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The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse
 
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The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse [Audio CD]

David Lucas Burge (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)


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Book Description

November 1, 1999
Learn to recognize EXACT tones -- BY EAR! The #1 best-selling ear training method, as seen in major music magazines for 20 years and verified by research at two leading universities.

An amazing discovery into your personal musical talent.

In classical times, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin -- and most all the musical greats -- had Perfect Pitch. 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, Andre Previn, Stevie Wonder, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Gould, Yngwie Malmsteen, Eric Johnson, Tommy Mars, Bela 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 you climb, the more commonplace the ability becomes. For example, at the Julliard School of Music you'll find about 10% of the students with Perfect Pitch. A typical symphony 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 and enjoyment always hinges on one's ability to hear.

The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse contains 8 audio CDs (or cassettes) plus easy handbook. You will learn the fascinating secrets behind the legendary ability of Perfect Pitch -- the prized "super ear" of the world's greatest musicians, the master key that enables you to:

+ recognize EXACT tones and chords -- BY EAR! + sing correct tones -- without a starting pitch + play songs by ear after listening to them + compose music in your head + perform with confidence, increase your powers of memory + sight-read and sight-sing with precision + enjoy richer perception, finer music appreciation

The proof? You will actually hear for yourself -- with YOUR OWN EARS!

It's a curious experience the first time you can tell that a vocalist hit a high C, or when an ensemble has drifted flat -- just by listening with your own ears. Singers find Perfect Pitch invaluable for sight singing, locating obscure pitches, singing in tune, and producing a correct pitch out of thin air.

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.

Listening to music, you can hear that a piece is in the key of G major, and you can follow the chords by ear:  E minor, A major, D dominant seven, etc. -- a vital tool to zero in on voice lines within layers of melody and harmony.

When you know each pitch by ear, musical tones become yours to command. For example, if you want to play by ear, your ear does the work for you -- instead of searching for desired tones by hand.

Do you ever have a new melody or new chord sequence come to your mind, unexpected, in a flash of inspiration? When your ear can identify tones with Perfect Pitch, you can take that music out of your head simply by listening to your "inner radio."

Perfect Pitch (known 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." 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 easily recognize voices on the phone, or quickly pick up languages and foreign accents.

Music is a hearing art. When you develop your ear, you touch everything in music. Every possible avenue of skill and talent is ultimately linked to your ear.

Imagine the talents your Perfect Pitch can open for YOU -- to advance your playing, your singing, your own creativity and confidence. But then again -- how will you ever know until you experience Perfect Pitch for yourself?

Don’t wait and wonder. Order your own Perfect Pitch Ear-Training SuperCourse -- a lifetime gift of music to yourself. Do it now -- and hear it with your own ears!

P.S. Special Offer: To celebrate Version 2.0 we’re now giving away TWO free CDs!!



Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 How I Discovered the Secret to PerfectÊPitch

It all started in ninth grade as a sort of teenage rivalryÊ.Ê.Ê.

I would slave at the piano for five hours daily. Linda practiced far less. Yet somehow she always seemed to have an edge that made her the star performer of our school.

It was frustrating.

What does she have that I don't? I'd wonder.

Linda's best friend, Sheryl, sensed my internal competition. One day she bragged on and on about Linda, adding more fuel to my fire.

"You could never be as good as Linda," she taunted me. "Linda's got PerfectÊPitch."

"What's PerfectÊPitch?" I asked.

Sheryl gloated over a few of Linda's uncanny abilities: how she could name exact tones and chords Ñ by ear; Êhow she could sing any pitch Ñ from memory; Êhow she could play songs Ñ 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 later I doubted Sheryl's story. How could anyone possibly know F# or Bb just by listening? An ear like that would give you a mastery of the entire musical language!

It bothered me. Did she really have PerfectÊPitch? I finally got up the nerve, approached Linda, and asked her point-blank if it was true.

"Yes," she nodded to me aloofly.

But PerfectÊPitch was too good to believe. I rudely pressed, "Can I test you sometime?"

"OK," she replied cheerfully. Now she'd eat her wordsÊ.Ê.Ê.

My plan was ingeniously simple: I picked a moment when Linda least suspected. Then I boldly challenged her to name tones for me Ñ by ear.

I made sure she had not been playing any music. I made her stand so she could not see the piano keyboard. I made certain that other classmates could not help her. I set everything up perfectly so I could expose her PerfectÊPitch claims as a ridiculous joke.

The tension mounted as I plotted my testing strategy. Linda appeared serene. Then, 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 played another tone. She didn't even stop to think. Instantly she announced the correct pitch.

