#im a. echoer. ive always been really bad at associating note names to their pitches lol

[talesgolden]

Hello Hi by the way: Luke has absolute/perfect pitch; the ability to identify and (in his case) re-create a musical note without use of a reference tone. This means he can:

name the key a piece of music is in

identify by name all the individual tones in a chord /mass of tones

identify by name individual pitches played on various instruments

identify the pitches and correlating tones of sounds from non-musical instruments (car alarms, squeaky shoes, etc.) <- this one is his favorite

sing a named note on demand without a tone for reference and be on pitch

This does not mean he has supernatural hearing or is hyper smart or anything. It means he has a little bit of natural inclination but more than that, spends so much of his time immersed in music that it’s always in his head, and he doesn’t have to go hunting for or guessing at the notes. He knows where they are, what they’re called, and how to get them.

He’s not hearing things other people don’t. Most people are pitch sensitive, and capable of replicating them to some degree. You know at least the vague way songs go, and that when the end of a sentence lifts you’re being asked a question. Take that, dial it up about a thousand, and then add in names for every tone and imagine that for every tone name there is, you think of it every time you hear it. (The way every time a smoke detector beeps, you think smoke detector, because that’s the noise of a smoke detector. It’s a shrill G# by the way. Oh and then imagine you could open your mouth and whistle that sharp G# on command without hearing it in the moment, first.)

Edit: hi I forgot initially but I am back to say that this also includes a lot of microtones (tones found in the range between piano key notes). Microtones don’t have readily recognizable labels in western music so the answer is “between (note) and (note)” and sometimes how close to one or the other. But they are included in this.