the Perfect Pitch’ Ta eT] SuperCourse Version 2.0 Special Edition Smear es a Ua wi) LMC seem aaa eas ai Mies area! Mo)How to Use this SuperCourse To begin: First read pages 1-13 only, then listen to Master Class 1. Congratulations on your decision to refine your musical ear, and welcome to the Perfect Pitch® Ear Training SuperCourse! Here in your hands you have a highly specialized audio series that will give you aural training and results available nowhere else. Here you will learn revolutionary, time-tested methods—directly from the source—as David Lucas Burge explains to you in masterful detail the art of Perfect Pitch ear training. Your complete, step-by-step Master Classes are provided on your enclosed CDs or audiotapes. This handbook serves as supplemental material for your reading enjoyment. Perfect Pitch is easy to understand and fun to practice, yet the training is also very subtle—a refined art which cannot be fully grasped merely by reading a book. We have found that as musicians continue to listen to David Lucas, their comprehension is greater, their experiences are clearer, and their ear matures faster. So here, for the very first time, we are pleased to present to you a brand new, revised, and greatly expanded version of the Perfect Pitch® Ear Training SuperCourse with timeless knowledge for a new millennium. The ear training techniques you will learn here have been proven effective by thousands of musicians around the world—as well as by independent research at two leading educational institutions (see page 72). This program is also being used at music schools, colleges, universities, and by private music teachers everywhere. | The audio/handbook package you now hold in your hands includes the complete Perfect Pitch® Ear Training SuperCourse, known as VOLUME 1 of The David Lucas Burge Ear Training Library for Musical Excellence. Immediate benefits regularly reported with this course include: increased aural alertness, greater depth of sensitivity, richer percep- tion, and enhanced creativity. Benefits over several months include the full development of Perfect Pitch and advancements in a wide range of associated musical talents. VOLUME 2 of this library is the Relative Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse, the classic 41-Lesson program by David Lucas Burge that you can study separately—or concurrently with this Perfect Pitch series. (Please note that no previous experience is required for either series; you may begin your ear training studies with Perfect Pitch or Relative Pitch or both.) In these Perfect Pitch Master Classes, David Lucas talks to people from all styles, instruments, and nationalities. Whatever your back- ground or previous musical experience, we welcome you to this exciting new adventure into Perfect Pitch. Are you ready to begin? To start your Perfect Pitch training, continue reading through page 13, including Your Introduction on pages 11-13. Questions? PerfectPitch@EarTraining.com, or call (641) 472-3100. Comments and Graduation Letters may be sent to David Lucas at DavidLucas@EarTraining.com, or mailed to the publisher's address. Although it is not physically possible for David Lucas to respond personally to every letter, each one is read, appreciated, and valued.6 Thanks to: Gary Boucherle David J. O'Reilly Robert Woolfenden Glen Stalder Tina McIntosh Noelle Parnell Lynn Peterson John Soares Carole Vinograd Bausell My Parents (who provided musical training for me from age 7) Contents How to use this SuperCourse ... 4 In Loving Memory... 8 Your Introduction... 11 Perfect Pitch Defined . . . 14 Perfect Pitch: The Phenomenon .. . 22 The Riddle of Perfect Pitch ... 25 Pitch Color & Tone Color ... 32 Color Hearing & Color Association . . . 37 Perfect Pitch & Singing ... 40 Perfect Pitch & Relative Pitch ... 44 Levels of Perfect Pitch ... 53 Level 1: Color Awareness .. . Level 2: Color Discrimination .. . 54 Level 3: Refined Color Discrimination . .. 54 Level 4: Universal Color Discrimination ...55 Level 5: Spectral Discrimination . .. 57 Level 6: Aural Recall... 58 9 Concert Pitch & Tuning ... 61 10 Music: The Language of the Heart .. . 64 11 Levels of Musical Awareness . . . 66 12 Ear Teasers for Super Ears... 69 Research Briefs .. . 