Recently, I got into a conversation (again) about one of the most contentious and divided musical subjects, "Perfect Pitch", and felt that it merited a mention here.

Where it’s no secret that I can pick out notes and name them, frequently I’m asked to demonstrate this skill and “prove it” far more than I’m asked how it works with a view to devising an approach which would serve to effectively develop it. There are courses available which can assist in the development of perfect pitch but frequently these courses are misunderstood as the “answer” to the perfect pitch “question”. Some people seem to want these courses to actually supply the skill of perfect pitch for them, and don’t often realise that these courses only actually provide means by which an end may be met. Often, these courses are criticised but in truth, there is nothing really “wrong” with any of them. They all point people in the direction that they want to go, but don’t always clearly explain that developing perfect pitch is no different from learning any other skill. Some people don’t have the patience or the discipline to dedicate sufficient time to the development of this skill, and cruelly interpret this situation as a matter of being “fooled”, and declare “These perfect pitch courses just don’t work”.

Where there a lot of quite amusing definitions of perfect pitch, like “the ability to hit a skip with a clarinet at 50 yards” (and other such variations), how perfect pitch has been defined (seriously) is a varied mixture of ideas. Essentially, perfect pitch is an ability which can be identified as “a level on which one perceives musical notes”, and I would go on to define perfect pitch as: “The ability to recognise and recall notes, independent of their relativity to other notes”.

This frequently leads to a lot of “What about this? What about that? What about melodic movement and relative pitch? What about recognising intervals and notes placed within chords? What about chord movement? What about notes on different instruments? What about notes in different registers? Etc although these questions are almost always regarding the context within which these notes appear. This introduces the idea of “levels” on which perfect pitch can work. As people begin to develop perfect pitch, they develop the ability to recognise notes in certain circumstances but not others. This is sometimes where people actually “stop listening”, and consider that they have gone as far as they can go with perfect pitch but the ability to recognise notes in almost all circumstances can be developed.

Developing Perfect Pitch

The underpinning principle on which perfect pitch works for me is that the notes actually sound different from each other. This is independent of their relative position to other notes. I believe that how these notes sound different from each other to me (whilst not a secret) wouldn’t actually be of any practical use for anyone who wishes to develop this skill, This is because throughout history, musicians who have had this skill have offered very different interpretations and descriptions of what they hear when they are recognising or recalling notes. Each person seems to develop this skill in their own way. To develop this skill, you will need to listen for these differences. Frequently at this point I’m asked: “What am I listening for?” (Not in the sense “Why are we listening?”, but in the sense “What, within this sound, am I trying to develop the ability to detect?”). At this stage I frequently make the analogy with sight. If you ask someone to look for something, they may ask “What am I looking for?”, but even if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it doesn’t compromise your ability to see it when it appears. For now, this analogy with sight is the best expression of “the way in which you have to listen to develop perfect pitch” that I can find.

Where perfect pitch can be developed, some people who have not developed this skill within a timeframe that they have set for themselves will often take a very strange view of perfect pitch, and will criticise those who don't share it. This is one reason I avoid talking about it so much. I frequently ask; “how long did it take you to learn a few simple chords?” However long that may have been, I usually find out that they wanted to develop the entire skill of perfect pitch in less time! Realistically, that’s just not going to happen.

Nik Harrison

I’ve found that an incredible part of my mind seems to be accessed by repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again. Where I’m aware that repeated patterns are used for hypnotic induction, and I’ve considered that I’ve most probably ‘mesmerised’ myself here with the repeated patterns within reinforcement exercises whilst practicing, they have certainly opened up a part of my mind today which offers consideration to many things that I’m sure would have been filtered out within “normal” consciousness. Today’s excessively philosophical pondering has led me to consider that it’s not in our nature to destroy ourselves. It is in our nature to squander the responsibilities that we have in the form of choices that are born of consciousness, and that this is the result of a tragic misunderstanding of the actual importance the ability make decisions has. Where the presence of power needs to be met with the ability to control, a very simple lack of understanding of our actual circumstances and nature is where we fail. I’m hoping that this thought passes the test of time, and that when I return to it in a few months it will remain valid and have the same profound effect on me as it has done today. This is because where I can’t see any practical application of these thoughts, I’m convinced that they will have a value over time, and (subsequent to passing the time test) prove to be significantly beneficial to my perspective on life beyond music. 

