As I touched on in the first post on this subject, there are a wide variety of ideas about how absolute pitch works. Why do some people ‘just have it’? If you’re not born with it, how can you develop it? Why do some people hear real differences in a C and a D, and others not?

In this post I want to discuss some of the ideas around how absolute pitch works, and highlight what I thought was particularly promising in the forum post on absolute pitch training I mentioned before.

Conflicting theories

If you look at training courses for absolute (or “perfect”) pitch, you’ll find a lot of conflicting explanations of what makes the ear hear different pitches differently. Anything from the relative strength of the harmonics, to timbral clues (like the start and end of notes), to an inexplicable ‘character’ that you must try to hear through very deep listening.

My educational background is scientific and I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor – so it’s probably no surprise that I tend to subscribe to the more basic explanation, one grounded in fundamental science: Click to read the rest…

You sit slightly confused in your “Sight Singing and Ear Training” class. The music teacher insists that by the end of the class you will be able to transcribe Mozart after three listenings, sing complicated atonal melodies at sight, and figure out any harmonic jazz progression through osmosis. You eye the door, looking for an easy escape. You can see why other musicians nicknamed this class “Sight Screaming and Ear Trauma.“

Before you bolt for the door and opt for a less musical vocation like professional wedding florist, realize that like learning the alphabet before you learn how to read and write, you need to learn a few music basics before you can accomplish the hurdles of ear training.

Click to read the rest…