72 SNAUVERUAN eS How I Discovered the Secret to Perfect Pitch ...15In Loving Memory When I was a mere fumble-fingered 14-year-old aspiring pianist, I auditioned to become a student of concert pianist and teacher, Héléne Rynd Vinograd. Her demanding schedule was overbooked with students. Somehow, she accepted me anyway. This changed my life A native of Poland, she graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory with highest honors and a gold medal at age 14 (one of the youngest students ever). She distinguished herself with great honors at the famous Chopin competition, herself a third-generation student in direct linage to Frédéric Chopin. In Brussels, the Royal Conservatory conferred to her the prestigious Dipléme de Virtuosités. A 1951 news clipping quotes her: “When the Nazis occupied Belgium, I found myself alone and in grave danger. Each time I wanted to practice the piano I had to risk my life. This was a double fight—for life and for music—but | survived” After numerous symphony engagements in Europe and the USA, she immigrated to the USA at the end of World War II and taught piano at Carnegie Hall. Intensely active in our local music community, she also served as a chairwoman of the Eastern Division of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). Mrs. V was the classic music teacher, par excellence. Her colorful roots as a child prodigy, her deliciously artistic accent and eccentric manner, her illustrious musical training and accomplishments—she was the ideal mentor who taught with authority and inspiration. She not only played music—she breathed it. Really, she was made of music. She spoke three languages fluently—and English more than fluently! I can't remember all the details of her endless stories and childhood dramas, but she always seemed to be playing for “the Dutchess of Somewhere" or entertaining yet another royal family. I was fortunate to have Mrs. V as my teacher—and she was a strict one! | could always tell how I was doing: When I was making good progress, she would sternly keep me focused; if I had an “off week” she would lavish praise on me. Through this I learned not to crave praise from others, but instead to inde- pendently know my own merits —and be secure in them. Those fleeting four high school years left me with a solid piano technique and a priceless musical foundation. My devotion to her teaching culminated in devotion to her as a ; person, and we stayed in touch over the years. In November 1998, I visit- ed my parents near‘my home town of Wilmington, Delaware. Somehow I felt a special need to pay a visit to my piano teacher. I called up Mrs. V and a couple days later we were chatting over lunch at a lovely inn across the border in Pennsylvania. Lucid at age 85, there was never a lapse in the conversation as she . excitedly filled me in on her up- Héléne Rynd Vinograd coming recital next month. I was: My teacher grateful to let her know once again that she had laid the groundwork for my success—a fact she proudly denied in great detail to our waiter! It was our cherished last moment; the following month there would be no recital, only silence. Mrs. V will live on in my heart and in my fingers. Whenever I play, I will always remember her sweetly. I dedicate this Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse to her,Ability to hear fine distinctions of pitch is the primary musical gift and the ultimate point in the analysis of musical ability. —Frank Howes, Man, Mind and Music? 10 Your Introduction Dear Musician: While remastering the Perfect Pitch® Ear Training SuperCourse from its original audiotape format to its new CD format, I finally realized it was time to add a volume of helpful new material. People had used the program all over the globe for nearly two decades, and with their success stories and gracious feedback over the years, I had formulated many improvements that were not included in any previous version of this series. First I went back to the original audiotape master reels from years ago. I reedited these tapes from scratch, sifting out what should be included and what needed to be added or refreshed. Then I made new recordings to give you important Perfect Pitch techniques never before published —which doubled the audio content of the series. The original recordings were done years ago in a quaint church at Grand Lake, Michigan. In those days, audiotape was more the standard. So when you hear me refer to “tapes’—even when you're listening on CD—you'll know you're hearing a talk from the original Perfect Pitch series; we call them the “classic” parts of the program. You will probably be able to hear a difference in the audio qualityof the old tapes compared to the latest recordings. Also, from time to time you will hear me mention the Perfect Pitch Seminar (during a “classic” talk, of course). These days, I no longer travel to do seminars, as !am hope- lessly overbooked with many other projects in my life. Instead, I have