Composing in your head with Absolute Pitch

[greg]

I doubt that improvisation has much to do with perfect pitch.

I don't think most musicians "write" music, but I haven known composers who do not have perfect pitch, but that didn't stop them from writing great things.

Vice versa, if there are so many people with perfect pitches (like you claim), how come we still only have so few truly "great" composers?

whoaaaaaaa  this is totally misunderstanding what i'm saying.
I didn't say perfect pitch, i said absolute pitch, the type most/every? musician has. Perfect pitch is totally different, it's just an extra nice tool that has nothing to do with talent.

maybe i should use the term 'relative pitch' to avoid confusion? 

Absolute 100% ditto. However, I find it greatly helps the memory if, once you come across something really worthwhile, repeat it over and over in your head endlessly - get it stuck. Then find some sort of mnemonic device that will help you remember it, put it totally out of your head for a few minutes, and then summon it back. If you can recall it then, you will pretty much never forget it. I can still remember chipper and cheery tunes that danced around my head for a few weeks when I was 14ish. 

excellent

....and Ravel - who said something along the lines of 'one can't discover new chords without the piano'.

Personally, it depends on what I am composing. I often compose away from the piano, though not having perfect pitch I find it necessary to check things over. But when writing certain types of thing the feel of the instrument and the technique of letting my hands follow their flights of fancy is too useful to deprive myself of.

those are things i've also thought about..... no matter how good you get with pitch training, i guess in the end when you're writing it down, you have to double-check and maybe change things, maybe even transpose entire sections.


well, mild success yesterday at pitch training, but i guess it'll take a WHILE to get good at it, since it isn't very exciting and gets old very quick. A little bit at a time is the best thing. Mostly successes with C, F#, and G#, being able to hum the note after totally losing any reference points. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

whoaaaaaaa  this is totally misunderstanding what i'm saying.
I didn't say perfect pitch, i said absolute pitch, the type most/every? musician has. Perfect pitch is totally different, it's just an extra nice tool that has nothing to do with talent.

maybe i should use the term 'relative pitch' to avoid confusion? 

whoaaaaaaa  I think we have to get our definitions clear to each other.

I understand "perfect" and "absolute" pitch to be synonymous: the ability to accurately identify any musical pitch one hears as an A, an F#, etc., just as most of us can identify the color green when we see a painting. Some say that this is an absolute memory that one either has or doesn't. I'm not sure. I had an enjoyable encounter some years ago in a music store when I heard a young fellow playing the Rondo alla Turca of Mozart, and I joined in on a second piano. He had learned the piece totally by ear; I had memorized it from the notation. Yet he couldn't figure out one progression in the bass (during the F# minor interlude), and I helped him out. Perfect pitch? I don't know, but pretty darn close. But perfect pitch is no guarantee of musicality; it is only a superior form of memory.

"Relative" pitch, which is equally valuable to the musician if not more so, is the ability to recognize pitches in relation to one another. If you play C and ask me to sing the minor sixth above, I sing you an A flat. It was said of Bernstein that he didn't have perfect pitch, but once he heard the oboe's A in the morning he could hear any pitch in relation to it. In a sense relative pitch is more useful to the musician than absolute pitch, because relative pitch depends on one's sense of relationships among intervals and pitches. Perfect pitch in its purest form is no more than a brute form of memory. I had a colleague at work who played jazz saxophone and could identify any pitch I sang to him, but he showed little sense of musical intelligence per se and couldn't even read bass clef.

[Gustav]

whoaaaaaaa  this is totally misunderstanding what i'm saying.
I didn't say perfect pitch, i said absolute pitch, the type most/every? musician has. Perfect pitch is totally different, it's just an extra nice tool that has nothing to do with talent.

maybe i should use the term 'relative pitch' to avoid confusion? 

whoaaaaaaaaaa, I didn't say "killer", I said "murderer". "Killer" is totally different....

maybe i should use the term "criminal" to avoid confusion? 

please, don't come and tell me that you didn't know the difference between "perfect" and "absolute" pitch, or maybe you didn't...

[greg]

ok, looks like i got the terms absolute pitch confused..... i was thinking it was synonymous with relative pitch instead of perfect pitch. Sorry about that. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Perfect (aka "absolute" pitch  ) can even be a liability for a musician, for example if you're used to hearing an A at 440 and then you sight-sing with a period group whose A is your G#. But more to the point, perfect pitch can be an easy way around the challenge of grasping intervallic relationships. If I can unerringly identify a C#, I am less likely to feel a need to identify a perfect fifth above F# or a major third below C#. A good sense of relative pitch, however, goes hand in hand with developing a good theoretical sense of melodic and harmonic relationships.

