importance of relative pitch

[will landstrom]

Hey there, Just wondering about something. I would assume most musicians understand how important it is to have a keen sense of relative pitch (absolute pitch is cool but not really necessary). Here is my question I would be curious to get some (hopefully serious) feedback on. How important do you think it is to "maintain/nurture" one's sense of relative pitch? In other words, once you have good relative pitch - however that was developed - via transcribing records, some formal ear-training, just had it naturally, whatever, do you think there is value in continuing to force oneself (via transcribing records for example) to make sure one's relative pitch stays sharp? I have a sneaking, unproven, suspician that it IS important to do this - but, of course, I could be wrong.

[Analogaddict]

For me, it´s definately important. For a couple of months I actually had "perfect" pitch. I could name just about any note out of the blue and in worst case, I always knew the way Ab sounded. This lead to me trying to relate a lot of the sounds I heard - not only musical - to this Ab, it almost became an obsession, and I finally had to decide I would stop practising for a while. Now, I´m on a comfortable level; I can transcribe almost anything by ear from a record, but I don´t nescessarily know the absolute pitches. Which is kind of convenient when I have to play out-of-tune pianos...

 

/J nas

[Mike Dawson]

Some things simply make you a better musician, and that will help you out overall. The better relative pitch you have, the more discerning an ear you can develop which will affect the way you hear things on a level completely separate from pitch. It's sort of like weight lifting, and how no one really wants to have a muscular back. But working on your back directly affects your chest (you can't have huge pectorals and no back muscles), and the larger your chest and back are the bigger you can get your biceps.

 

It's unlikely that your piano will go out of tune (at least I'd hope so) but it will affect your piano playing and musicianship on other levels. Plus, you can help out your guitar player when he's a little off, and is useful in other areas you may pursue (on a personal or professional level) like engineering and producing, or live mixing for a friend. I think working on your ear and maintaining good relative pitch is essential to being a good musician (we get 4 semesters of it here at Berklee so I guess they think so too).

[Tom Fiala]

Well stated, berkleeboi!

 

It's hard to imagine having an ear that's "too good"

[kad]

I have both perfect pitch and good relative pitch. I can tell you from experience that good relative pitch is WAY more important and useful for overall solid musicianship. The great thing about relative pitch is that in addition to its value in "guiding" you to the note you hear in your head, it forces you to know a bit about theory and the role of each of the 12 notes with respect to a given reference note. By developing relative pitch, you are also wrapping your mind around the tonal system itself. This opens many creative doors and simply makes you a better musician.

 

Perfect pitch definitely has its place - it's nice to be able to put on a CD at work (during down times of course ) and be able to transcribe vocal parts for my band without being at an instrument. However, if I had to give up one of the two systems, I'd keep relative pitch in a heartbeat!! Any musician can learn it, sharpen it and ultimately use it. Once you begin to consistently use it (through improvisation or transcription for example), you will sharpen it just by using it. Eventually, it becomes a way of life (musically speaking) and it requires little to no dedicated practicing for its maintenance. It maintains itself through usage alone.

 

BTW, I rarely ever publicly mention having perfect pitch unless I believe that doing so will be helpful to someone in some way. I've learned over the years that perfect pitch carries with it an assumption of arrogance, and I'd rather not go there!

 

Kirk

[Prot]

I think relative pitch is of the highest importance, especially if you are playing any kind of improvised tonal music, like jazz for instance. You need to be able 'sing' a melody in your head, and be able to instantly translate it onto your instrument. Relative pitch is the thing that allows you to do that.

 

I can't imagine what it would be like not have relative pitch - I'd have to rely entirely upon my knowledge of music theory, but I'd have no idea what it was going to sound like until I actually played it. I wonder if anyone actually plays jazz like that?

[stoo schultz]

A composer is only as good as his ear is. No matter how good a technician, programmer, engineer, no matter how many people you know, no matter how many pictures you have of yourself standing next to Sting, it still all comes down to your ear. If you have a crappy ear, your stuff sounds like crap. If you sound stellar, then you must have a stellar ear.

 

And there are lots of people trying to play music with very very bad ears

 

I think its true if you don't do things that maintain your ear regularly it will get worse. I can see this from experience: I can identify distant intervals much easier in keys I play in a lot than I can in more unfamiliar keys. If I start playing in that key a lot, then I start hearing the intervals in that key better.

[CP]

Well I guess the next question is: how do you learn relative pitch, and what are the best exercises?

[Dave Horne]

Originally posted by CP:

Well I guess the next question is: how do you learn relative pitch, and what are the best exercises?

Doing a record copy to learn and transcribe a tune is an excellent way to improve your ears. (It also saves you money since you never have to buy sheet music.)

[stoo schultz]

It's a lot easier these days than in the past, you can use a computer drill program like Earope that you can download off the web fairly cheap.

 

There are web-based Flash ear training programs now too, like www.earplane.com.

 

It's a lot more than relative pitch too . . . e.g. you need to be able to identify chord function, inversion, extension, intervals between chords (regardless of inversion).