taken great care to ensure that everything you need is right here in these Master Classes for you. The Perfect Pitch* Ear Training SuperCourse is structured into 24 Master Class sessions: Introductory Phase: Master Classes 1-4 Phase 1 (Preparatory Phase): Master Classes 5-12 Phase 2 (Pitch Color Discrimination): Master Classes 13-23 Phase 3 (Advanced Levels): Master Class 24 You will also find a supplemental support session called “Power Points” (on the same CD as Master Class 12). Listen to this session at any time, but only if you encounter a question or difficulty with your Perfect Pitch ear training. This SuperCourse set also contains the additional CD session entitled Perfect Pitch for Children: A Message to Parents and Teachers. This session is for adults to hear after they have listened to at least 12 Master Classes and have become familiar with the art of Color Hearing Technique. You will find this extra session combined onto the last Perfect Pitch CD—right after Master Class 24. To begin your Perfect Pitch ear training program, simply listen to Master Class 1. After each Master Class you will receive instructions for what to do next—including when to read the main body of this Handbook. Please listen to a maximum of one Perfect Pitch session per day, even if you have already completed your homework assignment. (It is OK—and actually ideal—to also listen to a Relative Pitch Lesson in the same day.) I know that many of you are eager and will want to hear everything all at once. But save some surprises for yourself! Take a steady pace, do each session step-by-step, and you'll get great results. So now, in these Master Classes, | would like to welcome you personally into my home, where we recorded the new portions of this course. From time to time you may hear tropical birds in the background. Please come in, make yourself comfortable, and we'll learn all about Perfect Pitch. Enjoy your listening! avid Lucas Burge Hawai'i Next step: Listen to Master Class 1Perfect Pitch \par-fikt ‘pich\: The adept musical hearing ability that enables its possessor to 1 identify tones, chords, and tonalities [keys] by ear; 2 recall or sing tones from permanent memory in correct pitch; 3 judge the sharpness or flatness of a tone by ear without an external reference; 4 enjoy a sense of pitch color akin to the sense of visual color. 5 M L Also called: Absolute Pitch, dicionary Color Hearing 8 definition How I Discovered the Secret to Perfect Pitch Tt all started as a sort of teenage rivalry... I'd slave at the piano for five hours daily. Linda prac- ticed far less. Yet somehow she always shined as the star performer at our school. It was frustrating. What does she have that I don’t? I'd wonder. Linda's best friend, Sheryl, bragged on and on to me, adding more fuel to my fire. “You could never be as good as Linda,’ she would taunt. “Linda's got Perfect Pitch” “What's Perfect Pitch?” I asked. Sheryl gloated about Linda's uncanny abilities: how she could name exact tones and chords—all BY EAR; how she could sing any tone—from mere memory; how she could play songs—after just hearing them! My heart sank. Her fantastic EAR is the key to her success. How could I ever hope to compete with her? But it bothered me. Did she really have Perfect Pitch? I finally asked Linda point-blank if it was true. “Yes; she nodded to me aloofly. But Perfect Pitch was too good to believe. I rudely pressed, “Can I test you sometime?” “OK she replied.Now she would eat her words... My plan was ingeniously simple: When Linda least suspected, I challenged her to name tones for me—by ear. I made her stand so she could not see the piano key- board. I made sure other classmates could not help her. I set up everything perfectly so I could expose her Perfect Pitch claims as a ridiculous joke. With silent apprehension, I selected a tone to play. (She'll never guess F#!) I had barely touched the key. “F#’ she said. I was astonished. I quickly played another tone. “C/' she announced, not stopping to think. Frantically, I played more tones, skipping here and there all over the keyboard. But somehow she knew the pitch each time. She was AMAZING! “Sing an E/ I demanded, determined to mess her up. She sang a tone. I checked her on the keyboard—but she was right on! Now I started to boil. I called out more tones, trying hard to make them increasingly difficult. Still she sang each note perfectly on pitch. I was totally boggled. “How in the world do you do if?” | blurted. 