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Absolute pitch (my own effort)

jsa0100

jsa0100

Apr 6, 2005
188
22
Norway
#1
I have decided to try to gain absolute pitch.
I think it can be an advantage, or at least i can use it
to impress my friends.
I am not up to paying 100$+ to get a bunch of CD's.
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It simple, however i have learned to hear the difference
between A, D and F.

Is there any others out there who have trained their ear to
hear Perfect pitch ?
 
#2
Every once in a while I'll hear something in my head and pick up my bass to see if I know what pitch it is in. Sometimes I get it right. On a bad day I can be as far as possible off - a tritione away (flat 5). Oh well.

The problem with training for perfect pitch is that once you have one pitch in your head, and you know what note it is, any other pitch you hear you can figure out much faster by relative pitch, so the only time I can train for perfect pitch is on the first note I hear.

At any rate, if you can master relative pitch there's very little advantage to perfect pitch, so I'd work on your intervals if you can't already identify them just by hearing.
 
#3
Rattlehead said:
The problem with training for perfect pitch is that once you have one pitch in your head, and you know what note it is, any other pitch you hear you can figure out much faster by relative pitch, so the only time I can train for perfect pitch is on the first note I hear.

At any rate, if you can master relative pitch there's very little advantage to perfect pitch, so I'd work on your intervals if you can't already identify them just by hearing.
Click to expand...

Right. Absolute pitch is highly overrated. It presents nearly as many problems as opportunities, and can even interfere with the pragmatic functioning required of a musician in the everyday real world of relative pitch:

Absolute pitch

It's not clear whether authentic absolute (i.e. "perfect") pitch can even be learned at all...as opposed to a well-trained ear that can rapidly identify various pitches relative to a memorized reference pitch, acquired through recent experience.

Far better to focus on developing the practical skills of relative pitch, than to waste your efforts on a musical "gimmick" of very limited usefulness... :rolleyes:

MM
 
#4
There's a really good book about music and the brain by Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote "Awakenings", called "Musicophilia". There's a chapter in it about perfect pitch, and it really made me glad NOT to have perfect pitch. He talked about instances on how it could impede musical thinking greatly. For starters, it becomes a great, great chore to transpose a piece of music to a different key. A person with a good ear and good relative pitch can do this with ease, but to a person with perfect pitch, it can be anything from a nuisance to an impossibility to transpose a song from its original key. One feels like the music has "lost" something, and can't be regained unless its in its original key, and the ability to transpose is severely hindered. Interval recognition can be a huge problem too. Oliver Sacks described a person who had trouble hearing the tritone between C and F#, and only could identify it as a tritone because he knew intellectually that C to F# is a tritone. He said "the C-ness and the F#-ness pervade, you can't hear the structural interval", just the notes C and F#, and you have to force yourself to think through the intervals rather than hearing them as they are. Absolute pitch can actually hinder your structural understanding of music this way - toddlers who display perfect pitch tendencies cannot tell that the same melody played in three different keys isn't three wholly different pieces of music.

This is how I see it. Compare it to painting. A person with absolute pitch and little training in relative pitch listens to music like looking at a series of paintings like the monet cathedral studies (see below) and seeing just the vibrant colors. There's a lot of colors, and they all make sense, but there isn't any cohesion between the paintings, and it will be hard to recognize them as related. A person with more musical training will see more of the structure between the paintings, but still be mostly preoccupied with the colors. Compare this to a person with good relative pitch. They might not be able to describe the exact colors that they're looking at (certain shade of red, blue, etc, think colorblind), but they can without any problem tell that the paintings are related, and appreciate the color without forgetting that they're all cathedrals.

I personally would rather appreciate a cathedral (grander structure and relationships between notes) rather than a shade of blue (the note itself). If that made ANY sense, please, somebody, speak up.

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#5
I think relative pitch is more useful than absolute pitch. You can always play a note and then decipher the note in your head from that.

