Learning Perfect Pitch

 

At your risk.

This is how i trained myself to recognize any note, even from a car beep signal.

It may be that starting at a young age helps. But i keep improving every day after so many years.

i started at about 6.

My great grand parent Menelaos bought me un upright piano.

When singing in class in primary school songs such as this,

i would thing i got all the notes, being so happy i would write them down on the Hellenic language book.

Impatiently i would return home to test at the piano what had been written.

Of course everything was so wrong.

But after so many frustrating coming backs suddenly it came. When i hear the note of any instrument i hear as well as it beauty, its name , for example Do or Re or Mi...

Since them it is getting better. Most difficult is understanding what note is the bass when all the other harmony notes or the main melody note plays at the same time.

i still find it difficult on the most evolved classical or pop music, Pedal bass is difficult.

This song by the Hollies helps as the bass is on one of the stereo channels.

When i could not reproduce a very beautiful or evolved harmony i would read a score. For example on Private Investigations - Dire Strtaits

i leaned the 6th interval above the bass and how it sounds or feels.

Then on the Great Gig in the Sky - Pink Floyd

i learned the major 7th interval too.

The same for Concierto d' Arajuez - Rodrigo

i think on this i could already reproduce the beautiful harmony at the piano, but i got the score in order to start understanding how the strings are arranged.

Perfect pitch is a great tool for leaning or reverse engineering music even when passing by a bar that plays music.

i heard this at about 14 coming out of the disco in the seaside village of Tolo, south of Athens.

i would also play along with radio or record player. The high notes almost always fit much easier when improvising or playing along with the great musicians on the records. Just by trial and error one can find the scale, when something is wrong it sounds very wrong! 

So learning by mistakes!

Many good composers or composers i think may not have perfect pitch.

 

Here is a list of notable people with absolute or perfect pitch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_absolute_pitch