Good News: Perfect pitch is actually teachable !
Published: Aug 31, 2021 | Category: Uncategorized
Friends,
Good News: Perfect pitch is actually teachable !
This technical yet reassuring scientific paper on Perfect Pitch got me thinking.
We understand that the better we hear, the better musicians we are. The word "Hear" is a bit fuzzy though.
Many Jazz players mean Understand/Feel & Recognize the Harmonic structure ( Chord changes/Melody)
when they say simply ask "Can you hear it?"
We can get that super power by studying applied Harmony, but more fundamentally,
by training our ears to recognize pitches and the stories they tell.
A great app I have been using and mentioning lately is Politonus.
I hear great things about Functional Ear Trainer as well.
Play the game 10mn a day, and watch what happens.
You will start "hearing in color".
But recognizing pitches is not the end-goal, and more benefits will come from this practice:
Recognizing notes will make transposing ( "stealing") easier, it will make learning a musical sentence much easier.
In turn that will make memorizing a song structure better.
That will make writing lyrics, and/or improvising a solo on top of it more natural and authentic.
So ear training is not just about pitch recognition.
It is about feeling, perceiving, creating and serving music
as a pitch-based & time-based art form.
Chears,
Bertrand
Good News: Perfect pitch is actually teachable !
This technical yet reassuring scientific paper on Perfect Pitch got me thinking.
We understand that the better we hear, the better musicians we are. The word "Hear" is a bit fuzzy though.
Many Jazz players mean Understand/Feel & Recognize the Harmonic structure ( Chord changes/Melody)
when they say simply ask "Can you hear it?"
We can get that super power by studying applied Harmony, but more fundamentally,
by training our ears to recognize pitches and the stories they tell.
A great app I have been using and mentioning lately is Politonus.
I hear great things about Functional Ear Trainer as well.
Play the game 10mn a day, and watch what happens.
You will start "hearing in color".
But recognizing pitches is not the end-goal, and more benefits will come from this practice:
Recognizing notes will make transposing ( "stealing") easier, it will make learning a musical sentence much easier.
In turn that will make memorizing a song structure better.
That will make writing lyrics, and/or improvising a solo on top of it more natural and authentic.
So ear training is not just about pitch recognition.
It is about feeling, perceiving, creating and serving music
as a pitch-based & time-based art form.
Chears,
Bertrand