Absolute pitch like. What is absolute pitch? How to develop absolute pitch
It is difficult to imagine a good athlete without strong muscles and excellent physical fitness, a good speaker without the ability to speak beautifully and speak freely in front of an audience. Likewise, a good musician is unthinkable without a developed musical ear, which includes a whole range of abilities necessary for successful essay, expressive performance and active perception of music.
Depending on the musical characteristics There are different types of musical hearing. For example, pitch, timbre, modal, internal, harmonic, melodic, intervallic, rhythmic, etc. But one of the most inexplicable is still absolute pitch. Let's figure out what this mysterious phenomenon is.
The name of this type of hearing comes from Latin word absolutus, which translated means “unconditional, independent, unlimited, perfect.” Absolute pitch refers to “the ability to determine the exact pitch of a sound without relating it to another sound whose pitch is known” (Grove Dictionary). That is, absolute pitch allows, without adjustment, without comparison with any “standard” of height, to instantly, and most importantly, accurately recognize and name the pitch of audible sounds.
Interestingly, the concept of absolute pitch appeared only in the second half of the 19th century. And since that time, scientific minds have been trying to find an answer to the question: “Where does a person get such a unique ability?” Researchers have put forward a variety of hypotheses regarding the origin of absolute pitch. However, there is no clear answer to this question today so no. Some scientists consider it an innate (and also inherited) acoustic-physiological ability, which depends on the anatomical features of the hearing system (more precisely, the structure of the inner ear). Others associate absolute pitch with special mechanisms of the brain, in the cortex of which there are special formant detectors. Still others suggest that absolute pitch is formed due to strong sound impressions in very early childhood and well-developed “photographic” figurative-auditory memory, especially in childhood.
Absolute pitch- quite a rare occurrence even among professional musicians, not to mention ordinary connoisseurs musical art who may not even know that nature has awarded them with this rare gift. Determining whether you have absolute pitch or not is quite simple. To “diagnose” this ability, experts use a piano, on which you will be asked to identify and name a particular sound. But to cope with this task, you need to at least know the names of the notes themselves and how they sound. Therefore, as a rule, absolute pitch is detected in early childhood: in children at about 3-5 years of age, usually after becoming familiar with the names of musical sounds.
Absolute pitch is especially important for such musical professions as a conductor, composer, and performer on instruments with unfixed tuning (for example, string instruments), since it allows you to more subtly perceive the pitch of sound and more accurately control the tuning. And having perfect pitch won’t do any harm to an amateur musician: choosing chords for familiar melodies is, of course, much easier for those with perfect pitch.
But along with undeniable advantages (primarily for professional musicians), this unique ability also has its disadvantages. In certain cases, absolute pitch can become a real challenge, especially for those who are familiar with the basics of musical literacy. For example, you are sitting in a restaurant during a romantic date. And instead of enjoying the conversation or the aroma delicious dishes under a quiet background sounding music cherished notes periodically “float” in your mind: “la, fa, mi, re, mi, salt, do...”. Not everyone in such a situation is able to “switch off” and focus their attention on the interlocutor.
In addition, it is difficult to find a worse torture for an absolute student than listening to an even inspired performance of a work by those who are “absolutely deaf.” Indeed, with such abilities, a person not only hears the exact pitch of the sound, but also absolutely accurately determines falsehood, the slightest deviations from the correct reference sound. One can only sincerely sympathize with the absolutist during the concert sound of the joint playing of poorly tuned instruments (especially strings) or uncoordinated “dirty” ensemble singing.
By and large, it is not so important whether you have absolute pitch or not. But if you decide to devote yourself to music, and maybe even become a first-class professional musician, then a good ear for music is vital for you. Its development should henceforth become a purposeful and regular action for you. Classes in a special discipline - solfeggio - can help in this difficult matter. But the ear for music develops especially actively in the process musical activity: during singing, playing an instrument, selecting by ear, improvising, composing music.
And most importantly, friends, learn to listen and understand music! Listen to every sound with love and reverence, sincerely enjoy the beauty of every consonance, in order to further give happiness and joy from communicating with music to your grateful listeners!!!
So, Andrey, are you planning to enter our music school? - Yes.
Do you have hearing? - Well, we’re somehow carrying on a dialogue...
absolute pitch as a personality quality – with ability to precise definition the heights of sounds without correlating them with other heard or sung sounds that have a known pitch.
