My ear sucks. But less than yesterday.

Does anyone remember this guy?

Does this help?

Back in the late 80's, at the back of every music magazine in existence was a full page ad for the David Lucas Burge Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse.  The ad told the tale of David Lucas Burge's "discovery" that perfect pitch was not, in fact, something you had to be born with, but something that could actually be taught if you understood the secret.  And for just a couple hundred dollars, he'd teach it to you.

As a type-A over-achieving 10 year-old musician, I was of course bitter that I had been born without the elusive Perfect Pitch gene -- so learning that I could overcome my disability was quite exciting.  I saved my allowance for what seemed like years and sent away for the course, along with its companion Relative Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse.

The course arrived in a box of 53 shiny CDs (only recently dubbed from cassette tape), 8 on perfect pitch, and 45 more on relative pitch.  I excitedly put in the first CD and learned all about the wonders of perfect pitch and the mystical journey I was about to embark on.  In disc 2, I learned that perfect pitch is actually not unlike how we see colors.  When we perceive light, we recognize different frequencies as different colors; similarly, the ear can distinguish between different audio frequencies by recognizing the unique "tone color" of each pitch.  All I had to do was "unlock" my ear so that it could hear these subtle differences in color.

Excitedly, I bragged to my friends on the playground that I was about to join the exclusive ranks of the perfectedly pitched.  It's a wonder I didn't get beat up more.

Returning home, I began disc 3, and discovered that "unlocking" your ear actually requires doing all kinds of exercises, which turned out to be well beyond the attention span of a 10 year old.  The discs quickly found their way into a closet, and I resumed my life of imperfect pitch.

When I moved back in October, I stumbled onto my pile of 53 not-quite-as-shiny CDs, which have somehow stayed with all these years.  I decided to rip the CDs into my iTunes, if only so I could stop carrying those stupid CDs around every time I move.

As the first relative pitch CD was loading, I decided to give it a listen.  It talked a bit about the importance of good relative pitch, and then started quizzing me on recognizing fifths.  Easy stuff.  Feeling good about myself, I kept on going, and breezed through fourths, octaves and unisons (a gimme).  And then somewhere around disc 5 (of 45), I got stuck.  It was still pretty easy stuff -- he'd play an interval and you had to quickly identify it as a fourth, fifth, or octave.  Should be easy, but I kept getting flustered and making mistakes.

And that's how I learned that my ear is not as good as I thought.  As I worked through the drills, I found that my ear is actually pretty terrible.  I was having trouble recognizing basic chord progressions, dictating melodies, hearing chord inversions.  If you're gonna play jazz, not having an ear for it is a problem.

So ever since, as I'm waiting on the subway or walking to work, I've been going through the relative pitch course on my iPhone, a little bit every day.  While others are jamming to music, I'm jamming to David Lucas Burge drilling interval after interval, progression after progression, while I quietly mouth my answers.

And I'm getting better, slowly but steadily.  I'm on disc 11 now (you're not allowed to go on to the next disc until you master every drill on the current one), so only 34 to go... And then maybe I'll give the perfect pitch a shot and see if it really can be taught.

Let's see how you do:

06 Lightning Round_ Mixed P4, P5, M3, M3, M2, Perfect Octaves And Perfect Unisons

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