Hey players. I have always been impressed and fascinated with musicians who were born with perfect or absolute pitch. Our music teacher in jr high had it, several of my own piano teachers had the "gift" and we know jazz pianists Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson and Mike Garson also were born with it.

But what I wanted to know if any players here that weren't born with perfect/absolute pitch have been able to find a way to learn it on their own? There are a few methods available that offer home study courses that claim if you go through the program you can acquire perfect pitch. Has anyone tried these courses and if so, did you get positive results?

What I have done is work on memorizing middle C on the piano, then go up a 6th to A 440 and internalize the sound of C and A. Although this is not perfect pitch and I cannot identify the various notes played randomly on the keyboard, I am trying to get to a point of identifying a note by hearing it and knowing exactly what it is. I have good relative pitch by hearing with a starting note and then recalling and internalizing the tone.

I have a way to go, but I'm always trying to improve my ear by transcribing songs, jazz, pop and rock from records. I personally had 3-4 piano students who told me they had perfect pitch and we did the "blindfold" test at the keyboard and sure enough they passed the test "perfectly." No mistakes or doubt of any tone ever! Fascinating, to the max.

Anyway, please post your experience if you had any success learning accurate perfect pitch and what techniques helped you get there.

Thanks katt

I knew people who had perfect pitch. I guess if anything that didn't necessary translate to being a good player. They still need to practice like most of us.

The ability to play by ear (hearing what's in your head and be able to play) may be an important factor, but there are many other factors that contributes to one becoming a good player. I am guessing most good players have strong relative pitch witch they developed through stuff like transcriptions.

I remember Bill Evans talked about how talented people may have disadvantage because things come very easy to them and they never had to work too hard to get things right. He talks about how these people end up hitting a wall(when they find something challenging) and not having the ability to overcome it. Bill also talks about how his talent was modest at best, and he was able to improve because he had a very focused and meticulous approach to practicing and practiced diligently.

I went through that same thought process before, and came to two main conclusions:

1) It's not clear there is any advantage to having perfect pitch. There are pros and cons to it, but in any case, it is clear that having it does not guarantee anything. Serious academics believe that it cannot be learned past the age of 3-5 years old, as I recall. (On the other hand, if that Keith Jarrett guy has perfect pitch, I don't want it ).

2) Be careful when you do a web search about these products, as you will undoubtedly run into "independent" reviews, who lo and behold point you to the same guy you are considering! That is, the same guy who is trying to sell you something has set up 10's of web sites claiming to be helpful reviews, etc.

Yes, some people who aren't musicians have perfect pitch. And musicians with PP still have to do their homework if they want to develop as trained players.

I read some reviews about various PP courses and the one that gets the highest rating is this one http://www.perfectpitch.com/

The course claims it gets results and people who have taken it have reported success. I am still doing research about it.

Of course many successful musicians don't have perfect pitch, but they still did ear training to develop relative pitch which we have all have done.

If anyone here got one of the PP courses, did you get successful results? Please report back

katt

Check out the book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain By Oliver Sacks - lots of interesting stuff about perfect pitch, tone deafness, rhythm defness, musicians, never been musicians and life-changing events.

good points - I'd also add that there is no such thing like perfect "perfect pitch", it may vary half tone here and there depending on weather, health condition etc.

One important thing to understand most of us use ears in wrong way once we grew up and then it's VERY difficult to unlearn this but it is doable. I doubt if it's very usable in music though unless you're director of big orchestra. I personally acquired or already had so called color hearing (Synaesthesia) which is less precise then the perfect pitch but it's more useful in music since art is not precise anyway...

<<There are a few methods available that offer home study courses that claim if you go through the program you can acquire perfect pitch. Has anyone tried these courses and if so, did you get positive results?>>

I'm just an ABF'er but about 18 months ago I spent around 15-30 mins a day for several months working my way through the PitchPaths
scheme.

I picked this one because: a) It was cheap ($22.99), b) the demo was simple.

It associates a well known tune or phrase with each particular pitch. Eventually you just know what a pitch is without the tune.

The course is in several levels, the pass-mark required/gateway between levels for each is 100%.

Whilst I ought to repeat the course, I've had a lot of fun since playing songs ear, copying solos recognising chord voicings, and so forth. None of which I could really do before and much of which wasn't specifically covered in the course (whose focus is a single octave).

There also seems to be a body of academic literature around absolute pitch which indicates there is much latent ability in the majority of the population and that skills can be acquired or improved in this regard.

One important thing to understand most of us use ears in wrong way once we grew up and then it's VERY difficult to unlearn this but it is doable. I doubt if it's very usable in music though unless you're director of big orchestra. I personally acquired or already had so called color hearing (Synaesthesia) which is less precise then the perfect pitch but it's more useful in music since art is not precise anyway...

[/quote]

Hey. You mentioned color hearing and David Burg's course explains that each tone is like a shade of color. This is beyond my understanding of how to compare colors to identify tones. How did you develop your pitch skills (Synaesthesia?