 

So the goal I think is to be able to play any sequence of notes (or chords) you hear on your instrument without having to think. This sounds hard, but you can learn to do it if you have a daily practice routine. The more you practice the better you get, and you can never be too good . . .

 

And as you get better, you'll notice it in your playing immediately, especially if you do a lot of improvising. It will sound better, and it will feel more enjoyable too.

 

I think most people will get a far bigger payoff, per minute of work, improving their ear than say practicing technical exercises.

[Mike Dawson]

Thanks, Tom! I tend to post on here as and I'm drinking my coffee and still waking up so it's encouraging when I don't embarrass myself.

 

I think there are a couple different ways to work on relative pitch and keep your ears sharp. A lot of music schools teach solfeggio, which is the do-re-mi stuff in that song from the Sound of Music. I personally think it's kind of silly but it helps some people. To me a minor third is a minor third, it's not the sound of 're' to 'fa'.

 

A good thing you can do is get a simple piece of instrumental or piano music and sing the melodic line a capella and record yourself. Then go back and listen to it and play along with an in-tune instrument and listen for discrepancies. Another pretty simple thing is to pick an interval, say a perfect 5th, sing it and then play it on the piano. Those are really basic things.

 

Transcribing in general helps a lot. If you sit down on a regular basis and listen to a song, or a specific instrument or part in a song, and figure it out and write it out it will help. Then as you continue you do it you'll find that you hear the interval or line in your head before you need to check with your instrument. And before you know it you'll be walking down the street, hear 2 car horns at the same time and say to your friend "that's a major 3rd", at which point your friend will walk 5 steps ahead of you so that no one around associates the two of you together.

 

Relative pitch is really just recognizing intervals in your head quickly. And just like having good relative pitch will help you in other areas, knowledge of chords and some theory will help you with relative pitch. Say you have a song in C major, and there's a ii7 chord (d minor 7) and the melody jumps from D up a minor 7th to C. From a relative pitch perspective I know what a minor 7th sounds like, so I can find that C. But from a theoretical perspective I know what a root sounds like, as well as what a 7th sounds like on a minor 7 so I can find the C that way too.

 

Like a lot of musical ventures, it starts out sort of painstaking and foreign. But as you get better and more comfortable with it it takes on a more organic feel. And if you become proficient enough you can hear a line and translate it to paper or to an instrument without any real conscious thought.

[guestuserguestuser.com]

Originally posted by CP:

Well I guess the next question is: how do you learn relative pitch, and what are the best exercises?

Transcribe, transcribe, transcribe.

 

Also, just sit at your instrument, and try playing melodies that you can hear in your head. This is a kind of 'paperless' transcribing. You're transcribing it from your brain to your instrument. For a beginner, these could be simple melodies to some song which you know and like, for instance.

 

I think it probably takes quite a while to get really good at it. I did this learning progress years ago when I was a kid, so it's hard to remember what the progress was like, but I do remember that it gradually got easier and easier. As a kid, I wasn't really paying any attention to how long it was taking me, or whether my progress was good or bad. It was just something I did a lot, every day for years.

[stoo schultz]

Also, just sit at your instrument, and try playing melodies that you can hear in your head.

Yep, this is good for your ear and your ability to find your way around the keyboard. A good daily exercise is to take a simple melody and play it with both hands in each of the 12 keys, up and down the keyboard. Can be any melody, some riff you heard, a TV theme song, a piece of a pop tune, something you just made up. If you do this pretty much every day it doesn't take long before you're quite good at playing by ear in any key.

[John O. Lennon]

Originally posted by CP:

Well I guess the next question is: how do you learn relative pitch, and what are the best exercises?

Several good suggestions already but let me emphasize starting with the simple things & building thereon.

Also do exercises on a daily basis (& studies show that early in the day is the best time to practice/learn anything).

 

(1)Play various (& unconnected) pitches & sing them. This won't help, at first, with developing your identification skills but it will help you developing your mental imaging process, as well as helping your voice.

(2)When practicing to identify pitches start with the same ones that theory focuses on: learn to ID octaves first, then fifths/fourths, then thirds (both major & minor).

(3)After that, learn to ID less consonant intervals: sixths, boths types of sevenths, seconds/ninths, finally working on altered intervals like flatted or sharped fifths by playing, for example, the perfect fifth & then the variant.

While working on these always include your voice matching exercises.

 

Somewhere along step 2~3 above begin ID-ing chords (or actually, as a first step, simultaneous intervals), again starting with the most basic ones---fifths, then thirds (major/minor), etc.---&, again, singing through the chord's pitches will help you internalize the relations.

 

It's fundamental to practice these in various keys (but, again, start with what's simple---one key at a time rather than jumbling them together).

It's also good to do these exercises with various instruments or patches because the timbre of sounds has a great deal to do with how we recognize their pitch.

 

Many who have great relative (even "perfect") pitch are in fact just tremendously well drilled in recognizing the sounds of their favored instrument; you're ultimate goal is to be able to recognize the pitch of any source.

 

Finally don't be too impatient; music is a lifelong groth effort & there is no real shortcut that won't leave a gap in your abilities.

Get a little better each day.