I was talking with a more experienced bassist about different things to learn, and he said perfect pitch isn't worth the effort. He put a lot of time and effort into attaining it, and now realizes it wasn't worth the investment. The benefits are limited, he said, and learning to recognize intervals is so much more useful.
 
#6
I have perfect pitch, and I'm here to tell you it's little more than a parlor trick.

Somewhere I read that Steve Vai spent 2 weeks with a metronome connected to his ear, playing A440 constantly, so that he could use it for relative pitch and be able to name notes that way. True or not, it seems that that would be much more useful.
 
#7
Perfect pitch is highly overrated. You will not be a better musician just because you have perfect pitch. It's helpful when transcribing songs, but in other senses, relative pitch is more useful.

My twinbrother (pro pianist/keyboardist) has PP. The second sentence above is his. He has problems playing on a piano or keyboard where the notes aren't the ones you press down. Old pianos are often tuned a half step lower, and if he plays one, he has to play mechanically what the muscle memory and theory tells him, as opposed to playing what he hears in his head. It's not easy for him when the C actually is a B...

Anyway, he's an awesome pianist. Most of that comes from hard work, and countless practice hours though. But still, during the last 20+ years (we're turning 30 in 3 weeks) I've never heard him playing a wrong note...
 
#9
jsa0100 said:
I have decided to try to gain absolute pitch.
I think it can be an advantage, or at least i can use it
to impress my friends.
I am not up to paying 100$+ to get a bunch of CD's.
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
It simple, however i have learned to hear the difference
between A, D and F.

Is there any others out there who have trained their ear to
hear Perfect pitch ?
Click to expand...

As a singer, I do not want perfect pitch. There are times when there is unaccompanied singing (barbershop quartets, small/large choral ensembles, etc...) Sometimes they go sharp/flat. If I had perfect pitch, such discrepancies, which I cannot completely control or fix during the actual performance as one singer out of many, would be incredibly frustrating, difficult and annoying. With relative pitch, however, I am able to deal with such fluxuations that occasionally occur in choral groups.

Lastly, I have found little need for absolute pitch, ever, in any circumstance, in any ensemble or on any instrument (or vocal) and I've done some of everything from classical, to jazz, bluegrass, and rock and so on. Relative pitch, however has been beneficial in almost EVERY musical endeavor.

Best to you.
 
#10
Me, being in band, I can pretty much instantly recognize an F's and Bb's. From there I can normally figure out what note something is. Also it helps that I know how it feels in my body when I sing a low Bb. (My lowest note. I have a really high voice. :l)

Also, I would learn how to recognize intervals. Minor thirds are easy, I just think of Smoke on the Water. Some other songs with notable intervals are Jaws (Minor Second), Maria from West Side Story (Perfect Fourth), Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Octave) and YYZ (Tritone.). There's tons of other songs, but really, just get a piano and learn intervals.
 
#11
Wow, it's funny...perfect pitch never slowed me down or hindered me or made me not be able to compensate for a capella vocals where everyone drifts a little. The only thing named off here that I've had is being annoyed at changing keys on songs and feeling like it's lost something. I got over that real quick when I started straining my voice from trying to sing too high. Otherwise I think most of what's been talked about is a lot of nonsense. At least for me. I think there's a lot of projecting in some of the theories being proposed. I've never had headaches from out of tune instruments, I've never had trouble compensating for out-of-tuneness on a capella songs, I've never had a problem telling the cathedral from the bricks, etc.

Having said that, it's little more than a parlor trick ;) Yeah, I can pick notes out of thin air, but it's no substitute for knowing theory and having skill on your instrument. You still have to know what to do with the notes when you recognize them. And relative pitch, for all intents and purposes, is as good as perfect pitch. It's definitely not better, but it's as useful as perfect pitch, and it can be learned, unlike perfect pitch. So it takes you a couple seconds to figure out the key before you can figure out the rest of the notes instantly...that's no biggie. Most bands will gladly take it.

But I'll tell you something...perfect pitch deteriorates with age. I've made mistakes recently that I would have never made ten years ago. Certain intervals have become harder for me to spot, like telling C# from D, and even E and F have become a little hard for me to differentiate at times. Oh well, at least I don't need Viagra yet.
 
