Is it possible to develop absolute pitch? Musical ear: what is it and can it be developed? Programs and applications.

Everyone loves music, but not every person is musical from birth. Sometimes, there comes a moment when, in an emotional outburst, you want to perform a couple of lines from a fresh hit by Miley Cyrus. However, after the performance, one has to catch sympathetic looks and listen to disapproving comments. To prevent this, you need to figure out what an ear for music is and what to do if you don’t have it.

Someone has perfect pitch by nature, someone raised him
with time

Musical ear is a fairly broad concept, containing a whole list of abilities that allow you to fully perceive music and adequately assess its advantages and disadvantages. A well-developed ear for music is a vital ability for musicians, producers, and sound engineers. It is given to someone by nature, someone brought it up over time. Any creative person, even those who are not related to music, would do well to add this one to their treasury of skills. Recently, experts have proven that ear for music even helps to learn foreign languages.

It has been scientifically established that there is a certain area in the brain responsible for musical hearing. This bundle is located in the auditory zone: the larger it is and the more nerve fibers it contains, the better a person’s hearing is. So how do you know if you have hearing and how are your neurons in that very area of ​​the brain? To do this, it is not necessary to go and do a magnetic tomography, it is enough to try to accurately repeat the melody heard, for example, from the chorus of the Arcade Fire song Reflektor, while trying to keep the rhythm. If it doesn't work the first time, don't worry. You probably have impaired coordination in the work of hearing or voice aids, and you need to exercise more.

It seems to me that professionals will help to determine exactly whether you have a hearing or not. But, in any case, there is no point in despairing, because all this can be developed. The main thing is to have a desire.

There are several varieties
musical ear:

Perfect Pitch

This is the ability to accurately determine the pitch (musical note) of any sound without resorting to comparing it with any standard. It is believed that this talent is innate and is present in 1 in 10,000, and even most of the world's greatest musicians do not have perfect pitch.

Relative (or interval)

Hearing, capable of determining and reproducing musical intervals in melodies, chords, etc. In this case, the pitch is determined by comparing it with the standard.

inner hearing

The ability for a clear mental representation (most often - from musical notation or from memory) of individual sounds, melodic constructions.

intonation hearing

A type of perception of music that allows you to understand its character, expression.

fret hearing

The ability to hear, separate and identify differences in chords, consonances and sections of a melody, for example, their stability and instability.

Rhythmic hearing

The ability to move through music, to feel the emotional expressiveness of musical rhythm.

Also, vocal masters and musicologists distinguish harmonic, polyphonic, rhythmic, textural, timbre and architectonic hearing.

Set yourself a big challenge- by all means train your ears, of course, you need to contact a specialist and find a teacher in solfeggio (there is such a special discipline designed for the development of hearing and musical memory).

It is best to go to an experienced private teacher and it would be good to start learning musical notation along with the desired instrument. You will be taught to distinguish between notes and intervals, and then whole chords, keys and how to deal with all this. I went to solfeggio when my interest arose. Each lesson, the brain swells with new information and begins to process it painfully. The most useful thing in solfeggio for a musician is practical exercises, when you are trained by ear to determine notes and their relationships - intervals, chords, etc.

The most elementary exercise is probably just to sing the scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si) in unison under the piano. I would also advise you to listen to melodies from your favorite tracks on the instrument until you get one to one. It is doubly useful to study under a metronome and devote some time to exercises for a sense of rhythm.

After practicing for a while, you begin to hear the structure of the compositions on a much more subtle level. You just listen to music and get into everything like hell! You mark cool moves or, conversely, simple, elementary ones. In general, you perceive everything more insightfully.

7 programs and applications

If there is no time for a teacher, you can try to train your ear for music with the help of special web services, programs and applications, of which a lot has recently appeared. We have selected some of them.

To train your hearing and learn to distinguish and identify intervals, chords, timbres, rhythms and other basic elements of music, you need a lot of practice. For such practical exercises, it is simply necessary to have an accompanist partner who would play the same intervals and chords for guessing on the instrument. The Ear Teach service allows you to train on your own, clearly tracking your progress. The program exists both in the web version and as a separate program (however, so far only for Windows).

