Perfect Pitch Advertisement
Kareem du Gristle
Have any of you musicians seen the add for a package that will
teach you Perfect Pitch. The kit includes a book and some tapes
and guarantees that you will acheive perfect pitch. It sells for
$85.00
Has anyone tried this? Does it work? Whats the catch? Whats the secret?
gristle
Stephen D Hawley
I have seen these, but am not really intrigued.
I had a theory teacher (supposedly who wrote the Merry Melodies theme, but
that's another story), who talked about perfect pitch one day. He said that
it was really nonsense for the most part, and if you wanted perfect pitch,
you should go to a piano every morning and hum an A (for example), then play
an A and correct yourself. Repeat until you don't make mistakes anymore.
Then develop relative pitch with regular ear training exercises.
He claims it works.
Steve Hawley
s...@flash.bellcore.com
A noun's a special kind of word.
It's ev'ry name you ever heard.
I find it quite interesting,
A noun's a person place or thing.
Dave M. Owczarek
writes:
>
>I had a theory teacher (supposedly who wrote the Merry Melodies theme, but
>that's another story), who talked about perfect pitch one day. He said that
>it was really nonsense for the most part, and if you wanted perfect pitch,
>you should go to a piano every morning and hum an A (for example), then play
>an A and correct yourself. Repeat until you don't make mistakes anymore.
>Then develop relative pitch with regular ear training exercises.
>
>He claims it works.
>
>Steve Hawley
I have been playing guitar for 14 years, and have been into popular music for
most of those 14 years. A few weeks ago, I changed strings on my guitar, and
tuned it by ear just for the hell of it. I had not be listening to any music
for several hours, and my guitar was in almost perfect concert pitch. I am
inclined to agree that with practice and experience, you can aquire "perfect
pitch". Whether or not I would practice just to get perfect pitch is another
story. :-)
--
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Dave Owczarek, Operations Staff George Washington University
da...@gwu.seas.edu Engineering Computing Facility
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Kevin Johnson
>In article <20...@bellcore.bellcore.com> s...@flash.UUCP (Stephen D Hawley)
>writes:
>>I had a theory teacher (supposedly who wrote the Merry Melodies theme, but
>>that's another story), who talked about perfect pitch one day. He said that
>>it was really nonsense for the most part, and if you wanted perfect pitch,
>>you should go to a piano every morning and hum an A (for example), then play
>>an A and correct yourself. Repeat until you don't make mistakes anymore.
>>Then develop relative pitch with regular ear training exercises.
>>He claims it works.
>most of those 14 years. A few weeks ago, I changed strings on my guitar, and
>tuned it by ear just for the hell of it. I had not be listening to any music
>for several hours, and my guitar was in almost perfect concert pitch. I am
>inclined to agree that with practice and experience, you can aquire "perfect
>pitch". Whether or not I would practice just to get perfect pitch is another
>story. :-)
I concur. In school, I found that I could tune my Double Bass for
warming up and seldom needed to adjust it when the oboe gave the
reference pitch at the start of rehearsal. To carry this even further,
several other people had developed this skill. We could, pretty faithfully
detect if the oboe player was correct :-| Also, I have noticed that on the
double bass the vibration of the instrument is good tool to help tune the
puppy. Each note on an acoustic instrument vibrates the resonating body
in a distinct manner. In one particular rehearsal hall in a particular
season of the year, I found I could 'feel' if the instrument was still
in tune in the middle of particularly bombastic Symphonies and Overtures.
As an aside, I had to stay away from my cheap record player after
rehearsals (no fine-patch adj.) :-)
Also, for an interesting story about ear training check out a book
about Charles Ives...
Robert Tillman
If they use the tape as a pitch reference, I pity the fool whose
cassette deck tape speed is off by a few percent...
- Bob Tillman
r...@lexicon.com
...!harvard!spdcc!lexicon!rt
Mark Turner
damn close by ear. I'm sure that's true of most frequent players. But
that doesn't constitute "perfect pitch." It just means you can tune a
guitar. But can you tune a fish? :-}
But seriously, I don't know anything about those ads you've been seeing,
but if you have a Macintosh, I strongly recommend you buy a program
called Listen, by Resonate. It's an interactive ear training program
that really works. It plays a note (and shows you the note on a music
staff if you want), then you decide what note was played. It shows
both a keyboard and a fretboard, and you use the mouse or a MIDI device
to pick the correct note. It also does chords, scales, melodies, and
lots of other things that I haven't tried. Really cool. And at about
$70, it's cheaper than those tapes.
mark
Dallas J. Hodgson
Seminar from American Music Publications. I purchased his course some time
ago and find it interesting. Supposedly some music college back East has
incorporated his stuff into their standard music curriculum and independently
verified the results.
The complete set consists of four tapes and a short (50 pp or so) booklet
entitled "Perfect Pitch." This is in contrast to his Relative Pitch seminar,
which is 20 tapes long, lots and lots of information & is essentially a
complete college ear training education in one package.
The perception of Perfect Pitch does not involve "memorizing" any pitch
as your teacher suggested. It's simply not possible. Vocalists can "cheat"
to a small degree by guestimating pitches based on the tension in their
vocal cords, but this is not real Perfect Pitch.
I had a limited degree of Perfect Pitch prior to reading the seminar; as
with many other string players, I could recognize the pitches of open
strings on the guitar and many harmonics, but that was it. From those
pitches, I could interpolate others by using Relative Pitch.
Burge's training basically says that every tone in the 12-tone Western
chromatic scale has a unique "color", or "flavor" which unique to itself.
This tone color is on the very threshold of perception to the undeveloped
ear, and requires careful, relaxed practice to train the ear to be
aware of it. In essence, recognizing 440HZ as an "A" is not accomplished by
memorizing the "A", but recognizing the "tone color" that A has and thereby
naming the note. According to Burge, F# and Eb have the most distinct colors,
and he uses these for all the early drills.
Many musicians have this ability to some degree on a subconscious level,
but can't really explain "why" they can recognize a pitch for what it is.
David goes into extreme depth explaining the relative intangibility and
subtlety of Perfect Pitch perception, which is why it has been so easily
overlook as a skill that can be learned.
I can't guarantee whether what Burge teaches is effective or not, as I have
not put the time or dedication into applying his methods. However, I do think
he is on to something.
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