Learning Perfect Pitch ad in BPM

[ToddC]

There is an ad in BPM regarding 'learning' perfect pitch.

I've always thought this was a gift and not something one can aquire. Frankly it seems like a hoax to me.

Has anyone here used this system?
Did it work?
What are the necessary conditions for it to work?

If its not a hoax I'll make the effort to gain perfect pitch.
If it is ....smoke'm (that can mean whatever you like)

tia

[tZer]

I don't know about what they're selling - but I hear a piece on NPR a while ago - Science Friday, I think - where the guest described how our ears hearing sound waves and associating them with musical notes as being very similar to how our eyes see and interpret light waves and color. But the way we're taught to understand the two very similar things is very different. He theorized that we all actually have perfect pitch but never learned to use it the same way we are able to see and understand color.

I think it'd probably be easier to develop it as a child and significantly more challenging to train yourself to have it as an adult - but not impossible.

Maybe someone should contact Mythbusters...

[fretlessman71]

Having already been blessed with perfect pitch and understanding what it's about, I can tell you that I think this course is in all likelihood COMPLETELY VALID.

However, it's also overstating the usefulness of perfect pitch. RELATIVE pitch is far more important than perfect pitch, which is really little more than a parlor trick IMHO. But it certainly couldn't hurt to try it. Consider: The guy's been advertising for well over 20 years, which means he's been in business for that long...

[ToddC]

Originally Posted by fretlessman71

Having already been blessed with perfect pitch and understanding what it's about, I can tell you that I think this course is in all likelihood COMPLETELY VALID.

However, it's also overstating the usefulness of perfect pitch. RELATIVE pitch is far more important than perfect pitch, which is really little more than a parlor trick IMHO. But it certainly couldn't hurt to try it. Consider: The guy's been advertising for well over 20 years, which means he's been in business for that long...

I'm a little confused by your statements.
If perfect pitch(PP) allows you to know exactly what note or notes are playing, why would relative pitch(RP) be more important?

In the case of RP you always need a reference pitch and your ear plus knowledge of intervals, etc..
But with PP your ear is the reference and the pitch is the pitch. The information is much more direct.

Am I missing something?

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by ToddC

Am I missing something?

Yes the relationship between notes is what is you will use most as a musician. There are people with perfect pitch can tell you what note is what, it's just names to them they have no idea what to do with it. As a musician you hear a some notes and the relationship of the notes you start to identify how they are being used. Then you think of where you would want to go next, the relation to previous notes.

The advantage to having perfect pitch is you will know what starting note is, but that note it's relative pitch that tells you everything else.

[tZer]

I think what he is saying is that being able to simply identify a note out of thin air is not as useful as being able to hear and understand intervals in practice.

But as you point out, if you have perfect pitch is seems to imply that you'd also have relative pitch by default.

[BigOldHarry]

This same guy has been running the same ads in BP and GP and every other music rag for years and years. He must be making money from someone, but not me. No, I don't have perfect pitch, but my 'relative pitch' is pretty good and that's good enough for me. I used to teach students drills for relative pitch and that always helped them.

Perfect pitch, it seems to me, is only really useful for singers... and even then, it's only so useful.

[StyleOverShow]

All musical pitches are composed of overtones and timbres. Perfect is a relative term and anyone can improve your sense of pitch, particularly through regular and structured practice. I worked with Johnny Mathis back in the day and he had a pretty good ear, but if he started off a quarter of a step off, he sang relatively in tune, until a musical interlude or turnaround when he could/would reset himself.

Like Einstein said, its all relative to the observer.

[BananaKing]

It really is best to have both, but Relative pitch is more important overall, IMO.

A good sense of relative pitch will come in handy more often than perfect pitch, as all of my ear teachers have told me.

I also know someone with perfect pitch and she finds that it can get in the way when you are dealing with inversions in ear training class. Someone will play a chord and you wont know which one is the root if you can't tell the intervals apart or distance between them.

[ToddC]

The theoretical part is 'relative' to both hearing methods (PP/RP).

I guess for me its the difference between hearing, knowing what you hear, and communicating what you hear.

I know guys with great RP and play fantastic (Hearing) but have little knowledge about what they heard (Knowledge). They are just very capable at translating what they hear to their respective instruments(Communicating).