16 See sag “I don’t know,’ she sighed. And that was all I could get out of her! The dazzle of Perfect Pitch hit me like a ton of bricks. My head was dizzy with disbelief. Yet from then on, I knew that Perfect Pitch was real. I couldn't figure it out... “How does she DO it?” | kept asking myself. On the other hand, why can’t everyone recognize tones by ear? It dawned on me: people call themselves musicians and yet they can't tell a C from a C#? Or A major from F major?! That's as strange as a portrait painter who can‘t name the colors of paint on his palette! It all seemed odd and contradictory. “How in the world do you do it?” I blurted. T was totally boggled. (age 14, 9th grade)with our “supernatural” powers, yet to Ann and me, it was just normal. Back then, I never dreamt I would later cause such a stir in the academic world. But as I entered college and started to explain my discovery, many professors laughed at me. “You must be born with Perfect Pitch,’ they'd say, “You can't develop it” I would listen politely. Then I'd reveal the simple secret —so they could hear it for themselves. You'd be surprised how fast they changed their tune! In college, my so-called “perfect ear” allowed me to skip over two required music courses. Perfect Pitch made everything easier for me—my ability to perform, compose, arrange, transpose, improvise, sight-read (because you know the tones you're playing without looking—and my enjoyment of music skyrocketed. I learned that music is very definitely a HEARING art. 20 Oh, you must be wondering what happened with Linda? Please excuse me, I'll have to backtrack. . . It was now my senior year of high school. I was nearly 18. In these three-and-a-half years with Perfect Pitch, my piano teacher insisted I had made ten years of progress. And I had. But my youthful ambition still wasn’t satisfied. I needed one more thing: to beat Linda. And now was my final chance. The University of Delaware hosts a music festival each spring, complete with judges and awards. To my horror, they scheduled me that year as the grand finale of the entire event. The day arrived. Linda gave her usual sterling perform- ance. She would be tough to match, let alone surpass. But my turn finally came, and | went for it. Slinking to the stage, I sat down and played my heart out. The applause was overwhelming. Later, posted on the bulletin board, I discovered my score of A+ in the most advanced performance category. Linda got an A. Sweet victory was music to my ears—mine at last!Perfect Pitch: The Phenomenon Prized over centuries as the quintessence of a virtuoso ear for music, Perfect Pitch bestows on its possessor an unmatchable mastery of the musical language. In classical times, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel— and most all the musical greats—had Perfect Pitch. When Mozart was seven years old, a friend lent him a violin with a pleasing sound. Young Mozart soon com- plained that it was “half a quarter of a tone flatter” than his own violin—without a direct comparison. Incredulous, Mozart's father insisted that both violins be brought forth to compare. Of course, the child's ear proved impeccable.’ From classical to pop to rock to jazz, many current and recent superstars also possess (or did possess) Perfect Pitch: Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein, Barbra Streisand, Julie Andrews, André Previn, Stevie Wonder, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Gould, Yngwie Malmsteen, Eric Johnson, Tommy Mars, Béla Bartok, Jascha Heifetz, Paul Shaffer, Yo-Yo Ma, Yanni—the list goes on and on. In the general population, Perfect Pitch is rare. But the further up the musical ladder we climb, the more common- place the ability becomes. 9) (\!| -.cLea aa nTT e For example, at the Julliard School of Music you'll find about 10% of the students with the ability. A typical sym- phony orchestra will boast 20-40% of its membership with Perfect Pitch. Surveys indicate that half of today’s most popular recording artists have Perfect Pitch, rising to 87% for top concert performers. Professionals rate a good sense of pitch as the most valuable element of musicianship—higher than any other essential, including good rhythm, technical facility, accurate memory, intensity discrimination, and creativity.’ Even with years of formal training and the finest instrument, one's success in music always hinges on one’s ability to hear. Singers find Perfect Pitch invaluable for sight-singing, locating obscure pitches, singing in tune, and producing a correct pitch out of thin air. It’s a curious experience the first time you know that a vocalist hit a high C, or when you can tell that a singing ensemble has drifted flat. Glancing at a page of sheet music, others may see only black dots. But with Perfect Pitch, you can mentally hear how each pitch sounds. This mental ability to hear music “in color” also improves your musical memory. Perfect Pitch is more than naming individual tones by ear. You can also hear that a piece is in the key of G major and you can follow the chords by ear: E minor, A major, D seven, etc—all the layers of melody and harmony.Various skills are often confused for the ability of Perfect Pitch itself, but really, these skills evolve from a mastery of pitch. For example, Perfect Pitch does not automatically mean that you can play by ear. But if you want to play by ear, Perfect Pitch becomes your prime resource. More and more—as your ear does the work for you—you can find desired tones by ear, instead of searching by hand. Perfect Pitch (known more often in scholarly circles as absolute pitch) also adds a higher aesthetic appreciation. Acoustical psychologist A. Bachem found that “particular characteristics of certain keys, e.g., the brilliancy of A major, the softness of D flat major, can only be appreciated fully through absolute pitch” To the Color Ear, the entire pitch spectrum is a wondrous display of distinct pitch colors that dance within their musical framework, blending to form various chords and tonalities. This richness of sound extends even beyond the musical sphere into day-to-day living. For example, as your ear becomes more alert, you suddenly find that you can recognize voices on the phone, or pick up languages and foreign accents with ease. Music is a hearing art, so when you develop your ear, you touch everything in music. Every possible avenue of musical skill and talent is ultimately linked to your ear. 24 The Riddle of Perfect Pitch Many people think “either you're born with Perfect Pitch, or you're not"—and that’s that! Many consider Perfect Pitch a “gift” associated only with prodigious personalities. Often- times musicians feel that Perfect Pitch is way high above them, ever beyond their reach. It is not so. This super-refinement of hearing is not a mystical gift bestowed only on the musical elite. Most every musician has a natural but usually undernourished ability to discern exact pitches by ear. Perfect Pitch is Color Hearing. Just as you can recognize visual colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet—your ear has the potential to recognize pitch colors: C, Ct, D, Eb, etc. Your eye sees colors of light; your ear hears colors of sound. The twelve chromatic pitch colors could also be com- pared to twelve spices on the kitchen rack. Each has its own scent which distinguishes it from the others. When you smell rosemary, you know it is rosemary by its own scent, even though you have not compared it to sage or thyme. This may all sound very abstract, but once you catch onto it, you'll find it’s nothing other than normal.What blocks our sense of pitch color? Without Perfect Pitch, the common ear roams in a shadowy music world painted only in shades of grey— a world where pitches rise and fall but somehow sound all the same. But why should this be? What prevents us from hearing pitch colors? The chief reason why people—including musicians— have not developed a sense of Color Hearing is simply a lack of proper listening—a lack of aural orientation in life. Psychologists say we are about 80-90% visually oriented. Early in life we are taught the names of visual colors—red, blue, yellow—but how often does a child learn the musical colors of Ft, Bb, A? Our vision is our dominant sense, used for just about everything—except listening to music. The hardest thing our ears have ever dealt with is learning the sounds of spoken words, one of our first childhood struggles. It’s been a long time since our ears have had to perk up like that. Imagine if we had spent quality time in school listening closely to pitches in music—what would our ear have become with just a little more care? The ordinary, untrained ear can certainly enjoy all forms of music. But it hears from a more crude level of percep- dy 20 tion, asleep to more refined possibilities of experience. It is as if the ear has taken on a sort of dullness or laziness because it has never really had to listen more closely. It’s not that people can’t hear the pitch colors; it’s that the ear has never paused long enough to notice them. And it’s not that people are tone deaf. True tone deafness is rare. People who appear tone deaf are mostly lacking in musical development, that's all. There is usually nothing wrong with their hearing that cannot be amended with some simple listening techniques. No musician is