I am a musician and I have absolute pitch. I can recognize any note with no reference tone. I can recognize any "tonal" or extended chord (ex. V13, ii13, etc). When the chord is "atonal", I usually can only recognize the root and the top note - I have trouble recognizing the inner notes in "atonal" chords when listening. Also, I do not know how to "measure" the distance between notes (such as: "That C# is 40 cents flat".) I would know that it is a C# that is flat, but would not be able to name the amount. Please offer suggestions that would help me to improve my absolute pitch.
2006-07-21 05:44:16 · 1 answers · asked by Amino Acid 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Medicine
About recognizing the inner notes, I don't know of any tricks other than you-know-what (begins with p). On the how many cents question, can you mentally or actually hum the true note, then the bad note, then continue with the same interval to the next semitone? (I don't have that resolution myself, but perhaps you do.) Then you've gone 100 cents in however many steps you took and can do the math. Or if it's too big an error you can do the equal steps to cover 2 or more semitones and do that math (number of steps/number of cents).
When I googled "improving absolute pitch" I saw any number of offers for downloadable training methods. Also the ref. brings up an interesting point about speakers of tonal languages (like Vietnamese and Mandarin) and their absolute pitch abilities, suggesting that the skill may not be simply inborn and untrainable. Good luck.
2006-07-21 06:39:00 · answer #1 · answered by kirchwey 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