One day, an orchestral rehearsal was conducted by a young but overly arrogant conductor who wanted to show off his exceptional hearing and musicality. As soon as the orchestra finishes playing the piece to the middle, the conductor stops the musicians with a mannered gesture: “Second oboe, I ask you in tutti in the fifth number to play your phrase a little quieter and more coherently: ta-ta-ta... All over again!” We started again, got carried away, sped up - and the conductor again knocked on the music stand with his daddy: - Violas, attention, you have F-A notes in the sixth number. Play them with subtle accents!
The orchestra is playing - they stop him again. Finally, the musicians got tired of it, and the drummer, using general pianissimo, hit the big drum as hard as he could. The maestro blinked his eyes in surprise and asked:- Who did it?
Absolute pitch is a rare personality quality. One in ten thousand people has it. This ability is more common among musicians: the ratio is approximately 1:100. Famous musicians with perfect pitch include Mozart and Beethoven.
TO characteristic features absolute pitch should be attributed to: its low prevalence; finding it in childhood; ease and secrecy from observing the process of its formation and development; the existence of two types of absolute hearing: passive and active; multiplicity and dispersion of the magnitude of errors in sound recognition; short duration of the sound recognition reaction; low pitch sensitivity; presence of 12 identification standards. Some of the features of absolute pitch were explained by the innate nature of this ability. The other remained without explanation.
— They say that your son has perfect pitch. - Yes, he can use the sounds of the keys of a mobile phone, intercom and ATM
identify any combination of numbers.
IN music conservatories In Japan, approximately 70% of musicians have perfect pitch. Perhaps such a large process is explained by the fact that absolute pitch is more common among people who grew up in an environment with tonal languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese). Absolute pitch is also more common in people who are born blind, have William's syndrome, or have autism.
It's dusk, the rain is pouring. Otters whistle along the surrounding streams. And Sergeich may be a novice in hunting, but he has an absolute ear for music. He began to whistle. Timidly at first. And when the otters began to respond, he went wild - just an alpha male. - Do not whistle! - the hunters advised gloomily. But he didn’t listen. The next morning we saw gutted backpacks. The otters ate everything butter. Everyone has. But only one backpack was crap. Sergeich...
Musician Georgy Baranov expresses an interesting idea: supposedlyabsolute hearing is a serious pathology. Commonly found in pianists who are constantly locked to 440 Hz. If the adjusters work normally, this is an occupational disease that greatly complicates the life of its owner. Much more often, musicians simply “show off”: “You know, I have an absolute!” Some even reach the point of complete, absolute insanity, claiming that they have “innate absolute pitch”!
To understand how ridiculous and ridiculous these statements are, it is enough to take into account just a couple of points: the historical moment - the note “A” 300 years ago sounded much lower, then it gradually rose; the geographical moment - in some countries there is a different standard “A” - 435 Hz, and in some halls in America - pianos are set on the contrary, they are tuned higher. Absolute pitch - develops as a result of binding the sound-pitch system to a certain frequency - for example, 440 Hz. These are unhappy people. When they find themselves in some school or club with an out-of-tune piano, they experience real physical torment. But, thank God, there are not so many such people. There are much more pontjars, following the lead of a common misconception, everywhere hastening to proudly declare - “I am an absolutist.”
It's simple. A normal musician has relative hearing and is able to instantly build a pitch system from any “A” and feel comfortable in this system. That's all. The rest is from the evil one.
One man writes: “U I have one friend who studies at a music college and has perfect pitch. This is a gift, and it really, to some extent, prevents him from perceiving not only music, but also other sounds compared to how other people perceive them. Due to the fact that he knows musical notation, he perceives all sounds and music from the point of view of music theory. He immediately isolates notes, motives, phrases, etc. His brain, instead of enjoying the music, begins to analyze it, because of this, he cannot fully enjoy it. He hears on what note the steamship whistle blows, and how the mosquito squeaks at the beginning of the forest and at the end, hears on what note the cartridge creaks when a light bulb is screwed into it.”
Jokes on topic. YoungGeorgians enter the Tbilisi Conservatory. Everyone who needs money has already been given. He passes all exams successfully. Solfeggio remains. They tell him: “It’s quite simple.” We press a key on the piano and you guess. He turns away from the examiners, listens to the note he plays, then points his finger at one of the teachers:- You pressed!