I frantically played more tones, skipping here and there all over the keyboard. But somehow she knew the pitch each time. She was AMAZING Ñ she knew tones as easily as colors!

"Sing an Eb," I demanded, determined to mess her up. She sang a tone. I checked her on the keyboard Ñ 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 it?" I blurted.

"I don't know," she sighed.

And to my dismay, that was all I could get out of her!

The dazzle of PerfectÊPitch hit me like a ton of bricks. My head was dizzy with disbelief. Yet from that moment on, I knew PerfectÊPitch was real. I couldn't get itÊ.Ê.Ê.

"How does she DO it?" I kept asking myself. On the other hand, why can't everyone recognize tones by ear? It dawned on me that most musicians can't tell a simple C from a C#, or the key of AÊmajor from FÊmajor! I thought about that. A musician who can't tell tones by ear?! That's as strange as an artist not knowing the rainbow colors of paints on his palette! It seemed odd and contradictory.

I found myself even more mystified than before. Humiliated and puzzled, I went home to work on this problem. At age 14, this was a hard nut to crack.

You can be sure I tried it myself. I would sweet-talk my three brothers and two sisters into playing tones for me; ÊI would try to name them by ear. But I found it was a guessing game I couldn't win.

I tried to feel the "highness" or "lowness" of each pitch. I played tones over and over to get them to stick in my head. Day after day I tried to memorize those elusive tones, but nothing worked. After weeks of pure nothing, I still couldn't get it.

I had to admit that Linda had an extraordinary gift Ñ the ultimate ear for music, a master key to many talents. I wished I had an ear like that. But I realized it was way beyond my reach.

So finally, I gave up. Then it happenedÊ.Ê.Ê.

It was like a miracle. A twist of fate. Like finding the lost HolyÊGrailÊ.Ê.Ê. Once I had stopped straining my ear, I started to listen NATURALLY. Then the incredible secret to PerfectÊPitch jumped right into my lap.

I began to notice faint "colors" within the tones. Not visual colors, but colors of pitch, colors of sound. They had always been there. But this was the first time I had ever "let go" Ñ and really listened Ñ to discover these subtle differences.

Soon Ñ to my own disbelief Ñ I too could recognize the tones by ear! It was simple. I could hear how F# sounds one way, while Bb has a different sound Ñ sort of like "hearing" red and blue.

The realization struck me: THIS IS PERFECTÊPITCH! This is how Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart could mentally envision their masterpieces Ñ and know tones, chords, and keys all by ear Ñ by tuning in to these subtle "pitch colors" within the tones. Ê Story continues...


Product Details

  • Audio CD
  • Publisher: PerfectPitch.com; 2 edition (November 1, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0942542908
  • ISBN-13: 978-0942542905
  • Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 22.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #979,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

 

Customer Reviews

25 Reviews
5 star:
 (10)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (9)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars fail, January 10, 2008
This review is from: The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse (Audio CD)
To summarize:

Start:
He talks about how wonderful perfect pitch is. It's so easy to get. It's very simple. Its magic. Its color, but not real color, its hearing color, also described as texture, and flavor. Each note has these.

Listener:
Uh ok. What am I supposed to be listening for?

Explanation:
You should absorb the note. Spend time with the note. Look for the notes flavor and color. Like, to me, the F note sounds twangy. When I was a kid I remember my piano sounding twangy. I wont give you anymore clues than that. You'll have to describe the characteristics of each note yourself. Each note has a unique characteristic.

Listener:
I knew that. If each note didnt have a characteristic it wouldnt be possible to differenciate notes. What should I do to increase my ability to find characteristics?

((several hours of listening later))

Explanation: Go with a partner have them play notes and try to identify them.

Listener: Mmm you didnt give any techniques besides playing non melodically and I was already training that before buying this thing. Guess and check isnt 100$ advice.

Explanation: Drugs(subtances, alcohol too) are bad. (says that for like an hour) If you can get 20 notes in a row with perfect pitch continue playing this tape.




David Burge has a wonderful way of using parallels and comparisons to waste your time. He gets to the point yes, but he continues saying the same thing for an hour without providing any more than guess and check technique looking for characteristics of the note.

He cites his past numerous times at random during the lecture talking about he can recognize peoples voices by pitch, how he used to brag about it in high school, how people would ask him to sing notes for him, etc.


You may gain perfect pitch from the tapes. I assume those who rated this high just got the motivation to do guess and check and are still zealously trying to convince themselves their $100 was well spent. This is more of a general self help tape than a standardized educational method of teaching. There's more motivating and rambling than educating.



