Memes and Perfect Pitch

In recent years, with the advent of various social media platforms, music and memes have become even more intertwined, with various songs invoking a mental image, and pictures that you can hear the music behind. In recent years, songs like “Shooting Stars” by Bag Raiders, “We Are Number One”, performed by Stefan Karl Stefanson, and “All Star” by Smash Mouth have been hard to escape, if you spend time on memey-er parts of the internet.

But why am I telling you this stuff? Well, I’ve started using some of the sections of songs that are very memorable (to me) as sort of ‘phantom’ reference tones to give the impression that I have perfect pitch. Now, quick sidebar, the subject of perfect pitch is fiercly debated. I subscribe to the Rick Beato definition, that perfect pitch is the ability to hear any pitch and instantly know what that pitch is, and it can’t be acquired later in life, and it can only be learned as a baby.

What I’m trying to do here is not acquiring perfect pitch, but instead, a variation of listening to a single pitch and trying to memorize it, to recall as a reference tone later. But there’s very little evidence that has any effect on tone perception. The difference here, is I’m trying to add context to these tones. The song (meme) that gave me the idea to make an attempt at creating these ‘phantom’ reference tones, was Steve Hartwell’s first word in “All Star” by Smash Mouth. I can recall the F#, the first melody note, with about 80% accuracy (ballpark, not an actual statistic), so my hypothesis, is that if I’m able to recall a tone from one meme with reasonable consistency, then I can recall 12 tones from 12 memes with reasonable accuracy. So, I’m not acquiring perfect pitch, but I am attempting to learn a skill that might convince someone I have perfect pitch.

I’ll keep you updated with my journey, if I make any progress, or if it’s a dismal failure, but before my next post, I’ll share my current list of meme songs and pitches, starting from All Star.