A man gets a job at a conservatory. They listened to him - everything is fine! His command of the instrument is excellent, his pitch is perfect, he plays impressively, in general - the dream of any orchestra. They say: “Great, we’ll get you registered.” What's your last name? - Ivanov - Ivanov? Hmm... Strange... What about the name? - Ivan - Ivan?!! Amazing, incomprehensible... What about your middle name? — Moiseevich — Oh, how deep talent can be buried.
Entrance exams to the school named after. Gnessins... -So you came to enter the GNESSIN school with the last name IVANOV? - Yes. - Iraida Archibaldovna, write down - Ivanov. Write it down with a PENCIL! What's your name, young man? - Husein - HUSEIN? ! - That's what Husein - MODEST MUSORGSKY himself touched this music stand. MODEST, Huseyn, do you understand? Modest! Tsitsak von Mitsatsyan himself walked imposingly along these corridors! ..What do you want to play, Guseyn Ivanov? — On the cello. - On the violon-WHAT? Can you imagine, in the organ hall Evelina Rudolfovna will announce: Franz Liszt, 13th suite, with Huseyn IVANOV at the cello?!!! Are you even gay? - No!! ! - (with feeling) What do you hope for, young man?!!! Well, it’s okay, let’s give it to the boy last chance. What's your middle name? - Appolinarievich! - THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THE BOY! Where do you live, O son of the glorious Appolinarius? - In Khimki. - OUT! Get out of art! And pick up Evdoksia Markelovna in the corridor too...
Petr Kovalev 2015
D. K. Kirnarskaya
Absolute pitch
Possessors of absolute pitch, or, as musicians call them, absolutists , cause white envy among many. Ordinary people with good relative hearing recognize the pitch of sounds. compare them: if you do not give them a standard for comparison, then they will not be able to name a given sound, which any absolute student can easily do. The essence of this ability has not been fully revealed, and the most common version boils down to the fact that for the owner of absolute pitch, each sound has the same definite face as timbre: as easily as ordinary people they recognize their relatives and friends by the voice, distinguishing timbres; absolutists “recognize by sight” each individual sound.
It is likely that absolute pitch is a kind of “super-timbre” hearing, when the discrimination of timbres is so subtle that it affects each individual sound, which is always a little thinner and lighter than the neighboring sound, if it is higher, and also barely noticeably “darker” than the neighboring sound , if below it. A group of American psychologists led by Gary Krammer experimented with absolute musicians, non-absolute musicians and non-musicians. The subjects were asked to distinguish the timbres of different instruments. All people recognize timbres very well, so it is not surprising that all subjects coped with the task perfectly. But the absolute students answered much more confidently and quickly than their musician or non-musician colleagues. This means that absolute pitch includes a timbre element or even entirely, as many psychologists believe, is an ultra-fine branch of timbre hearing. Some introspection by musicians supports the “timbre version” of the origin of absolute pitch. Composer Taneyev recalled: “The note for me had a very special sound character. I recognized her just as quickly and freely by this a certain character its sound, as we immediately recognize the face of a familiar person. The note D already seemed to have a completely different, also quite definite physiognomy, by which I instantly recognized and named it. And so on for all the other notes.”
The second popular version regarding the nature of absolute pitch emphasizes not the moment of timbre sensation, but the moment of supermemory on musical pitch. It is known that a common person can remember the pitch of a given sound for one and a half minutes - after a minute and a half, he can sing this sound or recognize this sound among other sounds. Musicians have a stronger memory for musical pitch - they can produce a sound eight minutes after hearing it. Absolute people remember the pitch of sounds indefinitely. Psychologist Daniel Levitin believes that absolute pitch is simply long-term memory.
Absolute pitch can be active or passive. Passive hearing allows you to recognize and name the pitch of a sound, but if such an absolute student is asked to “sing the note F,” he is unlikely to sing it instantly and accurately. The owner of active absolute pitch will do this without difficulty, not to mention the fact that he will easily recognize any sound. In discussing the nature of active absolute pitch and passive absolute pitch, researchers find room for both timbral and pitch versions of its origin. Many people believe that passive recognition of sounds is based on timbre absolute pitch, and the ability to actively reproduce them is based on pitch pitch. The question about the nature of absolute pitch still remains open, but no matter what absolute pitchers memorize - timbre, pitch, or both, they are extremely rare; only one in a thousand people has absolute pitch.
