Ear Training Fundamentals: Absolute Pitch & Relative Pitch

What every musician needs to understand about the true natures of Absolute Pitch and Relative Pitch…

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Prerequisites

LOVE of music and the discipline to study and practice the right things the right way.

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Lesson Goals

To understand the practical implications of Absolute Pitch (AP) and Relative Pitch (RP) and how they relate (or not) to developing your aural comprehension (ear training).

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Absolute Pitch Defined

Absolute Pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is the ability to identify a musical pitch in the absence of any other tonal points of reference.

Absolute Pitch is the ability to instantly recognize a pitch in any musical context–no matter the particular piece, no matter the key center, no matter the tonality, and no matter what melodic or harmonic function those notes perform. For those of us not so endowed, it’s a miraculous and humbling thing to witness.

And AP is a rare gift indeed. According to widely accepted studies, it’s estimated that AP is possessed by roughly one in every 10,000 people. But even then, AP occurs on a spectrum of degrees (If you ask, Frank would be happy to share his research on the subject).

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Relative Pitch Defined

Relative pitch (RP) is the ability to hear how musical tones relate to other pitches within your field of perception.

For example, Relative Pitch is the ability to recognize the unique sound-feeling of the note E when played in the context of a C Major tonality.

RP is the way that almost all of us are naturally able to perceive and enjoy melodic and harmonic relationships between sounds.

There are two main types of relative pitch reference:

• With respect to the prevailing key center Do. This is the purview of Solfege ear training. An enduring sense of key center provides the harmonic “context”, a context that organizes all the sounds in functional terms relative to a single point of reference Do.
• With respect to any note currently in your field of perception. This is the purview of Interval ear training. This can be useful for hearing the local relationship between notes in a melody or chord progression, when the tonal center is ambiguous, or when there is a change of key center.

Interval ear training does not contradict Solfege. Interval ear training complements Solfege and adds another dimension to your relative pitch listening skills.

Sidebar: Unlike Absolute Pitch, Relative Pitch is a learnable skill to various degrees.

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