What is absolute pitch? Perfect pitch

Everyone loves music, but not every person is born musical. Sometimes there comes a time when, in an emotional outburst, you want to sing a couple of lines from Miley Cyrus’s latest hit. However, after the performance you have to catch sympathetic glances and listen to disapproving comments. To prevent this, you need to figure out what an ear for music is and what to do if you don’t have it.

Someone has been given absolute pitch by nature, someone raised him
with time

Musical ear is a fairly broad concept, containing a whole list of abilities that allow you to fully perceive music and adequately evaluate its advantages and disadvantages. A well-developed ear for music is a vital ability for musicians, producers, and sound engineers. To some it is given by nature, to others they have cultivated it over time. Any creative person, even one unrelated to music, would do well to add this skill to their repertoire. Recently, experts have proven that an ear for music even helps to master foreign languages.

It has been scientifically established that there is a certain area in the brain that is responsible for hearing music. This bundle is located in the auditory zone: the larger it is and the more nerve fibers it contains, the better a person’s hearing is developed. How can you determine whether you have hearing and how things are going with your neurons in that very area of the brain? To do this, you don’t have to go and have a magnetic tomography scan, just try to accurately repeat the melody you heard, for example, from the chorus of the song Reflektor by Arcade Fire, while trying to keep the rhythm. It didn't work out the first time - don't be upset. You probably have poor hearing or vocal coordination and need more training.

It seems to me that professionals will help you determine exactly whether you have hearing or not. But, in any case, there is no point in despair, because all this can be developed. The main thing is that there is a desire.

There are several varieties
musical ear:

Absolute pitch

This is the ability to accurately determine the pitch (musical note) of any sound without having to compare it to any standard. This talent is believed to be innate and present in 1 in 10,000, and even most of the world's greatest musicians do not have perfect pitch.

Relative (or interval)

Hearing capable of determining and reproducing musical intervals in melodies, chords, etc. In this case, the pitch of the sound is determined by comparing it with a standard.

Inner hearing

The ability to have a clear mental representation (most often from musical notation or from memory) of individual sounds and melodic structures.

Intonation hearing

A type of perception of music that allows you to understand its character and expression.

Fret hearing

The ability to hear, separate and identify differences in chords, harmonies and sections of melody, for example, their stability and instability.

Rhythmic hearing

The ability to motorly experience music, to feel the emotional expressiveness of musical rhythm.

Vocal masters and musicologists also distinguish harmonic, polyphonic, rhythmic, textured, timbral and architectural hearing.

Setting myself a serious task- by all means, train your ears, of course, you need to contact a specialist and find a teacher in solfeggio (there is a special discipline designed for the development of hearing and musical memory).

It is best to go to an experienced private teacher and it would be good to start mastering musical notation along with the desired instrument. You will be taught to distinguish notes and intervals, and then entire chords, keys, and how to handle all of this. I went to solfeggio when I had an interest myself. Each lesson, the brain swells with new information and begins to process it painfully. The most useful thing about solfeggio for a musician is the practical exercises, when you are trained by ear to determine notes and their relationships - intervals, chords, etc.

The most basic exercise is probably just singing the scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si) in unison under the piano. I would also advise you to select melodies from your favorite tracks on the instrument by ear until you get one to one. It is doubly useful to practice with a metronome and devote special time to exercises on the sense of rhythm.

After practicing for a while, you begin to hear the structure of the compositions on a much more subtle level. You just listen to the music and really get into everything! You mark cool moves or, conversely, simple, elementary ones. In general, you perceive everything more insightfully.

7 programs and applications

If there is no time for a teacher, You can try to train your musical ear with the help of special web services, programs and applications, of which a lot have appeared recently. We have selected some of them.

To train your hearing and learning to recognize and identify intervals, chords, timbres, rhythms and other basic elements of music takes a lot of practice. For such practical exercises, it is simply necessary to have an accompanist partner who would play the very intervals and chords on the instrument for guessing. The Ear Teach service allows you to train independently, clearly tracking your progress. The program exists both in a web version and as a separate program (though so far only for Windows).

Theta Music Trainer- a resource that includes several dozen flash games for hearing development, most of which are intuitive. Some games can be played for free without any registration; to access others you will have to enter your data. To fully complete the entire course and access all site materials, you need to create a paid account (for $7.95 per month or $49 per year).