Professional musicians while studying at music schools, schools and conservatories constantly perform a lot auditory exercises: they write musical dictations, sing from notes, guess chord sequences by ear. During the work of a conductor, choirmaster, singer and in the most different types Hearing makes musical activity much easier and often serves as a convenient aid. Colleagues of happy absolutes sometimes set out to acquire absolute pitch, to develop it, even if they do not naturally have absolute pitch. Over the course of many hours of training, fanatics eventually develop the coveted absolute pitch and use it for some time, at least in a passive form. But as soon as they stop training, the absolute pitch they had acquired disappears without a trace - the skills acquired with such difficulty turn out to be very ephemeral and fragile.
Infants, who are already prone to manifestations of absolute pitch, can learn it even in an active form. Psychologists Kessen, Levine and Wendrich asked mothers of three-month-old babies to instill in them a special love for the note “F” of the first octave. This note is suitable for child's voice, and when the babies hummed on their note, the mothers had to remind them “F” every time, as if to suggest this particular pitch of sound. After forty days of training, twenty-three infants, participants in the experiment, hooted in unison on the note “F” - they managed to remember exactly this pitch and they no longer strayed from it. After some time, when the meaning of this special love for “F” was not cleared up, and the mothers stopped endlessly reminding this particular note, the babies switched to their usual humming. This is how I finished my short life barely breaking through absolute pitch. From many similar trials and errors with both infants and adults and children, researchers have made a preliminary conclusion about the inability of true, durable and not requiring additional work active absolute pitch. The reason for all sorts of fiascoes in attempts to achieve absolute pitch is explained by its genetic origin, which has been confirmed many times.
Neuropsychologists also believe that absolute pitch is an innate and genetically determined quality. A group of neuropsychologists led by Gottfried Schlaug focused on studies of the left hemisphere part of the planum temporale, which is slightly enlarged in all people compared to the corresponding part of the right hemisphere. This department is in charge of sound discrimination, including the discrimination of phonemes, and as already mentioned, some increase in this brain adaptation of the “human speaker” was formed in chimpanzees 8 million years ago. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that absolute musicians have even more planum temporale than all the others. Homo sapiens, and even more than non-absolute musicians. “The results of the study show,” the authors write, “that outstanding musical ability is associated with exaggerated left-hemisphere asymmetry in the regions of the brain that support musical functions.”
Judging by the data of neuropsychologists and geneticists, absolute pitch as an ultra-high ability of sound discrimination and auditory memory is not cultivated or developed, but is bestowed from above. “Abandon hope, everyone who enters here!” It should be written not on the gates of hell, but in the solfeggio class of especially zealous teachers who captivate gullible students with promises to develop their absolute pitch. However, more important question is different: is this gift of fate necessary for a musician, is absolute pitch such a valuable quality that it is difficult for a musician to do without? Since absolute pitch has attracted public attention, many almost anecdotal stories have been collected about it, telling about the incredible auditory capabilities of humans. But these quasi-anecdotes do not bring absolute pitch closer to music, but move it away from it, strengthening doubts about its usefulness as a purely musical quality, and not a curiosity of nature, which has a very indirect relationship to the art of music.
Absolute pitch works in automatic mode, recording everything that happens. The dentist of the absolute pianist Miss Sauer distracted her from the unpleasant sensations by asking questions about what note the drill was humming. Just like young Mozart, who knew how to name what sound a glass filled with water made, what note a clock ticked and doors creaked, Miss Sauer distinguished the pitch of all sounds in general. One day, while practicing a piece, she heard uninvited accompaniment in the form of the sounds of a neighbor's lawnmower, which was buzzing on the note “salt.” From now on, every time Miss Sauer performed this ill-fated piece, the sound of a lawnmower on the same note awakened in her mind, and the concert piece was irrevocably ruined. Miss Sower's colleague, the Rev. Sir Frederick Ousley, Professor of Music at Oxford University, also had legendary perfect pitch. At the age of five, he told his mother: “Just think, our dad blows his nose on “fa.” At any age, he could determine that thunder rumbles on “g” and the wind blows on “d”. At the age of eight, listening to Mozart's famous G minor symphony on a hot summer day, young Sir Frederick claimed that in fact he was not hearing G minor at all, but A flat minor, located a semitone higher. It turned out that the boy was right: the instruments became so hot from the heat that their tuning increased somewhat.
