Developing True Pitch: Techniques for Musicians

True pitch can be developed by anyone through consistent practice on a single live instrument.

### Developing True Pitch: Techniques and Insights for Musicians
* 🎶 The development of perfect pitch occurs in five stages of brain development, with stage two (birth to age six) being **critical for establishing this ability**.
* 🧠 "If perfect pitch is developed here and you haven't had musical training from your zero to six, you're **out of luck**," but there are **alternative paths to develop musical skills later in life**.
* 🎷 The speaker shares personal experiences of learning music, emphasizing that **exposure to music**, even without formal training, can still lead to **musical development**.
* 🎵 Relative pitch is the ability to **identify notes based on a reference**, while true pitch, coined by jazz instrumentalist **Sean Wallace**, can be developed by **consistent practice on a single instrument**.
* 🎹 To develop true pitch, musicians should focus on live instruments, as electronic instruments lack the **unique timbres that help distinguish notes**.
* 🔊 Consistent practice on one instrument allows musicians to **memorize the unique timbres associated with each note**, leading to a **deeper understanding of sound**.
* 🧘 Mental practice is also highlighted as a valuable technique, allowing musicians to **continue their development** even when they can't physically play their instrument.
* 💡 The speaker encourages musicians to invest time in learning their instrument while also using mental techniques to enhance their musical abilities, stating, "**If I can do it, I know everyone can**."

So you want perfect pitch? So from the moment you're born to the time you die, your brain develops in 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

become 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 wanted to join band because my brother played drums and I wanted 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 the saxophone, 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 pitch. 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 key it is 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 instruments strings are highly imperfect I think we all could agree on that there are so many variables and

factors that creates the timbre 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 timbre - 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 timbre of every individual note of a live instrument that we'll be using to our advantage while using an electronic instrument is kind of disadvantageous is because that each notes timbre 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

tambourine 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 it's 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 best friend's 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 ask what vowel isn't making one thing I do need to make clear is that since you'll be memorizing tambours 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 tambours and

every note you memorize wasn't even the right pitch. 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 true pitch 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 C 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 can't hear the notes well with this troop it's 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 when 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 everyone can because I am nothing I'm using an 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 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

How I Taught Myself Perfect Pitch (True Pitch)

Saxologic

Development of Perfect Pitch and its Misconceptions

Perfect pitch is believed to originate between birth and age six.

Skills and instincts developed in this stage are deeply ingrained.

Lack of musical training in early childhood doesn't preclude developing pitch skills later.

The speaker's experience involved informal exposure to music, not structured training.

The speaker demonstrates their ability to identify notes without a reference pitch.

Relative pitch relies on a reference note to identify others.

Relative pitch uses interval knowledge to determine notes based on a reference.

Relative pitch is crucial for improvisation, more so than perfect pitch.

The speaker's ability is not relative pitch, as they don't need a reference note.

Perfect pitch is described as instinctive, unlike the speaker's ability.

The speaker can identify the key of a song without a reference.

The speaker distinguishes timbre (tone color) easily.

True pitch is a term coined by Sean Wallace, which the speaker believes is attainable by anyone.

Consistent playing of the same instrument is crucial for developing true pitch.

Developing True Pitch: Instrument Choice and Process

Live instruments are preferred due to their inherent imperfections in timbre.

The inconsistencies in timbre of live instruments aid in distinguishing notes.

Electronic instruments are less ideal due to their consistent timbre.

The focus is on memorizing the timbre of each note, not the pitch itself.

Choosing one live instrument as a primary source is recommended.

Practical Application and Exercises for True Pitch

The speaker recommends using a tuner to ensure accurate pitch memorization.

The speaker demonstrates associating notes with vowel sounds.

The importance of connecting with one's instrument and personal sound is emphasized.

The speaker encourages memorizing the timbre of each note on their instrument.

True pitch allows for mental transcription of notes, similar to mental rehearsal.

The speaker uses the example of mental practice in baseball to highlight the benefits.

Mental practice using true pitch is beneficial even for highly skilled musicians.

The speaker mentions transcribing entire solos mentally.

True pitch simplifies transcription but doesn't replace practice and learning.