Pitch recognition

I love the drills on this site, but the one area I need the most improvement in isn't really represented: pitch recognition. Using the excellent note reading drills I've become very adept at knowing the names of notes on the staff if I see them, but I can't usually tell a note just by hearing it, which is a real shame. Is there anyway you could make a drill that plays the note without showing it on the staff, and has the person playing the drill guess what the note it?

Hi, Claire --
Other people have asked about drills for developing "perfect pitch", but so far it's not on my list.

It's a tough question, because a lot of people would like to have perfect pitch, to be able to hear a song on the radio and say "this is in G minor!", to be able to hum the starting note of a song without a pitchpipe, etc..

The trick is that perfect pitch, especially strongly-developed perfect pitch, can also cause a lot of problems, especially for vocal performers. If you're singing in an a capella group and the pitch has slipped a half-step during a 15-minute piece (which is pretty common!), you might not even be able to keep singing. Or the conductor might choose to perform the piece a whole-step up to better suit your range of voices -- you'd have to sing a D# while staring at that C# on the page.

Also, with any instrument you might want to perform in a group that *didn't* tune to A = 440 Hertz -- historically, a lot of different freqencies have been used, so for an authentic performance you might use a different tuning... but you can't retune your ear.

I usually argue for working on better relative pitch, which is generally more valuable to a musician, without the pitfalls. It's easy to carry around a tuning fork or a pitchpipe if you're going to need one. Good relative pitch means that if you're singing a C and the next note is an Ab, you just jump up a minor 6th without a problem, and you know exactly where that is. The nice thing is that it doesn't matter if you're actually performing the piece a half-step down -- you'll still be in tune with everyone else when you hit the next note.

So now that I've said all that.. do I have a drill to help you test your relative pitch? Well... not really (yeah, I know... I know...). You can work on learning your intervals using the Interval interactive exercise. And I do have more drills for aural training like this on my to-do list.

I might eventually add a perfect pitch drill (because some people perform a lot of 12-tone music, or are hobby-only musicians who want a good party trick, etc.), with a warning, but it's not on the list right now.

Thanks for the feedback!
-Rob

Hi,

Developing Perfect Pitch is just like Recognizing intervals. It is its "opposite."

What you'll need to listen for is oscillations. That is the key word. A note takes about 10 seconds to hear the whole thing!

Without RP, you cannot have AP and VICE VERSA!

Please feel free to email me if you'd like to know more about developing both of these two LEARNABLE SKILLS.

Best,

Dean Wegweiser

deanwegweiser@gmail.com

By the way.... I'm not selling anything. I'm a college student eager to share information with others and eager to hear of your success in developing a musical skill that I believe has been lost since the time of Mozart.

Hi, Dean -
Can you share more on how you've found perfect pitch to be useful, and/or problematic?

Perfect pitch hasn't been lost since Mozart, at any rate; there is always a certain percentage of musicians who develop perfect pitch without any special training. My wife, for instance, can recognize any key on a piano by ear (and sometimes hum a note by imagining what the correct key would sound like, than matching it). This skill just developed on its own through years of piano studies.

It's not always a good thing, though -- there were two people with natural perfect pitch in my college choir, and they'd tend to have a harder time than the rest of us when the pitch drifted accidentally, or when the conductor chose to perform the piece down a half-step, for example (to better fit our ranges). One of the people sometimes had to drop out entirely when the pitch was off. The rest of us (finding notes by relative pitch, and listening to the rest of the group) were fine.

On the other hand, of course, it helps quite a lot with atonal pieces; what do you use it for?

I do believe if you had a developed relative pitch these so-called "problems" would be a lot easier to deal with. just in my humble opinion. I can recognize tones by ear and if you won't be to A. either get out of tune with you I can certainly flatten or sharpen on a whim and B.if you want me to be transpose my voice a minor third sixth etc. from what's on the sheet or in mind as long as I don't have any other problems I don't see why I <i>shouldn't</i> be able to do this. I don't cringe if you sing off key. I just sing off key or transposed with you. It's not that hard. people with relative pitch can do it. ;) well I can too. cause I have RP also.

don't disregard perfect pitch for this reason it's certainly a better asset than not.
and you should make an exercise. Are you telling me a skill like it should not at least tried to be practiced because you think it has drawbacks? yes I have PP poor me. ; ) you should add an exercise especially if there's a demand. maybe you should ask people who've developed perfect pitch and then if they had relative pitch before it(which they'll obviously need alongside) if they'd rather have it then not. those above singers should have developed their perfect pitch before I from my position just can't see why they should have any problems from my position of having developed
relative and perfect pitch through experience.

