The tonal ear - Theory and practice of ear training

thanks for posting it.....it seems interesting to me. I took a very quick look and I find it intriguing!

does anyone have direct experience with ear training? in my day there wasn't this attention to ear training.

I've always been told that I have perfect pitch, but instead I would have wanted relative pitch....if I study this "little manual" can I find help in it to get rid of that perfect pitch and strengthen the relative one???

Without a doubt you can enhance relative pitch, but getting rid of absolute pitch is impossible! You can at most strive not to use it in certain contexts by enhancing the relative one, but getting rid of it altogether just can't be done

I don't know what is so good about it in an absolute sense (except perhaps greater ease of memorization)... I find it decidedly limiting and I was hoping to suppress it! When I tackle pieces that have a fairly intense harmonic and polyphonic texture, I get very confused because the score my mind recreates once I have memorized it is completely different from the real one, since the unambiguous identification of individual sounds does not fall within tonal grammar... and it's not pleasant!!!

I will try, as you say, not to use it in certain contexts, but it is difficult because it is cumbersome!

hello everyone,

i am introducing a cross-cutting proposal/question.

nancy, could you please explain to me how music is seen/read/heard,

with the gift/burden of absolute pitch? and why many 'absolutists' often find themselves disoriented by the tempered system?

could it depend on the fact that the tempered system is, in reality, a COMPROMISE between instrumental practice and the physics of sound (Pythagorean scale laws)?

esist there are any textbooks that address the subject, as far as you know?

thanks

since I started playing (I was 6 - 7 years old) I had an extreme ease in recognizing sounds and giving them their name... it's as if the sound itself told me what its name was!! the first difficulties I encountered were in choral singing... in the modulation. I struggled immensely and it irritated me quite a bit because it forced me to do all this reasoning about the sounds I heard! so while in melodic dictation I never missed a single one, I had to force myself to reason about homophonous sounds.... C# is C# and that's it, and I have to reason and remember the correct key to say that it is Db.

when I study a piece, as long as I am reading everything it's okay, but the moment I memorize it and abandon the sheet music, my C#'s replace the Db's etc., and if I were to transcribe what I have in my head at that point, it wouldn't make sense as tonal music...

i don't know if I was clear.... maybe I am lacking in something and it's not the fault of absolute pitch, and I often force myself to do the harmonic analysis of pieces to reason and memorize things correctly and clearly, but then while playing, this kind of reasoning goes out the window!!!!!

...if it was also discussed a little here

www.pianoconcerto.it/forum/index.php?/topic/375-solfeggio-ear-training

Maybe there are some useful insights

You can't imagine how lucky you are! You don't know how much I wish I had perfect pitch...

I'll gladly give it to you

i assure you that when I had Goitre's manual in my hands, which is based on the mobile do, I wasn't enviable at all; it seemed like Nazi torture to me and in the end I would just stand there speechless because I would get lost after two notes!!

what would you do with absolute pitch?

maybe if I understood how I should use it, I could make peace with it and start to appreciate it, and I won't deny that in my opinion it would be a great thing if, from a young age, those who have it are educated to exploit it to enhance the relative one!!

I imagine that, for a choir director, it could be an added value

I have a relative ear, even if it is good enough to write down what I hear by ear; honestly, I don't know if I would like having perfect pitch that much... especially when listening to music on instruments that easily jump from 440 to 445, to 430, to 415, and sometimes to 390 Hz

A little anecdote, the first times I tuned the harpsichord, given it is at 415 Hz even if transposable to 440, I struggled absurdly; I felt it was all a semitone low, pure madness... nowadays I don't even notice it, I've gotten used to 415 Hz and even to 430, truth be told.