Theta Music Trainer- a resource that includes dozens of flash games for hearing development, most of which are intuitive. Some games can be played for free without any registration, to access others you will have to enter your data. To fully complete the entire course and access all the materials of the site, you need to create a paid account (for $7.95 per month or $49 per year).

EarMaster 6 is the latest version of the Danish developer's tutorial. In it you will find 2000 lessons and exercises for both beginners and experienced musicians. By connecting a microphone to your computer, you can hum along to the notes displayed on the screen. The program, in turn, will evaluate your hearing, giving a detailed report on hits in tones. Cost: €47.95

Auralia 4 is a serious program that contains 41 topics covering the basics of solfeggio: intervals and scales, chords and their sequences, rhythms, harmonies and melodies. Auralia allows you to arrange melodic dictations for yourself, connect a MIDI keyboard and a microphone. $99.00

Pitch Improver

A simple collection of basic exercises that offer to play melodies by ear. Press the Play button and try to repeat what you heard on the virtual keys. The first note is marked with a letter, and the rest are highlighted in green. To pass to the next level, you need to accurately play all the notes. Pitch Improver can be tried in the online version, as well as downloaded to your smartphone

Absolute pitch is a special way of perceiving sounds. A person with absolute pitch determines the frequency of a sound without comparing it with others, without singing them to himself. This quality distinguishes perfect pitch from relative pitch, in which a person defines a sound by comparing it with others.

Absolute in translation from Latin absolutes means "unlimited". Distinguish between passive and active absolute pitch.

With passive absolute hearing, a person easily determines the pitch of a musical sound, but is not able to reproduce it with his voice. Active absolute pitch has no such limitation, the owner of this quality can determine the sound and sing with his voice.

People with active absolute hearing - absolutes, differ from each other in the speed of identification, the frequency range of perception of sounds, the ability to identify sounds of different timbres of sound.

Sound range features

A person distinguishes sound vibrations in the frequency range from 16 Hz to 20,000 Hz. High-frequency sounds are fully perceived in childhood, with age the upper limit decreases.

A person with absolute hearing perceives sounds in the usual range, but has the ability to accurately distinguish sounds of different frequencies, and not in the entire range of audible sound vibrations, but in a certain area.

The highest accuracy of sound recognition corresponds to the middle register, decreases towards the edges of the frequency range.

The middle register includes small, first, second octaves. The speech range also lies in the middle register, the middle part of the range is the first octave.

Sound standard

In 1939, at the International Conference in London, a standard was adopted for tuning musical instruments around the world. The standard of sound, by which even today all the musicians of the world compare their actions, is the sound of the note “la”, corresponding to a frequency of 440 Hz.

Pseudo-absolute, harmonic, inner ear

In addition to the absolute, there is a pseudo-absolute pitch. With this method of sound recognition, a person compares the external sound with the sound of his own voice. The reference for determining the sound can be the highest or lowest sound of one's own voice.

Another feature of people with perfect pitch is the ability to recognize sounds when they sound simultaneously. Such hearing is called harmonic. Absolutists accurately name the number of sounds in a harmonic chord, recognize each of them.

It is important for a musician to have not only a good absolute and relative perception of sounds, but also a developed inner ear.

This quality is based on musical experience, the ability to think in musical images, to represent the harmony of a musical work as a whole.

Inner hearing is based on musical talent, it is improved throughout life. Such well-known composers as Beethoven, Smetana, suffering from deafness at the end of their lives, wrote music using only their inner hearing.

Perfect pitch and musical ability

The absolute ability to recognize sound frequencies is always innate, but in order for it to manifest itself, a person must first hear sounds. The frequency of the sound heard is stored in memory unchanged for life. W. A. ​​Mozart is considered to be the first known absolutist.

With age, absolute pitch is not lost, and according to some reports, it improves. There is an innate ability to absolutely recognize sounds with an average frequency of 1: 10,000. Among professional musicians, this ability is noted more often, in about one in several dozen people.

