There are some who believe that perfect pitch training is not worthwhile because they think a person cannot learn the skill, that you must be born with it. It may surprise you, though, that the majority of musical scholars are aware that the ability can be developed as an adult. So, the question is, can it be purposely learned? And how?
There are a few quite common methods used to learn the ability. They usually start with a message of optimism, they will tell you that perfect pitch training is certainly possible and you need to believe this to make progress. You do need to have an optimistic view, which will allow you to progress. If you are overly pessimistic, this may prevent you from developing. Assuming you believe it to be possible to begin with, you can take steps towards learning perfect pitch and the improvement in your ear will encourage you and re-enforce your belief. This happens as the acuity of the ear improves gradually. It should be noted, however, that belief is not enough in itself, you must train. More information can be found here: perfect pitch software.
The first stage in learning perfect pitch is learning to identify differences between the sounds of different notes, other than their fundamental pitch. Some methods will call these the “pitch colors” or “note timbres”. Some methods offer little or no explanation of these “colors”, though, which is the main stumbling block for most students. An example would be a perfect pitch training manual, which simply suggests that you play a ‘C’ and close your eyes. Listen to the ‘C’ very intently and think about how it makes you feel or try to associate a particular image with that sound so that you can make a link in your brain to remember the note. An extremely vague guideline like this is common. This type of approach will only work if, by coincidence, your ear tunes in to the quality of the note needed to discern it from others. You are more likely to just start daydreaming about any random thing.
The use of melodies is sometimes used to teach the memorization of a note. In the context of a melody, it is thought, the particular note can take on more meaning and can become endowed with a quality to remember it by. You may try to remember individual notes this way. The argument against this is that, in the context of a melody, the notes are not absolute entities. If you are trying to remember melodies in their correct key so as to remember note pitches, are you really learning perfect pitch? For more info, click: perfect pitch training.
It would be better to learn how to listen to harmonics (also known as overtones). When we listen to a musical note, most people fixate on the fundamental pitch of the note. However, each note contains many multiple frequency components of the fundamental. The timbre of a tonal sound comes from the harmonic levels. It is most likely that the perfect pitch “colors” are related to the way we perceive these harmonics differently for each note. Developing the acuity of your ear to hear the harmonic range of a note is the way forward for perfect pitch training. More information can be found here: what is perfect pitch?
