Ear Training...Getting a trained ear.

[Ogg Vorbis]

Seems like I remember hearing that perfect pitch can be learned because pitch can be tied into memory. If you think about it, it makes sense.

Think about your favorite song when you were a kid. Think about a song you heard yesterday. Chances are very good that you are imagining these songs in the correct key! So if you knew that the song in question was in D, then you basically have a rudimentary perfect pitch thing going on.

Supposedly this can be developed until you can recognize pitch given whatever timber is heard.

To me, perfect pitch has never really been a goal. I'd rather learn more about pitch relationships and patterns within the relationships instead of static labels of "Ab Db C" etc. I'd rather hear "root note, up a perfect fourth, down a minor second to form a major third with the first note."

[tapper mike]

Perfect pitch can't be learned due to how we percieve pitches on different instruments. We remember tambre. Guitars (regardless of how they are tuned. Accentuate certain pitchs in a different manner then .... Saxaphones. Guitars can also have a wide variety of timbre in and of themselves.


See this -



George Harrison has a capo on the 6th fret. Making the first chord he plays a Bb

See this,
http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/g/georg ... un_crd.htm

Or this
http://tp.ultimate-guitar.com/g/george_ ... nline.html

There is no capo markings making one assume it is a D not a Bb

Ones ears and fingers can easily be fooled as the transcribers above illustrate.

I've had literally hundreds of fake books and many of the songs in them were no where near the original material. Even guys like Wolf Marshall who did hundreds of transcriptions for Guitar Player, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Guitarist and Guitar World, Get it wrong on occasion.

http://www.wolfmarshall.com/bibliography.html

Tony will tell you better then I about working with musicians who have a half baked idea of how they think something should go and how it actually does go.

[shankfiddle]

tappermike... please read the discussion on the previous page

I'm not typing all that again.

yes, there are those with a half-baked idea of what perfect pitch is, but there are also musicians who can pick out pitches whether sax, guitar, or voice. And it IS a skill that you can learn.

I'd be happy to argue with you but please read the posts on the previous page first

[tapper mike]

But that's not perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is when someone calls out... A 440 and you can sing it A 440 or any other note in the chromatic scale. AND they can tell how sharp or Flat a note is without a tuner. AND can establish how far off a harmony is based on the intonation value.

JanCivil has perfect pitch. You can tell in the way she obsesses over intonation values.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation

Some people are born with it and some are not. One can get very close using relative pitch And I know those who have and will admit it's due to relative pitch. Those I've found with the best relative pitch are those who have played acoustic instruments from a young age.

[jopy]

This website might help this debate somewhat:

http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/

Like most "nature vs. nurture" debates it seems that the middle ground of a combination of a genetic disposition coupled with the proper environment is the optimal understanding of the issue:

Based the absolute pitch survey and auditory test data we have collected to date, we learned that the majority of individuals with absolute pitch began formal musical training before age 7. This finding supports the hypothesis that early musical training may be necessary for the development of absolute pitch. However, early musical training alone is not sufficient for development of absolute pitch, because many individuals with musical training initiated before age 7 do not possess absolute pitch.

We also observed that absolute pitch aggregates in families, indicating a role for genetic components in its development. Indeed we found that a sibling (with early musical training) of an absolute pitch possessor is about 15 times more likely to possess absolute pitch than is another individual with early musical training but with no family history of absolute pitch.

Together, these observations implicate a genetic predisposition to the development of absolute pitch, which, when coupled with an environmental stimulus such as early musical training, can give rise to the perceptual trait. The development of our pitch-naming test and these initial results were reported in two papers in the American Journal of Human Genetics (1998 and 2000).

[shankfiddle]

But even someone who obsesses about intonation as you mentioned is conditioned by his/her musical culture.

If you asked for a 440, most musicians could sing it perfectly using only memory like Sammy24 and I discussed - it is a standard reference pitch. Ever been in an orchestra? You'll never forget that piercing oboe tone... no vibrato... pure 440hz drilled into your head. We've been "calibrating" to 440 for the entirety of our musical careers.

I had a professor who played a separate violin/bow with gut strings, no chinrest, etc specifically for baroque music and actually tuned to A415 because historically that's what they tuned to back in the day. that's just what an A was defined as and as such every single note was flatter. Over the years, the trend has been a sharpening of pitch. When my fellow students who were "born with perfect pitch" heard the professor play a Bach partita tuned to to 415 they cringed, and almost couldn't handle it. But had they been born in the 1600s and been educated at that time, their ears would have a completely different idea of what defined playing "in tune".

