Is It Possible To Develop Perfect Pitch?

Описание: 👉FREE Ear Training Cheat Sheet For Guitar Players → https://www.jonmaclennan.com/goldenear

There are a lot of terms thrown around in the music sphere, related to theory, ear training, and learning guitar.

Two of them are:

Perfect pitch
Relative pitch

I do not have perfect pitch. Nor did I have relative pitch when I started. In fact, I was so bad I couldn’t even tell if I was “on-pitch” or not.

Developing this skill of “pitch-matching”, which I did over time, is incredibly useful for everything you do in music.

But perfect pitch is a whole different animal.

Over the years, I’ve bumped into a few people who have perfect pitch.

It seems like a magic trick.

But in my opinion, I don’t think it’s anything to work on as a musician. There are (a few) programs out there claiming to teach it. But in almost 3 decades of being in the music business and music education, I’ve never seen anyone go from not having it to developing it.

You either develop it before the age of about 6, or else it’s not going to happen.

Some people were born with perfect pitch all along and just didn’t realize it until they started practicing.

But that’s very different than not having it, and developing it.

And even if it was possible to develop, that doesn’t mean it’s going to make you any better.

True story:

One time I played this weekly gig with a really great bassist who went through the GIT program back in the 70s and grew up working as a musician in LA.

He was fantastic – a real pro.

One day he told me he was going to try and work with this perfect pitch course he’d heard about. So he started working with it a little bit each day. He told me one of the exercises was that he was supposed to pitch-match an open string on his bass with his voice, while saying the note, and also thinking about the “color” of the note.

So each morning he woke up and was singing:

G……………………

G……………………

G……………………

G……………………

G……………………

And on and on.

I had to crack up at the thought of him doing that.

Anyway, he stuck with it for quite a few weeks, and...

Guess what?

... it didn’t work.

He still doesn’t have perfect pitch.

But relative pitch on the other hand is a much more valuable skill for musicians to have if they want to:

Play by ear and improvise
Figure out leads and solos in your favorite songs
Write what you hear
Sing with perfect intonation
Compose artfully
Transpose freely
Perform with confidence
Memorize easily
Deepen your sense of music appreciation

It enhances every aspect of your music.

Want to learn more?

Grab my FREE Ear Training Cheat Sheet For Guitar Players → https://www.jonmaclennan.com/goldenear