Customer Reviews

The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have been listening to this program for one year, and things are starting to happen. You can't imagine the feeling the first time I heard the sound colour of the tone B. It has nothing to do with how high or low the pitch is. It's how it sounds. After I heard the first tone, I quickly managed more tones.

Now I can sing any tone at any time, find keys and chords, and I am still getting better. I love it...

If you have the motivation I would highly recommend the program, however if you don't, don't bother...

I bought this "CD Program" thinking there would be more hands on drills. The EIGHT cds could have easily been reduced to ONE cd and a workbook. 99% of the cds consist of David Lucas Burge talking on and on and on and on and on as you are waiting for him to actually tell you what to practice... which, by the way, ends up being a very esoteric and ambiguous assignment.

After having listened to the CDS, I have no doubt that Mr. Burge truly has perfect pitch, but knowing and teaching are 2 COMPLETELY different things. Mr. Burge is NOT a good teacher.

I'll summarize the course for you: Spend a lot of time listening to notes, and try to recognize the quality of different tones. There you go.

I can't believe some of the stuff I'm reading on here. You don't have to like Burge or agree with his opinions on things, but the content of this course is gold for the patient student. I was also very skeptical, to the point that I bought this course in hopes that I could prove it was a scam.

I did this course years ago, back when it was in cassette form only, and it did miracles for my hearing. I do admit, that my case was an unusual one. I gained perfect pitch after just 1 week of practice. Once your ear "tunes in" to the subtle moods of the pitches, you'll forever hear them.

The most frustrating thing about a course like this is that you can't always see the progress. You just have to trust that your ear is improving, and it surely is. My suggestion to those of you having problems with this course:

Compare notes C, D and E. Have someone play them randomly (and slowly) in any octave on a piano or keyboard. This will make it nearly impossible to listen with relative pitch. After a while, you will notice that all the C's sound one way, the D's another, and so on. This is exactly what I did for 4 days with no progress. Then all of the sudden, I just "got it."

This course seems to be a combination of snake oil..., with Mr. Birge insisting that faith and slick talking will improve your ear. I had hoped for a series of progressive ear training exercises on CD, but there is nothing of any real substance provided. In addition I found that the course is really designed for two people to work on togeather, which was not what I had planned and is difficult for most adults to coordinate on a regular basis. This is a very expensive investment for the small return it provides.

This course is a great method for musicians (or others) that want to learn perfect pitch. Though it doesn't take much time per day, it's not an instantaneous process: the CD's aren't reprogramming your brain; they're showing you how to reprogram it yourself.

Berge's instructions are exceptionally lucid and easy to understand. You do have to have an instrument yourself so that you can create the tones you will be listening for.

If you're looking to acquire perfect pitch and willing to invest the time necessary to do so, I highly reccommend this course.

I have been a guitarist and home project studio user for the past five years.I am 27 years old.I have had many instructional DVDs, books, and even audio CDs along the five years of my playing.I would have to say that this package rates about the same uselessness as most, if not all, of the get-rich-quick and other lame crap you see for sale.I did give it an honest chance and was completely disappointed.Basically Mr. Burge spends 80%-90% of the time telling you to relax and just trying to convince you of hearing something that is completely abstract.He also basically spends a section at the beginning trying to convince you to listen to the rest of the CDs, cause it seems completely pointless to continue.He makes it sound like some mystical ability that just happens when it comes.That is such bull crap, if my other instructional stuff had said that, I would have given up on music instructional material a long time ago.

When you buy some instructional material, weather it be DVD, CD, Book or whatever else there is, you KNOW when what you bought is helping you, cause you'll actually learn something from it, that is all the proof you need.Of all the instructional material I have had in the last five years, not one has spent so much time trying to convince me of something that just didn't work.Ive heard of the Relative Pitch program and I think that one may actually be of some use but I will see in the near future.

Save your money, don't by it.It's a complete waste of time.I walked away from it with disappointment.I have the Master Class version to be specific.

(As for the previouse reviewers that gave it 4 or 5 stars, obviously Mr Burge was succesful in convincing them of there magical ability, lol.)

I am so glad I didn't spend my own cash on this garbage. Although it was a loaner, I would still like a refund on the time I wasted listening to it.
The reviewer who likened it to Snake Oil was spot on. There is nothing tangible here, just a bunch of nebulous and ambiguous concepts. I suspect that if Burge had the right of reply he would have said that "...it's because I didn't take the time to understand it", "didn't practice enough" or that I am just plain tone deaf. That's not unlike the faith healer who asserts that the only reason you are not cured is because you don't truly BELIEEEEEVE in Jesus. Bottom line: If perfect pitch was teachable, then Juilliard would have offered a course.