Frequently Asked Questions

What is perfect pitch?
The ability to identify a note, without comparing it to another, known note.

Why is perfect pitch useful?
It’s useful for picking up music by ear, tuning instruments, memorizing melodies quickly. If you play music in a band, you’ll be able to follow and recognize everyone else’s parts as they play them. The list goes on.

Can a person develop perfect pitch?
We’ve seen people learn perfect pitch. It takes a bit of work, but you’ll have a lifetime of knowledge to reward you for your efforts.

Are there any other experiments or scientific studies that show that perfect pitch can indeed be developed?
Yes. A group of Japanese scholars researched brain activity that occurs when listening to music. The study showed that professional musicians had activity on the left side of the brain while non-musicians showed activity on the right side. The study correctly identified long-time musicians and people with perfect pitch from those who just listened to music for fun. This confirms the theory that perfect pitch isn’t just something you have at birth — it’s something that must be developed.

How long does it take to develop perfect pitch?
Most people take about one and a half to two months, with 30 minutes a day of practice. Much of this time will be spent learning the first octave of notes. The other octaves will be simpler: the same note in different octaves will sound similar and be easier to memorize.

If you can practice for just 15 minutes a day, even just for two weeks, you’ll familiarize yourself with the method. But we can’t promise that you’ll be able to recognize each and every note unless you spend enough time working on it!

If I have perfect pitch, does that mean I’ll be able to sing in tune?
Perfect pitch manifests itself in two different ways: passive (you hear a note and recognize it) and active (not only can you recognize the note, you can also sing it without outside help. If you want to sing C, you just sing it!).

To be able to sing in tune, you need both a trained ear and the ability to properly control your voice. What does it mean to “have an ear for music”? This means that you can tell whether you’re singing in tune or not, whether a note is higher or lower than another.
If you try to sing a note, and hear that it’s off pitch, it’s likely that you have trouble controlling your voice — it’s not a problem with your musical ear, just your vocal control.

Sometimes people have worked on ear training and can hear when pitch needs to be adjusted, but their voices just don’t seem to respond correctly. In this case it’s necessary to take some separate time to train the voice. This will allow you to sing exactly what you want to, to sing what you hear in your mind. This is essential for people who want active perfect pitch.

To help you train your voice and sing on pitch, we have designed a special course on singing. It includes exercises for vocal control, dynamics of the voice and relaxation of the throat. At the end of the course, there are several well-known songs which you’ll be able to sing with accompaniment (even if you have no previous singing experience).

The exercises in our course are designed for people who can’t sing notes on pitch AT ALL. Music schools and professional voice teachers don’t often work with such students, so we created this specialized program:
http://EasyWayToLearnMusic.com/Singing

Are there other methods for developing perfect pitch?
Yes, there are. In Russia, this is the Berezhanski method. Another one is the David Lucas Burge method.

How does this method differ from the Berezhanski and Burge methods?
In short, our method is simpler. It is also grounded in the basic principles of how people memorize things and how the human memory works in general (i.e., you can use it to memorize anything, not just notes).

The Burge idea is very simple. He starts with saying that our eyes can see colors and distinguish between them. Then he makes a following statement: if our eye can distinguish colors and we can name different colors, our ear should be able to distinguish sounds and we should be able to name them, too. According to Burge, perfect pitch is achieved by opening the ear, listening effortlessly and vertically, not horizontally. As you can see, what we are doing here, while directed towards the same result, is completely different.

The Berezhanski method is based on the development of perfect pitch from relative pitch. First, you learn the C Major scale, and then you transpose it in your mind (this is basically a movable-tonic system, which can conflict with perfect pitch). In our method, you memorize the 12 notes of one octave, and then you learn all the rest by similarities of associations. There won’t be conflicts between perfect pitch and relative pitch…and transposing takes a long time, which won’t be necessary with our method.

Who does not need perfect pitch?
Professional musicians who perform early music do not need perfect pitch. For them, keys and tonality vary because tunings are different. Our current note A, which is a 440Hz tone, is higher than the A they use, because the pitches used in early music are not the same. This can cause confusion for people with perfect pitch.

Any other questions?
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