And just clarify, when you say "they can tell how sharp or Flat a note is without a tuner..." do you mean that to one with perfect pitch if you played an A440.05 they can tell you "the A is one twentieth of a cent sharp" like a human oscilloscope?

because as Tony Ostinato said earlier, that is a bit ridiculous - the 440-based-scale is a cultural construct. those who are "born" with perfect pitch are calibrated by their musical culture... even the most expensive tuner needs to be calibrated. That an A is defined as a convenient multiple of 10 is a relatively recent phenomenon.

While perceiving the overtone series is innate, the perception of A as needing to be exactly 440 is not.

[fateamenabletochange]

When I was learning piano as a kid, teacher would do pitch exercises, ie. sing out A below middle C.
In fact, doing Royal College Pianoforte exams, I think this was part of the exam at a certain level, grade 5 or 6 ??

Surprise surprise, I got better at it, as most do.

I can still nail A440 tone for guitar tuning, and naturally double check on a handy keyboard [probably quite a sensitive test of ongoing cerebral function and maybe even better than standing on one leg with eyes closed ]

[shankfiddle]

See this -



George Harrison has a capo on the 6th fret. Making the first chord he plays a Bb

There is no capo markings making one assume it is a D not a Bb

Ones ears and fingers can easily be fooled as the transcribers above illustrate.

I've had literally hundreds of fake books and many of the songs in them were no where near the original material. Even guys like Wolf Marshall who did hundreds of transcriptions for Guitar Player, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Guitarist and Guitar World, Get it wrong on occasion.

http://www.wolfmarshall.com/bibliography.html

Tony will tell you better then I about working with musicians who have a half baked idea of how they think something should go and how it actually does go.

I just watched your youtube link, and that particular performance is actually in A. (im not looking at his hands, just listening, so he may be in eb tuning...)

oh the irony...

[fateamenabletochange]

How many hours per day would be the best and what would be the best training?

Thanks.

I learnt perfect pitch 3-4 minutes I would guess, once a week.

...hours a day ???? don't do it, you'll drive yourself absolutely bonkers.

This is easy, every time you approach a keyboard, imagine the sound of say a reference note, say, middle C. Imagine that sound in your head as a hum, then hum it aloud, then play middle C and see how close you get. Pitch being pitch, there isn't any fudging it, you'll either be spot on or miles off.

A few weeks to months you'll have it. Some will do better more quickly.

I imagine there will be people on this forum that have perfect pitch and don't even know it.

Try it out. It is easy. Really.


Same with the tone deaf thing...doesn't exist, either there is 'deaf', or it is something that can be learned, more or less quickly.

As with any kind of learning, encouragement and expectation make a huge difference. Having some grizzled greybeard telling you how difficult to impossible it is won't help. Negative beliefs and unhelpful mental schemata tend to be self perpetuating.
And of coarse, perseverance and motivation. A person who believes they are tone deaf and that is that, won't persist at an attempt at learning otherwise. You don't get fit running around the block once.

Afraid there is a lot of pap, dogma and over analysis of the bleedin obvious in this thread, and a few great suggestions.
I am describing a 'start' above which is good enough for me to keep my guitar in tune without having to use a reference or tuner. Others obviously go much deeper, can listen to something and write out the notation for it.

A skill that can be learned like any other.

[Sascha Franck]

I just watched your youtube link, and that particular performance is actually in A. (im not looking at his hands, just listening, so he may be in eb tuning...)

oh the irony...

Yeah well...
The capo is not at the 6th bur at the 7th fret, making A major a somewhat nice key to play in.
And well, I could figure that out without looking at the vid, too. I took it as some sort of a personal challenge, so I dimmed my monitor, but as I have no perfect pitch, I had to strike an open string of the guitar standing next to me. Then I listened and was like "ok, if there's a capo at all (very likely due to the sound), it must be 7th fret" (assuming the guitar was in standard tuning) . Finally looking at the video confirmed it.