EarMaster 6 is the latest version of the training program from Danish developers. In it you will find 2000 lessons and exercises for both beginners and experienced musicians. By connecting a microphone to your computer, you can hum tunes based on the notes displayed on the screen. The program, in turn, will evaluate your hearing, producing a detailed report on the tone hits. Cost: €47.95

Auralia 4 is a serious program that contains 41 topics covering the basics of solfeggio: intervals and scales, chords and their sequences, rhythms, harmonies and melodies. Auralia allows you to arrange melodic dictations for yourself, connect a MIDI keyboard and microphone. $99.00

Pitch Improver

A simple collection of basic exercises that ask you to play melodies by ear. Press the Play button and try to repeat what you heard on the virtual keys. The first note is marked with a letter, and the rest are highlighted in green. To pass to the next level, you need to play all the notes correctly. You can try Pitch Improver in the online version, and also download it to your smartphone

It is difficult to imagine a good athlete without strong muscles and excellent physical fitness, a good speaker without the ability to speak beautifully and speak freely in front of an audience. Likewise, a good musician is unthinkable without a developed ear for music, which includes a whole range of abilities necessary for successful composition, expressive performance and active perception of music.

Depending on musical characteristics, there are different types of musical hearing. For example, pitch, timbre, modal, internal, harmonic, melodic, intervallic, rhythmic, etc. But one of the most inexplicable is still absolute pitch. Let's figure out what this mysterious phenomenon is.

The name of this type of hearing comes from the Latin word absolutus, which translated means “unconditional, independent, unlimited, perfect.” Absolute pitch refers to “the ability to determine the exact pitch of a sound without relating it to another sound whose pitch is known” (Grove Dictionary). That is, absolute pitch allows, without adjustment, without comparison with any “standard” of height, to instantly, and most importantly, accurately recognize and name the pitch of audible sounds.

Interestingly, the concept of absolute pitch appeared only in the second half of the 19th century. And since that time, scientific minds have been trying to find an answer to the question: “Where does a person get such a unique ability?” Researchers have put forward a variety of hypotheses regarding the origin of absolute pitch. However, to this day there is still no clear answer to this question. Some scientists consider it an innate (and also inherited) acoustic-physiological ability, which depends on the anatomical features of the hearing system (more precisely, the structure of the inner ear). Others associate absolute pitch with special mechanisms of the brain, in the cortex of which there are special formant detectors. Still others suggest that absolute pitch is formed due to strong sound impressions in very early childhood and well-developed “photographic” figurative-auditory memory, especially in childhood.

Absolute pitch is a rather rare phenomenon even among professional musicians, not to mention ordinary connoisseurs of musical art, who may not even know that nature has awarded them with this rare gift. Determining whether you have absolute pitch or not is quite simple. To “diagnose” this ability, experts use a piano, on which you will be asked to identify and name a particular sound. But to cope with this task, you need to at least know the names of the notes themselves and how they sound. Therefore, as a rule, absolute pitch is detected in early childhood: in children at about 3-5 years of age, usually after becoming familiar with the names of musical sounds.

Absolute pitch is especially important for such musical professions as a conductor, composer, and performer on instruments with unfixed tuning (for example, string instruments), since it allows you to more subtly perceive the pitch of sound and more accurately control the tuning. And having perfect pitch won’t do any harm to an amateur musician: choosing chords for familiar melodies is, of course, much easier for those with perfect pitch.

But along with undeniable advantages (primarily for professional musicians), this unique ability also has its disadvantages. In certain cases, absolute pitch can become a real challenge, especially for those who are familiar with the basics of musical literacy. For example, you are sitting in a restaurant during a romantic date. And instead of enjoying a conversation or the aroma of delicious dishes under a quiet background of playing music, cherished notes periodically “float” in your mind: “la, fa, mi, re, mi, salt, do...”. Not everyone in such a situation is able to “switch off” and focus their attention on the interlocutor.

In addition, it is difficult to find a worse torture for an absolute student than listening to an even inspired performance of a work by those who are “absolutely deaf.” Indeed, with such abilities, a person not only hears the exact pitch of the sound, but also absolutely accurately determines falsehood, the slightest deviations from the correct reference sound. One can only sincerely sympathize with the absolutist during the concert sound of the joint playing of poorly tuned instruments (especially strings) or uncoordinated “dirty” ensemble singing.

