Perfect Pitch Training

[bluedad]

Btw, as far as relative pitch, my only experience is with EarMaster Pro and Auralia. However, I was intrigued by the ads for http://www.perfectpitch.com/ in Keyboard Magazine, and they have apparently been in business for 27 years.

Over the years I've tried both his Perfect Pitch and Relative Pitch courses.
I understand now that the training excercises for PP have been refined, and you can do them by yourself whereas the early course I had required a partner which made it difficult for me to
do on a regular basis. So I was a bit disappointed.
Can't say enough good things about the Relative Pitch course, though. Really well done, lots of exercises.

[tapper mike]

If you have perfect pitch by nature then you wouid have to have perfect pitch at any frequency including A440.
If your living in an A440 12 tone tempered world then that's the way you hear music. A song you've had on cd doesn't automatically or gradually sound out of tune after 20 years.

Those who have perfect pitch usually do have a pitch perfect speaking voice.
The rest of us have a natural speaking voice that is flat or sharp.
My speaking voice is a few cents short of E it's not as flat as Eb.
One's sense of pitch is also related to the timber of the instrument one plays. If you have an old fashion mmt sequencer (DR5 XL7 MPC etc) it's pretty easy to copy any riff/chord progression on the fly (provided you have a decent relative ear)without knowing the key or having the notation infront of ou. Easy so long as you are using the same preset sound. Try to use a different sound even in the same group of instruments and you'll struggle a bit more. Timbre affects perception

Relative pitch is easy to develop and requires little maintanence. Less then a minute a day. Some people try to work it too hard for too long.
Each day a different key.
Play a one octave scale.
Sing and play the scale.
Sing and play ascending/decending 3rds
Sing and play primary arpeggios.
121314151617181716151413121
878685848382818283848586878

If you have a free moment later in the day try to mentally reproduce during the exercie when you are a way from the instrument. Don't sing just think it. Concentrate hard enough and you may even feel your ears wiggle anticipating notes.

A key a day. Dont try and play/sing constant repitions of a scale/pattern.
Don't do it with more then one key a day. Your trying to develop key conciousness that's why they call it relative pitch. And if your a guitarist tune up before you play. You've got no chance of developing any sense of pitch with an out of tune guitar. Don't tune by recall use tuner.

[Sascha Franck]

A key a day.

While some of your suggestions are well thought out, I totally disagree on this. One of *the* main difficulties in aquiring proper relative pitch skills is to determine when something goes out of key and where exactly it's moving to. Relative pitch detection in one single key is as easy as it gets.
And fwiw, I have never heard about that approach ever before - and we had an *extremely* well doing teacher at the local music university. Apart from some "warm ups" (like singing chord inversions and guide lines) he wouldn't even stick to one key in the very first lessons.

- Sascha

[herodotus]

I mean, people aren't asserting that one can be born with 12 tone equal temperament as an a priori mental construct are they?

Of course not.

OK, cool.

My only objection is to the idea that someone can be 'born with' perfect pitch. People can be born with a good ear. But perfect pitch is a form of memory.

[tapper mike]

If your familiar with all the keys you'll never have to sit out a song.

If you want to develop relative pitch you have to learn to concentrate on a singular key. You don't have to only play sing that scale for the entire day but your pitch training time should be in that key and that key alone.
New Day New key same method. It will train your ears in every key to the relationship between the notes which is what relative pitch is.

[Sascha Franck]

If your familiar with all the keys you'll never have to sit out a song.

If you want to develop relative pitch you have to learn to concentrate on a singular key. You don't have to only play sing that scale for the entire day but your pitch training time should be in that key and that key alone.
New Day New key same method. It will train your ears in every key to the relationship between the notes which is what relative pitch is.

Sorry, but that's almost nonsense. If you want to learn "relative" pitch, there's no need to concentrate on isolated keys. It's *way* more important to concentrate on the relationship of notes, chords and keys. There's barely any tunes that stay *entirely* in one key, so learning keys isolated doesn't help you at all with them.

Seriously, this method is something that is teached nowhere on the world - for good reasons, if you ask me.

- Sascha

[duncanparsons]

Django Bates 'Interval Song' is good...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nl2d4zS56cY

Django says: Incredibly, most children in England have no music lessons at school. If your young ones sing along with this tune, they'll be practicing every possible interval (within 8ve) over every possible bass note. What more could any child want?




DSP

[rockstar_not]

If your familiar with all the keys you'll never have to sit out a song.

If you want to develop relative pitch you have to learn to concentrate on a singular key. You don't have to only play sing that scale for the entire day but your pitch training time should be in that key and that key alone.
New Day New key same method. It will train your ears in every key to the relationship between the notes which is what relative pitch is.

Sorry, but that's almost nonsense. If you want to learn "relative" pitch, there's no need to concentrate on isolated keys. It's *way* more important to concentrate on the relationship of notes, chords and keys. There's barely any tunes that stay *entirely* in one key, so learning keys isolated doesn't help you at all with them.

Seriously, this method is something that is teached nowhere on the world - for good reasons, if you ask me.

- Sascha

Sascha, one day I would like to meet you - I don't think I've ever disagreed with any point I've ever seen you make here at KVR - including this post. Your point is particularly true for playing in bands or accompanying singers for whatever reason.