It seems that the PP method of hearing would provide faster communication if the knowledge was equal.

But since I don't play that fast anyway this may be just an interestng discussion.

[Jim Carr]

A person with Absolute Pitch (the Psychoacoustic term for perfect pitch) lives in a technicolor world that those without it cannot imagine. Sorry to be so blunt, but if you don't have it, you have to work a lot harder to do many of the same things, and there are useful things you just can't do that those with AP can.

People with AP and a thorough training in music always have more information immediately available to them as they listen, perform, or compose. It makes a difference. Yes, there are drawbacks, but they are minor compared to the advantages. The impact of these drawbacks is usually felt more by those with AP in professional performance situations where tunings are modified to fit ideas about early music, though that is not the only area. AP is a serious handicap for an ear training teacher who wants to actually help students without AP.

AP is genetic, according to most researchers. Yet, there is no doubt those without the particular differences in brain structure that enables AP can acquire a degree of AP. I have personally experienced it. During the two and a half years I was taking tons of Ear Training at a New York conservatory while also teaching even more ear training at another school--I was also practicing piano 2 hours a day, composing each day, AND teaching other college classes in music--I noticed something surprising happening to me.

I started becoming very sensitive to pitch and key. The musical form of classical pieces I taught and studied started to unfold in new more dramatic ways. Key areas were noticeably different sounding, and this was not just based on obvious modulations or intervals between key centers. D minor sounded like D minor, Ab major just sounded like Ab major. No colors, no smells, not weirdness, just knowing.

I usually knew what key something was in instantly when I heard it, and nearly ALWAYS could identify a pitch played on the piano. The funny thing is the same thing was happening with the metronome. If you had asked me to produce common classical tempi like quarter = 72 or quarter = 96, I could do it dead on. After a couple years of this kind of intense teaching and study, I finished my Doctorate and was also done (for a while) with all the ear training study/teaching I had been doing.

After a few months of less practice and teaching, the AP effect faded. I have had a number of conversations with others about this, and it is not unusual. However, mine was not like the AP that others I have known with "real" AP possess. Later on, when I again started teaching Ear Training, playing a lot of piano, and composing, the temporary AP effect came back. It then mostly faded when I again moved on to other, less musical work.

Much of the research I have read (citations needed here) leaves one still wondering. The multitude of (physical) neurological studies I've seen support the "genetically inherited brain structure" model of AP. You are born with the capacity or you are not. Yet, some psycho-linguistic studies have indicated that Mandrin, Nederlands (Dutch), Cantonese, and other languages encode an amazing amount of AP which native speakers thus ALL posses. This argues for a more environmental/cultural side to AP. The science is just still unclear.

To me, what is clear is that you are born with a brain which is yours to make the most of--or not.

In closing, I'd like to add that I had the great privilege to have been a student and friend of the great American composer, George Perle. George is the finest musician I have ever known. He not only posses AP and a truly virtuosic level of pianistic skill, he is also one of the greatest music theorists AND musicologists of the 20th Century. There is seriously nothing that George does not know in intimate detail about the classical music of the last 300 years.

When George Perle hears a piece of music, I can attest that he instantly understands the deepest relationships that exist between each and every tone in the music he is hearing. This helped him instantly spot all his stunned composition student's errors in tonal and post-tonal composition without fail.

George composes (he has won a MacArthur, a Pulitzer, written a huge amount of orchestral and chamber music) and has written nearly a dozen amazing (and important) books. Did AP matter for him? Yes, totally.

In fact, a number of years ago, he complained bitterly to me that his AP was "sinking." He was hearing things transposed downward a semi-tone. It was very distressing to him. I had read in several places that as the brain ages, this is common for those with AP. I don't think he was reassured when I told him. It was just too important, and he wanted to find a way to fix it. The fact that in his mid-80s, it still really mattered to the most brilliant musician I have ever known that his AP function correctly tells me something about AP.

PS. Just to clarify one thing: I do not believe real AP can be learned. The potential for AP is inherited, IMHO.

[Jim Carr]

Oh, I might add that I know BPM is Bass Player Magazine (I subscribe), but the three letters "BPM" really tickles me, because that is what theory teachers often call Beats Per Minute on a metronome. Weirdly ironic....