By and large, it is not so important whether you have absolute pitch or not. But if you decide to devote yourself to music, and maybe even become a first-class professional musician, then a good ear for music is vital for you. Its development should henceforth become a purposeful and regular action for you. Classes in a special discipline - solfeggio - can help in this difficult matter. But musical ear develops especially actively in the process of musical activity: during singing, playing an instrument, selecting by ear, improvising, composing music.

And most importantly, friends, learn to listen and understand music! Listen to every sound with love and reverence, sincerely enjoy the beauty of every consonance, in order to further give happiness and joy from communicating with music to your grateful listeners!!!

Intervals Tritones Scales, modes Triads Inversions
characteristic triads
Referral intervals
dominant seventh chord Introductory
seventh chords All sections

Begin! Begin! Begin! Begin!

Let's get to work!

This simulator is designed to develop practical skills in auditory analysis of pure, small and large intervals of major, minor, augmented and diminished triads of inversions of major and minor triads of characteristic intervals of the dominant seventh chord and its inversions. Your task is to learn to identify them by ear.

To go to the next page, click "Next!". If you need to first repeat the theoretical material on the topic “Triad Intervals Characteristic Intervals Dominant Seventh Chord”, go to the section “A Little Theory A Little Theory A Little Theory A Little Theory”.

Check yourself!

The simulator is designed to develop practical skills in auditory analysis in the main areas used in music school. It is assumed that preliminary training has been completed on each topic.

This section is general in nature; some tasks are given in a compressed form.

Before you start, configure, select several items on the topics covered or the "All" button.

When answering each question, you must first determine the topic of the answer, and then select the correct option from the list that opens.

To go to the next page, click "Next!"

All Random Reset

Home Next!

Which variant presentation choose?

You can listen to tasks in two ways - in a harmonic presentation (both sounds are taken at the same time) and melodic (sounds are taken alternately). Usually, beginners choose a melodic sound, which helps to “sing” the sounds of the interval and determine the distance between notes. But the harmonic version is most often used. So if you have experience in guessing, choose the harmonic option.

Choose topic

Before starting the training, select the desired section: Scales (various types of major and minor) or Modes of folk music (for high school students).

Which variant presentation choose?

Since some types of seventh chords can be identified by ear only by resolving into another chord, when selecting the “Without resolution” option, only the minor introductory and diminished introductory in the main form will be offered.

If you select resolution options, you will be able to listen to the inversions of the diminished leading seventh chord. A small introductory note is not offered in this case.

Iz-lo-zhe-nie

Choosing a topic

Gar-mo-ni-ches-koe Me-lo-di-ches-koe Scales (modes) Modes of folk music Without permission With permission Without permission With permission With permission through appeals D7

Let's get to work!

This simulator is designed to develop practical skills in auditory analysis of various scales of pure, small and large intervals. Your task is to learn to identify them by ear.

This simulator is designed to develop practical skills in auditory analysis of reduced introductory seventh chords.

Based on the resolution of a particular chord, it is necessary to determine the type of its inversion.

Before starting the training, configure its parameters: select several items on the topics covered or the “All” button (for beginners, the number of subsections should be small). Assignments will be given from the selected material.

To go to the next page, click "Next!". If you need to first repeat the theoretical material on the topic "Scales, modes Intervals Introductory seventh chords", go to the section "A little theory A little theory A little theory".

You-be-re-de-ly for pro-listening

All Random Reset

Home Next!

Test or training apparatus?

If the task is to train auditory skills, select the “Trainer” mode. If you want to find out how well prepared you are, select “Test” (test of knowledge for assessment). We work in simulator mode until we get tired of it (and then press the “Finish” button). In test mode there is a limited number of tasks, based on the results of which a grade is given.

Trainer Test Trainer Test Trainer Test Test Trainer Test Trainer Test Test

The only reason you won't be able to develop absolute pitch is laziness!

Hello.
I am Irina Gulynina, the author of all the methods of the Hearing Development studio.
And I have perfect pitch. There is nothing mysterious about this.
It’s just that when I hear a sound, I immediately understand what exactly this sound is and what it’s called.

But you most likely do not have absolute pitch if you are here.
You can hear the same sound. And even understand that it is different from other sounds. You just can't name it yet. Sounds separately, note names separately.
Fortunately, this can be fixed :)

There is a popular misconception that absolute pitch cannot be developed.
If you think about it, this is simply absurd. As if it were so difficult to remember the sound of 12 basic notes.

You can tell the difference between the smell of an apple and the smell of an orange, right? And what about the smell of a dozen other fruits? So why should sounds be more difficult to distinguish than smells?