Says a lot about ancient origin absolute pitch, even more ancient than human speech. People sing and play the same melodies at different pitches; the same music often sounds either higher or lower. IN musical creativity relative hearing dominates, for which it is not the absolute height that is important music performed, and sound relations. It’s not the same with birds: they sing their “music” at the same pitch, remembering not so much bird melodies as the absolute height of the sounds included in them. This set of sounds is a sign for them, a signal, but not an artistic message. Dolphins do the same thing, emitting sounds of a certain pitch, where each frequency acts as a certain sign-signal. Animals forced to communicate over long distances use sound frequency as its most stable characteristic, not subject to distortion. Since ancient times, frequency sound vibrations transmitted information in a storm, in snow, and in rain, cutting through forests and oceans and overcoming all sound interference. In some species of animals, absolute pitch has thus been formed, capable of distinguishing and using several common frequencies.
The works of the Englishman Sargent shed light on many phenomena associated with absolute pitch. He claims that almost every person could become an absolute master if he started playing music in early childhood. A survey he conducted of one and a half thousand members English Society musicians shows that there is a certain connection between the start time music lessons and the possession of absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is dying out due to the fact that the same music, when heard in different keys, is perceived as practically the same; If this phenomenon, which musicians call “transposition,” did not exist, absolute pitch might still exist. To assume this would, however, be a complete fantasy - singing as the basis of music-making could not live without the performance of the same melodies by soprano, bass, and tenor. All the data - both the phenomena of absolute pitch in animals (musicians sometimes call absolute pitch "canine pitch"), and the ease with which infants perceive the absolute pitch of sounds - makes us think that absolute pitch is not at all the highest achievement of human hearing, as is sometimes believed, but on the contrary , an auditory rudiment, a vanishing shadow of the evolutionary process, a trace of the auditory strategy of our distant ancestors. In ontogenesis, in child development, reflecting phylogeny, historical development, one can clearly see how absolute pitch, having barely emerged, dies off without receiving practical reinforcement: it is not necessary either in music or in speech, and being unclaimed, this rudiment quietly dies away as it once disappeared from people animal tail.
Among the advantages of absolute musicians is often the so-called “color hearing,” when musical tonalities seem to the perceiver to be colored, and persistently evoke certain color associations in memory. Rimsky-Korsakov considered the key of E major to be “blue, sapphire, brilliant, night, dark azure” thanks to the advice of fellow composers. Glinka wrote the chorus “The darkness of the night lies in the field” in this key, and Mendelssohn used this key for the overture “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and for the famous “Nocturne”. How could one avoid “night and dark azure” associations? Beethoven used F major as the basis for the “Pastoral” symphony, associated with the life of innocent shepherds and peasants in the lap of nature, and this tonality in the composer’s community began to naturally gravitate toward green. Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner associated E-flat major with water - the first with “Blue Ocean-Sea”, and the second with “Das Rheingold”, although Rimsky-Korsakov could boast of absolute pitch, and Wagner did not. This further strengthens the idea that “color hearing” is a historical and cultural phenomenon, not related to absolute pitch. Scriabin also gravitated towards color associations of tonalities, but like Wagner he did not have absolute pitch.
Comparing absolute musicians with non-absolute musicians emphasizes their fundamental equality in the main thing: both hear and record sound relationships and remember the pitch of sounds, but use different strategies - where the absolute player does not think and does not compare, acting instantly, there the non-absoluteist achieves the same thing with minimal effort, but with the same result. Except in cases where it is necessary to tune an instrument with an accuracy of a few hertz or to recognize a false sound. So is it worth envying absolute listeners, and how to interpret this gift of nature, knowing about its rudimentary origin, as well as the fact that some great composers, including Tchaikovsky and Wagner with Scriabin, did without absolute pitch.
The very phrase “absolute pitch” suggests something perfect, highest, unattainable. This name reflects public reverence for absolute pitch, if only because of its very low prevalence. The very fact of possessing absolute pitch already suggests an extremely high level of musicality. However, even an approximate review of the facts and views of experts forces us to abandon such reverence. “Perfect pitch is not a panacea,” writes Ms. Sauer, who knows how to recognize the pitch of drills and lawn mowers. – It is only what you can do with it and how you can use it. One does not automatically follow from the other.”