#12
interesting...I can see how absolute pitch can hinder one's ability to feel comfortable in translating keys. And I really don't see much use for it.

Personally, I've been focusing more on what improving my "relative pitch"...

I can recognise 5ths and octaves easily enough (most can)...and I can also do a good job with 3rds and minor 3rds (again, most can)...but picking out 4ths, 6ths, 7ths, & 9ths can be very handy...

I do some of this instinctively, already..but to be able to recognise it for what it is so that I can communicate it to other band members can be extremely useful.
 
#14
ameshokostreet said:
to all those who say absolute pitch can hinder one's musical sense and relative is much better. is it possible for one person to possess both at the same time?
Click to expand...

Well, yes, but in a lot of cases a person with perfect pitch just would find relative pitch useless. Relative pitch is being able name notes after hearing a reference tonic by way of aural recognition of intervals. Why would a person with perfect pitch need a reference?

However, in actual musical situations, it becomes a lot more importantly to hear intervallically rather than literally. Work on your relative pitch.
 
#15
HaVIC5 said:
Well, yes, but in a lot of cases a person with perfect pitch just would find relative pitch useless. Relative pitch is being able name notes after hearing a reference tonic by way of aural recognition of intervals. Why would a person with perfect pitch need a reference?

However, in actual musical situations, it becomes a lot more importantly to hear intervallically rather than literally. Work on your relative pitch.
Click to expand...

This is probably urban legend, but one of the singers of yore (I want to say Debbie Reynolds, but that might not be right) had perfect pitch, and she said she wish she didn't. Working with bands that weren't in absolute tune (but were fine with respect to each other) gave her fits.

Is perfect pitch you're born with different than a skill you acquire? That might make a difference, but I'm talking out of ignorance, here.
 
#18
PP is somewhat common in pianists that start extensive training early, say, younger than 5 or so.

There's a good rant contrasting perfect and relative pitch, in the introduction to Bruce Arnold's ear training books. I won't be bothered to quote it here, though.
 
#19
im new in the forum, and im very happy that im learning perfect pitch, and i make some tests on line and i got them correctly, (begginers tests),
i tryied, the davis lucas PP, but he doesn't really, teach you, i believe he's a big scam! and totally waste of money. like all methods, people don't buy them!
i tryied my own method, which i simply put on my software (i have finale, don't have a instrument right now!) the note C and i was listening to it all day, for a week ( i try to memorise it), then the note D, and the same, the third week, i found my self that i can "hear" them among other notes and in tests on line i could easily recognize them.
and no , i don't have relative pitch, im 18, and i didn't had any piano training, but i discover that i have a very good opera singing voice in the age of 13, so it is my dream to become professional singer and song writer.
i write music and perfect pitch is what i need. so i put my a** down, and im learning it!
i could always remember sounds and i could always tell even if im in wrong tune, but with no money i couldn't go to a music school,so i was teaching my self alone.
it is now a month that i started learning perfect pitch and i can recognize C, D, and B. Now i put the C major scale and im listening to it, everyday, almost all day, and i have real results.
my personal opinion is that you can learn perfect pitch, it is just easier when you are in the age of 3-7, thats all.
after im gonna be in a good level, i will start with relative pitch, it is gonna be easier because when you know the notes i can learn the spaces between the notes, ex. C to F, i know recognize them and i know that that is a perfect 4.
perfect pitch is gonna make my song writting easier, because when i have a melody in my head i gonna know how to write them without searching and searching which is very fustrating, and it takes long time!
anyway im very happy, and i wish to all musician who wants to learn it to succeed! :):):):)
 
#20
I've been trying to improve my relative pitch over the last few days, and I can easily identify any interval up to a 5th, but m6, 6, m7, 7 are all giving me a lot of trouble. I can hear major 6th and 7th but when I exclude the minor 6th and 7th from the test, but as soon as I add them I only get it right maybe half the time, probably less. Does anyone have any advice on training relative pitch?
 

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