Perfect pitch in a couple of weeks?...

[mrdaveux]

I was reading the November edition of Clavier and ran across a double page advertising saying "Perfect pitch: learn to recognize exact tones and chords by ear!"

I don't have perfect pitch, but I wish I did (I wish my ear was better trained too, but that's another story). I've always heard that it's something you're born with.

But that David Lucas Burge says that with his course (8 CDs + book) you will acquire a perfect pitch, and he goes on telling you how he got it, that he wasn't born with it etc. The advertising is for $99 and 40 day money back if you don't get results.

Highly suspicial, I thought. But then Clavier is a very serious magazine, they wouldn't just give any rascal a chance to trick us teachers and students.

What do you think? Is this perfect pitch course something possible? Has anyone heard of it or even tried it? Thanks for the input.

[palika dunno]

I have the perfect pitch course by David Lucas Burge.
I didn't have the time/patience yet to work through it and at the moment I'm not sure if I really need perfect pitch...To be honest I'm a bit too lazy to work with this course.
But I listened to the first 2 CD's and it sounded very convincing.
I'm sure that you will gain perfect pitch but as said above I don't know, I didn't try.
I have the complete course on my PC, several Mp3's + handbook pdf...
If you want it, just send me a personal message and I'll upload and send you the link.
This would probably be the best thing because you don't have to pay and can just try it.
If it's good keep it, if not, delete it! 

Palika

[pseudopianist]

I have it. I tried it but never completed it. The drills get hard quite easy if you ask me.

The first drills somewhat like this:

"Okay... get crayons, paint the colour that fits with the notes"
"Listen to the notes"

and then all of the sudden


"Name 20 correct notes in a row with out looking!!!"

I never managed to that 

[kaveh]

I'm interested in getting this.

I have relative pitch, but absolute pitch seems like an incredibly useful skill to have.

I know there are a few different courses out there.  Would you recommend the David Lucas-Burge one?

Also, once the skill is attained, does it require regular practice to maintain??

Just curious...

[rc]

I'm not sure that perfect pitch is such a great thing, just because of how tuning systems have changed and are quite the abstractions anyhow. So would you only learn to recognize pitches in equal temperment? Then what happens when you hear something in just intonation...

Maybe it would be useful in being able to 'hear' notes in your head from reading sheet music... But I wonder how useful that would be too.

 *shrugs*

[pianogeek_cz]

Something of an abstract from my friend's diploma work on perfect pitch (he has p.p.):

Perfect pitch is a matter of neural connections in the brain: All newborns have perfect pitch, but as a person grows older, the number of the connections decreases and the ones that relate to perfect pitch are usually lost before two years of age. However, if the brain is subjected to enough music at this early age, the critical connections may not be lost and therefore the perfect pitch is preserved. However, it has proved to be impossible to acquire perfect pitch after it has been lost. [...] A substitute can be developed, though - people can for example recognize if their favorite piece has been transposed or not, if they have listened to the original version enough times. However, this is pure memory, which has gotten sensitive enough to even such a subtle change as transposition - the brain is just comparing what it hears to what it has heard sometime in the past. [...] As to the color method: yes, some great musicians of the past (Scriabin...) described their perfect pitch as frequencies associated with colors, specifically as connected to the "fifths circle".

Dunno. But I tend to take this rather sceptical standpoint...