A few statistics go along with these chilling tirades. If the total number of absolutists in the world is about 3%, among students at conservatories in Europe and America there are already 8%, then among Japanese music students there are already 70% absolutists, it is likely that oriental languages are genetically closer to tonal languages, and the auditory capabilities of Asians are generally higher. Isn’t that why it’s complicated? classical music Europe so quickly gained popularity in Far East, that the auditory resources of these peoples are extremely large compared to Europeans? It is easy for them to perceive the global sound structures of sonatas and symphonies, since their hearing is very perfect. However, the percentage of outstanding musicians among Asians is by no means greater than among Europeans. All over the world, quite ordinary musicians, and simply piano tuners, and even people who are not at all have absolute pitch. music lovers and those who are not interested in it. “Having absolute pitch in no way makes you a good musician,” writes one of the absoluteists, professor of solfeggio class at DePaul American University, Dr. Atovsky. - That doesn't mean you understand. musical relationships, this does not indicate a sense of rhythm, it simply means that you have absolute pitch. A lot of people think it means much more than that."
At the same time, among outstanding musicians the number of absolutes is very large. On the tops musical Olympus at the height of Mozart-Bach-Debussy and the like, non-absolute pitch is a great exception. The same can be said about outstanding performers Richter-Stern-Rostropovich rank. In a special study about outstanding cellists, it was noted that 70% of them are absolute players. There is a certain discrepancy: on the one hand, absolute pitch and musical talent are clearly connected, and among the geniuses of music, a non-absolute person is as rare as a white musician among the black titans of jazz. At the same time, absolute pitch does not guarantee even passable musical abilities: possession of absolute pitch in addition to the absolute pleasure of recognizing a door home judging by its unique creaking, it does not promise any other pleasures.
Even a superficial analysis of the hearing capabilities of the greats can bring some clarity to the mythology of absolute pitch. “When I was two and a half years old,” recalls the composer Saint-Saëns, “I found myself in front of a small piano that had not been opened for several years. Instead of knocking randomly, as children usually do, I fingered one key after another and did not release it until its sound died out completely. My grandmother explained to me the names of the notes and invited a tuner to put the piano in order. During this operation I was in the next room and amazed everyone by calling out the notes as they sounded under the tuner's hand. All these details are known to me not from hearsay, since I myself remember them perfectly.” What is surprising in this description is not that absolute pitch appeared so early - it always awakens early; It’s not surprising that the child so confidently named all the sounds after hearing them only once - this is absolute pitch. The love for music that arose early in a child was amazing, when he listened to the sounds with such attention, with such unprecedented interest, perceiving the piano as his interlocutor, who should be listened to, and not as a toy that needs to be beaten so that it responds with an offended tinkling sound.
Absolute pitch is rudimentary in its origin, it is an atavism, but among gifted musicians, on the one hand, and among ordinary “tuners,” on the other hand, it is preserved according to various reasons. Outstanding musicians are gifted in auditory terms not only with absolute pitch; their overall high musicality, their sensitivity to the meaningfulness of sound enhances all sound-discriminating abilities, including absolute pitch. It does not die out in the consciousness of an outstanding musician, because it is included in the context of other auditory data, among which there is necessarily excellent relative pitch: an outstanding musician equally freely uses absolute pitch and non-absolute pitch, if necessary.
Absolutists, who can be conditionally called “tuners,” are essentially non-musicians. Their absolute pitch is just a rudiment, preserved as a curiosity of nature. Sometimes in a family of musicians this rudiment is delayed because the child is overloaded with sound impressions, his hearing aid works in enhanced mode. In addition, children of musicians have a hereditary tendency to preserve absolute pitch. However, in all similar cases the tendency to retain absolute pitch does not come from within consciousness, from within awakening musicality, and as a result, dead absolute pitch arises, which can push one to make a choice musical profession– the recognized fetishism of the phrase “absolute pitch” will play its treacherous role here. The apparent ease of mastering the basics of the profession will obscure the bitter truth from such a “pseudo-talent”: nature did not endow him with a real creative gift, but only a surrogate in the form of absolute pitch.