The number of absolutes is higher among peoples with tonal languages. These languages ​​include Japanese, Vietnamese.

The inhabitants of these countries are musical, they love and understand music. However, the number of composers in these countries is on average no higher than in European countries.

The fact is that absolute pitch is not a guarantee of musical talent. By analogy with literature, it is not enough to recognize colors in order to draw, to know letters in order to become a writer.

Is it possible to achieve perfect pitch by training?

The absolute differs from a person with a relative ear for music by the ability to store the frequency of a sound in memory. The external sound entering the auditory analyzer is compared with the frequencies available in the memory of the absolutist and the closest value is selected.

Absolutely perfect sounding of external sound is difficult to achieve. In fact, even the standard - the note "la", is reproduced not at a frequency of 440 Hz, but with a small error. The error range or sound-height zone is 435-445 Hz.

With special training, an ordinary person, if desired, is able to get as close as possible to the ability to distinguish sounds with absolute accuracy.

Perhaps not everyone will be able to achieve the speed of recognition and accuracy of sound definition, characteristic of absolute pitch, but everyone can bring their musical ear closer to the desired ideal.

A prerequisite for starting classes should be the presence of a relative ear for music. This method of sound recognition can be developed to perfection and correspond to the level of absolute sound recognition.

There are special programs - Ear Power, Earope, which allow you to improve your hearing on your own. Those wishing to improve their absolute pitch are offered courses where, under the guidance of a trainer, the mastery of recognizing musical sounds is mastered step by step.

There are a large number of successful, outstanding composers who did not have absolute pitch from birth and honed their skills in their professional activities.

Disadvantages of absolute pitch

Not always outstanding qualities bring the owner only one benefit. Absolute pitch in ordinary life even creates some inconvenience.

So, absolutes hear any false note. Dissonance cuts the ear, distracts, brings a shade of displeasure to the lessons. Absolute pitch catches false notes in the sound of an orchestra at a concert, church singing in a temple, the sounds of ordinary singing in karaoke cause shock.

In addition, pure absolute pitch without developed relative pitch will allow a person to play complex pieces of music from a sheet, perfectly tune instruments, but will not allow him to write music. The owner of absolute pitch with undeveloped relative pitch perceives musical sounds separately, does not feel their mutual attraction and harmony.

Absolute pitch is discovered when playing music, trains and develops throughout life, does not weaken with age. The musical abilities of a person consist of the ability to accurately distinguish the pitch of a sound, the ability to determine the timbre, duration, relative pitch and intensity of sounds.

D. K. Kirnarskaya

Perfect Pitch

Possessors of absolute pitch, or, as musicians call them, absolutes , cause many white envy. 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 the given sound, which any absolutist can easily do. The essence of this ability has not been fully disclosed, 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 a timbre: just as easily as ordinary people recognize their relatives and friends by the voice, distinguishing timbres, absolutes " recognize each individual sound by sight.

It is likely that absolute pitch is a kind of "super-timbre" hearing, when the distinction of timbres is so subtle that it affects each individual sound, which is always slightly 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 the subjects did an excellent job. But absolutes responded much more confidently and faster than their fellow musicians or non-musicians. This means that absolute pitch includes a timbre element or even as a whole, as many psychologists believe, is an ultrafine offshoot of timbre pitch. Some self-observations of musicians support a "timbre version" of the origin of absolute pitch. Composer Taneyev recalled: “A note for me had a very special character of sound. I recognized her just as quickly and freely by this certain character of her sound, as we immediately recognize in the face of a familiar person. The note D already had, as it were, a completely different, also quite definite physiognomy, by which I instantly recognized and called it. And so are all the other notes.

The second popular version about the nature of absolute pitch emphasizes not the moment of timbre sensation, but the moment of super-memory to the musical height. It is known that an ordinary 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 it among other sounds. Musicians have a stronger memory for musical pitch - they can produce a sound even eight minutes after they heard it. Absolutes, on the other hand, remember the pitch of sounds for an indefinitely long time. Psychologist Daniel Levitin believes that perfect pitch is just a long-term memory.

