I was watching the tuner as he was singing, "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away." When he hits the word "far" he hits a perfect "E" note, just freakin' completely dead on. What was amazing to me is that this seemed to be what triggered some girls to scream.
Do we biologically just know when someone nails a perfect note? Jason Mraz, who has perfect absolute pitch, also makes audiences freak out when he hits certain notes.
After a show I played with Jason in Sacramento once, he came outside and sang a bit of one of my songs he liked to me. I'm fairly accurate, but he just sounded so much better. I didn't know why, seven years ago, but now I understand.
He wasn't just singing my "Fear of Success" song with the notes all the correct distance from each other (perfect relative pitch), he was singing from memory, with no instrument, perfectly in tune, with absolute pitch. He reproduced my song back to me with the pitches corrected. I knew he was doing something amazing but I didn't know what. ( I said, "I wish I could sing like you." He said, "I wish I could think like you." Cool moment. ) It was a great gift to be shown that there is a "next level" I can work for.
So, I'm still working on it. I've gotten to the point were 90% of the time, I can accurately find Middle C out of the blue by singing "Hey Jude", and I'm on an incredible high about this!
As I said in my previous posts, I learned to find Middle C by keeping the first two notes to Hey Jude in the memo pad of my cell phone, testing myself at random times during the day, and when I'm wrong, by comparing the feeling of the right and wrong notes. After a while, the right note is just there, and you can recall it at will.
Today I decided to add Yesterday to the mix. The first two notes are "G" and "F". So, if you sing, "Hey Jude, don't make it bad" the word "bad" in Jude is the same G note as the word "Yes" in "Yesterday".
Using some well known songs, I want to get the point where I recognize that a "G" is always a "G" no matter what the song. I hope this will lead to an ability to hear any note and recognize what it is (pitch recognition as well as pitch recall).
Perfect Pitch EXERCISE 2.
Here are some intros to well known songs. Sing them and work on hearing the notes they have in common.
C4 A3 A3 C4 D4 G3
Hey Jude, don't make, it bad.
C4 C4 C#4 G#3
Mi- chelle my belle
G#3 A3 B3 B3 A3 G#3 F# G#3 A3 A3
What would you think if I sang out a tune
G3 G3 G3 G3 B3 B3 A3
Im- a- gine there's no heav- en.
A3 B3 C4 B3 A3 B3
There's a La- dy who's sure (Stairway to Heaven)
B3 D4 B3 E4 B3 D4 E4 B3
I read the news to -day oh boy
B3 C#4 Eb4 C#4 B3 G3 B3 G3
Pen- ny lane there is a bar ber
G3 F3 F3 A3 B3 C#4 D4 E4 F4 E4 D4
Yes-terday, all my trou- bles seemed so far away.
G3 G3 G3 G3 A3-E3 E3 G3 G3 C4 D4
When I find my self in times of trou-ble (Let it Be)
G#3 G#4 G4 Eb4 F4 G4 G#4
Some- where o- ver the rain bow
C#4 C#4 C#4 C#4 C#4 C#4 C4 B3 B3 B3 B3
Some thing in the way she moves a- ttracts me like
About the numbers: The 4th C on the piano is called C4 or middle C. An A3 is 220Hz, A4 is 440Hz.
I'm finding that when I started learning new notes, I lost the Middle C recall, so I have to build that back up again.
2 comments:
[...] posted about perfect pitch previously: correcting wrong learned notes, paul mccartney making girls scream, absolute pitch [...]
Very interesting. I've been trying to analyse some Beatles songs according to the point in the chord sequence that the girls scream at. Never thought that they might also be screaming at single notes though.
Post a Comment