Hi there.

I've been hearing alot about perfect pitch resently. How do you know if someone has it, if they haven't had any previous musical backround?

I have a friend who I think might have it. She doesn't actually know the names of notes, but she an certiantly tell if a note is off and reproduce a note easily. She also has a pretty good memory for tunes...sometimes she only has to listen to something once to be able to hum it a day later! We used to sing in a little choir, and she would sometimes have problems singing with everyone else like people have mentioned.

Haha, I'm sure she'd love it if she was. She wants to learn the flute, so if she knew she had perfect pitch it would definatly motivate her!

Thank you!

RIchard Lee Esquivel Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I do believe if you had a developed relative pitch
> these so-called "problems" would be a lot easier
> to deal with. just in my humble opinion.

Hi, Richard --
They weren't problems that I had -- I don't have perfect pitch (though my tone memory has improved bit by bit over the years). They were problems people had due possibly to having perfect pitch *without* developing solid relative pitch first.

> I don't cringe if you sing off key. I just sing off
> key or transposed with you. It's not that hard.
> people with relative pitch can do it. well I can
> too. cause I have RP also.

Right -- if you have good RP, then adding PP will be helpful. PP without RP and other basic music theory skills isn't necessarily so helpful.

> don't disregard perfect pitch for this reason
> it's certainly a better asset than not.
> and you should make an exercise. Are you telling
> me a skill like it should not at least tried to be
> practiced because you think it has drawbacks?

Perfect pitch isn't really central to a good music theory education. PP won't help you understand what's going on in the music in any way, and if you use it *instead* of relative pitch to manage sight-singing, dictation, etc., you are just causing yourself trouble.

I'm not saying it's never useful (and it can be very useful for some performers), and I'm not saying it isn't helping you -- I'm just saying there are far more useful drills that I can offer a student of basic music theory that I still haven't yet built.

> yes
> I have PP poor me. ; ) you should add an exercise
> especially if there's a demand.

Once I have better coverage of the basic music theory skillset, I will reconsider it, but for students trying to analyse scores and so it it's not much use (and like I mentioned before, it can make developing your relative pitch more difficult).

> maybe you should
> ask people who've developed perfect pitch and then
> if they had relative pitch before it(which they'll
> obviously need alongside) if they'd rather have it
> then not.

These people probably *are* glad they have it, and find it useful. However, my main users are students of basic music theory -- not active performers who mastered relative pitch skills long ago. I'm trying to help people learning to read and understand key signatures, inversions, scales, clefs, scores, etc.

There are also tons of people out there who read about a famous musician with perfect pitch -- and think that they, too, could be great if they had that skill... so that's what they *start* with. There are some pretty pricey programs available online that take advantage of this confusion. If I do eventually make a drill for PP, I'll have to put big notices around it to counter this hype.

Does this make sense?
Thanks for the discussion,
Rob

Natasha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have a friend who I think might have it. She
> doesn't actually know the names of notes, but she
> an certiantly tell if a note is off and reproduce
> a note easily. She also has a pretty good memory
> for tunes...sometimes she only has to listen to
> something once to be able to hum it a day later!

This sounds like she does naturally have pretty good pitch memory and/or a good ear. That's good -- it does make learning an instrument easier (though have a really good memory for melodies can make learning to sight-read trickier -- you read through a piece once and you already know it, so you're "cheating" on your reading!)

> We used to sing in a little choir, and she would
> sometimes have problems singing with everyone else
> like people have mentioned.

I tend to think this would just be the sort of trouble any novice musician will run into singing in a group, but it's hard to say.

> Haha, I'm sure she'd love it if she was. She
> wants to learn the flute, so if she knew she had
> perfect pitch it would definatly motivate her!

A good musical memory and a good ear for pitch are a help to any musician -- I think that would definitely help her out!

-Rob

"Perfect pitch hasn't been lost since Mozart, at any rate; there is always a certain percentage of musicians who develop perfect pitch without any special training. My wife, for instance, can recognize any key on a piano by ear (and sometimes hum a note by imagining what the correct key would sound like, than matching it). This skill just developed on its own through years of piano studies. "

Hello,

This is more common then most people think. However it normally isn't actually perfect pitch listening or hearing. It is an adult-learnt attempt at recognise pitch by quantifying how high or low a note is.