I post quite a bit of stuff on the music radar forum, and not too long ago someone expressed the purpose of a scale to reflect “the assonance of tones” which I thought was quite poetic and a nice description of it. The thread went on to discuss this descriptive “mistake” but I took a step back and gave this “mistake” some thought and realised that some quite interesting things surfaced when the vantage point of objective consideration is used. We have a whole range of terms in music theory to identify intervals in different contexts, but we only use 2 words to describe what they are all like from a perceptive point of view. These are “Consonance” and “Dissonance”. They are also expanded upon (and prefixed) with more adjectives such as “strong”, “weak”, or “mild”. Surely the perceptive vantage point on intervals has greater importance than the theoretical expressions which are used to describe them? This being the case, it seems strange that this situation is accepted so blindly when intervals sound so different? We don’t describe the weather using two words prefixed like this, and it’s just as complex! It occurred to me that this situation (through the natural evolution of the language of music) will change over time, but also that it is people who influence this change (albeit inadvertently). Maybe we can actually take control of this evolution, based on considered analysis of these situations? Really, the only way that “what can be done” has been made apparent historically, is where it’s been recorded that somebody somewhere has actually done it! As far as I can tell, it’s usually only a lack of perspective that will determine whether or not you, or anyone else, can be that someone.

I’ve recently been reading through some lessons and articles (devised over a long period of time), editing and updating them for publishing to my website. One of these articles is about (and titled) “Three Aspects of Performance Musicianship”. It currently appears on the Audio Design Workshop myspace page:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=147226874&blogID=374018957

I’ve been considering the content of this article a lot recently, since I engaged in a discussion about some aspects of theory (on the music radar forum http://www.musicradar.com/forum) not too long ago. I’ve become concerned that this article may be misunderstood as the “guitar perspective” on music, and I would wish to avoid using this point of view as a basis for establishing a balanced and overall outlook on playing. A reply to something I had posted made reference to “guitar theory” being different from “common practice”. I disagreed with this distinction at the time, although later in the discussion, it became clear what was actually meant by this. What was meant, was that that people who learn music in different ways (though learning to play different instruments) usually develop different perspectives on theory, unfortunately sometimes to the point where their knowledge can offer someone what they consider to be a “comprehensive outlook” on theory. In actual fact, they really just have a basic grasp of a small part of theory (from the point of view of studying an instrument on which certain things are easier to grasp than others). I occurred to me that where the old adage “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, didn’t quite apply, a modified and similar “little knowledge based on the study of one particular instrument, will lead you to have a totally different little knowledge of theory from someone who has studied a different instrument” probably did (to a certain extent). My contribution to the discussion was as follows:

“Theory is theory. How that is practically applied to any instrument (melodic/harmonic) is immaterial. Chords, keys, scales, modes, modulation, harmonic suspension and resolution, are all the same no matter what instrument you play. There are recognisable differences in the manner in which theory is sometimes expressed within different styles/ genres of music which is perfectly acceptable for practical reasons, but ultimately within the western system of equally tempered instruments (which modern classical and jazz theory relates to), theory is universal.”

From the practical viewpoint of studying “guitar playing” in general, these considerations raise some interesting questions regarding where and when one actually begins to learn theory, and where and when one perhaps should begin? Also, should we just accept, or reconsider the entire “natural approach” to learning theory as a guitarist, where an emphasis on the theory which makes most sense to guitar players (borne of the nature of the instrument) is learned first? Is this the best approach in the interest of developing a thorough and comprehensive understanding of theory? When it comes to learning, should we continue as we have done for a long time, or change? Perhaps learning theory as we learn to play the guitar (as and when theoretical questions arise regarding theoretical expressions and explanations of what is actually being played on the guitar) cannot be improved upon? Do we consider the practical aspects of guitar playing and the theoretical aspects to be separate subjects and study them independent of each other? I believe that the large space in between the extremes of theory being on one side of the table, with “practice” on the other, is where most guitarists will find their own experience of learning. Taking that into consideration, I would like to put the question to “accomplished” guitarists: Was this the “best” way you could have learned all this stuff? And if it wasn’t the “best” way, how could it be improved?