Ear training

Does anyone know some CD or any audio training program that is ONLY audio so that I can put it in my mp3 and take it to my work so I don't waist my time while working? I'm allowed to hear music so it would be fine. ;)

If you want some hardcore ear-training, record the note A=440hz and have it play for a constant 30'.

Listen to that A for 30' every day for the two months, and you'll be able to pitch an A at a snap.

Or.

You could record loads of intervals and try and recognise them. So you can record loads of intervals, say all starting from an A, so you'd also get to hear the A as the first note of the interval, and then try to find out the interval. You can also create a whole collection of recordings like that, for all intervals under an octave, for all the pitches of an octave, going both upwards and downwards (= 264 recordings), and then just have it play at "shuffle".

Or you can record a dog dying and send it to green peace and get a medal. Your choice.

Here's a little song that may help: (posted by robin)

Huh? I'm currently in Ear Training II, and we don't do any of that. You should be listening to melodies and dictating them, giving yourself only 5 times to fully dictate four to eight measures of SIMPLE melodies in major keys, than minor keys, than the dominant, etc. Sight-reading and rhythm exercises are essential as well.

I can recommend you the finest book in the land for ear training: Music for Sight Singing by Robert Ottman and Nancy Rogers.

If you want some hardcore ear-training, record the note A=440hz and have it play for a constant 30'.

Listen to that A for 30' every day for the two months, and you'll be able to pitch an A at a snap.

Are u serious? I thought of doing that but as far as I know perfect pitch is not trainable. Did it work for you? Cause if it did I'm doing it for sure.

Or you can record a dog dying and send it to green peace and get a medal. Your choice.

Already did it ;)

Perfect pitch is a moot point. What's the difference between perfect pitch and perfect absolute pitch? Perfect pitch is just memory and associations that are made when people are very young, but I don't believe it's something that is in the genes. Some people might have biological predispositions to acquiring perfect pitch more easily (i.e. to make these associations between sounds and note names more easily) than others. But pitch is just frequency, and so is colour. And for example, although we all have "perfect colour" (apart from color-blind people, that is..), some people have it more so than others. Which is why people argue about "oh, this is dark blue", "No! this is black!" or whether a colour is light orange or pink etc, and which is also why some tribes of Eskimos can distinguish up to 10 different kinds of white, and some tribes in the amazonian can distinguish up to 100 different kinds of green (and have names for them), while to us they'd seem very similar or the same.

Diana Deutsch has done some extensive research on ear illusions/perception and perfect pitch, and she found that in the UK, there was 14% of children aged 3-6 and who had been introduced to music performance (were playing an instrument, singing in a choir etc) had perfect pitch, whereas in China (where Chinese is a tonal language - which means that the word "Ma" has five different meanings depending on the way you intonate it, and also that everytime you say the word "Ma" in the way that it means "mother", it will be said in the same pitch), the percentage of those kids was 75%.

I know a few professors of mine who got "perfect pitch" just by being in an orchestra (an "aural skills" teacher of mine said she got perfect pitch just by playing in an orchestra, and listening to that tuning-up A all the time) (another friend of mine got perfect pitch by playing the low "E" of his guitar for 5 minutes and really focusing on it every time he grabbed the guitar to play or practice) or by other means. I personally don't like the "elitist" approach that people who "are born" with perfect pitch have against other people (because as I said, I don't believe they are "born" with perfect pitch, but simply developped it very early - and usually, you'll see that a lot of people who have perfect pitch have parents musicians or have been introduced into music at a very early stage) (of course exceptions do exist, nothing's absolute).

So there :)

Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse: Name Notes & Chords by EAR.

This product has helped me a lot with both perfect pitch and relative pitch, and although I don't have a fully-developed absolute pitch yet, I can distinguish pitches enough that I can tell if someone is out of tune without needing a reference (it just "sounds wrong" or "a little off"). It's rather expensive, but if you've got the cash it's well worth the time it takes to develop it.

I can't really see myself spending the time on obtaining perfect pitch, not unless I've absolutely mastered relative pitch. I mean how useful is it really? Isn't it just for grabbing a note out of thin air when you don't have a reference pitch? Seems like more of a novelty to me whereas relative pitch is like a superpower.

Well, I agree that a good relative pitch is probably much more important to a musician/composer than absolute pitch. It still has many uses though, for example in cases where you have "lost track" following music with relative pitch, to find back into it. And there are always such cases if you're dealing with complex music that doesn't have a clear tonal center.

It also helps you to get started when you want to listen to a series of pitches or want to remember it and don't know what note it starts with. Sure, you can just learn the sequence of intervals, but for some people this approach is too abstract and not "visual" enough. I, for example, very often think in piano keys and remember some note sequences (obviously next to remembering the intervals aurally) visually on an imaginary piano keyboard. This would of course be faciliated if I had perfect pitch.

That being said, I don't have perfect pitch and I never really missed it. I agree that training your relative pitch is generally more useful.

(As for "absolutely mastering perfect pitch" - I don't think that's possible. Well, it's probably impossible to "absolutely master" anything.)

I want perfect pitch because sometimes I get lost on modulations when hearing a piece and without perfect pitch I need to rewind to the part where I knew what the key was. Actually I think I might have "some" perfect pitch because I haven't heard Beethoven's moonlight sonata for some time and I didn't know what the key of the piece was but I heard a chord on one of these ear training things I'm listening to and reminded me of that piece (it was a perfect 5th, but there are several perfect 5th's on the ear training thing but only that one reminded me of the piece). Then I came home and tryed to hear the sonata on my head and played it on piano and I got the C minor key, and the actual piece is on C sharp!. So I was pretty close what do you guys think?

^^ Don't think so. =P Close unfortunately, isn't perfect. You are bound to a hum a melody in the right key some of the time; provided you hum enough melodies. The real trick of course would be to know when you hum something in the correct key .

-sigh- I do know what you mean about modulation. I remember listening to the development section of Mozart's 40th and being utterly at lost as to what key a particular portion of music was. It took me 100s of listenings to realize how simply and methodically the key changes were constructed. Embarrassing, really. And although I've improved from there when listening to say Wagner or maybe a polytonal Stravinsky, gosh I'm smack back in pacific lost and confused. =(