Absolute pitch can be active or passive. Passive hearing allows you to recognize and name the pitch, but if you ask such an absolutist to “sing the note in F”, then he is unlikely to sing it instantly and accurately. The owner of active absolute hearing will do this without difficulty, not to mention the fact that he can easily recognize any sound. In discussing the nature of active absolute pitch and passive absolute pitch, researchers find a place for both timbre and pitch versions of its origin. Many believe that passive recognition of sounds is based on timbre absolute pitch, and the possibility of their active reproduction is based on pitch. The question of the nature of absolute pitch still remains open, but no matter what absolutes memorize - timbre, pitch, or both, they are extremely rare, one out of a thousand people has absolute pitch.

Professional musicians while studying at music schools, colleges and conservatories constantly perform a lot of auditory exercises: they write musical dictations, sing from notes, guess chord sequences by ear. During the work of a conductor, choirmaster, singer and in various types of musical activity, hearing facilitates a lot and often serves as a convenient help. Colleagues of happy absolutes sometimes set themselves the goal of mastering absolute pitch, developing it, even if by nature they do not have absolute pitch. In 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 won disappears without a trace - the skills gained with such difficulty turn out to be very ephemeral and fragile.

Babies who are already prone to manifestations of absolute pitch can learn it even in an active form. Psychologists Kessen, Levine and Vendrich asked mothers of three-month-old babies to inspire them with a special love for the note "fa" of the first octave. This note is convenient for a child's voice, and when the babies hooted on their note, the mothers had to remind them every time "fa", as if to prompt this particular pitch. After forty days of training, twenty-three babies, participants in the experiment, hummed together on the note "fa" - they managed to remember exactly this height and they no longer strayed from it. After some time, when the meaning of this special love for “fa” did not become clear, and the mothers ceased to endlessly remind this particular note, the babies switched to their usual cooing. Thus ended its short life of absolute pitch, which had barely broken through. From many such trials and errors, both with infants and with adults and children, the researchers made a preliminary conclusion about the uneducability of real, durable and not requiring additional work of active absolute hearing. The reason for all sorts of fiascos in attempts to acquire absolute pitch is due to its genetic origin, repeatedly confirmed.

Neuropsychologists also consider perfect pitch to be an innate and genetically determined quality. A group of neuropsychologists led by Gottfried Schlaug focused on research on the left hemispheric planum temporale, which is slightly enlarged in all people compared to the corresponding section of the right hemisphere. This department is in charge of sound discrimination, including the distinction of phonemes, and, as already mentioned, a certain increase in this brain device of the “speaking person” was formed in chimpanzees 8 million years ago. However, upon closer examination, it turned out that absolute musicians have even more planum temporale than all other 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 an exaggerated left hemispheric asymmetry in the brain regions involved in 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 brought up and developed, but is bestowed from above. “Abandon hope, ye who enter here!” one should write not on the gates of hell, but in the solfeggio class, especially zealous teachers who captivate gullible students with promises to develop absolute pitch in them. However, a more important question is different: does a musician need this gift of fate, is absolute pitch such a valuable quality, without which it is difficult for a musician to do? Since absolute pitch was brought to public attention, many almost anecdotal stories have been collected about it, telling about the incredible human auditory abilities. But these quasi-anecdotes do not bring absolute pitch closer to music, but move it away from it, reinforcing doubts about its usefulness as a purely musical quality, and not a curiosity of nature, which has a very indirect relation to the art of music.

