Perfect
Pitch Training
Perfect pitch
ear training comes in a few different forms. For example, the
perfect pitch course taught by Acoustic Learning Inc. whereby the abilities
of the brain to pick out similarities and differences between
objects or sounds is used. The idea seems to be to enforce a
memory of a particular pitch by including it in various
different settings. This method uses software in the form of a
game to try to make developing perfect pitch as entertaining as
possible.
There are also more
confusing courses about perfect pitch online, such as Absolute Pitch Power, by Graham
English, which attempts to apply complex psychological techniques to
the subject of perfect pitch, as well as a new-age type of
positive thinking approach, “Imagine how good it will feel
to have perfect pitch” etc. Some of these techniques
cannot simply be dismissed off-hand. However, it seems
like an odd approach to take. English is clearly qualified
in some kind of psychological discipline and has thought
to himself, “What skills do I have, that I can apply to
the field of perfect pitch”, rather than studying the
subject from within. He once remarked, “I don't think
perfect pitch has anything to do with
psycho-acoustics”.
The most
popular course to develop perfect pitch is the Perfect Pitch
Ear Training Supercourse, by David Lucas Burge. The course has
been around for decades, having been sold as a set of cassettes
and now CDs. When you order the set, you are covered by a
money-back guarantee as long as you only open the first CD. The
rest are sealed and, once hearing the first CD, most people
will be too curious about what is on the rest to resist opening
them too. This is clever but the course is, by no means, a
scam. The CDs are recordings of Burge lecturing on the subject
of how to learn perfect pitch. It seems that he gives all the
knowledge he has on the topic in these lectures. There are only
two main criticisms to be made about the course. Firstly, the
content does not seem to have changed much in the twenty eight
years it has been around and is really pretty thin. In this day
and age, you would expect video and interactive media as part
of the course but all it contains is a series of audio
recordings, which could easily be saved onto a single DVD. The
name “Supercourse” is a great exaggeration, considering the
amount of material. Burge basically explains that there are
individual qualities to the notes and that you should get a
friend to play random notes to you and try to guess what they
are from these qualities. The second criticism is the price,
which is an astronomical $169. It is obvious that the course
has been sold successfully for almost three decades now and
Burge must have become extremely wealthy from it, so it has to
be said that charging such a great amount for nine CDs is just
plain greedy, or else his business is extremely
inefficient.
Another option
is the Pure Pitch Method by Ryan Cameron. This has many faults
but, actually, this is the one that gets my vote. The main
criticism is that it seems to try to mix relative and absolute
pitch together in a rather strange way. Also, the idea of
“trigger pitches” is used, which is something seemingly
contradictory to the whole idea of absolute pitch. If you are
trying to memorize a particular note and then count all the
others from there, then you are not really employing perfect
pitch, you are simply learning a trick. Ryan Cameron has been
criticized for his lack of knowledge in musical theory. In his
“blog”, Richard Bosworth pays great attention to point out
Cameron's mistakes. For example:
”Ryan's chart
says a Minor 6th is "C to G#." Ryan, please know that C to G#
is actually an Augmented 5th - ... The correct
interval of a Minor 6th is C to A flat.”
For goodness sake, this
is Bosworth being a pedantic musical snob. In absolute terms,
G# and A flat are the same note and we are dealing with
absolute pitch. Bosworth goes on to claim that they are
different and that this is important. He then plugs a relative
pitch ear training course by Lucas Burge. He also recommends
the Perfect Pitch Supercourse. This is, of course, because
Bosworth is affiliated to Burge. We can tell he is earning a
cut of the sales of these courses by the fact that he has
Pay-Per-Click adverts on Google pointing to his
“blog”.
Anyway, the Pure Pitch
method will teach you the same kind of material that is in the
Perfect Pitch Supercourse but it is much cheaper and, if you
don't like it, you can claim a full refund. This refund is
guaranteed because this is the policy of all digital products
sold through Clickbank, including the Perfect Pitch Simulator.
It is because of the price and the no-risk purchase policy that
I would choose Pure Pitch over the Supercourse. The Perfect
Pitch Simulator can be used along side one of these courses but
this is not really necessary. It is also cheaper than all of
them and comes with some great instructions and tips on how to
get stuck in to developing your ear from day one. I believe the
resources on this website, alone, are worth more than all these
courses put together and the obvious course of action is to
forget Burge, Cameron, and English, and get the Bryce Alexander
Perfect Pitch Simulator! For more information on the Simulator,
click
here.
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