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The pleasure of finding things out, Richard Feynman, Dr. Kurt Fischer, dynamic skill theory, developmental levels, adult learning, ear training, and much more…
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(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Topics covered:
Learning absolute pitch, your motives, absolute pitch disinformation, motivation to learn absolute pitch, and more.
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(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Singing what you hear, the body/mind connection in music, exercises to improve your musicianship, and more.
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(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)There’s a perpetually propagated myth that if you have absolute pitch, then if you listen to music that is out of tune, you have a bad experience. If there is any truth to this myth, it’s definitely not an absolute. Some people may be disturbed by music that is out of tune. I believe this has more to do with personality type than anything else. But we have to deal with the definition of “out of tune.”
Most musicians with good relative pitch will notice immediately if a note is out of tune relative to its surroundings. If it bugs you, then there’s a lot of music you probably can’t listen to. If it doesn’t bother you, then you know how someone with absolute pitch is affected by sound. Sounds sound good or bad or somewhere in between based on your personal preference, whether you have absolute pitch or not.
Part of the problem with this myth comes from the sloppy use of language to describe an experience. A single note can be out of tune relative to the surrounding tones. That’s one example of being out of tune. A single instrument can be out of tune relative to the other instruments in an ensemble. That’s another example. But if all the tones or instruments are tuned differently than A440 kHz, it’s not out of tune. It’s just a different tuning.
History tells us that we haven’t always listened to music with the A440 kHz standard. In Mozart’s time, stringed-keyboard music music was meant to be played at a range of around A420 to A430. There are also different tuning systems and temperaments.
If this myth were true, then there would be quite a few people with absolute pitch who couldn’t listen to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which on record was globally tuned a little sharp. And if you don’t like Kind of Blue, it’s got nothing to do with absolute pitch. It just means that you’re crazy!




(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)iTheory is a free ear training tool for your iPod. It took me a couple of tries to get it installed correctly, but it works great. The interface isn’t as clean as I would like. You have to scroll past hundreds of notes before you get to the iTheory main menu. But once I got there, it worked like a charm.
Basically, you just copy the text files to your iPod’s notes folder and copy the MP3s to your music library. Then, in the iPod’s notes menu, you navigate to the main iTheory note and you can test intervals, scales, chords, and absolute pitch.
I think I’m going to hack into mine and personalize it a bit more. It’s really cool how you can reference audio in a note. I wish I knew before that you can do that. My mind is racing with ideas to use this trick.




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I'm a professional blogging musician, songwriter, recording artist, music educator, and lifehacker.
I'm a songwriter and recording artist who sings, plays keyboards, and explores the vast world of sound hoping to find some magical moments along the way.
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