if they were bang on and one of the final chords was just an improvisation of my own that I thought just worked and didn't alter the song, just gave it a tint. Apparently jazz players do this a lot so I just let it roll and recorded what I had. Finally I played my track to someone and she said, yes, that's the sad song song from the TV series and she seemed to like it. Then I played the original and, sure, the delivery was a bit different. But, yes, the same song in essence.
Point is, I agree you can if you choose make an absolute duplicate of another track but personally I don't have an issue with minute changes using improvised chords so long as the song remains intact.
By the way I read the other day John Lennon wrote Imagine in one key but it went out on record in another key (the latter key being much trickier to play).

I never saw the point in doing covers without making some changes and making it one's own. I think you should keep it up.

 

[total-recoil]

I only do covers I guess to improve my own songwriting efforts. Basically I stay fixed on the musicians that I like most and try to listen to at least 80 per cent of their music. One songwriter I really love is Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys did an album called Sunflower in 1970 that, for some reason, cut no ice in record sales. It flopped. Yet I consider this a truly awesome album. The other week while on YouTube I found a guy doing a cover of probably my favourite song on Sunflower, namely Our Sweet Love. I think he sings quite well (more so compared with my own efforts) although a decent mike would have helped here.
I am in the process of working out this track too - I start mine in C, if I recall.
The last few chords around "like a child with his sweet toy" and so on have me foxed so far but the first bit I found easy.
P.S. This is not me below just someone doing a cover as well:
CWT - Our Sweet Love (Beach Boys Cover from Sunflower).mp4 - YouTube
CWT - Our Sweet Love (Beach Boys Cover from Sunflower).mp4 - YouTube

I never saw the point in doing covers without making some changes and making it one's own. I think you should keep it up.

 

[Daniel]

I agree that learning great songs is the best thing you can do for your own songwriting. Just like listening to/watching great musicians perform is valuable for learning to play instruments.

My dream--I'd love to learn my own updated version of "The Great Western Songbook", and know the chord progressions of a host of great songs, and be able to transpose them and sing them in any key, and play them in a range of solo piano or guitar styles. I'd love to know the charts by numbers, and think of the chord progressions in terms of 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

 

[total-recoil]

Have you noticed scores in movies? I'm sure you have. A few days ago I watched this movie with Demi Moore. As a film it was very different than the norm and filmed in Scotland. It was about a female author who discovers this haunted lighthouse but I really liked the score. A lot of slow, melodic piano. I find these days I automatically get tuned into either film scores of T.V. series background.
Anyway, so far as ambitions go, I think for me it would be something special to work out Moonlight Sonata. Just by ear. Mainly to see if I can do it.
Very happy with the last two songs I wrote too but really impossible for me to judge them due to personal bias. Either you're too hard on yourself or too excited by the new song to be truly critical. I will only know when I air them next year. They use quite a few unusual minor chords the names of which I really haven't a clue.

I agree that learning great songs is the best thing you can do for your own songwriting. Just like listening to/watching great musicians perform is valuable for learning to play instruments.

My dream--I'd love to learn my own updated version of "The Great Western Songbook", and know the chord progressions of a host of great songs, and be able to transpose them and sing them in any key, and play them in a range of solo piano or guitar styles. I'd love to know the charts by numbers, and think of the chord progressions in terms of 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

 

[goodgravy]

I do, I don't know if it's an autism thing though. I can identify four notes on the piano simultaneously, and I can sing any of the twelve tones. Hasn't served much of a purpose other than entertaining my parents and quick tunings.

 

[Salmongirl17]

Perfect pitch is an incredible talent, and can be very useful-- if your job involves music. One of my friends at my middle school has perfect pitch, and he has gone on to being one of the best prodigies out there. He is the lead violinist for a symphony orchestra, he is licensed composer(you can buy his music), and he's only in 8th grade! He hopes to write scores for movies when he grows up.
So just saying, perfect pitch is great in the musical world.
I do not have perfect pitch, but I'm a good instrumentalist anyway.

 

[ChildoftheCorn]

Completely tone deaf here.

 

[tlc]

I actually trained myself with the ability to recognize pitches in my "tween-early teen years". I would listen to the radio, find a song that started with a different pitch than the last, and I would find it on my piano. I eventually found a song for each note, except I didn't need songs for A and B flat. Those I'm used to because they are standard tuning pitches for orchestras and wind ensembles, but I also associate the pitch A with Evanescence's "My Immortal" for the "I'm" in the "I'm so tired of being here" phrase. It was 10 years ago, okay? lmao

The "Can" from the "Can this be true, tell me can this be real" in the first verse of Nsync's "God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You" is an F. An example of a C is that stupid high starting note of a famous bassoon solo in Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". An F sharp could be the "Some-" of the "somebody once told me" in Smash Mouth's "All Star". See? That's how I did it. My favorite band Avenged Sevenfold loves to play in D minor. A lot. Killswitch Engage loves C minor and most of their songs sound the same on one of their albums because of it. :laugh:

As for tuning, I already had a knack for it. If you see me making the cringy face, you'll know. :hot:

Yes! That is what I did exactly. Mine was 20 years ago in my later teens but one of my musical cousins bought the David Burge course at the time. I listened to some of it but came up with my own method of identifying pitches which is exactly what you did. I played bass (he played guitar) and I identified my pitches with songs I was working with at the time. For example C was the opening bass note in Vision Of Love by Mariah Carey. E and F were main notes in Impulsive and Hold On by Wilson Phillips. My cousin saw how well it was working for me and he tried it with success too. For him A was Cat Scratch Fever. For both of us Bb was No Excuses by Alice In Chains.

As I got better at it, the whole thing that David Burge was saying started to come through. How every note has a feeling to it, and same for the songs that were in these keys, and why many songs are chosen to be in a certain key. Everything I heard was a pitch, like the squeak of the woodstove handle was C. I was much better at this in college (and better at playing too), and at the time I had created a wheel chart of the notes and pigment colors that seemed to be best associated with each, and it jumped around in a circle of fifths. Like B is plainly sullen and sad, C is a bright sunny happy, C# is on the verge of crying, F# is mad, G is more of a joyous happy....

Also (at least for bass notes I hear), each note has a certain voice no matter what the timbre. Like A always sounds like "ACK!" and G always sounds like "brooOOOM" and C always sounds like "BEEEErom".

So yes like you I can tune an instrument very accurately without a tuner.

And like others, it does bug me when songs are off key. When I got my first Walkman in the 80s I drilled a hole in the back so I could adjust the tape drive speed because it was always off based on temperature or tapes just dragging. All my tape players still today have holes drilled in the side with a homemade long screwdriver in the tape drive speed pot. This was one thing so nice about playing fretless bass, I'd avoid open strings and then just play along no matter how far off pitch the damn radio was. My fretless is kinda in the shop right now. Going by the feeling of the song, especially the 2nd half, I think Layla was meant to be in C#. But the fingering is easier to just play it in C.

 

[anne.bc]

Mariah Carey... Nice!