How I Taught Myself Perfect Pitch (True Pitch)

so you want perfect pitch so from the moment you're born to the time you die your brain develops and stages five stages now in stage two from birth to six this is where perfect pitch is thought to be originated from it is at this stage where the things you do here becomes permanent and your instincts in your lifestyle either permanent or seriously deeply ingrained in you for the rest of your life including musical training once this stage is over it is impossible to go back that's why often a lot of times we say kids soak up information when they're so young because it's true so if perfect pitch is developed here and you haven't had musical training from your zero to six you're out of luck right nope if you're anything like me when you're from zero to six you probably weren't playing music you were probably eating dirt or playing Super Smash Brothers I have a dad who always played guitar even when I was a kid but he never sat me down and said hey son this note is an a this note is a C here's the major scales here's all twelve keys he just played awesome rock and roll music a lot that's not really musical training of course as I got older I want to join Bain because my brother played drums and I want to play drums but before I joined percussion I was required in my band program to play a wind instrument for six weeks so that's what I did and I picked the saxophone eventually I started to really like text phone so I said I don't want to do percussion anymore and I can very distinctively recall a time where I tried to recall a note without any instrument and I've tried to say what that note was it went a little like this all right here I go let me press the note [Music] see sometimes I'd be a whole tritone off but now so let me just click a bunch of random notes to clear any reference in my brain now I'm gonna close my eyes looking away and I'm just gonna wiggle my finger and click the first note G alright [Music] a flat all right yes you're not convinced this - one more just worse that note doesn't e it wasn't easy but how like I said when I was six I didn't have any musical training I just heard music as I'm sure you did so is it a relative pitch well relative pitch is when you have a reference so if you're in a choir or just experimenting and you know C is C first but you have to hear it so now you have this pitch as a reference in your mind now from then on with the use of knowing your intervals you can assume what every other note is so knowing this is C I can say oh that is the sound of a v so v from a C is a G dou aa minor seventh dominant seventh that is a b-flat ah a relative pitch I think when learning improvisation this relative pitch knowing your intervals this is much more important than being a perfect pitch but this is not a relative pitch tutorial but through the use of interval training and classes everyone's relative pitch can be developed everyone has relative pitch but what I demonstrated see that's not relative piss I didn't need a reference now I'm not gonna call a perfect pitch because people who are born or develop perfect pitch at this stage - of brain development describe pitch as something as instinctive as knowing your colors and I don't have that and I'm guessing if you're on this video you don't have that either however I am able to tell you what key any song is in just by hearing it this is especially useful if you're on a gig and they call a tune in but they don't tell you what key it's in and you don't want to fiddle around on your horn to figure out what kids and you just know just by hearing the tonic just by hearing the first chord or the first few chords however I do see timbre as color and I'm sure you do too you can easily tell a flute from a saxophone without even looking at it you could tell a clarinet from a trumpet so what is it if it's not perfect pitch or relative pitch what is it jazz instrumentalists Sean Wallace has coined the term for this he has called it true pitch true pitch I believe can be developed by everyone but what it does require is an instrument that you play consistently or every day or basically remain an instrument and it has to be the same instrument that you play they say you play piano if you if you're playing a different piano every day like you're playing this piano in this house then you go over here and then you play this one for like two weeks and then you go to the Antarctica you play there grand piano you're gonna have some problems developing this for me this instrument that became my ultimate true pitched source was the alto saxophone I played it every day still play it as often as I can yours can be clarinet there's gonna be trumpet it doesn't matter what instrument what matters is that it's the same personal instrument that you are accessing every day however you are gonna have the most trouble on developing this through an electronic instrument and I'll get to that in a second live instruments like wood instruments or brass instrument strings are highly imperfect I think we all could agree on that there are so many variables and factors that creates the tambour of a sound variables such as the length of - how the air vibrates inside the tube everyone's own built-in exclusive DNA when it comes to their muscles for their embouchure if you research acoustics and live instruments it'll explain how every single note has their own individual phenomenon giving you this exclusive flavor tambour - every note every single note of every instrument even if it's one thin the same instrument is going to create a different timbre it's these inconsistencies within the tambour of every individual note of a live instrument that we'll be using to our advantage while using an electronic instrument is kind of disadvantages is because that each notes tambour of an electronic instrument is kind of the same this lack of imperfection is gonna make it a bit hard to distinguish what note is what because it all sounds the same so in developing true pitch we're not actually going to be focused on the actual pitch we're gonna be focused on the sounds of the tambour so before we get started I need you to choose one instrument that will be your source of true pitch it's okay to play a bunch of instruments but choose one for your source of true pitch it doesn't matter as long as a live instrument you have the best chance