I just can't seem to make this page work as a guestbook, no matter how much I try. My web host keeps assuring me that it should work, but it keeps refusing to do so. In the short term, I'll post your e-mails (with your permission), so please feel free to write! This is a spam-free zone-- I'll guard your privacy with my life.
November 27, 2004
I just wanted to point out that in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria (which I practice), the set of 3, 2-headed drums called Batá collectively are used to produce complex, multi-tonal ritual music which is used to mimic exactly the original "Lucumi" Yoruba language from Nigeria in rhythm, pitch and inflection... The drums are used to speak to the deities directly and the songs and rhythms have been handed down over hundreds of years. There's Smithsonian/ Folkways collection called, "The Sacred Rhythms of Santeria" available at Amazon.com that demonstrates this.
Darrell
February 22, 2004
...that was one of the most frustrating things about [another perfect pitch] course. There wasn't any research explained. I mean, I know it's important to listen to the notes, but to just listen like he says. No explanation. His classes eventually just become homework. Listen to blah blah blah, and when you finish that come back for more. No, I like to have things explained and to have some basis. While I was doing his course I kept on thinking, I believe you can learn it, but can you really? I am finding with the research you are doing, I am hearing the difference. I don't know how you find time to do all the readings that you do, and then this site, but it has been such a gold mine. I am sure you are told that often, but it's great.
Jon
July 23, 2003
It was one o'clock in the morning and i was having trouble getting to sleep (its really hot in florida right now) and in my head i was going over the stuff on your site. While i'm thinking about how i don't feel the notes just yet, i thought of how i wished an E sounded. Don't know why an E but that's what i was thinking. Then i just hummed the characteristic that i wished E had and a clear cut pitch came out. I bugged me to death till i got out of bed and checked on the keyboard and guess what, it was an E. Its really strange because i can't pinpoint what feeling i wanted it to have yet i was able to hum it. I can get the sound again but not the feeling (i can probably get the sound again since i just played it though).
I now seem to be able to recall an E all the time ( though it is slightly out of tune sometimes). But if somebody plays an E, i cant tell you its an E. Isn't this a little backwards. I can also recall an A any time if i recall an E first. This is not due to relative pitch thought, i feel as if an A has the opposite feeling of an E. My way of thinking of it is E = Rainy day and A = Clouds moving away to show sun. My first trigger words!!! I now realize that i need a partner cause i have no way of telling if i can pick out the A or the E from other notes.
I seem to be able to get more trigger words (but they aren't very permanent, sometimes they overlap feelings in other notes, ill just have to sit down till i find a good one for all the notes) if i create a feeling first and then figure out what pitch it has that feeling. Another interesting thing is that i was playing a game and the theme song caught my attention when it came to a place where only trumpets played a certain phrase in the song that was repeated often. When the trumpets played, i was able to identify one of the notes as being A. I didn't realize i would be able to do this and it surprised me. But the thing is that i couldn't hear the feeling of the A in the other instruments until i realized it was present in the trumpets. After that i was able to pick out all the A's in the song. I couldn't hear any E feeling though, so i'm later going to check the song for any E's and see why i couldn't feel them, maybe my trigger needs to change.
John
Chris,
How are you? I've been following all the posts to your site with great interest. I'm also proud to say I have not missed a single day of ear training since I started back in January. I'm currently working on C, D, E, and F.
During your review of [another perfect pitch] course you wrote that he instructs students not to try to apply their perfect pitch development to situations outside of the training. I think he says you get confused too easily. I can't remember what you said about it, but I have one thought and one observation.
First the thought--I find it difficult to recognize C, D, E, or F when listening to music outside of ear training, and I think the reason is because I haven't worked with all the pitches yet. If a real song were playing, and the only notes that made up the song were those four (a strange song, but consider it hypothetically), and I knew that that was the case, I'm confident I could identify the pitches in real time, and hear the vowel sounds passing by as the pitches occurred. But when there are notes with which I am not familiar, I can't be certain what I'm hearing. It suddenly becomes difficult to recognize a C, for example, because there are 8 pitches I have not yet studied, and there is the potential for mistaking some of them for a C. I guess this is another way of saying "confusion," but it seems more specific.
Now my observation. A few weeks ago I was watching TV, and there was a song playing on a commercial. There were several instruments playing, but my mind focused on a guitar which was playing melodically. I had a strong feeling that something felt very familiar about it, although I could not recall having seen the commercial before. I suddenly realized that the guitar had landed on a note and was repeating it often, and I knew it was an E. I checked it on the piano, and I was correct.
Ear training was the last thing on my mind while I was watching that commercial. I had no intention of trying to identify pitches. It was just a subconscious feeling that I became aware of. I imagine that this is what having perfect pitch will be like. Musical sounds will become very familiar, even in unrecognized music; just like a spoken sentence is familiar and creates certain feelings, even if you have never heard that particular sentence uttered before. As a side effect, if you stop and think about it, you're able to say, "Oh, that's a C, now an A, and that's a Bb," or whatever. But the true perfect pitch sense is that subconscious feeling, understanding, and familiarity of what you're hearing. I think I've experienced a first taste of that perfect pitch sense.
Anyway, I'm excited to see that the new version of ETC is ready, and I'm looking forward to using it. Take care.
Mike
April 16, 2003
Hello,
I've read the entire archive on your site and I'm keeping track of your progress, each time with eager expectation for your next entry. You keep saying that if children were taught pitches as they are taught colors, pitches could become useful in everyday life, outside of the music realm.
After reading the archive I became quite convinced of this idea myself. So I was pleasantly surprised when I read something like this in a magazine (translated from French)
"Microwave oven, computer, VCR... all kinds of devices in our homes emit beeps and noises to signal what they're doing (or malfunction) But when everything is running, it's hard to tell them apart. Matsushita, the Japanese electronics corporation, has built an experimental house to try and give meaning to these sounds, by modulating frequency, length, volume, pitch... the cost of the experiment is 420 000 euros"
I don't know how thoroughly they are going to experiment with pitch, but nevertheless I welcome the initiative. It's high time we gave a bit of sense to this cacophony.
Miklos
March 16, 2003
Hallo,
I'm Andreas from Germany, started to work with [a different perfect pitch] Course months ago and I began to feel, that there's no longer development in my learning. But reading your critical comments and impressions motivated me enormously! Your intelligence is astonishing! Now, knowing that I'm no longer dependent of something mystical, Perfect Pitch is again attainable for me.
Thank you.
Andreas
Your experience of the transposed song on stage is right on. Although a transposed song is instantly recognizable as the same song, some of the feelings of the song change. Just last night, I was strumming my acoustic and singing in my bedroom while my girlfriend was watching American Idol in the living room. I played through Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" but didn't bother to go into the other room to grab the capo. I tune my guitars down a half step for three reasons: many rock bands do this so it's easier to play their songs, the strings are slightly slack which gives a nicer feel for legato work, and that simple half-step makes it much easier for me to sing anything that I write. Of course, "Fake Plastic Trees" is in standard tuning, so I'll usually pop a capo on the first fret, something I was too lazy to do last night. Now, the song was the same song, but the feeling was appreciably darker (for an already dark song). My guess for the primary culprit is the absence of the F# minor (replaced by an F minor). That got me to thinking. Lots of pop songs are written in A major and use the F# minor chord as one of the few chords for which a suspended chord or non-diatonic chord voicing is substituted. Could this be because F# is inherently bright and "twangy", thereby taking the edge off of the sad feeling of the minor chord. Just a thought.
Rich