BTW, Wikipedia has a decent guide on simple melodies that concentrate on all the different intervals. Something like this years back helped me to ID some of the intervals. I have more of an ear for chords than intervals, for some reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_training

-Scott

[Per Lichtman]

You know, I found that studying counterpoint really helped my hear for intervals too. When you get used to hearing certain intervals that "should" happen, or things being "out", at the same time as you see it on the page, it can end up having the side effect of helping ear training.

Anyway, if you are interested in that, there is Counterpointer by Ars Nova. It still has a few bugs in it, but it goes far beyond the process of learning counterpoint by studying Fux on your own.

[Sascha Franck]

Sascha, one day I would like to meet you

Yeah well - let's see. Maybe one day I'll make it to the big overseas KVR meeting or so.

BTW, Wikipedia has a decent guide on simple melodies that concentrate on all the different intervals. Something like this years back helped me to ID some of the intervals. I have more of an ear for chords than intervals, for some reason.

Oh yeah, that's a helpful thing. For instance, "Also sprach Zarathustra" = perfect fifth (followed by a fourth), "Brazil" = major sixth (between 5th and major third of a major chord), "Kleine Nachtmusik" = perfect fourth, and so on.
You can even expand this to some more extended shapes. Let's take "Jingle Bells" - first thing to easily remember is that it starts on the third of the (major) tonic. Then, during "jin - gle - all" it's again the third, up to the 5th and down to the tonic. To me, this is a very easy to remember shape and sound, very sing-able, too. And not only do you learn the melody shape and intervals, it's at the same time some major chord arpeggio.

Fwiw, even if it's not exactly too much along the lines of classical ear training, what I always found to be extremely helpful in developing my own listening skills while at the same time sort of "connecting" them to my playing skills, is improvising over random chords. Usually, I'd stick to major (7), minor (7) and dom7 (or dom7sus4), so any "logical" progeressions can be sort of avoided (it really needs to be randomized).
I would just use 1 or 2 bar long patterns for each chord and arrange them randomly (sequencers obviously are extremely helpful for such things), transpose the occasional chord and so on.
To get started, one note per chord is enough. Then, once the next chord kicks in, you decide whether to go up or down (you can as well just make up a rule such as "only up", "only down" or "up-up-down-up" etc etc). The next thing to decide (and that's where your ear is required) would be "halftone or wholetone?" (there's only a few exeptions when both won't exactly fit, such as in landing on a fourth over a major chord).
It's easy to expand this method to 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. notes per chord.
The next step could be using larger intervals but seconds.
Then it could be a pattern that you would have to adjust to the new chord. Let's say you're playing a pattern using E-G-B on a Cmaj chord. The next chord might be an Ebmaj major. You'd have to adjust the E (would become an Eb) and the B (would become a Bb). This is already quite advanced.
Fwiw, singing along with what you play defenitely helps.
After a while, you may notice that what you play "interconnects" with scale shapes you've already learned.
And finaly, the master step would be to apply the same technique to multiple voices at once. Not necessarily "true" chords for a start, 3rds and such are defenitely tough enough.
And again, after a while, things should connect. You may for instance realize something like "oh, this note played here is the minor third of what's playing in the background - let me build a chord around it".
These are the very things you need when jamming with people (unless you plan to stick to endless 20 minute sessions on the same old E7/#9 pattern) and developing ideas.

Seriously, being able to follow unknown chord progressions (without sheets available) and probably also remembering them quickly on the next repeat of the verse/chorus has defenitely been one of the main reasons I've been called for some sort of emergency jobs. Really, it has often been like "ok, now this tune, we're sure you'll sort of know it, we play it in G today. Just follow the chords and you'll be fine". In that case, recognizing shapes, intervals, chord types and whatever needs to go hand in hand with your playing skills.

In the end, while I actually practised "classical" ear training for quite a while (and I'm kinda gifted by nature, lucky me, really...), while it has been immensely useful, too, these are the exact situations you're facing in a daily musician's life. And that's why I often prefer doing my own lessons.

Cheers
Sascha

[tapper mike]

The only way to play in all keys well is to know all keys well. Then transposition is less of a computation.

[Sascha Franck]

The only way to play in all keys well is to know all keys well. Then transposition is less of a computation.

Err, ok. But that doesn't make your previous statements anymore plausible.

- Sascha

[MaliceX]

It's *way* more important to concentrate on the relationship of notes, chords and keys. There's barely any tunes that stay *entirely* in one key, so learning keys isolated doesn't help you at all with them.

Seriously, this method is something that is teached nowhere on the world - for good reasons, if you ask me.

- Sascha

+1

This is something my music teacher at school was stressing on for so long, only a few people would understand the advantages to learning this way. And of course, this isn't limited to things such as the Cycle of Fifths/Circle of Fourths. (IMO, is the best thing ever in terms of practical learning in music, and you don't have to be a theoretical genius with a masters degree in music to know that)

[arturito]

Seriously, being able to follow unknown chord progressions (without sheets available)
Cheers
Sascha

i always do that by playing a random note.
66% chance i have a good note.
If not, i'll make a resolution; 1/2 a note higher/lower.
So its 100%.

33% 'wrong' note is my embellishing tone. i'll play it again.