# Pitch hearing, recognition? Practice and exercise.



## Thlian (Jul 31, 2022)

Ever played eandom on the keys and suddenly you play something that you recognize. You play the first few notes and then it stops, suddenly you don't know where to go from there. You have the melody in your head, but you just can't seem to find the right key.

This annoys me, because I feel musically incompetent. I've always considered myself as fairly musical. But when it comes to the technical department I kinda fail.
Say a "hm" or a "ah" in a specific pitch and I can't determine neither key or scale. Maybe it's just practice or is it something you are born with? 

I'm a bit jealous when it comes to some of the library developers. They have this inventiveness and creativity when sampling. They play all kinds of stuff, write codes for the library GUI'S. At the same time mix, master and compose. Like a musical wonderchild. 

Things might come a bit slower when one is older. Doesn't help when one also work 8 hours a day with something that's as far from music as one can get. Back home there are children and a wife that often need help with something every 10 minute. So to achieve "effective" learning progression. How much time should I spend without interuption each day to actual get progression? This might be objective, since it often depends on the person.

Right now I feel like it's too many steaks on the grill. Lots of forum, lots of looking for instruments, effects and libraries. Going through libraries and create something out of presets, pads, drones and so on. But I can't sit down and actually play a piece of music, because every time I try to learn how to do it, someone is calling my name. Isn't that typical 🥴

Figured I could talk about something else than "gear" for once 😉


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## d.healey (Jul 31, 2022)

It seems like you're referring to perfect pitch. It's something you acquire at a very young age and it can be lost as you get older. It's not very common.

What is more common and can be gained through practice is relative pitch. This is where you know the name of the first note that was played and from that you can determine by ear the next note. The way to practice this is to learn how different intervals sound.


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## Thlian (Jul 31, 2022)

d.healey said:


> It seems like you're referring to perfect pitch. It's something you acquire at a very young age and it can be lost as you get older. It's not very common.
> 
> What is more common and can be gained through practice is relative pitch. This is where you know the name of the first note that was played and from that you can determine by ear the next note. The way to practice this is to learn how different intervals sound.


Ah, that's new to me. Actually never googled it, so some are more or less born with it? Guess I have to train my relative pitch then. Probably some lessons where one can practice with 😊


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## d.healey (Jul 31, 2022)

Thlian said:


> Ah, that's new to me. Actually never googled it, so some are more or less born with it? Guess I have to train my relative pitch then. Probably some lessons where one can practice with


Rick Beato has some good videos about perfect pitch.

There are lots of ear training apps. That's all you really need. And the intervals are the same in all keys so once you've learnt one key the other keys will be easy.

One technique is to use well known tunes to learn different intervals. For example the first two notes of Here comes the bride is a perfect 4th up, the first two notes of star wars are a perfect 5th up, Jaws is a minor second up, etc.

Here's a page to get you started - http://cola.calpoly.edu/~amclamor/Musicianship/intervals.html


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## jcrosby (Jul 31, 2022)

Most of what you're describing is relative pitch, not perfect pitch.

*Perfect pitch* = Being able to determine the key when you hear it, on the spot, with no point of reference.

*Very few* musicians have perfect pitch.


*Relative pitch* = Being able to hear a melody in your head, or identify the half step/whole step combinations that make up a melody in a song you like, (not needing to identify the key). You may not necessarily know whether you're listening to C minor or D minor, but you can _hear_ the scale steps of a melody, then sit down and play it once you identify the key it's in.

*Relative pitch* = Hearing a piece of music and identifying the underlying chord progression (for example I, iv, VI, I) - without being able to identify the key. Again, you may not be able to identify if it's E major or F# major. But this doesn't matter because you can identify the underlying chord progression regardless of key.

Many musicians have relative pitch. It can be learned, and it's something you'd develop studying music at a a music college. But music college is in no way needed to develop it. I have relative pitch I learned learning guitar in high school. I never went to music college... And it's been decades since I've taken a guitar lesson. (Or other instruments).

What you want are ear training exercises for sure... For example Someone plays two pitches 8 half steps apart and you can identify it as a minor 6th. Or you hear a minor 7th chord and can identify that it's minor 7...


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