Try and mentally work out and then sing a 'C'. You wont probably be right, but the point is why did you sing that 'c' where you did? Because you probably know that a C is roughly 'so' high and so you make an educated guess based on how high the note is.

Perfect pitch isn't this. It is hearing the actual universal timbre of each note.

The ways to test which it is, height based or characteristic based are simple:

1. Play a random chord of at least 5 notes and have them name them all.
2. Play a short piece of music and have them name the key, chords and as many of the notes in order as they can remember... Height based pitch identifying is normally hugely confused when the tones aren't isolated because the relative pitch habits kick in and take over.
3. Hum a random sound into a electronic tuner, observe the result and then ask them to name the tone and if it was sharp or flat and by how much.

Food for thought.
This however isn't to say perfect pitch can't be taught/learnt - which i strongly believe it can. It is simply to say that most adults who have seemingly developed perfect pitch have done it by quantifying and narrowing in on the 'area' or region a tone is located in.

Perfect Pitch on the other hand is simply recognising and descriminate the natural quality of a sound/tone/note and being able to identify it in some way...

Chris

I do not have perfect pitch. Let me say that. However, I have made it my center of study and research, and also, somewhat of an obsession. Perfect pitch is learned by soliciting musical notes from others, which babies and young children certainly do, since they are so observant. When they are exposed not to music, but to musicianSHIP, their ears become attune to this, developing perfect pitch. Later, they do not develop the sense of relativity that everyone else hears when they listen to music. They still hear a jumble of musical notes. This is why, they cannot easily sing with a capella groups, because they would have to calculate every new interval, which is not easy for them. When we transpose sheet music on paper, we look at the distance between the tones to find the desired note. When you have perfect pitch, you must do this mentally to every note. They may, however conform to new keys of songs after listening to them, and this would be much less difficult than mentally recalculating it all, note by note. If you have specific questions, ask me on here, or e-mail me!
-Sam

Hey there

you said:
Please feel free to email me if you'd like to know
> more about developing both of these two LEARNABLE
> SKILLS.

I'd like to know more about developing both of these two LEARNABLE SKILLS!!!
lol

Let me know what info you have that would be helpful.

Thanks
Duncan

You may check out my free ebook, it maybe helpful to you!
[lala-land.net]

This is bullshit.

I have jammed with the Stones, Buddy Holly's guitar player, been in the hottest roots country band in Austin Texas for years and years, and I want to say right straight up that 'sightreading' causes musical brain damage, and if you believe that crap you put out, you need to eat @#$%& or die.

www.naturalearmusic.com

I know what I'm doing, you must have gone to school and wasted yer momma's money.

Absolute vs. Relative Pitch Recognition

Absolute Pitch Recognition (APR): The ability to correctly identify or reproduce the name of a pitch without using an external pitch reference.

Relative Pitch Recognition (RPR): The ability, without using an external pitch reference, to recognize pitch relationships and tonal contexts independently of specific note names; the ability, given a reference pitch, to recognize and identify all other pitches by their positions and names within the same tonal context.

_APR is an attribute not necessarily associated with musical talent._

Although there are certainly occurrences of APR among successful musicians, there are by far many more eminently successful musicians who do not have APR. There are many cases of APR occurring in individuals who show no musical aptitude whatsoever, and who have clinically demonstrated that they are musically untrainable.

Musically talented individuals who have APR sometimes attribute much of their facility to having this trait. In fact, it may well not occur to these musicians that, over the course of their musical development, they would necessarily have developed the skill of Relative Pitch Recognition anyway — a musical skill different from, but running parallel to their physiological APR ability. One is superimposed on the other, and it seems it would be natural to attribute one's musical hearing skills to the more conspicuous APR than to RPR.


While it is true that a non-musical individual having APR needs no pitch reference to tell you that some sound happens to be the note G, he has no concept of that note's position within a key or chord—in short, he cannot appreciate the value of the note G in a musical context. This non-musical person can name individual pitches in the same way you can name colors, but he has no sense of how they interrelate to form tonal organization.

Of the two aptitudes, RPR is the one that is essential to the musician, whereas APR is "frosting on the cake"—and sometimes an inconvenient frosting in certain situations, as reported by those having APR.

Here's a link on perfect pitch that might be helpful:
[www.straightdope.com]

Rob