Books about Perfect Pitch

BOOKS ABOUT PERFECT PITCH AND EAR TRAINING

courtesy of www.perfectpitchpeople.com

The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse 2.0 (8 CDs/ 8 cassettes)

This is the well-known Perfect Pitch Course. I know, both from my own personal experience and by regular email conversations with interested people, that the course undoubtedly improves hearing, even before developing perfect pitch. Whether it eventually develops PP is a more controversial issue. There has been some research at universities which shows that a significant proportion of the individuals that took the course developed the ability after some time. More studies are needed, however. It seems to me that the best thing one can do in these cases is to try the material for oneself. The time required by the exercises is not very much, and there is always the money back guarantee.

The new 2.0 version has much more material, and has been completely reorganized. To those familiar with the old version, you'll be happy to know that this one does not require you to look for a partner (although you can make use of one, if you have someone else with whom you can share the drills, since the course provides exercises suited for different situations). The redistribution of the material into 24 lessons is a welcome addition, making this course resemble (in its own way) the relative pitch one.

David Lucas Burge

The Relative Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse (22 cassettes/41 CDs)

In my opinion, it's as (or even more) useful than the perfect pitch one (Burge says it is "the other flip of the coin"). It goes step-by-step: you can't jump to the next level (it's divided in five levels) until you don't pass the one you are in, and you can't pass until you do everything well. This way all you learn gets permanently fixed. For example, once you learn the Minor 7th interval, you can immediately recognize it in any song or piece. Highly recommended.