Even if absolute pitch and its preservation are caused by internal reasons, and the child is indeed endowed with an excellent ear for intonation, a good sense of rhythm and even remarkable relative hearing; all these qualities taken together do not mean that musical talent is evident. These properties of hearing are operational properties that make it possible to successfully dissect the musical fabric, understanding why it is constructed this way and not otherwise. But these properties of hearing do not mean that the absolutist has at least a small amount of musical fantasy, imagination and artistry. He is still very far from the requirements that society places on gifted performers and composers. In addition, in the musical profession it is quite possible to get by with good relative pitch, which once again warns society against excessive enthusiasm for the magical properties of absolute pitch. Its rudimentary origin and fundamentally conscious, reflexive nature once again emphasize that the concept of “absolute pitch” is just another myth. Whether to believe in it or not is everyone’s choice.
In this article we'll talk about such a concept as ear for music, and how to develop it.
So, musical ear is the ability of the brain to determine the pitch of notes and generally recognize notes; it has nothing to do with ordinary hearing. There is a misconception that you may not have an ear for music. Surely you have heard people say: “I have no hearing.”
So, every person has an ear for music, some have it better developed, others less well.
Development of musical ear
Development of musical ear, this is not a myth. It is better to develop it from childhood, but this is also true for adults. If a person is able to learn new things, then the development of an ear for music will not become an insurmountable obstacle.
If a person has a well-developed ear for music, then he can distinguish notes; there is even an exercise when playing a melody - you need to write down the notes by ear. But if the ear for music is poorly developed, then this is very difficult to do.
To check how developed your ear for music is, you can use the following scheme. Several different notes are played, for example three, then one of these notes is played and you need to answer which note this is, the first second or third.
The higher the development of musical ear, the easier it is to guess the notes. A person with a poor musical ear will not be able to guess one out of five notes, but with a good ear, nine out of ten are easy.
Also, a criterion for the development of musical ear is the ability to distinguish the tonality of notes. Between notes there is a space, a semitone or tone. As a result, the better this distance is felt, the better the musical ear.
Surely many have heard the expression “absolute pitch”. In everyday life it is often attributed to people who are well versed in music, musical notation with extraordinary vocal abilities. However, being a highly skilled musician does not automatically mean you have perfect pitch. Moreover, only a few percent of the world's population can boast of this gift.
Mysterious phenomenon
Absolute ear for music is a rare phenomenon whose status is difficult to even determine. Is it the result of the action of certain natural factors or a physiological (hereditary) feature? The result unique development personality or a consequence of the influence of the social environment (family, society)? Or a complex combination of all factors? This mystery, even after centuries of study, is shrouded in darkness.
Presumably, most babies have this gift, but quickly enough it is “overshadowed” by other skills that are more important for survival. The main question, thanks to which an element of mystery arises, is the following: why in the same environment of upbringing, under the same conditions for musical development, one of the children develops absolute pitch, and the other does not?
Statistics
Over the years of in-depth research, scientists have accumulated rich statistical material. It turned out that absolute pitch is formed exclusively in childhood, moreover, precisely in preschool, during the period of dominance of involuntary acquisition of skills. This fact is unanimously confirmed by all researchers of absolute pitch. At the same time, the formation of a rare skill requires quality mandatory condition presence of a child in the family musical instrument, whose pitch is fixed. For example, keyboards, a number of wind instruments (accordion, accordion) and others. The reasons for this, presumably, lie not so much in the field of psychology of human abilities, but in the psychology of individual differences (differential psychology).
Absolute musical ear steadily retains its status as a phenomenon as an outstanding, exceptional phenomenon in a certain respect. This is due to its relatively low prevalence. According to researchers, 6-7% of professional musicians and no more than 1% of all music listeners have absolute pitch.
Definition
Absolute pitch is the ability of people to determine “by ear” the absolute height of sounds. Musicians with this gift remember the scale absolute altitudes 12 semitone octave scale. They are able to accurately determine the pitch of any sound without outside help. In turn, absolute pitch is divided into:
- Passive - the ability to match the pitch of an audible sound.
- Active - the ability to reproduce a given sound with the voice (the owners of “active hearing” are an absolute minority).
There is also the concept of relative hearing - not an innate, but a learned skill, when people are able to correctly determine the pitch of a sound using “cues” (a comparison object, such as a tuning fork).
Development of absolute pitch: pros and cons
For more than a century, there has been debate about whether this rare natural ability can be developed and trained. Theoretically, this is possible, because under the influence of some factors it is formed in children. However, critics of teaching methods argue that there is no mass “influx” of musicians trained in absolute musical ear.