[Zombbg4]

My old band teacher experimented with teaching us perfect pitch. Didn't work, but something interesting did happen. He told us to pick a song or melody that started on a certain pitch and pick 11 others for the remain pitches. One guy could name any pitch by going through all his chosen song untill one matched. So in a sense he aquired pp.

[hbarcat]

You can find the answer to your question in this book:



Here's the site of the author and you can read an online copy of the book there.

http://musicophilia.com/


In short, the ability to have an innate sense of absolute pitch is relatively rare and is almost always learned at a very early age by being immersed in a musical environment as an infant. This has also been determined to be linked to a condition called "synethesia" in which multiple senses overlap (such as you would hear sounds while simultaneously seeing, tasting or feeling them).

An approximation of absolute pitch (sometimes called perfect pitch) is more common and many musicians develop this skill over years of intense practice and training.

[hbarcat]

If you were to stop me at any random point of the day when I wasn't playing bass or listening to music and you asked me to sing or hum the low E note on my bass I can do this to a very high degree of accuracy. I can then use the E note as a reference to sing intervals also with a high degree of accuracy and I often tune my bass this way without the use of a tuner. I believe this is because when I first started to play bass a few decades ago, I had a pitch pipe instead of an electronic tuner and I used it for tuning exclusively for about 7 or 8 years. But I can't identify pitches that I hear from some other source unless there is a named reference and then I can use "relative pitch" as most musicians do.

It's odd but there are rare occasions when I try to do this and I'm off by a significant amount, perhaps as much as a half step, and I've found that it's when I have been sick with a cold or have pollen allergies acting up.

[Jazzdogg]

An aunt who passed away before I had a chance to meet her was reputed to have had absolute pitch. Pop told me that she played piano and double reeds (oboe, bassoon), and that she used to get horrible headaches and complained about funny tastes in her mouth when listening to songs being performed slightly off pitch. Sounds like it was as much a curse as a blessing in her case.

[rogueman]

Jim, fantastic post. When I played alot before my encounter with a table saw, which I'm just now recovering from, I would play until my fingers bled. Friends would have to stop me. Later I would sit and listen to music and quote the notes whether half's or wholes or quarters and say c or d or whatever. I believe also that the more you play, practice, or try to compose the more acute this becomes. As they say practice, practice, practice. Deeper mind wrinkles.
Do you believe that a sense becomes more acute also as a person strives or starts to become self aware? I studied under a self aware person's guidance [ Adano Ley] back in the 80's and he could tell you what chord the song was in and chords when they changed. He played no instrument. Never had. Is this ability connected to self awareness possibly by constantly exercising our minds until it becomes automatic response, thus becoming energy acting upon matter as he said. Possibly by concentrating on one thing so much that you tend to stay in an alpha state, unencumbered by the "noise" of life around you. In other words, like a finely developed muscle with automatic responses, like say self defense masters who respond automatically to a hand coming towards them. Is this a higher plain of awareness molded by constant focus on a subject? This must mean that our minds are barely being used these days and operate on a lower vibratory plane of awareness brought down by baser instincts, distractions and events. As we know meditation raises you up into a alpha state, free to soar and create. Do you believe their is a correlation? Maybe the right mental key. All things have a unique frequency, even a persons brain. Even most germs and pathogens live in 0 -1000-Hz.

[BananaKing]

Originally Posted by Jim Carr

A person with Absolute Pitch (the Psychoacoustic term for perfect pitch) lives in a technicolor world that those without it cannot imagine. Sorry to be so blunt, but if you don't have it, you have to work a lot harder to do many of the same things, and there are useful things you just can't do that those with AP can.

People with AP and a thorough training in music always have more information immediately available to them as they listen, perform, or compose. It makes a difference. Yes, there are drawbacks, but they are minor compared to the advantages. The impact of these drawbacks is usually felt more by those with AP in professional performance situations where tunings are modified to fit ideas about early music, though that is not the only area. AP is a serious handicap for an ear training teacher who wants to actually help students without AP.

AP is genetic, according to most researchers. Yet, there is no doubt those without the particular differences in brain structure that enables AP can acquire a degree of AP. I have personally experienced it. During the two and a half years I was taking tons of Ear Training at a New York conservatory while also teaching even more ear training at another school--I was also practicing piano 2 hours a day, composing each day, AND teaching other college classes in music--I noticed something surprising happening to me.