The essence of my technique is quite simple:

You simply concentrate on the images and sensations that a particular note evokes in you. You describe and clarify them in detail, down to the smallest detail.
And you strengthen the connection between the sound and the corresponding image.
As a result, you hear a sound - and immediately remember the corresponding image and set of sensations. All that remains is to name it.

In the following stages, you develop the speed of recalling images, while their further consolidation occurs.
Speed is needed to reliably recognize and name not only individual sounds, but also sounds as part of melodies.

And finally, working with the tones of different instruments. The G note on piano and guitar is same note salt. The difference between them is like the difference in the smell of apples of different varieties. You can distinguish the Jonathan variety from the Antonovka variety, but the apples will still smell like apples and cannot be confused with oranges. At this stage, the understanding of the similarities and differences of the same notes in different timbres is consolidated.

(Taras Gusarov, artistic director of the Imperialis Chamber Orchestra, founder of the All-Russian Saxophonists Association, talks about an open lesson on the development of absolute pitch).

As you can see, there is no mysticism. Everything is quite simple and logical.
If you are not lazy, strictly follow the instructions and complete all the exercises, you are GUARANTEED to develop absolute pitch.

Our course is not just information. As practice shows, people do not study on their own. They need to be regularly nudged, monitored and given feedback. All this, and even more, is done by the famous Ear Gryz program.

From Ukhogryz's report:

I recognize every note, this is truly progress! I just need time to identify the notes, so in order to determine what notes the melody consists of, I need to listen to it five times very carefully, without being distracted by anything else.

Zhanna Gatiyatullina, Tyumen.

You can download and try Ear Gryz in practice right now.

With absolute pitch it will be easy for you:

Pick out. You hear the melody and think to yourself in notes: “mi-fa-sol.” In essence, selection comes down to a quick, quick recording or memorization of the notes that you heard and named.
Record music with notes. Ideal for writing dictations. Enter a school/conservatory.
Memorize works. Each piece will turn into a sequence of notes.
Set up tools. In particular, the guitar.
Record and remember the music that you came up with in your head.
Improvise with someone without preparation. In a group, in company around a fire, or simply with any musician you meet. He's playing something for you. You hear and you understand what they are playing for you. You come up with a suitable part (you need a little musical theory to know what will work and what won’t) and play. And everyone looks at you like you’re a magician :)

Benefits of our course

A technique that has been proven over the years.
An earworm that WILL make you study.
Just half an hour a day. But EVERY day.
You don't need to be a professional musician to develop your ear.
Different timbres and tempos of melodies are a complete workout.
Your ear for music improves in general.

We don't sell a pig in a poke

Here is one of the lessons of the course - this is lesson 18 (there are 27 in total), dedicated to the note A-sharp of the first octave:

And here are the results of training using this method, a person names the notes:

And, of course, be sure to download and have fun :)

Here is a review from one of our clients:

I have developed perfect pitch!

“I can say with confidence that at the moment when you sent me a message, I confidently and accurately identified all the notes (though only on white keys) of the first octave.

Today I almost instantly recognize and name all the notes of the white and three black (C-sharp, G-sharp and A-sharp) keys of the major, minor, first, second and third octaves, not only on the piano, but also on the guitar , violin, trumpet, accordion and other instruments.

Recognition of sounds practically does not depend on their timbres. I can also determine the pitch of a person's voice and sing the previously listed notes clearly myself.

I don’t know how I managed to do it. After I had mastered the first octave of the piano well, I moved on to recognizing the sounds of other instruments - guitar and violin. The guitar was very difficult at first, I even wanted to quit, but I overcame myself and continued. And, apparently, not in vain. There were MUCH fewer problems with the violin (I'm talking now only about the notes of the first octave), and then a miracle happened. Firstly, an unfamiliar timbre has almost ceased to be an obstacle in identifying sounds, and secondly, the speed of sound identification has increased significantly. And the most important thing is that from that moment on, I began to recognize the notes of other octaves even without special training, without concentrating on the sound of the note and its image, in a word, “automatically.” Some note would sound, say, salt of the third octave, and I immediately became confident that it was salt. Each note acquired its own individual color, and it was simply impossible to confuse it with another, just as it was impossible not to distinguish yellow from blue. By the way, one interesting feature: it is easier for me to name the note itself than the octave to which it belongs.

Now I plan to finish off the two remaining notes that I am not yet quite confident in recognizing (E-flat and F-sharp) and also to further increase the speed of identifying notes, which also seems very important to me.”