tone deaf, no matter how poorly he may sing or play. A desire for music indicates a sense of enjoy- ment while listening to pitch—that doesn’t sound like tone deafness to me. But among musicians there is certainly a vast range of hearing skills. For most people, hearing is a more elusive sense than sight. And because Perfect Pitch is even subtler than our basic sense of hearing, it’s no wonder that Perfect Pitch goes long undeveloped. Most ears—and I'd reckon this includes yours—have always been capable of hearing pitch color. In fact, many musicians already hear pitch color to some extent, though they may not be consciously aware of itThe sour notes syndrome Some musicians argue that they don’t want Perfect Pitch —that such a “perfect” perception would make them “too sensitive” Some say that people with Perfect Pitch “suffer" with “too good" an ear, or that Perfect Pitch will confuse you if you transpose a score into a new key. (Transposing troubles are actually more likely due to poor Relative Pitch, which can occur even among those with Perfect Pitch.) These objections often expose a deep inner frustration, a sense of inferiority, or a lack of understanding, especially in those who may have desired—and failed—to uncover the secrets to this mysterious ability. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians comments on these sorts of notions: Arguments that absolute pitch is of doubtful value to a musician (particularly one engaged in transposition) strike one as if a majority of colour-blind people were to tell a minority of normally sighted ones that, even if they wished to be painters, colour vision is more trou- ble than it is worth. In fact it is less surprising that the few possess it than that the many are without it* Other people remain adamant that Perfect Pitch cannot be developed. But long before the successes of my own students, renowned musicians have said otherwise. Q 28 Composer and theorist Paul Hindemith wrote that his experience “time and again has proved that ‘absolute pitch’ can be acquired and developed, underscoring his statement by adding that “if not, the question may be raised whether there is any musical gift at all in a mind that cannot learn to remember and compare pitches:’” The artful quest for Perfect Pitch Perfect Pitch is a subtle art. If this were not so, everyone would have developed the ability by themselves long ago. Perfect Pitch cannot be gained merely by knowing a set of exercises or through any sort of rote recipe. As we shall discover for ourselves in our Master Class sessions, there's a bit more elegance to this training. Many people, without understanding the principles of Color Hearing, try to force the ability. Some play tones over and over in hopes to memorize them. Others unsuccessfully keep trying to judge how “high” or “low” a pitch is. I know, because I myself made these same mistakes many years ago. I learned that a pitch will not stick permanently in the mind until you perceive some special quality that distin- guishes one pitch from another; that quality is its color. Pitch color is really all in the ear; it does not exist in the objective world. Take the color blue: there's no real differ- 29ence between blue and red, except that red light vibrates more slowly. The blue color we see is really all in our eyes. Like this, there is no real sound quality difference between F and G. Yet as we learn to listen more deeply, we begin to detect a color difference. This distinction is really all in our ear, part of our natural inborn gift of hearing. Perfect Pitch is not an object, a jewel that can be confis- cated by force. It is more like a riddle waiting for the right answer that makes you say “Ahhhh!" Has it ever happened to you? You muse and fret for hours on a problem when suddenly, in a flash, you realize that the answer is the easiest thing in the world. In these moments we realize that truth dawns in childlike simplicity. Perfect Pitch is rather like this. Perfect Pitch is a riddle. But you can't solve this riddle with your mind, your intelli- gence, your logic; all the king’s horses and all the king's men cannot help you here. Instead, this riddle is for the ear. We're off to a good start. We already have an important clue: Perfect Pitch is Color Hearing. But this is not the final solu- tion, it is not the full perceptual experience; it is merely a signpost that tells us which direction to take. Proper techniques are important. But raw techniques will not work without an artful application. There is a finesse to this training: how to focus and sharpen the ear, and at the same time