Perfect Pitch Training

[jwilkinson]

Anyone recommend any software, books or downloads to train perfect pitch?


Thanks

[MaliceX]

Not really, but rigorous listening and dictation practice with note letters at different octaves, scales (major in all 12 keys), is probably the best way to practice without a book.

[jupiter8]

[jopy]

You're much better off learning relative pitch detection. I think there's a lot of skepticism that perfect pitch can be learned.

This is a great free ear trainer. It's based around jazz, but it can work for anything:

http://www.iwasdoingallright.com/tools/ ... ining.aspx

[Sascha Franck]

A question to the OP: Do you already have good relative listening skills? If so, ok, you may have your reasons to aquire perfect pitch. If not, I'd say concentrating on good relative listening is most likely the better thing to do. In daily life, unless you're planning to transcribe stuff for a living, perfect pitch doesn't exactly make too much sense (it's an entirely different thing if you're born with it). It might even get in your way sometimes, especially when having to deal with whatever sort of transposed material, be it slightly out of pitch backings you have to work with or, say, transposed guitars (of course, the latter only matters once you're a guitar player).

As said, when transcribing stuff, perfect pitch is a great thing to have, but apart from that I don't think it'll necessarily make you a better musician.

Cheers
Sascha

[MaliceX]

You're much better off learning relative pitch detection. I think there's a lot of skepticism that perfect pitch can be learned.

This is a great free ear trainer. It's based around jazz, but it can work for anything:

http://www.iwasdoingallright.com/tools/ ... ining.aspx

+1. It's always got me scratching my head when people say I've got perfect pitch when all I'm really doing is simply hearing a note that matches with my memory of a sound, if not easily recognizing what note is what based on scale or chord tonality, or tracking pitch closest to easy notes and transposing in my head. (Isn't that THE definition of Relative pitch?)

Perfect pitch, IMO, should be what absolute pitch recognition or audition should be. (ie: The ability to sing and dictate an exact frequency to a note such as A440, without the need of an electronic reference.)

[Sascha Franck]

You're much better off learning relative pitch detection.

Exactly.

I think there's a lot of skepticism that perfect pitch can be learned.

Well, I think it can be learned. A friend of mine did it. But, he noticed two things after a while:
- Apparently you need to permanently keep training it. At least it was the case for him, even if he's playing gigs like mad and also practising on his instrument (bass) all the time.
- He said it didn't help him much with things (apart from the mentioned transcribing becoming easier).

Cheers
Sascha

[MaliceX]

- He said it didn't help him much with things (apart from the mentioned transcribing becoming easier).

Cheers
Sascha

Truth be told, isn't transcribing + transposing around the cycle (all 12 keys) one of the best ways to learning such skills?

[Sascha Franck]

Truth be told, isn't transcribing + transposing around the cycle (all 12 keys) one of the best ways to learning such skills?

Well, you can still do that with perfect pitch.
Another good friend of mine (the most f**king incredible piano/keys/organ player I know) was born with perfect pitch. A few years ago, when we played together in some cover band regularly (we both moved on to some more interesting things), he would sometimes just listen to a tune on the car stereo in the morning, and in the evening, when we were rehearsing, he'd write lead sheets just from his head, covering almost each and every aspect of the tune - I've almost never been able to find any errors. Needless to say that his almoast photographic memory skills do a nice helping job (seems to come along often with perfect pitch folks), but the fact alone that he'd instantly wrote the sheets in the right key certainly was remarkable.

As said, if you're born with perfect pitch, it can be an incredible gift. If you have to learn it, I'm absolutely not sure about the value, especially given that it requires quite some effort.

Cheers
Sascha

[duncanparsons]

I did some work for these guys recently: EarMaster. Quite well respected software, I helped with some of the recent OSX translation.



DSP

[Sascha Franck]

I did some work for these guys recently: EarMaster. Quite well respected software, I helped with some of the recent OSX translation.

Oh, cool. Almost looks like a fresh development of Emagic's long forgotten "Hearmaster" (which I still use under Windows occasionally, there's no Mac version). I may get this one day (even if I seem to play enough so my hearing skills don't seem to get all too rusty).

Cheers
Sascha

[PaulG]

I just want to echo the sentiment here - relative pitch is a more useful skill by far than perfect pitch, and I took that funny face guy's course, too.

Perfect pitch is really only good for knowing if your in tune. Relative pitch, though, once acquired and ingrained, can help you transcribe or just figure out a whole chord progression or melody/harmony the first time you hear it.

Once you've done enough ear training (the relative pitch kind), don't be surprised if that's the norm - knowing the chords, intervals, etc, without even being in front of your instrument.

The reason this is so important is that as you start to hear music more and more in your head you can then instantly play it and, yes, it will sound exactly the same. Until then, doing that with perfect pitch alone will take all week, you'll have to check each tone, each note that you hear. Not too productive.

Someone bragging about perfect pitch is almost like them being a golfer who can hit any putt in the hole from anywhere on the green but can't hit well enough to get to the green. On the other hand, relative pitch doesn't usually miss any hole in one that you use it on.

[jopy]

I did some work for these guys recently: EarMaster. Quite well respected software, I helped with some of the recent OSX translation.

Thanks for that link--that looks like a really outstanding product. The exercises might be similar to those offered by a lot of the free java plugins like the one I linked to, but having a consistent and thorough system for putting in all together is probably very motivational.

Every time I starting thinking about getting a new plug I should remind myself that a good $60 ear training package applied consistently would do more good for my music than any new plugin ever could.

Just so we can have one more person saying this--I've known quite a few musicians who had or didn't have perfect pitch, and in my experience the people who had rock solid relative pitch and chord recognition were FAR better at figuring out a tune from a record or transcribing something from their imagination than people who had perfect pitch but comparatively shaky relative pitch skills (yes, it can happen).

[Meffy]

almoast photographic memory skills

I have what I call "phonographic" memory -- near-perfect recall of music, as many parts as my ears are capable of teasing out of the mix, and other organized/patterened sounds. But I can't identify or call out absolute pitches, just remember them in a way that "feels" as if my head held audio recordings, and tell when something's been slowed or sped up a bit (or actually pitched up or down).

[mattie]

why seek for software? if you train your ear with an instrument (instead of a mouseclick), you will practise some more skills at the same time. Nature gave us 2 brain-halfs.