Section 4 - Experiencing Absolute Pitch
In this section of the tutorial there will be many ideas gathered from people's experiences about what pitch chroma is, what it is not, and how to identify it. Since the chroma of a pitch can be so elusive at times, it would be beneficial to read this section with an instrument beside you, to get an idea of what you should be hearing, and more importantly what you should be listening for.
Twelve Rooms of Glass
Try to imagine this...
You are standing in a round room made of glass. The floor is painted light blue with a big "C" in black painted on top of it. You can see eleven other rooms from where you are standing, and they all appear to be different colors with different letters painted on their floors.
Listening to music in the key of C is analogous to this, just as you might be looking at different rooms from the "C" room, you hear scales and chords that in a piece of music from the C tonic. If you play a C major or minor scale now, take notice of how the scale wants to lead your ear back to the C or the tonic position.
Figure 1 - Relationships between C and other notes
Now that your ear is tuned to C, even if you play other notes outside the scale you were using above, that tonic "feel" is still present until the notes change enough to draw your ear out of that key. Changing keys in music would be like moving to a different room. Just as if you moved to the D room you could see all the other rooms from your new position, a piece of music in the key of D could present scales and chords that have relationships to the tonic D. If you play a D scale now, you will notice how the tonic or your tonal center has changed from the C to the D.
Figure 2 - Relationships between D and other notes
To continue the analogy, now imagine the glass of each room was tinted with the same color as the room it contained. The C glass would be tinted with the color of the C room, the D glass with the D room color etc. Looking through the glass of the G room while standing in the C room would create a blending of the C and G glass colors.
Bringing this analogy back to music, when you are listening to music in the key of C, each other note that you hear always is related to the tonic. Someone with good relative pitch can tell the names of each of the other notes because of the interval or relationships between them. Just like in our room scenario, someone could tell the names of the other rooms depending on how the other rooms looked through the room they were standing in. This is NOT absolute pitch, this is relative pitch.
To expand the analogy further, we take the names of the rooms off all the floors and present you with the following problem: Identify the room marked with the X.
Figure 3 - Identify the room marked X
Now, before we answer this question, let us go through the process of what should occur in order for us to answer it using an ability analogous to both relative and absolute pitch. With relative pitch, if you knew before hand that you are standing in the C room or in the key of C when asked this question, you can look at the X room or hear the X relationship and you would know the name by relative pitch.
Figure 4 - Relationship between C and X
This is the most common method of identifying a note; by its interval or relationship. Just to point something out here, this is good! Relative pitch is how we perceive and enjoy music and you are not trying to stop this from happening ever. Why would you want this to stop? This is the most important ability for creating or listening to music. No, what we want to do is add something to it. Add absolute pitch perception.
So how do we identify X using absolute pitch? Well this will happen differently at various stages of your absolute pitch ability's development. Let us continue with the analogy. First off, you need to get out of the C room (or whatever room you were in) and go to the room marked X (in this case the F#) or change to the tonal center of F#.
Figure 5 - Inside the room / tonal center marked F#
There are various techniques to accomplish this move musically, but the most obvious one is to listen to a piece of music in that key, so you can draw your ear to that tonic or tonal center. So now play a scale in F# and draw your ear to that tonal center. Once you have done this, it is like you are now standing inside the room marked F#, and have a clearer view of your surroundings. While you are in this room, tonic, or tonal center, take note about how you feel being there. For the room it would be easy; the floor is red and let's say the lighting is bright which makes you feel excited. For a note's sound this is more difficult to put into words and at first you probably don't have any real feelings that you can describe about it. Don't worry, you can trust that they are there, just unclear at this point.
To help you understand what you should be feeling, move to a different room labeled D#.
Figure 6 - Inside the rooms / tonal centers marked F# and D#
Play a scale in D# and draw your ear to that tonal center. You might notice right away that this new tonal center has a different feel to it from when you were in the F# tonal center. This is good! This is exactly what you should be experiencing. If you don't sense anything at first, slowly switch back and forth between an F# scale and a D# scale a few times and let your ear go into each key. Try just playing an F# and imagine the rest of the scale without playing it. Do the same thing for the D#. Notice anything? If you just listen to the F# and the D# you hear that one is higher than the other obviously, but you are trying to hear something else in there too. Actually it's more like you are trying to feel something else. When you hear the scale go up and down and land on the F# you can feel it better because you are focused more clearly on the F#. Do the same thing with the D#.
How does each key make you feel? In our room analogy, we can say that when you are in the D# room, the lighting is darker and the floor is a different color than when you are in the F# room. Having a comparison between the two rooms help identify your feelings about each one. The D# room is darker and calmer than when you were in the F# room which was bright and exciting. The feeling you get from each note is subtle and abstract which makes it hard to put into words such as these but it doesn't really matter. Do not worry about trying to describe it! If you can tell that you feel different (even in the slightest) about the F# and the D# you have exactly what you need to learn absolute pitch. You just need to learn to remember the feeling you get from each note well enough to say "that's the F#" or "that's the D#". If we took the labels off the floor of our rooms, you could still identify the F# room because you would remember that "I felt excited in that room, that was the F# room". Since the the feelings you get from the notes F# and D# are so subtle, you need more time to learn to identify them, and only then will you even want to attempt to describe them in words. Just remember that it is not important how anyone describes the notes, only that you can identify your personal feelings for each of them.
At first you need to constantly move into the room which you have to identify. The reason for this is when you are in the F# room you get a clearer look around than if you were looking at the F# room while standing in the D# room looking through the D# and F# windows. If you are in the F# tonal context or key, you get a clearer feeling from the F# than if you were hearing the F# from the D# tonal context. In time, you will be able to recognize the F# from any tonal context, just like you can recognize the F# room through the window of another room.
Prolobe has a function which helps move your tonal center around the note in question. Each time a note is presented, you try to recall the feel you get from that note. Whenever you are mistaken, you can press the F1 key, and a melody will play that surrounds that note to help bring your ear into that tonal context.
About the melodies
Each melody starts and ends on the tonic or tonal center for a note. Each of the 12 notes gets its own 5 note melody which stays constant, but no one melody is the same for a different pitch; that is to say that no two melodies are exactly transposed. All the F# melodies in any octave are the same and all the D# melodies in any octave are the same, etc.
During training, each time you are presented with a note, identify it as you normally would. However, on errors press F1 to hear the melody for the note erred. Let your ear draw around that tonal center, and give you a clearer impression of the chroma for that note. When doing chords, go through the same thing. Isolate each note of the chord in your mind's ear. Draw your ear around the tonal center of the first note, and see if the melody is triggered. Do the same thing with the rest of the notes in the chord. You need to hear every note in a chord as the tonic. If the melody or feel of a note eludes you, that's ok. On errors just listen to the melody again to reinforce that tonic feeling which is the chroma.
At first you will use the melodies to help remind you of a note's name and feel. In very little time, you will start to get impressions of a melody when hearing a note by itself. This is the feel of a note triggering the sound of the melody without even hearing it. Each time this happens, your ear was drawn to that tonal center, and it reminded you of the melody which also reminded you of the note name. This is exactly what should be happening! Over time, this will happen more and more often and eventually just happen automatically, which will allow you to instantly recognize a pitch and its name without any external reference.
This is absolute pitch.