by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
published in The Stream, January 2008
<< The Stream Index
The following arose out of an exchange between myself and a college student who is studying music and who has been seeking a faster, easier way to build his sought-for musical skills… He wrote:
“Recently I designed my own session for helping to develop perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is the ability to know the exact note when played…so if my professor plays a C sharp I can recognize it immediately without any help just by hearing it. The session I designed consists of brainwave entrainment technology…such as theta/alpha waves used to help me memorize the notes. I recorded each individual note into my microphone and uploaded it into a special program. But I have a feeling it’s not working properly…how can I develop my hearing to a perfect pitch level? What other methods could you suggest other than Improvitaping?”
He was right: What he described isn’t working and won’t work. The base line of his existing performance hasn’t been established, much less built into the program as a foundation. There is no sequence of iterated steps of increasing challenge through which he can develop finer and finer discriminations, and be reinforced on them, much less anything for “predicting” and sounding tones.
Even though using multiple differentiated states of mind and brainwave to input the sounds WILL help somewhat, as it will for the input phases of any information, he would still need a way to activate such of that information as he was able to install in order for it to be of much use to him.
From one of my own letters in that exchange:
First, let me mention one approach, for which we need a computer game designer to actualize.
PITCH-CONTROL COMPUTER GAME
- See A Fun Way To Teach Your 2-Year-Old to Sight-Read & Play Music — And Expand the Core of His Intellectual Capacity!” — Winsights No. 14, July 1997), and then extend the concept to that of successive presentations — presentations done rapidly enough to build reflexes — done by computer game.
- Even a tin ear can tell the difference between one octave and another, as a bottom-line starting point where, through a succession of levels of challenge, one learns to discriminate to finer and finer degrees. I figure taking it to something like 1/64th of a note during the challenge of a game should carry over enough to discriminate notes reflexively in casual, non-game use.
- Also important, the PREDICTION and voicing of tones so that you can “sound” the ‘A’ or whatever tone from scratch. Likewise, via successive levels of challenge, to something like 1/64th-tone difference during the game likely to carry over to satisfactory perfect pitch sounding under non-game conditions. (Such pitch control is only one aspect of a number of inner musical skills we propose for such a computer game that should eventually help this to materialize.)
TRAINING FOR PERFECT PITCH
- You may find yourself able to invent an entirely new, different and effective approach to training perfect musical pitch through the method known as Toolbuildering and so “visit” a “highly advanced but entirely human civilization” where even the most klutz-eared enjoy perfect musical pitch, and be taken to the point of experience which shows clearly what CAUSES everyone in that (imagined?) civilization to enjoy such perfect musical pitch. Copy off the tool or technique or practice you find there, which you can then use for objective training purposes back here. “Toolbuilder” has been the source of a good many of our Project Renaissance techniques.
- You can Google for programs which propose to teach or train the skill of perfect musical pitch. Some of these might actually work — and might not. It is hard for me to evaluate, since I have the trait already, all my life, and thought of it as a bit of a mixed blessing until I learned of its association with, and of its possibly being a cause of, a radically expanded left plenum temporales — the apparent very core of our intellect, since it is the organ in our brain which discriminates nuances of word meanings. In people with perfect musical pitch, physically the left plenum temporales is double the size of its counterpart in people without perfect musical pitch.
- Every one of our forty or so online-published problem-solving techniques can be used on the problem of finding an easy, effective, rewarding way to train up perfect musical pitch. Take your choice! — as often as you like, until you hit the payoff that best suits you.
In other correspondence, I also suggested use of the procedure at “Build Your Ability to Understand Everything!” – Winsights No. 44, August 2000) as another main avenue for training up such musical skills as perfect pitch, not only various intellectual and conceptual proficiencies.
A further point why I am posting this exchange here in The STREAM: I truly have no way of directly evaluating the effectiveness of existing programs, as advertised online, for training up perfect musical pitch. I need the help in this of people who do not now have perfect pitch, but who are willing to experiment. If an existing program does the job and does it well, I can simply link to it, for the benefit of all interested in such things that come our way. If not, we should develop a strong program for this, as there is strong if circumstantial evidence that this could be another powerful tool for heightening intellectual abilities. Could a half-dozen or more of you, reading this, write me who do not now have perfect musical pitch ability, and then be willing to undertake an effort to develop that ability through one of the programs which come up when you Google “train perfect music pitch”?