relax and expand the ear’s awareness. Usually 50 these goals are opposites. Here we will accomplish both together by nurturing the ear and coaxing it gently into a brand new style of listening, until naturally—of its own accord—the ear opens like a flower. The whole training is simple yet delicate. As you con- tinue with your sessions, you will resonate more and more with the art of it all. Artful listening is the speedway to your success. Remember: Every pitch has a color sound. To bring out this hidden dimension of your perception, you need a few essentials: proper understanding, step-by-step practices, artful listening, and—perhaps most important of all— the unassuming innocence of a child.Pitch Color & Tone Color Tone color, or timbre (pronounced tam-ber), is what gives each instrument its special sound. Every piano has a “piano timbre’ and every guitar has a “guitar timbre” Timbre tells you what instrument you're hearing. Each family of instruments has its own timbre—its own distinct flavor, its own tonal color. It’s easy to tell a violin from a saxophone, isn't it? Every violin has the “stringy” tonal color of a violin. Timbre makes a tone “mellow! “rich” “thin, “stringy, “brassy! “reedy/ “hollow! etc—any such quality that characterizes the sound of an instrument. Within each family of instruments, every individual instrument also has its own unique timbre. For example, a $100 violin will doubtfully possess the rich tone color of a priceless Stradivarius. What gives a tone its tone color, or timbre? Timbre is caused by the unique pattern of overtones that occur when a tone is sounded. Overtones are faint tones produced when a basic pitch is sounded. Take a piano, for example. When a string is sounded, it vibrates back and forth, right? But did you know that each string also vibrates in halves, thirds, fourths, ad infinitum? > eI These subtler vibrations cause faint overtones. So when you play C, you're not just playing C; countless overtones are also sounding, and you can hear some if you listen closely. 5 rete be te F Overtones can differ slightly from these exact pitches; they can even occur in belween two tones, as indicated. 2 AY ry Figure 1: First 15 overtones of C Try this experiment on any instrument: Using C as a starting point, play the G that is eleven scale tones higher. Listen to this G and get this pitch in your ear. Now, play your C, but listen instead for the G. Let your ear relax into the sound, and soon you may be surprised to clearly hear the G—while you play the C! This G is an over- tone of C, and remember, it will be much fainter Try this on the piano: Depress and hold Middle C, but do not allow it to sound. Then firmly—but briefly—strike Low C (the next C down). You will find that Middle C is now sounding, Explanation: The first overtone of Low C is Middle C; this overtone causes the strings for Middle C to sympathetically vibrate* *Note: This experiment will not work with all overtones due to mathematical differences between natural harmonic overtones and the contemporary Western twelve-fone scale (see pages 62-63).Try the same experiment using Middle C# and Low C. It will not work because Middle C# is not an overtone of Low C. (Low C cannot make Middle C# vibrate, nor can Middle C cause Low C to vibrate; Middle C can, however, cause the Middle C overtone of Low C to sound!!) It is the presence, absence, and relative strength of over- tones—and where they occur—that creates the tone color of an instrument. A rich sound is due to a rich abundance of overtones; the human voice, for instance, is rich with overtones. A tuning fork, on the other hand, has essentially no overtones. Figure 2 shows a sound wave of a pure tone with no timbre—it's just a simple sine wave. Figure 3 shows the sound wave of a piano. The complex overtones of the piano show up as fluctuations within the basic sine wave pattern. Every musical instrument has a unique wave patterm—a “fingerprint of sound” that lets you identify an instrument by ear. Actually, the term tone color is a bit imprecise. To me, qualities like “brassy, “reedy,’ “stringy, etc. are not really colors—they are more like tonal textures. Color is more correctly linked to pitch. Every pitch has its own color sound, which is determined by....uh.....its pitch! Pitches are specific colors that can wear many different textures. Picture this: A woman can wear a beautiful red dress, but the dress could be woven of any fabric—silk, cotton, 54 Re Figure 2: Pure Sine Wave (no overtones) Figure 3: Composite Wave Overtones show up as fluctuations in the basic sine wave pattern and register