Perfect Pitch

[Funkonaut]

http://www.perfectpitch.com/

 

Has anyone tried this method?

And how does it work (if it does)?

 

Thanks!

[Tim C]

i know someone who had the old perfect pitch courses on casette and he said that it was really good for ear training. I imagine the new version works just as well if not better.

[way2fat]

Perfect pitch is when you throw a banjo in the dumpster and it lands on an accordion.

[Eric VB]

Hmm ... I seem to remember seeing this come up here before.

 

I remember just reading the description in the magazine article helped me a bit. Pick a song you've heard so many times that it's so deeply imprinted in your brain that you call precisely recall it. If you know what the pitches are, you now have a reference sound to go with them.

 

For example, "Smoke on the Water". That's been pretty well beat into us older classic rockers. It starts in G, but you should also be able to pick out the Bb, C, Db, and with the chorus, Ab and F.

 

[Anecdotely, my wife was making a video for her h.s. class reunion. One of the cheerleaders was recalling how the marching band used to play that exact song. She did her little routine and vocalized the music almost note-for-note and beat-for-beat with the original Deep Purple recording!]

 

You don't have to use rock songs. "Happy Birthday" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" work just as well.

 

Go ahead and give it a try. Record yourself vocalizing the pitches for a song you're really familiar with and see how close you came.

 

[so, really, it's not "perfect" pitch; it's still relative. You just have a handful of reference pitches readily available in your head.]

 

Now, since they gave all that away in the ad, I assume there's more to it than that. But I found just this bit to be useful.

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog". E (open), E (open)G, Ab, B, E (octave). If I'm off by as much as a quarter of a note, it sounds like pure crap to my ear.

[Dave Brown]

Originally posted by way2fat:

Perfect pitch is when you throw a banjo in the dumpster and it lands on an accordion.

Nope.

 

It's "throw the fiddle in the toilet; nothin' but splash."

[PhilMan99]

Not quite sure what you're after by "perfect pitch". I've heard it described as meaning:

* Being perfectly in-tune with A-440

* Being able to identify a note, and call it by "name" (C3, B5, C#4, etc.)

* Having *really* good intonation

 

Anyway, "Band-in-a-box" comes with some ear-training tools, in addition to lots of "toys" for general practice. Right now, I'm kind of fond of having it generate "chord charts" for me to practice with to better know where the notes are on the fretboard without having to think so hard. With a decent sound-card (and SoundFonts), it provides a pretty good "toy" to jam with when nobody is around.

 

Here's the URL for BIAB: http://www.pgmusic.com/

[jeremy c]

If the system worked, they wouldn't have to have the big glossy ads in every music magazine. It would sell itself.

 

I listened to some of the tapes. I didn't get anything out of them.