Maxim Daminov, participant of the training “Development of absolute pitch”, Moscow

If you are interested in other reviews, they are there.

The course includes:

Book "Development of absolute pitch".
27 audio lessons with explanations, examples, and the most detailed description of the methodology and all its nuances.
The Ear Gryz program, which is written specifically for hearing development. (allows you to memorize notes, practice guessing them, tests you. The program contains about 60 popular melodies for every taste: from folk and bard songs to A. Makarevich and Paul Mauriat. You will pick them up during training). The program is designed for 3 octaves of sounds (small, first, second), 3 timbres of instruments (piano, guitar, flute), 5 tempos of melodies.
13 melodies - excerpts from popular musical works. At the end of the course, you will test yourself on them - picking them up and identifying the notes by ear will be as easy as shelling pears.
Recordings of sounds for listening and memorizing timbres. Each sound is recorded in several tones so you can compare and remember them. Convenient to listen to in the car.

reproduce individual musical tones in the absence of a musical source or standard. This ability is called absolute, or perfect, pitch. (For a review of the literature on this topic, see Gregersen, 1998.) Perfect pitch is rare even among professional musicians, and less than 1% of all musicians have it.
population (Moore, 1989), although among musicians who began training in very early childhood, people with absolute pitch are somewhat more common (Baharloo et al., 1998; Rauschecker, 1999; Deutsch et al., 1999). Although long-term training contributes to the development of absolute pitch, it is largely determined by genetic factors (Baharloo et al., 1998). Moreover, using PET, the neurons “responsible” for it were identified in the auditory cortex of the left hemisphere (Schlaug et al., 1995; Zatorre et al., 1994).

Since hardly all people with perfect pitch began their musical education very early (before they were even six years old), it is likely that systematic exposure to music in early childhood is a necessary but not sufficient condition for its development (Baharloo et al, 1998 ; Miyazaki, 1988; Deutsch et al., 1999). (By the way, although early musical experience in itself does not guarantee the development of absolute musical pitch, based on the data presented in Chan et al., 1998, it can be assumed that it improves verbal memory.) In this sense, absolute pitch is good an example of how a combination of genetic and environmental factors contributes to the development of a complex perceptual ability.

What absolute pitch is can be judged from a historical anecdote given in Stevens & Warshofsky, 1965: the brilliant composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had absolute pitch, at the age of seven, once said that his violin was tuned a quarter tone higher, than his friend's violin, which he played the day before!

In a sense, the opposite of absolute pitch is the inability to distinguish tones (tone deafness). It is clear that this term in itself is incorrect (literally translated from English tone deafness - “tone deafness.” - Note transl.), because most of the “tone deaf” are no worse at distinguishing between two tones of different pitches than “normal” people. » individuals.

It is possible that those who are considered incapable of distinguishing sound tones simply have greater difficulty than other people when they have to reproduce or sing some musical passage formed by sounds that they do not usually use in normal speech (Moore, 1989). Moreover, as a result of music study and practice, these people progress noticeably, which means that the main reason for the inability to distinguish sound tones is limited experience with musical material.

Musical agnosia: amusia. Despite the fact that such a diagnosis as “tone deafness” may be questioned, a certain form of auditory agnosia is known - an ailment, the cause of which is a dysfunction of certain parts of the temporal lobes, selectively affecting the perception of music (Peretz et al., 1994; Peretz, 1993,1996). This disease, called musical agnosia, or amusia, manifests itself in the inability to recognize melodies and keys. However, it does not affect the perception of other acoustic information, such as speech and those sounds that constantly accompany us in everyday life (Patel et al., 1998). The fact that this neurological disorder affects only the perception of music suggests the presence in the auditory system of certain neural circuits and cortical subsystems selectively tuned to the processing of musical information (Peretz & Morais, 1989, 1993; Tramo et al., 1990) . This assumption is also supported by the results of observations of patients who underwent operations, as a result of which the right and left hemispheres of their brain were separated from each other and began to function independently. These observations suggest that the processing of information about some of the distinctive features of music, and primarily those associated with harmony, occurs in the right hemisphere (Tramo, 1993; Tramo & Bharucha, 1991).

It is difficult to resist the temptation to suggest that amusia is a behavioral consequence of the inability to extract holistic information - in the Gestalt sense of the word - from such an auditory stimulus as music. And we move on to consider the role of Gestalt grouping factors in the perception of music.