M2M Day 217: Am I already on the wrong track?
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For June, my goal is to develop perfect pitch.
Two days ago, I started searching for song-based mnemonics that I could use to more easily identify the intervals between C and all the other notes.
At the time, I had identified five mnemonics that represented all the intervals in the key of C (other than the interval between C and B).
Today, I finished selecting mnemonics for all twelve intervals (with the help of a guide that Kev recommended to me).
Here are the songs I’m using as mnemonics (to remember each note in reference to C):
C — The reference tone
C# — Jaws
D — Happy Birthday
Eb — Georgia On My Mind
E — When the Saints Go Marching In
F# — The Simpsons
G — Star Wars theme
Ab — We Are Young
A — NBC Chimes
Bb — Star Trek theme
B — Take On Me
With these mnemonics established, I went back to Toned Ear to practice.
During my session, to simplify things for now, I continued focusing just on the notes in the key of C.
I very quickly came across a bit of a problem though: Whenever the played note was higher than the C reference tone, I could easily apply my mnemonic and guess the note correctly. However, my mnemonics didn’t work in the other direction — If the played note was lower than the C, I was essentially guessing blind (or deaf…? Tone deaf?? I’m not sure what the auditory equivalent of this expression is).
I’m not particularly surprised by this finding. In fact, I was aware that I would eventually need to learn my intervals in the downward direction (my mnemonics only work for intervals in the upward direction right now).
However, this finding did get me thinking… Shouldn’t I want to learn each note in an octave-invariant kind of way? In other words, if my end goal is perfect pitch, not relative pitch, shouldn’t I determine some method where each note is perceived consistently regardless of the octave it’s played in?
I shouldn’t have to learn “This is what a Bb sounds like when it’s a high Bb” and “This is what a Bb sounds like when it’s a low Bb”.
A Bb should always just be a Bb.
With my current approach, I’m not sure that I have this “octave-invariant” luxury, so perhaps this isn’t the right approach after all.
I feel like I could easily get sucked down the rabbit hole of relative pitch, which may actually take me further and further away from perfect pitch.
I need to make sure I’m using relative pitch as a crutch to get more comfortable practicing straight-up perfect pitch, and not as a short-term replacement goal.
I will likely want to remove my reliance on the relative pitch mnemonics sooner rather than later (and just use them to get me going).
Then again, if I remove the mnemonics completely, I’m not sure how scientific my approach can be… other than just repeatedly trying to identify notes over and over again on Toned Ear.
I’m a bit unsure which direction I should go. So, for now, I’ll continue to move generally forward, assess where I’m at, and refine my approach along the way.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