Absolute hearing works in automatic mode, fixing everything that hits. Absolute pianist Miss Sauer's dentist distracted her from her discomfort by asking questions about what note the drill was buzzing on. Just like the young Mozart, who knew how to name the sound of a glass filled with water, the note on which the clock ticked and the creaking of doors, Miss Sauer distinguished the pitch of all sounds in general. Once, while learning the piece, she heard an uninvited accompaniment in the form of the sounds of a neighbor's lawn mower, which buzzed on the note "salt". From now on, whenever Miss Sauer performed this ill-fated piece, the sound of a lawn mower on the same note was awakened in her mind, and the concert piece was irrevocably ruined. Miss Sauer's colleague, the Reverend Sir Frederick Usley, professor of music at Oxford University, also had a 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 afternoon, young Sir Frederick claimed that what he was actually hearing was not G-minor at all, but A-flat minor, located a semitone higher. It turned out that the boy was right: the instruments were so hot from the heat that their system slightly increased.

Much says about the ancient origin of 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. Relative ear dominates in musical creativity, for which it is important not the absolute height of the music being performed, but the sound relations. Not so with birds: they sing their "music" at the same pitch, memorizing not so much bird melodies as the absolute pitch of the sounds included in them. This set of sounds is for them a sign, a signal, but not an artistic message. Dolphins do the same, making sounds of a certain height, where each frequency acts as a certain sign-signal. Animals forced to communicate over long distances use the frequency of sound as its most stable characteristic, not subject to distortion. From ancient times, the frequency of sound vibrations transmitted information in a storm, and in snow, and in rain, cutting through forests and oceans and overcoming all sound interference. In some species of animals, absolute pitch was thus formed, capable of distinguishing several commonly used frequencies and using them.

The works of the Englishman Sargent shed light on many phenomena associated with absolute pitch. He argues that almost every person could become an absolute if he began to study music in early childhood. His survey of one and a half thousand members of the English Society of Musicians shows that there is a definite connection between the time of the beginning of musical studies and the possession of absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is dying out due to the fact that the same music, when it sounds in different keys, is perceived as practically the same; if this phenomenon, which musicians call "transposition", did not exist, then absolute pitch could be preserved. To suggest such a thing would be, however, a complete fantasy - singing as the basis of music-making could not live without the performance of the same melodies either by a soprano, or by a bass, or by a tenor. All 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 ontogeny, in child development, reflecting phylogeny, historical development can be clearly seen as absolute pitch, having barely begun to emerge, dies off without receiving practical reinforcement: it is not necessary either in music or in speech, and being unclaimed, this rudiment calmly dies off as Once upon a time, the animal tail fell away from people.

Among the advantages of absolute musicians, the so-called “color hearing” is often referred to, when musical tonalities seem to the perceiver as if colored, colored, and steadfastly evoke certain color associations in memory. Rimsky-Korsakov considered the key of E major "blue, sapphire, brilliant, nocturnal, dark azure" thanks to the prompting of fellow composers. Glinka wrote the choir "Darkness of the night falls 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 was it possible to avoid “night and dark azure” associations here? In F major, Beethoven laid the foundation for the "Pastoral" symphony, connected with the life of innocent shepherds and peasants in the bosom of nature, and this tonality in the composer's community began to naturally gravitate towards green. E-flat major Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner were associated with water - the first with Ocean-Sea Blue, and the second with Rhine Gold, although Rimsky-Korsakov could boast of absolute pitch, but Wagner did not. This further strengthens the idea that “color hearing” is a historical and cultural phenomenon, not connected with absolute pitch. Scriabin also gravitated towards color associations of keys, but like Wagner he did not have perfect pitch.

Comparison of absolute musicians with non-absolute musicians emphasizes their fundamental equality in the main: both hear and fix sound relations and remember the pitch of sounds, but use different strategies at the same time - where the absolute does not think and does not compare, acting instantly, there the non-absolute achieves the same with minimal effort, but with the same result. Except when it is required to tune the instrument with an accuracy of a few hertz or recognize a false sound. So is it worth envying the absolutes, and how to interpret this gift of nature, knowing about its rudimentary origin, and also that some great composers, including Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Scriabin, did without absolute pitch.

The very phrase "absolute pitch" suggests something perfect, the 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 is already suggestive of ultra-high musicality. However, even an approximate review of the facts and views of specialists forces us to abandon such reverence. “Absolute pitch is not a panacea,” writes Ms. Sauer, who knows how to find out what note drills and lawnmowers are buzzing on. “He is only what you can do with him and how you can use him. One does not automatically follow from the other.

