"The value of learning music is not in the number of pieces one may play, but in the musical thoughts one can think."
| Ages 5+: | The Ear
Training Companion patent pending method for learning perfect pitch and an exciting way to learn relative pitch |
| Ages 3-5: |
We Hear and Play taught for over 30 years in Germany and Japan |
| Ages 5-12: | The Fletcher
Music Method an amazing system, done in by bad business decisions |
stuff about acting |
Edgar Allan Poe audiobooks (read by me!) |
Music and Dyslexia |
Relative Pitch Monstercourse |
Object categories are generally formed by the cognitive act of sorting and labeling. So why, for 109 years, has every attempt to identify and label musical tones consistently failed to produce absolute categorical perception?
A possible explanation presents itself in this crazy little example from Rob Goldstone (and others). In this image, between A and B, which is more similar to T?
Now the fun part: again between A and B, which is more different than T?
This isn't a trick to fake you out; it's an honest example of how our minds work. The authors' explanation is that when we judge similarity we tend to look for relationships, but when we judge differences we tend to look for attributes. That's why T and B are more similar ("same shading scheme") but also more different ("does not display any checkered pattern"). This observation alone, if it is generally true, could explain why no method has ever taught absolute pitch.
Every perfect-pitch training system that's ever existed has operated just like this image. To train a student, the method offers an example tone T and asks students to identify unknown tones A, B, C, et cetera; in essence asking "is T the same as A or B?" But in judging similarity, a student will be paying attention to relationships, not attributes-- and that's relative pitch. An absolute pitch, by definition, has no relationship. Chroma is a single vibratory frequency; there is no second attribute for chroma to have a relationship to. If this image demonstrates the way our minds work, then any perfect-pitch instruction system may be, paradoxically, automatically doomed to fail because it asks you to name notes.
Deliberate categorization training does work, but it works for objects that have multiple characteristics. The categories can be arbitrary, unconscious, and practically indescribable (as with human faces) and still be trained effectively. But if categories are based on a single dimension, like width or length, categorical training will merely improve your ability to detect fine differences. Although you may become able to estimate magnitudes with good precision, you don't actually start making reliable categorical judgments.
Ordinary color perception shows, however, that learning categorical perception for a single attribute is not impossible. Furthermore, research has shown that color categories are highly dependent on the words we learn to name them. So there must be some process by which colors are learned, and mimicking that process should make it possible to learn pitch categories.
There is a common-sense explanation for how we learn colors as a child: adults point at them and for each one tell us that's x. But this can't be enough. A fellow named Willard Quine, quoted here from How Children Learn the Meanings of Words, illustrates the problem.
[I]magine a linguist visiting a culture with a language that bears no resemblance to our own and trying to learn some words: A rabbit scurries by, the native says gavagai, and the linguist notes down the sentence 'Rabbit' (or 'Lo, a rabbit'), as tentative translation, subject to testing in further cases. ...[I]t is impossible for the linguist to ever be certain such a translation is right. There is an infinity of logically possible meanings for gavagai. It could refer to rabbits, but it could also refer to the specific rabbit named by the native, or any mammal, or any animal, or any object. It could refer to the top half of the rabbit, or its outer surface, or rabbits but only those that are scurrying; it could refer to scurrying itself, or to white, or to furriness.
The process of color learning can't be merely learning a color-name and associating it with a sensory stimulus. Nor can it be the simple detection of different qualities of color; it is possible to recognize that wagons, hydrants, stop signs, etc, all share a similar visual attribute while lemons, canaries, dandelions, etc, share a different version of the same attribute-- even to the point of being able to detect and describe the "color" attribute-- and still not be able to recognize, remember, or name colors. Differentiation processes are the necessary start of the overall learning task (which is why Absolute Pitch Blaster is still going to be important) but once you are able to reliably detect a "color" attribute, you start making similarity judgments to name them. What relationship allows you to recognize the similarities between same-category colors of different brightness, hue, and saturation? The only category-relevant information in the sensory input is the frequency, and that has no internal relationship to anything but itself.
In short, I find it unlikely that color or pitch categories are formed by perceptual discrimination and differentiation alone. The general effects of language labels on categorical perception make me suspect that this is an issue of concept formation. What's traditionally been done in attempts to train absolute pitch is to present you with a sensory input (a sound vibration) and try to make you remember it somehow. But what if the necessary process is to form an independent concept and then match that concept with an available stimulus? So rather than seeing a bajillion different types of green colors and (eventually) figuring out that these are all "green", what if the color-category concept of "green" were learned, and all subsequent input served to reinforce and expand that already-existing intellectual concept?
That is-- to gain categorical absolute pitch, maybe we don't need to learn how to name notes. Maybe we need to learn, conceptually, what the names mean.
"I purchased your copy of the Fletcher Music Method book when it first became available and have read and re-read it several times. I am a full-time music teacher, teaching grades K4 through 12th grade as well as directing an adult church choir. I have already made several of the Fletcher music teaching aids and have found them to be very useful in the classroom." - Curtis Hollembeak
A brief but potent sampling of her philosophy.
Click the link or the book cover above to download the What Is the Fletcher Music Method e-book (PDF, 78 pages with illustrations). This book explains her philosophy and the principles behind her teaching methods. All proceeds are used for my ongoing work. And if you buy the e-book and don't like it, I'll refund all three of your dollars! There's no risk-- buy it now!
Read an informational publication about the Fletcher Music Method.
Read some sample passages from What is the Fletcher Music Method.
Click the link above, or the book cover below, to download the Fletcher Music Method teacher's handbook (PDF, 124 pages with illustrations). This book details her instructional games and methods; it is intended for the teacher who is handling a class of six or more children, six years of age and older.
Buy the teacher's handbook and receive What Is the Fletcher Music Method? for free!
Read some sample passages from The Fletcher Music Method Teacher's Handbook.
Please note: The teacher's handbook is not refundable.
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