in our ear as the timbre, or sound quality of the instrument. rayon—each with a different weave or texture. Yet the color of the dress is red in each case, right? Similarly, F has a definite sound color which can be “woven” into the tonal texture of a guitar or an oboe. But whatever the instru- ment, the pitch still has the color sound of F4. Make sense? d3/ Just remember: Color tells us the pitch; timbre tells us the instrument. Because musicians are inherently poetic, we lyrically use the word color throughout our music vocabulary. In addi- tion to “tone color’ color can also refer to harmonic texture, melodic disposition, dynamics, register, ornamental and interpretive devices, and the general character of a work. Color is a unit of melodic repetition in the French Ars Nova music of the fourteenth century. All these uses of color are liberal redefinitions of a word that also has a definite meaning in physics: a quality that allows us to recognize specific wave frequencies. Some people may complain that we have added yet another definition of color to an already overcrowded list. Yet our term pitch color is exactly that: the unique color sound of a specific pitch frequency. Therefore, it seems to me that Perfect Pitch music theory should have highest dibs on the word color. Color Hearing & Color Association Since the dawn of musical history, man has associated visual colors to notes, tonality, tempo, scale degree, register, timbre, harmonic texture, compositions, and even the entire works of some composers. In the fourth century B.C, Aristotle pondered on a relationship between visual color and music in his De Sensu. In the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton mathematically correlated the prismatic colors red through violet with the scale tones C, D, Eb, F G, A, and Bb'~a C scale in the Dorian mode. Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert, Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Macdowell, and other composers have expressed direct associations of musical tones and/or keys with visual color. And the impressionistic “paintings” of Claude Debussy evoke a visual counterpart in many a listener's mind. In Color Psychology and Color Therapy, Faber Birren noted: Among other composers, Liszt is credited with several pet phrases: “More pink here” “This is too black’ “I want it all azure” Beethoven called B minor the “black key” Schubert likened E minor “unto a maiden robed in white and with a rose-red bow on her breast” To Rimsky-Korsakoy, sun- light was C major, and F# was strawberry red.”This feeling of color associated to musical tones is called synesthesia—a synergy between the senses of hearing and sight. Synesthesia could also involve a smell, a taste, ora tactile feeling when listening to music. Color association is highly subjective. None of these composers associated visual colors to music in precisely the same way as another. Scriabin labeled A major as a yellow key, whereas Rimsky-Korsakov felt it to be rose-colored." The musical terms sharp and flat also seem to connote brightness and somberness in our minds, as they do when used in nonmusical contexts. For example, F# is more often associated with a bright color, while Gh—the very same pitch—is more often thought of as a darker hue. The musician and the artist seem to feel an irresistible and mystical unity between the senses of hearing and sight. Even the languages of the two are replete with related expressions: color, tone, chromatics, pitch, shading, bright- ness, intensity, volume, etc. One of the earliest references to a formal coordination of visual and musical art was by Louis Bertrand Castel in his La Musique en Couleurs (1720). Arthur Bliss wrote a symphony with each movement named after a color. And Russian composer Alexander Scriabin scored a colored light fantasia to accompany Prometheus, the Poem of Fire (1910)—the prelude for light shows and rock concerts to come. 38 For college art class, | wrote a term paper that compared visual colors with musical tones. Incredibly, I did not have any research references; instead, | wrote what I thought. Yet my teacher was so taken by the comparison that he gave it an A+ and made a copy for his permanent records. The point is, whatever our fascination between color and music, Color Hearing and color association are completely separate issues. Perfect Pitch does not rely on color associa- tion in order to recognize tones. You do not have to think of F# as red—unless of course you want to. Instead, we will learn how to hear the absolute pitch colors of tones—colors that are heard, not seen.