Perfect Pitch Options

[AdamB]

Hi,

I have been doing ear training of late, I'm trying to find someone who has taught themselves perfect pitch. I have read a lot of articles on the web about it, and it seems a lot of people think it can't be learnt. I wanted to find out if there is anyone here who can say that they have learnt it (in that they didn't posses perfect pitch abilities when they were a child but learnt it as an adult). I basically want some indication of whether I can learn it.

You see, I am trying to learn it myself, I'm just listening to loops of a piano playing C over and over and trying to sing C every day to memorize how it sounds, but so far it's not going well, I'm not seeing much improvement.

Also, some more info - I've been doing a lot of relative pitch exercises, if I use a relative pitch tool on the computer (like at musicthoery.net), I score > 90% every time, and have hit 100% before. I find that easy as anything now, however; I cannot tell pitches apart when listening to real music. If I stick a track on with a strong melody line, I find it impossible to name the intervals that are being played. Why is this? What can I do about it?

Any thoughts?

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[AdamB]

Thanks for the replies guys,

Well I've been using that good ears site for a while - I find the problem with regards to learning perfect pitch using it is that I ALWAYS get the first notes I try to guess wrong. However, when I happen to accidentally get one right, I then have a reference pitch, and then get them all right from that point on because I have good melodic relative pitch. It's a real pain because it doesn't feel like I'm training perfect pitch - I'm not figuring it out based on the tone, I'm still listening to the differences between tones, and I can't figure out how to turn that off so I can just use the single tones. The only way I can figure is to do it very, very slowly (so by each guess, I've forgotten the note before), so doing one guess every 15 mins or something. Very slow going, though.

I also find the problem with using those programs is that what I learn doesn't seem to get applied to real music, as soon as there is harmony (or even just melody which isn't just really straight forward, like I was listening to Hand On Heart by steve vai and trying to figure that out, as the beginning melodic line is quite slow I though it would be relativly easy, but because the notes are being bent etc. I find it impossibly hard), then my brain just kind of goes blank, even with relative pitches (if I find out what the first note of the song is, in theory I'd of thought with my relative pitch being good that would work for me, but it doesn't).

I think what I'm going to have to do is transcribe songs by ear like some have suggested, it seems like the only way to get this kind of aural perception, I'm really hoping it works, I want to get to a stage eventually that I can just transcribe without a guitar.

Also, do you have any new uploads on your channel? I remember some stuff you posted way back on here - was curious.

I'm not sure, I can't remember what I have/haven't posted. My latest videos were;

French Guitar Contest Entry
Van Halen - Eruption Cover
Adam Bradley - A Song For Ali
Steve Vai - Die To Live Cover

I'd love any feedback on them, some are better than others (there are some others on my channel which I'm not fond of now that I look back at them).

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

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This post has been edited by AdamB: Apr 14 2012, 06:57 AM