A few statistics are in tune with these chilling tirades. If the total number of absolutists in the world is about 3%, among students of conservatories in Europe and America it is already 8%, then among Japanese music students there are already 70% absolutists, probably due to the fact that Eastern languages ​​are genetically closer to tonal languages, and the auditory capabilities of Asians are generally higher. Is it because the complex classical music of Europe gained popularity so quickly in the Far East because the auditory resources of these peoples are extremely large compared to Europeans? It is easy for them to perceive the global sound constructions 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. Absolute pitch all over the world is possessed by quite ordinary musicians, and just piano tuners, and even people who do not like music at all and are not interested in it. “Having absolute pitch in no way makes you a good musician,” writes Dr. – It does not mean that you understand musical relationships, it does not indicate a sense of rhythm, it simply means that you have perfect pitch. Many people think it means something much more.”

At the same time, among the outstanding musicians, the number of absolutes is very large. On the heights of the musical Olympus, at the height of Mozart-Bach-Debussy and the like, non-absolute pitch is a big exception. The same can be said about outstanding performers of the rank of Richter-Stern-Rostropovich. In a special study of 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 is as rare as a white musician among the black titans of jazz. At the same time, absolute pitch does not guarantee even tolerable musical abilities: the possession of absolute pitch, apart from the absolute pleasure of recognizing the door of one's home by its unique creaking, does not promise any other pleasures.

Even a superficial analysis of the auditory capabilities of the great ones can bring some clarity to the mythology of absolute pitch. “When I was two and a half years old,” recalls the composer Saint-Saens, “I found myself in front of a small piano that had not been opened for several years. Instead of hitting randomly, as children usually do, I played one key after another and did not release it until its sound died out completely. Grandmother explained the names of the notes to me and invited the tuner to put the piano in order. During this operation, I was in the next room and amazed everyone by naming the notes as they sounded at the tuner's hand. All these details are known to me not from other people's words, since I myself remember them perfectly. In this description, it is not at all surprising that absolute pitch manifested itself so early - it always wakes up early; surprising and not that the child so confidently called all the sounds, only once hearing them - this is absolute pitch. It is amazing that the love of music awakened early in the child, when he listened to the sounds with such attention, with such unprecedented interest, perceiving the piano as his interlocutor, who must be listened to, and not as a toy that must be beaten so that it responds with offended strumming.

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 for various reasons. Outstanding musicians are gifted in terms of hearing not only with absolute pitch, their general high musicality, their sensitivity to the meaningfulness of sound enhances all sound-distinctive abilities, including absolute pitch. It does not die in the mind of an outstanding musician, because it is included in the context of other auditory data, among which there is necessarily an excellent relative pitch: an outstanding musician equally freely uses both absolute pitch and non-absolute pitch, if necessary.

Absolutes, which can be conditionally called "tuners", are essentially non-musicians. Their absolute pitch is just a vestige 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 is working in an enhanced mode. In addition, the children of musicians have a hereditary tendency to preserve absolute pitch. However, in all such cases, the tendency to retain absolute pitch does not come from within consciousness, from within the awakening musicality, and as a result, a dead absolute pitch arises, which can push one to choose a musical profession - the recognized fetishism of the phrase “absolute pitch” will play its treacherous role here. The seeming 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 causes, and the child is indeed endowed with excellent intonation pitch, a good sense of rhythm, and even a remarkable relative pitch, all these qualities taken together do not mean that musical talent is evident. These hearing properties 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 yet mean that the absolute player has at least a small fraction of musical fantasy, imagination and artistry. It is still very far from the requirements that society imposes on gifted performers and composers. In addition, in the musical profession, it is quite possible to get by with a good relative pitch, which once again warns society against excessive enthusiasm about the magical properties of absolute pitch. Its rudimentary origin and fundamentally conscious, reflex nature once again emphasize that the concept of "absolute pitch" is just another myth. To believe in it or not - everyone chooses for himself.