Guess notes throughout the day and check yourself. Try to find various ways to describe the notes. Use a friend and compare with them. This advice is way better than Burge's I-dont-know-its-a-feeling generalities.
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45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Time consuming and not much improvement, August 13, 2001
This review is from: The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse (Audio CD)
I purchased the whole CD set end of 2000 hoping to improve my perfect pitch skills. I am rather disappointed with the audio set as it takes so much time and yet really did not provide much progress. The author did not provide helpful instructions in improving the listening skill, all he did was asking listeners to relax and keep listening. There were 22 lessons, with each one focusing on listening drills, and emphasis on relaxing and let the music comes to you.
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47 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Look inward... before you're $200 poorer and feeling cheated., December 7, 2006
This review is from: The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse (Audio CD)
The advertising of this course is a bit over the top... enough to make one a bit skeptical. Good things should sell themselves, no? Perhaps they should, but conceiving a good product and having good marketing skills are by no means equated. Either can be true with a complete lack of the other. But the company that makes this course doesn't have the luxury of the gigantic Google, once a modest search engine, now the owner of Youtube. This course appeals to a rather limited customer base, and the funtionality of it isn't self-evident. Let's face it, Google was a great search engine, and what more did they have to do to win us over than give us great results when we looked stuff up on the internet? David Lucas Burge, the creator of this course, has decided to use some marketing tact.
Sometimes, the marketing exaggerates just enough so he's not quite lying but creating an allure that is too good to be true. The frustrated reviewer whose vocalist wife could do nothing with the course. The guy who has made no progress in several years despite 'doing' what Mr. Burges says. No one's gonna tell them they're wrong. This course costs a pretty penny and it promises the sky and more... So I just wanna help you see through the advertising, and help you consider whether this is for you.
I'm working on this course right now, and I have to say, my hearing has improved a lot. Whether its perfect pitch in the making, I'm not sure. But as a jazz guitarist, the ear is totally essential. And so far I'm impressed with Mr. Burge's approach. "Sitting down" with me and having me listen carefully to single tones... has proven to be something incredibly valuable I never would have thought to do simply because the world can put a lot of emphasis on doing more, doing it fast, and doing it now. Running to keep up with life, sometimes we lose track of the essential simple things; how essential the simple things can be.
What I want to contribute to the reviews here is that you, the prospective buyer, had better be DAMN committed. To music, and to doing something that isn't necessarily MAKING music to make yourself better at... making music. Otherwise, I would compare it to... trying to audit a class in college you have no interest in. Personally, I audit the classes I AM interested in but don't have time for. If I absolutely have to learn something I'm not interested in, I'll definitely take it for a grade. There's that extra incentive I need. Well, with this course, and with music, there is no grade so to speak. No diploma. Thank God!
So look deep inside yourself, examine your motives. If you wanna hear better so that so you can dazzle a crowd from the stage, consider getting a sweet hairdo and learning some pop tunes. In short, look elsewhere. Learn riffs. There are plenty out there. Take the blues for example. Blues musicians can sound phenomenal without barely any sense of the pitches they are playing. You don't really need Perfect Pitch to make pretty music. So if you can say with little consideration that music is something that matters greatly to you, that you think about music and not so much about being famous and big hair, keep reading, cause there's more to discourage you. :)
This takes patience, dedication and furthermore, TIME. Everyone will come to this course with their respective set of skills, and some of those skills will make progress quicker. but I think some lifestyles will prevent one from being able to truly take advantage of this. Music had better not only rank high on your list of preoccupations/obsessions, but you had better be able to sit down with music and spend some quality ALONE time with it. Sans distractions. Unfortunately, this may include most cases of having children or even having a moderately involved relationship. Wait until you guys inevitably get bored with eachother, or your kids run off because you won't stop playing Rush. Just kidding. I think. Or, you know, consider you own lifestyle. This ain't the thing for you if you can't be a bit of a loner, whether by choice or otherwise! In any case, this should take as much of your attention as studying for any final exam. That doesn't mean you should get stressed out about it. But it does mean you have to look it in the eye with all of that same seriousness and focus. Even if this is more about focusing on being seriously relaxed. Because you love this, right? That's all it ever was. Love for sounds and stuff. Here, I'll sound a little cheesy for a second. Mr. Burge will teach you how to be the best lover you can be to music. (I am definitely hinting at the metaphor you thought you sensed there.) There are times when I am almost creeped out by the way he speaks, how it seems to allude to the kind of intimacy we reserve for, well, loving someone. But there is a love he is sharing with you, I think, and that's the love of music.
I hope this helps you better consider throwing down those hard earned bones. The three stars is for advertising that flirts a little to much with being false.
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