Asheville Music Lessons

A lot of times you hear the term Perfect Pitch. It’s usually meant to refer to someone who can simply pick out any note they hear and name it, or “just know” what was just played. It’s said that perfect pitch can’t be learned, you’re either born with it or not. I don’t know for certain about that, after all the names we assign pitches are arbitrary. Yes, there’s a bit of math involved in the way we see a “C” relating to a “G”, but realistically who is to say that 440Hz is an A (long story, but that has not always been constant.)

I think that there are two things involved with stories of “perfect pitch”. The first is a very good memory. I’ve noticed over the years that C is a very easy key to recognize when I listen to my students. I can sometimes tell without looking that they’re not starting on C, even without hearing other notes. I’ve just heard Middle C enough that I can tell when they’re off. This is not due to great memory, but great repetition. I had a Professor in College with great pitch recognition. He could transcribe melodies and could tell you what chords he heard. He also “tuned” himself every morning by playing a C at the piano. We talked about him having Perfect Pitch, but I suspect that it was really the combination of a good memory and great Relative Pitch.

So, what is Relative Pitch? Relative pitch is being able to recognize intervals. Think about the melody to the bridal March “Here Comes the Bride”… The interval between Here and Comes is a Perfect 4th. (For example, C up to F.) If you know all of your intervals very well and can recognize different chord qualities you can do quite well at transcribing melodies as long as you know what key things are starting in. That’s where the good memory comes into play.

So, if you’ve got a good memory or a good way of remember which pitch is which, and good relative pitch, then you should be able to develop something LIKE perfect pitch.

I’ve seen the Pure Pitch method advertised quite a bit and having what I consider pretty good relative pitch and only about a whole step “drift” in my guess at singing a middle C, I’ve been interested to try. The program costs about $97 and they say you can Name Any Note Or Chord By Ear! Visit Pure Pitch Method To Learn More!

I haven’t been in a situation too often though where I just had $97 burning a hole in my pocket and it could well be a waste of money, but I’ve read a good bit of detail about it (and they have a low return rate from what I’ve seen.)

In the meantime, I’ve been working on relative pitch and trying to make that better.

For that I HIGHLY recommend GNU Solfege – it’s a great free program that’s available for linux, or windows. It can help you work on your interval recognition and has some fairly sophisticated chord training. (More than just Major, Minor, Augmented and Diminished Triads.) If you want really advanced ear training, or something for a beginner you can find both ends of the spectrum and most everything between in this fantastic FREE (in both senses of the word – no charge and open source) application.

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