IN different time different people Methods for artificially acquiring absolute pitch were invented, but they were not widely used in practice for a very simple reason: they were not in demand among professional musicians. By general opinion, absolute pitch, although it significantly facilitates the implementation of musical activity, does not guarantee its success, and sometimes even complicates it. In addition, numerous reliable facts indicating that not all famous musicians had absolute pitch confirm the thesis that this ability is not obligatory or decisive.
Moral aspect
And yet, the problem of absolute pitch claims to be an eternal one, since it consists in dividing all participants in the musical community into two “camps”: people who have the gift and those who do not. This confrontation cannot be avoided.
In other words, the possession of absolute pitch is not a matter of conscious choice, but of some kind of “blessing from above.” At first glance, people with relative hearing seem to be disadvantaged: in comparison with “absolute listeners,” they need the help of a tuning fork or any other source of sound standards. In addition, when performing one or another operation related to determining the pitch of sounds, “absolute speakers” demonstrate unconditional superiority, which cannot but affect the self-esteem of those with relative hearing.
The most striking consequence of this situation is the formation of a unique complex of professional inferiority in persons with relative hearing. This happens despite the widespread assertion that highly developed relative hearing is quite adequate, and sometimes even more effective, when performing musical activities.
Scientific approach
Musical hearing today is considered differentiated in the following gradation of levels: melodic, harmonic, tonal, polytonal, modal, internal, orchestral, polyphonic, rhythmic, physical (natural), singing-intonation, subtle, sharp, absolute, choral, operatic, ballet, dramatic. , stylistic, polystylistic, poetic, ethnic and multiethnic (absolute pitch).
It is possessed by composers, conductors, folklorists, the first violinist of an orchestra, arrangers, piano and organ tuners. Many researchers agree that absolute musical ear is a product concentrated on the basis of versatile natural phenomena, human genetics. It should be developed by capturing the voices of nature, birdsong, animal cries and even man-made (industrial) sounds.
How to develop absolute pitch
Whether it is possible to develop 100% hearing through training is a controversial issue. Usually people seeking good results, are called owners of pseudo-absolute pitch. It is advisable to develop talent in preschool children if they are capable of music. It has been proven that the most favorable time for a full perception of music is childhood, when the family learns the basics from the parents. musical culture, the ability to perceive, understand, feel, and experience musical images is cultivated.
Models of development of absolute pitch
Several development models are practiced in Russia. They are based on two principles for controlling intonation and hearing:
- oral (by text);
- associative (by notes).
The process of mastering comes down to the fact that at each lesson the entire scale with words is sung, then each student sings it during breaks, on the way home, after doing homework, at leisure. He has it constantly in his head. When basically the text of the model is fixed in memory, which is not difficult by analogy with poetic lyrics of songs, the text is sung broken down in the most various options. In the future, the key should be changed and try to sing the text in a new key, as a result of which the student begins to operate and modulate in any key.
Regular singing exercises develop an internal ear for music. The student begins to hear and determine what sound is being made - mi, sol, fa, la, etc. By analogy with what composers, folklorists, ethnographers, and conductors with absolute pitch have learned.
History lessons
What can a person with perfect pitch do? There is a famous incident in history that happened to the great L. Beethoven. It so happened that his physical hearing disappeared while conducting a piece at a concert, but his absolute, internal musical ear helped, helping the composer to conduct symphony orchestra(310 participating musicians).
Physical deafness did not hinder another opera composer- N. S. Dagirov (operas “Aigazi”, “Irchi-Cossack”, in collaboration with G. A. Gasanov “Khochbar”, ballet “PartuPatima”), who did not hear the production of his monumental works, but felt and perceived them with an inner absolute hearing. With the loss of the physical, the inner hearing does not disappear. A person with absolute pitch will be able to syntonize quite accurately, display, and beat out the rhythm closest to what was heard.
Conclusion
Seeing, remembering, recording, learning to catch and hear the music living around us is the goal and task of the model for the development of absolute pitch, first in preschool, then in school upbringing and education. The development of musical hearing into an absolute one leads to a differentiated perception of the timbres-voices of folk, symphonic, jazz and other groups. After all, the main goal human society on Earth is the study and improvement of surrounding life in space and time on a new turn of the spiral of evolution.