[jochanaan]

Perfect/absolute pitch--yes, they are synonyms--is useful in that you don't need an outside reference to "hear" things in your head, so it's easier to "write" a draft without notating anything on paper or Finale.  But sooner or later you have to write the thing down. Things always change when you write things down; you think of better transitions, a melody goes outside the instrument's playable range, you realize after writing it down and physically playing it that it doesn't sound as good "in the air" as it did in your head--that sort of thing.

Sforzando: Yes, it's hard having perfect pitch and having to transpose, and only lots of practice has helped me to do it.  I have to "recalibrate" my pitch sense every time I hear a period-instrument group!  And they're not all the same either; some of the French and British groups play at a pitch that seems to be about A390, since they sound a WHOLE STEP flat to me.

Gustav: Perfect pitch is actually very helpful when I improvise with a group.  I don't have to ask, "Which key are we playing in?"

[bassio]

I am sure many composers have this ability.

But just thinking of that I can make it just makes me shiver. 
I am just a mere performer. Even not a proficient one. 

[rappy]

It depends on what style you are writing in. I've written a whole symphony in classical style without any instrument. But then, when composing atonal music, this will never work.

[greg]

It depends on what style you are writing in. I've written a whole symphony in classical style without any instrument. But then, when composing atonal music, this will never work.

you mean, with relative pitch. As Ferneyhough said, he composes all his music in his head.

So far, i've gotten really good with the C note! I can recall it without any reference points, in any octave 
I think i've figured out the trick to this: one note at a time, even if it's only one note per week. Think about this: you can recall the first note of any piece of music, without being in the wrong key, right? But just pretend that a single note is an actual piece of music itself. C, C#, D, etc.... And picture the key being pressed or the note on the staff, and hum it your mind.... it'll take a lot of practice, still....

[rappy]

No, I meant with perfect pitch. It's very difficult to imagine atonal harmonic progressions with e.g. 6 independent contrapuntal lines, also with perfect pitch.
You can try it in your head first, but I think it would be very dogmatic not to try it out on the piano after you've written a few measures. And you will certainly sometimes find notes which will fit better than the ones you've written.

While in the style Mozart wrote, it would be no problem at all to write a whole symphony in your head if you have both creativity and a bit of experience. You will know how all chords which fit into the tonal system sound, even if they are quite complex. For example, you won't think by "rational arguments" that now a mediant would be a good idea, you will hear in your head that it is the best of all possible continuations.

[greg]

No, I meant with perfect pitch. It's very difficult to imagine atonal harmonic progressions with e.g. 6 independent contrapuntal lines, also with perfect pitch.
You can try it in your head first, but I think it would be very dogmatic not to try it out on the piano after you've written a few measures. And you will certainly sometimes find notes which will fit better than the ones you've written.

While in the style Mozart wrote, it would be no problem at all to write a whole symphony in your head if you have both creativity and a bit of experience. You will know how all chords which fit into the tonal system sound, even if they are quite complex. For example, you won't think by "rational arguments" that now a mediant would be a good idea, you will hear in your head that it is the best of all possible continuations.

True, except this time you said "difficult" instead of "never work", and that's good......

[(poco) Sforzando]

you mean, with relative pitch. As Ferneyhough said, he composes all his music in his head.

So far, i've gotten really good with the C note! I can recall it without any reference points, in any octave 
I think i've figured out the trick to this: one note at a time, even if it's only one note per week. Think about this: you can recall the first note of any piece of music, without being in the wrong key, right? But just pretend that a single note is an actual piece of music itself. C, C#, D, etc.... And picture the key being pressed or the note on the staff, and hum it your mind.... it'll take a lot of practice, still....

That might have some benefit, but I think you'll learn more if you drill yourself repeatedly on interval recognition. There are some freeware programs that do that for you; one I found is here:
http://www.miles.be/

This one plays a cadence in a key, then it sounds two intervals and you must guess the notes and the intervallic relationship. You can select the intervals to be tested on, if (say) you want to focus on sixths or seconds. I must admit I'm sadly out of practice, but it seems like a cleverly designed piece of software. It comes in basic and advanced versions (and it's free).

