For Christmas my wife’s gift to me was the, “Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse,”  by, David Lucas Burge.

I wanted this because although I know some tones by ear on my keyboard and bass, I definitely don’t have perfect pitch.  That is, the ability to name a single tone struck on a piano or played on my bass.   I have no problem singing on key but I want to be able to keep up musically with other musicians off the cuff.  I don’t want to have to hunt and peck for notes to figure out a cover tune or play along with a new one.    I want the ability to play my instruments by ear.   So, that if I happen to be jamming along with other musicians I can jam along right away, instead of having to use tabs or have someone tell me what the note is.

Just yesterday I did the first ear training drill.  The first drill didn’t come along until the third CD of the course.   There was a lot of talking before the first drill about what perfect pitch is and what it isn’t and all the misconceptions about it.

At first I was very cheesed at this.  I’m the type of person that I don’t need a lot of over-explanation.  Get to the point. But, it did make it clear what to expect and cleared up some misconceptions about perfect pitch.

Mr. Burge pointed out some very important things.  Foremost in my mind is how most people listen to pitch.  He states most people listen to pitches horizontally instead of vertically.  That is, when trying to identify a pitch people try to identify it by how high or low in pitch it is comparatively to a neighboring pitch.

I can attest myself that this does not work, and that striking a note over and over and trying to memorize it is very futile.

Mr. Burge states that in order to gain perfect pitch you must train the ear to listen vertically.  That is for the, “sound colors.”

Now, when he says sound colors you probably thought the same thing as me, that you would be associating colors with pitches and memorizing what color you thought A or B was to you.

Such is not the case, and I am glad, because that would be silly.

When Mr. Burge says tone colors he mean the characteristics of each tone.  Instead of listening for how high or low a pitch is, you listen to the character of the pitch.  For instance F# might sound twangy to you, and Eb might sound mellow.

He asserts that in his lecture that most people hear and describe the same things in the tones.  However he does not say that you should think of each tone in a certain way just because he says that’s how he describes it.

I’ve only done the first drill, but so far where the drills are headed is opening up your ear and hearing the character of each tone, or the tone colors.  I can see this course working very well, as even after the first drill I have the tones C and D ringing in my head and am able to sing them from memory because I listened to their tone color and not just that one was higher in pitch than another.

I like his approach so far.  He maintains that perfect pitch is not an exact science and that you can’t force it.  You must relax and let your ear open up, or let the tone come to your ear.

I must admit that when I first got the course I envisioned that some graphics would pop up on my computer and a tone would be played over and over and I would have someone telling me to memorize that this note is an A and that A is Green.

So, far I like the course and it seems well put together.

I will update this category as I progress through the course.

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