It doesn't matter if you're going to sing in a punk band, dream of not getting punched in karaoke, or plan to serenade your sweetheart on her birthday, an ear for music is a very useful skill for any developed man. We figure out what it is in general, what exactly is its use and what exercises can drive a bear out of your ear.

Do you love music the way we love it at Men's Health? Surely yes, and that's great. After all, you and I have known for a long time that:

• music can make physical labor easier, whether it's rowing a galley or tending a huge lawn;
• in the office, listening to your favorite music can reduce fatigue that accumulates during working hours, calm your nerves and relieve irritability;
• music increases enthusiasm and helps to relax;
• music classes help in learning foreign languages;
• music strengthens the mind: as Italian scientists found, fast music causes an additional rush of blood to the brain compared to slower or silence;
• music has been proven to help runners and cyclists: the former feel that they spend less effort, and their endurance increases by 15%, while the latter use less oxygen when pedaling to the music;
• pleasant music can effectively block the memory of failures, increasing the overall efficiency of the athlete;
• Finally, scientists have noted the effectiveness of music in reducing pain in cancer patients, improving the response of their immune system, reducing their anxiety and other psychological and physiological symptoms.

And remember how often you imagined yourself on stage with a microphone performing a hit from your favorite team? Some of us are downright delusional about this vision and strive to use every opportunity to make it come true. But, alas, no matter how hard the unfortunate vocalists try, no matter how loudly they try to voice their favorite lines both in karaoke, and in a cheerful company, and even alone with the closest people, the maximum that they get is sympathetic looks in which the prayer is clearly read: “Dude, stop making these heartbreaking sounds with your mouth!” In especially severe cases, bar vocalizations ended in scuffles, after which the editorial singers, rubbing fresh bruises and abrasions, complained about the universal misunderstanding and human insensitivity. To help them, we decided to find out if it is possible to develop an ear for music at all. It turned out that it is very possible!

What is it anyway?

An ear for music is a person's ability to fully perceive the musical palette of a work and comprehensively and adequately evaluate it, as well as reproduce it. Determining how developed your musical ear is is very simple.

• Choose your favorite song.
• Listen to it once, and then try on your own, a cappella (that is, without accompaniment), to sing the melody of the song, while keeping in rhythm.
• Neighbors banging furiously on the water pipe? Sorry, it looks like your hearing is not good. Wait, or did you perform something from Napalm Death?

But don't get upset. An ear for music is either given to a person by nature, or he is brought up over time by hard training. As scientists have established, in the auditory area of ​​\u200b\u200bour brain there is a bundle of nerve endings responsible for musical hearing. And if it is regularly and correctly stimulated, then things will eventually go smoothly.

In addition, if you didn’t really distort the melody, but constantly fly out of rhythm and tempo, then you need to work on coordinating the auditory and vocal apparatus - yes, and this can be pumped.

Varieties of musical ear

Out of almost 20 types of musical ear, we will highlight the 6 most important for us in this article.

Perfect Pitch

A fairly rare innate talent that gives its owner the ability to accurately determine the musical note (pitch) of absolutely any sound without comparing it with a tuning fork (that is, a well-known ideal). With all its advantages, it can cause a decent amount of inconvenience, such as difficulties with learning foreign languages, and most importantly, it has nothing to do with musicality and does not guarantee the career of Svyatoslav Richter or Mstislav Rostropovich.

inner hearing

But the ability to accurately represent a piece of music, its melody and the sound of individual instruments is much more important for your musical future. Let's say, if you suddenly (God forbid) go deaf, you can still compose songs for your group, just playing them in your head - remember our Ludwig van Beethoven.

Relative (interval) hearing

The ability to determine the pitch of musical sounds, comparing them with those already known, is possessed by most successful musicians, without having absolute hearing. And this is exactly the skill that can be developed.