it's important that it's the same instrument that you're gonna keep playing over and over because say you're a clarinet player you know that your clarinet has a lot of very tiny nuance differences than your bestfriends clarinet that you just tried out the other day once your true pitch is developed it's gonna stick it's gonna stay in your brain so then you don't have to worry about sticking to your one instrument and starting all over and stuff it's it's all good it stays in your brain alright now I'm gonna go get my saxophone and show you how I did it the way I do it is that I pretend it's a voice I asked what vowel isn't making one thing I do need to make clear is that since you'll be memorizing Tambor's and also their pitch as a byproduct it's important that you memorize the right pitch so I completely recommend that you use a tuner just to reassure that you're accurate because it'd be a waste if you did all this memorize the Tambor's and every no you memorize was wasn't even the right page you should use a tuner and not a drone because a drone helps you get rid of the sound waves that are created from playing out-of-tune with other people but in our case we're just trying to memorize the pitch ourselves and be able to generate it I'm not gonna have a tuner in this video because my tuner is an app in this phone and I'm using the phone to record so alright so the first note I'm going to start off with is a c-sharp on the alto saxophone or concert what does that sound like to you to me that sounds like [Music] like an a H now let me try a concert F just up a half-step times like a nasally narrow oh that's a thick note on the saxophone now let me combine the two [Music] notice it's not gone and no it's not going oh it's corn ah it's very important to memorize let's try another one let's try a flat I see on here that's to me that's making it sound [Music] it's not going that doing he was corn [Music] and every single note has their own distinctive one because of all the factors inside and all the factors from your embouchure and what you want to do is really get in touch with yourself and your instrument and figure out what is every timbre on your instrument when you play it everyone has a personal sound figure out yours and memorize [Music] Tambor's man Tambor's everywhere now I demonstrated classical saxophone because that's what I started off from so that's where mine originated from that was my true pitched source yours could be something totally different now the more and more in tune you get with yourself in your instrument and your personal sound you'll start to replicate your own sound without your instrument you'll be able to hear it crystal clear in your mind now if you have any experience transcribing what this true pitch is is basically you playing a note and you transcribing it in your head you know how transcribing is you kind of fiddling around until you find the note that's what troupe is pretty much is it's just the more and more you do it the faster it is so on those perfect pitch demonstrations that I gave you towards the beginning of the video this wasn't going on through my mind oh my god I see a color I see a color it's a CD I can just play the saxophone in my head and it's exact pitches so I'm transcribing the note I hear I'm making a rough estimate at first and then I fiddle around till I find the note and then I tell you the note as this technique involves you'll find that you can now play your instrument in your head and this is a very useful technique there was a study of two baseball players they had one practice without batting and another one practice with batting and the guy who just mentally practiced and proved only 2% less than the guy who actually did the motions now that's saying a lot of course actually doing it it's going to outperform not doing it and just thinking about it doing it but say hey you're on a vacation say you're on a family trip or you're on the airplane and you can't practice for three days you can just mentally practice it's much better than not practicing at all arguably the best cello player in the world had an injury for months and he admitted himself in an interview that he mentally practiced in the hospital bed the whole time and look his chops never left him but how can you mentally practice if you came and here the notes well with this troop its method you can't hear the notes in your head very vividly to you it's good to think about the fingerings as well as the pitch that comes with it the more you do this exercise that I showed you the more and more apparent it will become and the more natural it'll feel and pretty soon you won't even have to think about it I've transcribed whole solos on paper without my saxophone in my hand it's a very useful technique and I think everyone can benefit off of it now I do have to admit that true pitch or perfect pitch does not make you a better jazz improviser it just makes the transcription process a lot easier and it makes it a little more convenient when you're trying to figure out the key of a song still got to get your reps in you still got to learn your vocabulary you still got to listen to the Masters there's no skipping that and just because you can hear the notes in your head does that mean that you should stop playing your saxophone I mean you still got to develop your muscles every day there's nothing that's gonna Trump actually playing your instrument it's just a great substitute to be able to mentally practice we need you just absolutely can't get to your instrument right now all right I hope you found this video helpful I know you can do it everyone can do it if I can do it I know I everyone can because I am nothing I'm using iPhone app to edit these videos and it would be a huge help if you donated to my PayPal the links in the description just so I can invest in a better editing program because I got a new a laptop but now I'm broke again because of that laptop if you could help me out that'd be awesome if not that's fine alright thank you for the 500 subscribers by the way freaking awesome

Channel: Saxologic

Views: 694,705

Keywords: Saxophone, Sax, Music, Vision, Violin, Mozart, Perfect pitch, Sheet music, Nintendo, Jazz, Classical

Id: oT22zqg0jvE

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 09 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/AffectionateCow]

I would watch that