I started becoming very sensitive to pitch and key. The musical form of classical pieces I taught and studied started to unfold in new more dramatic ways. Key areas were noticeably different sounding, and this was not just based on obvious modulations or intervals between key centers. D minor sounded like D minor, Ab major just sounded like Ab major. No colors, no smells, not weirdness, just knowing.

I usually knew what key something was in instantly when I heard it, and nearly ALWAYS could identify a pitch played on the piano. The funny thing is the same thing was happening with the metronome. If you had asked me to produce common classical tempi like quarter = 72 or quarter = 96, I could do it dead on. After a couple years of this kind of intense teaching and study, I finished my Doctorate and was also done (for a while) with all the ear training study/teaching I had been doing.

After a few months of less practice and teaching, the AP effect faded. I have had a number of conversations with others about this, and it is not unusual. However, mine was not like the AP that others I have known with "real" AP possess. Later on, when I again started teaching Ear Training, playing a lot of piano, and composing, the temporary AP effect came back. It then mostly faded when I again moved on to other, less musical work.

Much of the research I have read (citations needed here) leaves one still wondering. The multitude of (physical) neurological studies I've seen support the "genetically inherited brain structure" model of AP. You are born with the capacity or you are not. Yet, some psycho-linguistic studies have indicated that Mandrin, Nederlands (Dutch), Cantonese, and other languages encode an amazing amount of AP which native speakers thus ALL posses. This argues for a more environmental/cultural side to AP. The science is just still unclear.

To me, what is clear is that you are born with a brain which is yours to make the most of--or not.

In closing, I'd like to add that I had the great privilege to have been a student and friend of the great American composer, George Perle. George is the finest musician I have ever known. He not only posses AP and a truly virtuosic level of pianistic skill, he is also one of the greatest music theorists AND musicologists of the 20th Century. There is seriously nothing that George does not know in intimate detail about the classical music of the last 300 years.

When George Perle hears a piece of music, I can attest that he instantly understands the deepest relationships that exist between each and every tone in the music he is hearing. This helped him instantly spot all his stunned composition student's errors in tonal and post-tonal composition without fail.

George composes (he has won a MacArthur, a Pulitzer, written a huge amount of orchestral and chamber music) and has written nearly dozen incredible books. Did AP matter for him? Yes, totally.

In fact, a number of years ago, he complained bitterly to me that his AP was "sinking." He was hearing things transposed downward a semi-tone. It was very distressing to him. I had read in several places that as the brain ages, this is common for those with AP. I don't think he was reassured when I told him. It was just too important, and he wanted to find a way to fix it. The fact that in his mid-80s, it still really mattered to the most brilliant musician I have ever known that his AP function correctly tells me something about AP.

You know, I guess I stand corrected about, at least, a very large section of this "Debate". Your story seems to make a very string case for Perfect Pitch and I would be a fool to just outwardly dismiss it.

thank you for sharing.

[Surprise Panda!]

I love that guy playing guitar screaming and that really creepy guy playing an acoustic

[Bassamatic]

Pitch Discrimination is an inherited aptitude. You can have it is various degrees from Absolute Pitch as well described by Dr. Jim, to none at all as made very clear on American Idol auditions. These poor people REALLY cannot hear that they are off pitch!

If you have some pitch discrimination ability, it CAN be sharpened, much as you learn to play better from practice. When I started building pro audio gear back in the 70's, one of my jobs was to calibrate the tuning knobs on variable equalizers. I set various tones on a generator and then tuned the EQ and set the knob to the correct position. After doing this for a few months, I found I could identify the frequency of a tone from hearing it. This amazed me then, and still does. Some people have this VERY strongly. A renowned audio mixer once listened to our EQs and commented on the accuracy of the knobs! Wow.

I do NOT have absolute pitch, but I am probably 80% there, and the ability to RECOGNIZE a tone was improved from practice. However, my relative pitch was always there.

I have a friend with absolute pitch and it is so strong he physically cannot play on an instrument that is out of tune as what he hears doesn't match up with what he is expecting and it makes him crazy.