[greg]

That might have some benefit, but I think you'll learn more if you drill yourself repeatedly on interval recognition. There are some freeware programs that do that for you; one I found is here:
http://www.miles.be/

This one plays a cadence in a key, then it sounds two intervals and you must guess the notes and the intervallic relationship. You can select the intervals to be tested on, if (say) you want to focus on sixths or seconds. I must admit I'm sadly out of practice, but it seems like a cleverly designed piece of software. It comes in basic and advanced versions (and it's free).

thanks.... but i honestly don't need that. Relative pitch is one of my stronger points.
thanks anyways 

[Cato]

Two stories: From early childhood I have had an extremely good musical memory: because of regrettable poverty, I was taught the piano on a cardboard keyboard, able to play once a week only on the piano at my teacher's.  But this practice combined with my memory and  transferred to composition by early adolescence, and by college I was composing quarter-tone works completely by mental ear. 

And yes, the few times I was able to hear them, they corresponded exactly to what I wanted.  Karl Henning has a recording of two little quarter-tone works of mine played on an early synthesizer, which I have earlier described as sounding like a Martian vacuum cleaner.   

#2: Schoenberg had a child prodigy as a student named Dika Newlin.  He played a few single notes on the piano to test her ear, and she never made a mistake.  Then he went on to chords, and again she never made a mistake, but apparently was beginning to annoy him with an arrogant, bored "give me a break" pre-adolescent attitude, and he began playing hexachords, whose notes she still correctly identified.

Schoenberg then yelled: "Identify this!!!" and slammed his fists down onto a cluster of notes, and she began:  "C, C#, D, D# ..."

Depsite this inauspicious beginning Schoenberg accepted her as a private student.

[(poco) Sforzando]

#2: Schoenberg had a child prodigy as a student named Dika Newlin.  He played a few single notes on the piano to test her ear, and she never made a mistake.  Then he went on to chords, and again she never made a mistake, but apparently was beginning to annoy him with an arrogant, bored "give me a break" pre-adolescent attitude, and he began playing hexachords, whose notes she still correctly identified.

Schoenberg then yelled: "Identify this!!!" and slammed his fists down onto a cluster of notes, and she began:  "C, C#, D, D# ..."

Depsite this inauspicious beginning Schoenberg accepted her as a private student.

Apropos of not too much (other than to show that even Schoenberg had an occasional moment of humor), there was a story told of him together with Dika Newlin and Richard Hoffmann, his secretary from 1947-51. To understand the joke you must know how to compare adjectives in German, e.g., dick (thick), dicker (thicker), am dicksten (thickest). Schoenberg would point first to Hoffman - Dick, then to Dika Newlin - Dika, and finally to himself - am dicksten.

[Cato]

Apropos of not too much (other than to show that even Schoenberg had an occasional moment of humor), there was a story told of him together with Dika Newlin and Richard Hoffmann, his secretary from 1947-51. To understand the joke you must know how to compare adjectives in German, e.g., dick (thick), dicker (thicker), am dicksten (thickest). Schoenberg would point first to Hoffman - Dick, then to Dika Newlin - Dika, and finally to himself - am dicksten.

Great! Danke sehr!  Never heard the story before!

[greg]

#2: Schoenberg had a child prodigy as a student named Dika Newlin.  He played a few single notes on the piano to test her ear, and she never made a mistake.  Then he went on to chords, and again she never made a mistake, but apparently was beginning to annoy him with an arrogant, bored "give me a break" pre-adolescent attitude, and he began playing hexachords, whose notes she still correctly identified.

Schoenberg then yelled: "Identify this!!!" and slammed his fists down onto a cluster of notes, and she began:  "C, C#, D, D# ..."

Depsite this inauspicious beginning Schoenberg accepted her as a private student.

Apropos of not too much (other than to show that even Schoenberg had an occasional moment of humor), there was a story told of him together with Dika Newlin and Richard Hoffmann, his secretary from 1947-51. To understand the joke you must know how to compare adjectives in German, e.g., dick (thick), dicker (thicker), am dicksten (thickest). Schoenberg would point first to Hoffman - Dick, then to Dika Newlin - Dika, and finally to himself - am dicksten.

that is some seriously good stuff.....

[greg]

anyways, actually remembering a whole piece in your head is too much work.....
probably perfect  pitch would be best for studying scores...

[mikkeljs]

I always compose without the piano, and I always search for the right pitch.

When I was 8 years, I was not convinced about my perfect pitch. So when I wanted to compose, when I was in school, I took a bottle with me from home, and I knew its wind tone. 

When I write atonal with many different lays, I still try as hard as possible to feel the whole harmonic meaning, which is very hard. But I think it´s important!

I also think the pitch means something, since the nature of a composition score is perfection. 

[greg]

that's surprising that YOU would compose without the piano, Mikkel! 
but the more skills the better, i suppose