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relative pitch

Relative Pitch – Distinguishing the Framework of Music

by Tania Gleaves on February 6, 2012

The Sound of Chords

Unlike perfect pitch, which is the sound of single notes, relative pitch is the sound of chords. A chord is a group of notes that when played together, create a new sound called a harmony. This harmony can be major, minor, or any one of the many derivatives and the reason that relative pitches are called such is because they’re dependent on the relationships within a chord’s notes.

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What Makes Musichttp://www.piano-lessons-central.com/ear-training/relative-pitch/

Since a large part of learning how to play the piano entails training the ear, it’s important that you spend some time training yourself to “hear” the song’s chords and chord progressions rather than a simple tune or melody. Similar to color, relative pitch creates new sounds. When colors are mixed the way that notes are played together, we get new colors or in our case, new sounds.

The ability to readily recognize relative pitch is extremely helpful in composing new music and if you want to write your own music one day, you’ll need to learn how to recognize the structure of a song as easily as you can recognize words. This of course is done with the help of practice. Consistent practice will help your ears “opening up” in such a way that identifying the structure of any song becomes almost natural.

The Physics Of Music

As you’ll soon discover, your body plays a significant role in your ability to play piano and this time, we’re not talking about posture. In this regard, we’re talking about the vibrations that it produces and the way that your body processes those vibrations.

Since all sounds are waves, your body responds to the sound waves that come from your piano. It will absorb some of those waves and it will even repel some of them. Either way, sound waves create physical feelings that your body experiences after being exposed to them.

Non-musicians may interpret these feelings emotionally and thus attach emotive connotations to certain kinds of music. But this is because they don’t understand the physics behind the music. All the properties of music are based on physics (vibrations, frequency, travel though space, etc.) and once fully understood, they can be manipulated to push music to new heights.

Pitch Preferences

Just remember that surprisingly, harmonies are not cross-cultural. Sounds that may “feel good” to Americans may not create the same effects for Africans, Mexicans, Asians, or even Europeans living in Sweden, Spain, or France. Cultural groups grow up with preferred harmonies — harmonies that account for varying preferences in music and if you’re going to write music, write for a specific audience.

The success of the latter of course depends on your exposure to the music of different cultures. Even if you have no intentions of playing or writing music for a foreign group, it’s still interesting to learn how that group interprets and appreciates the music that it favors over your own.

Click Here And Master Relative Pitch In Just Weeks!

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Perfect Pitch – How It’s Achieved And What’s Involved

by Tania Gleaves on December 22, 2011

What Is Pitch?

To make a long physics lesson short, pitch is the rate at which a sound vibrates. Mathematically, Hz (hertz, or cycles per second) units denote pitch and the faster the vibration — the higher the tone. The A note for example vibrates faster than a C or D note whereas a G note vibrates much slower than a B note.

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Perfect pitch is the sound of exact tones or notes. Its counterpart, relative pitch, is the sound of chords. Since a large part of learning to play the piano entails training the ear, it’s important that you spend some time training yourself to listen for perfect pitches. Practice certainly makes the process easier, however others contend that training yourself to listen for relative pitches at the same time increases your abilities to hear both. Some pianists even claim that training to identify relative pitches enhances the ability to pinpoint perfect pitches.

What’s particularly interesting about perfect pitch is that it isn’t easy to identify and it has thus become the subject of scientific study. It prompts us to ask why some people can easily identify any note while others can’t.

Four Components: The Ear, The Body, and Practice

As musicians, we can tell you that part of the answer lays in practice. Years and years and years of practice not only train your ear, they train your body as well. The ear isn’t the only thing that responds to sound — the entire body responds to sound too. So when you play a note, you’re ears will hear how it sounds and your body will feel how it vibrates even if you’re not conscious of the note’s sound waves.

In a sense, our bodies are tuners in their own right.

So you really have two distinct tools to help you identify perfect pitch and this is why many musicians will say, “that feels about right” when they attempt to match a tone. Believe us when we say that years of practice have a tremendous impact on these “feelings.” The ability to “feel” one’s way through a song isn’t unusual at all and it’s one of the techniques used by blind pianists such as Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles.

Natural Talent

Practice of course doesn’t mean to suggest that people can’t achieve perfect pitch through natural ability. Pianists who seem to pick up their lessons rather quickly probably have the natural ability to achieve perfect pitch because their bodies are more sensitive to the vibration of sound.

For those of us who aren’t Mozarts or Chopins however, or just not as sensitive to sound waves as others are, we need to practice – and we need practice a lot!

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Piano Music Notes – Hear Them Speak To You

November 10, 2011

Unless you plan to play music by ear, you’ll need to learn how to read sheet music for piano. Sheet music displays the notes of a song and musicians interpret it as if they were reading the words of a speech. It isn’t difficult to read piano music notes once you understand the basic structure [...]

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Ear Training – A Simple Guide to Hearing The Color and Structure of Music

November 6, 2011

If you have self-studied, as many musicians have, ear training may seem difficult or even impossible. It’s really not impossible or even that hard. There are only two things you need to study ear training at home. You need to be willing to invest time. You need to obtain a self-study course. When you have [...]

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Top 4 Reasons to Learn to Play Piano

September 16, 2011

The Piano Has Its Own Unique Sound One of top 4 reasons to learn to play piano is the unique sound it makes. No other instrument comes close to the type and quality of music generated by the piano, which consequently, is a good thing. High quality music requires that its instruments sound different from [...]

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Relative Pitch Ear Training Supercourse Review: Play Music By Ear

December 3, 2009

Product Overview Burge’s Relative Pitch Ear Training Supercourse is designed to help all levels of musicians acquire relative pitch, simply through practice, listening and focus. This course is designed for musicians who would like to acquire relative pitch. Explaining the purpose of the course, the creator says: “You are limited or set free by what [...]

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