Tag Archives: absolute pitch

Want to play it? Hear it first!

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It may sound like a contradiction, but if you want to create music when you play you must be able to hear the music first – in your head. This goes doubly if you want to improvise, compose or play by ear!

Ever noticed how great jazz improvisers often sing along with their own solo? Or how rock guitarists’ mouths move as if they’re singing out each note they play? These players know exactly what sounds their instruments will make before they move their fingers to make it happen. It’s no coincidence that this is a habit shared by many of the greats!

But, you may be thinking, I play from sheet music – what does it matter if I can hear it in my head or not? It makes all the difference in the world! Yes, you may hit the right notes at the right time – so does an old pianola machine! But the pianola won’t play with expression, feeling or freedom… and I can guarantee it’s not enjoying itself!

Hearing what you’ll play consists of two parts:

  1. Hear internally what you want to play
  2. Know how to bring those sounds out into the world

Let’s look at those two in more detail.

1. Hear internally what you want to play

This is what experts refer to as ‘auralising’, and it has many different aspects. The simplest is probably to make up a tune in your head. If you’ve spent any time playing music, this won’t pose you any problem. To auralise more complex music requires a more sophisticated ear.

Everyone knows the classic story of Mozart as a child, writing down an entire 8-part choral piece after hearing it performed once. For most of us, it’s more likely we’ll be able to manage short arrangements of 2-4 voice harmony, or a melody with supporting chords – and even those will take some practice!

The better you can create (or recreate) music in your head, the more musical power you have at your fingertips when it comes to playing, improvising or writing music.

2. Bring out those sounds on your instrument

This second part will be harder for most people. Forming the connection between what you hear in your head, and the notes on the page or controls on your instrument takes a lot of practice.

The most effective way to do this is with an intermediate stage – rather than go directly from your imagination to your manuscript paper or instrument, figure out what you’re hearing in your head in terms of theory, and know how to bring that theory out on your instrument. For example, instead of trying to play the chords you hear in your head directly on guitar, you understand that the chord progression you’re playing, and you know how to play chords in that progression on your guitar.

Train your ears to bring life to your playing

The way to build up both of these skills is to train your ears. Of course, when we do ‘ear training’, we’re training our brains more than our ears! By learning to recognise the concepts underlying the sounds we hear (such as notes, intervals, and chords) we increase the power of our musical imagination (step 1) and take a large step towards recreating those sounds on our instrument (step 2).

Like ‘music theory’, the phrase ‘ear training’ can be a big turn-off for people. For hundreds of years, ear training has been a fairly slow, and often boring process. And sitting at a piano, banging out notes again and again and trying to improve your listening skills has never been as fun as picking up your instrument to play real music!

Fortunately we live in an age of incredible technological innovation, and we’re beginning to see this impact ear training in a big way. There are computer programs and apps for your phone to lead you through the training process and personalise the course to suit your needs. There are online lessons and video tutorials. There are powerful music creation tools which can be used to help you train in interesting and fun ways. You can train wherever you are, whenever you have a few minutes to spare, and enjoy yourself along the way.

Over at EasyEarTraining.com we’re exploring the new ways to train your ears and get more out of music. Here’s a few ideas to get started with:

Don’t waste any more time!

Instead of practicing scales for the thousandth time, or learning a new piece by rote, take a bit of time to explore what ear training can bring to your musical life and the exciting new ways there are to open up your ears using the technology all around you every day!

Perfect Pitch

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The ability to identify or replicate a certain tone without the need to refer to an external source is commonly labeled as perfect pitch or absolute pitch (AP). For an excellent course on learning perfect pitch, check out this perfect pitch user review.

It can be done verbally or through other codes like sensorimotor responses or auditory imagery. What this means is that without the need for a musical code, a musician from an auditory tradition is capable of demonstrating absolute pitch. A number of persons are capable of demonstrating both absolute and relative pitch. The two factors are both important when attempting to study and listen to music. Still, there are those who lean towards different strategies to hone those skills.

Note that absolute pitch is not unconditional, meaning, the quality can be shown in varying degree. There are those who can name a specific pitch played on an instrument (A, G#, Gm). Other abilities identifying a perfect pitch include:

· Identifying tones of a chord or a tonal mass

· Sing a given pitch without resorting to an external source for reference.

· Identify and name the common noises heard everyday

· Without the need for an external reference, can name a key of a tone just by hearing the sound

Evidence shows that most absolute listeners were able to identify the C-major tone without any problem and more quickly compared to the other five “black key tones” except for B. A research performed by Dutch non-musicians have reached the conclusion that most people are more inclined to use the C-major during an ordinary speech, more prominently on syllables that speak of emphasis.

However, contrary to what some people may believe, an absolute pitch is not necessary for people to develop exceptional talent in the field of music. Although musicians and composers disagree in the importance of absolute pitch to overall musical quality, the fact is, history has been unable to prove whether notable musicians and composers possess absolute pitch or not. During the Baroque and Classical eras, Mozart is the only one thought of to have perfect pitch as supported by historical evidence. It was said that the famous musician developed the talent when he was 3 years old. An absolute pitch is also attributed to Beethoven since he can still produce high quality music even after losing his hearing.

At six years of age, Nicolas Slonimsky was hailed to have perfect pitch, leading his aunt – Isabelle Vengerova – to give him music lessons. Growing up to become a jazz pianist, Keith Jarrett’s perfect pitch was discovered by his parents when he was only three years old.

The ability to transpose is also believed to be influenced by absolute pitch with musicians more concerned with a specific note rather than the characteristics shown by the notation.

For some people, cultural exposure is one of the factors affecting a person’s absolute pitch.

One example of this is the European society which has produced very little individuals with absolute pitch, so much so that musicians who claim to possess the ability are initially doubted.