Fwiw, I do sometimes sort of *know* the key of whatever songs. But it's always stuff using guitars. And no, it's not about particular open string voicing, it just seems to "click" with me.
However, on other occasions I might be wrong by almost a fourth. So there, no (even remotely) aquired perfect pitch over here.
I do however know of some piano players that have quite perfect pitch once there's a piano played. But one of them I know more or less well already told me that he thinks of it as a combination of typical playing in whatever given key and his "inner voice" represented by the lowest note he might be able to sing on whatever day. He also admitted that he's been fooled more than once, sometimes simply because whomever has been using the transpose function of whatever keyboard.

Anyway, about aquiring perfect pitch, my personal belief is, that, unless you're born with it, you can only do it for some time. In other words: Aquired perfect pitch (at least IMO) requires constant training. Which isn't a big deal in case you play music every day anyway. But it'll fade away after a while when not doing so. At least that's what my (again personal) observations suggest.
"True" perfect pitch however will never fade away.

I was thinking about trying to aquire perfect pitch for a long time. But then, I'm sure I would've had problems with my (rather well-doing) relative pitch for at least quite a while. Plus I'm lazy. So I didn't bother anymore.

- Sascha

[shankfiddle]

...about aquiring perfect pitch, my personal belief is, that, unless you're born with it, you can only do it for some time. In other words: Aquired perfect pitch (at least IMO) requires constant training.

Disagree

It is a skill that can learned and automated. Do you still have to "think" to balance your bicycle? Once you learn it, it's learned. Once you have acquired the skill to distinguish between major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords, you don't have to think about intervals at all, you can just "feel" mood. But that "feel" is really just a sum total of all the theory/practice you have ever learned. As a violinist, I never ever have to think about my bow-hold any more. I spent my years learning it, but now it is entirely automatic.

People who are "born with perfect pitch" are just innately skilled at calibrating their ears quickly using the resonance of their environments. The goal is to be able to identify pitch absolutely. Everyone has to analyze his/her own perceptual processes and learn what he/she needs in order to maximize interval identification and pitch memory skills.

[fateamenabletochange]

It is a skill that can learned and automated. Do you still have to "think" to balance your bicycle? Once you learn it, it's learned.

Yes, I agree. It is not a rare and unique skill by any means. Many thousands each year have the basics of pitch down to be able to progress to the next year of their music coarse. These kind of skills come back quickly with a bit of repetition after periods of non use.
Not nearly as difficult as some describe.

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, but then: How comes that even among professional musicians, there's only a *very* small amount of people with perfect pitch? I mean, if it was not too hard to learn, you'd think that just about each and every professional would do so, no? But I know exactly *nobody* who has done so...

- Sascha

[fateamenabletochange]

How comes that even among professional musicians, there's only a *very* small amount of people with perfect pitch?
- Sascha

the assumption here is incorrect in my view, but that may depend on a difference as to what type of musician you mean.
As you have kind of pointed out, it may not matter for day to day rock and roll, why learn it if you don't need it, but if you are amongst the 2nd violinists in an orchestra, they will have perfect pitch or they wouldn't be there.

[mystran]

Ok, but then: How comes that even among professional musicians, there's only a *very* small amount of people with perfect pitch? I mean, if it was not too hard to learn, you'd think that just about each and every professional would do so, no? But I know exactly *nobody* who has done so...

I'm not convinced that it can be learned by the random individual.

Above some research was quoted that perfect pitch would be about 15 times more likely that in a family with history of perfect pitch. My sister has that (try to sing something like Christmas tunes from slightly different-than-written root key and she'll immediately tell you it's wrong if she knows where it should be).

Now, I have a good relative pitch. If I have an actual reference I have reference I can hear the slightest variations in pitch and I have no problem jumping huge intervals or any of that. But I don't have perfect pitch. If you catch me on a random day and try to ask me for a tone I'm typically about semitone off. I've tried to practice (for years now) but it just never gets anywhere. I'm still always about semitone off. I've been meaning to start writing down whether I'm actually deterministically off tune, but I just can't know.

Back to my sister, who recently mentioned that having perfect pitch is actually annoying as far as playing violin (I used to do that for years as well, so it's not anything that is different between us), because she would normally play one "reference tone" after another and in practice you wouldn't normally want to do that, but instead play more like natural harmonies (violins aren't stuck with a 12 tone tuning compromise after all). Afterwards I had a chance to listen to her play something, and I'm fairly convinced that she tends to play "in tune" to 12-tone ET most of the time.. which can sound a bit funny.