Thanks katt

Katt,
I guess it's different for everybody and what I read many have that ability but doesn't know it. It has not much to do with real colors although can give that impression. I discovered it playing completely in the dark. I have always
envied blind musicians to have so excellent hearing so I figured I'd be practicing like them, in the dark or with my eyes closed. I was amazed with results.

I think perfect pitch is overrated. Great if you were born with it but not necessary to becoming a good musician. I don't have it, tried some exercises to see if I could develop it, had very minimal success. Relative pitch however I find much more important, and also to be able to hear chords, major, minor, dominant, altered. Clusters of notes that produce a sound you can associate with.

Even those with perfect pitch say it's not always constant. The jazz bassist Christian McBride said, "some days I have it, some days I don't..."

It'd be nice if he'd apply some of that 'perfect pitch' to his singing/humming/vocalising It sounds perfectly like an injured animal.

(I'm teasing - I think Jarrett is absolutely fantastic. Aside from those weird noises.)

And his weird social skills, and other idiosyncrasies.

Keith Jarrett is one of my most respected jazz pianists and I listen to his CDs that I have constantly. But I do have to say, his background 'singing" gets a bit zippy. I first became aware of it being more than obvious on his first solo album Facing You.

I think I read that recording engineers try to eliminate it from the mix. But then again, there is background "singing" heard on some Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson recordings, just not as obvious as on J records.

katt

One piano player I know with perfect pitch has told me he considers it somewhat of a curse. Because of the condition of most of the pianos he encounters at gigs. Even if they start out in tune, they often don't stay that way.

My wife, who does not have perfect pitch, can still figure out just about anything by ear. Only catch is she has to sit down at the piano to do it and it might take a while if its complex and she has to work it out a phrase at a time. Having some sheet music to read, even if its a simplified fake book arrangement, really speeds it up for her. She says she finds understanding the chord structure as important as careful listening and good relative pitch.

Howard

The ability of perfect pitch is vastly overrated, in my opinion.

I can play by ear, but I often struggle with finding the opening note. But I can play a lot of simple pieces simply by ear, recently I sat down with my Elder Scrolls Oblivion soundtrack and played through some of the majestic music in that game, but it was really simple one hand only playing.

Is the ability to sing (or whistle) a song from memory, down to the correct melody and pitch with little effort related to having perfect pitch? After all, you are able to reproduce the same notes on your own using your own sound system!

No. Only those who are gifted with perfect pitch can sing/whistle the song perfectly in the correct key without a starting pitch being given.

Those with a good ear for relative pitch, can guess at the starting pitch and get all the steps and intervals right, relative to the starting pitch.

I will probably have to test myself again ... I know I can sing any song I like from first attempt in the correct key without any trouble, and have done that since I was a child, but I'm also sure that doing a piano test for perfect pitch leads to a resounding failure, go figure!

yes, pretty much that's all about.

I am not sure about the part about whistling along a song being a proof of perfect pitch. I can do it perfectly fine. I just can't find the same note on the piano. I have good relative pitch. As soon as I find the right pitch on the piano I can easily replicate a phrase I hear.

Does that still mean I have perfect pitch?

If anyone sings me a note I can often go straight to the key. But this is after practicing for a long time. I really enjoy working out songs by ear and can usually get it down in minutes. More complex passages need repeat listening many times of course.

I know all my scales and chords so I do not think this is intuitive but rather as you say acquired. Neither is it absolute all the time but rather 8 or 9 times out of ten. I also see the notes and visualise the keys after hearing too. I can also pretty much recognise many chords by sound such as sevenths, fifths, thirds, octave triads et al, so what? (also, "so what" chords

That's the standard definition, yes.

But there's something else going on here.

We observe that there are a great many people who cannot identify any given note played to them, and cannot produce any given note from a score, etc. By any definition they do not appear to have "perfect pitch." They cannot sing a C, nor can they identify C if you play it for them.

Yet these same people will sing a popular tune in the key it was recorded in, consistently. My wife is one of the, my kids are both very close.

I don't claim to understand the process.

Sorry if I break your illusions but to be able to remember a tune in the correct key doesn't mean you have perfect pitch. In fact most people can do that or at least be very close (within a semitone). If you don't believe read that study from daniel Levitin: http://cogprints.org/643/0/pitch.HTM

Now I don't deny the fact that some may be better than others at this skill but that remains a common skill.

I've been able to remember songs in their original keys here and there in the past also. My relative pitch is also good enough to be able to find a given note, if I start off right. So I can kinda fake it sometimes, but I still don't consider myself to have perfect pitch.

We had a kid (maybe 12 years old?) in one of my college theory classes that had real, live perfect pitch (he was related to one of the profs in the department). When the teacher would sing an example, he'd occasionally correct her ("actually, that's not an E, that's a B flat..."). It seemed to be instantaneous for him -- no extra processing necessary. These folks seem to hear notes like we see colors... a note sounds "C" or "D" to them, just like a color looks green or yellow to us. Pretty wild.