Rhythmic hearing

In dry academic language, this is the ability to distinguish the duration of the sound of notes in their sequence, their strength and weakness, as well as to feel the tempo, that is, the change in the speed of the music. But in fact, the presence of rhythmic hearing means that you are able to catch the sensation that musicians call "pitch" or "groove", that is, to feel the emotional expressiveness of musical rhythm.

pitch hearing

If you possess it, then you hear the slightest difference in pitch: for example, the difference between adjacent piano keys or guitar frets. It is easily developed through training and will help you become, if not a musician, then a concert technician or piano tuner.

melodic hearing

The most important ability to perceive the melody of your favorite song as a whole, with all its expressive changes in the course of the piece, and to assess its expressiveness and intonation. As they say in solfeggio lessons, the melody either runs, then jumps, then freezes in place.

What to do to develop musical ear?

We will not touch here on the countless applications and programs designed to help develop your ear, learn to sing and master the basics of musical instruments. And let's talk about the good old analog exercises.

Learn to listen to music

Yes, it's that simple. But now you will not just mindlessly drive your favorite tracks in a circle - you have to delve into them. Figure out how many instruments sound in a particular composition, how the sound of electronic drums differs from real ones, what effects distort the sound of guitars, how intensely the bass player plays his part. We guarantee: having mastered thoughtful listening to music, you will get a new and tremendous pleasure.

By the way, direct and frequent listening to music is perhaps the main condition for the development of musical ear and, more importantly, musical taste. And here it is better to turn to boring audiophiles who like to get confused with high-quality equipment, rather than treat it with a disregard, since the price of the issue is your hearing. Inexpensive tweeters (which sound engineers call "shit-control" - understandable, right?) and cheap in-ear headphones will easily beat off your musical bundle of neurons completely and are certainly unlikely to make it possible to correctly decompose the composition into instruments. Therefore, approach the choice of a device for listening to music wisely - and especially for headphones.

Editor's Choice MH: Audio-Technica ATH-DSR7BT Headphones

This is just that rare case when almost everything is perfect in headphones: sound quality, quality of materials, convenience and price. The ATH-DSR7BT full-size wireless ears from legendary Japanese brand Audio-Technica feature the Pure Digital Drive system, which redefines wireless audio, delivering impressive sound quality without any of the effects of digital-to-analogue conversions. It works like this: the digital signal remains as such until it reaches the drivers. In most Bluetooth headphones, from this point on, multi-stage signal processing begins, which in the end often results in a noticeable deterioration in sound. Pure Digital Drive at the same time excludes strong signal processing, as a result of which the alignment is perfect: no distortion or additional sound coloration.

Get to grips with the instruments playing your favorite song with 45mm True Motion D/A drivers designed specifically for the DSR7BT, recreating every detail of the recording with a natural, balanced sound.

Although the headphones are wireless, they have a USB cable that supports high-resolution audio (up to 96kHz/24bit). In addition, the headphones support the latest aptxHD Bluetooth codec, which provides lossless wireless audio transmission.

Editorial tests - and we usually conduct them from the heart, to the maximum, often at the risk of simply breaking the device - showed impressive results.

Headphones sit quite comfortably on the head and are able to adapt to any ears thanks to the ear cushions with shape memory. They do not slip off the head either when playing sports (boxing was an exception), or when vigorously shaking the head to the classic Metallica compositions. Although, of course, the natural conditions for the Audio-Technica ATH-DSR7BT are peaceful and calm listening to music not only at home, but also at work. And since these are wireless Bluetooth headphones, you can not be attached to space at all.

Touch control deserves special attention. In order to receive or end a phone call, as well as start a song, just touch the special point on the right earcup with your finger. And of course, thanks to various switching options, the headphones are ideal for the player, and for the smartphone, and for the vinyl player.

Scales

Yes, just like in the movies. You approach the piano (well, okay, to the synthesizer), find the note C and play the C major scale from it - the “do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si” you know. And then you begin to sing every note. Ideally, you should get a clean gamma on the first try.

Sounds

When getting ready for work in the morning, try to leave ten minutes early so that you have the opportunity to take your time and concentrate on distinguishing the sounds around you: the rustle of tires on asphalt, the sound of heels, the click of dog claws, snatches of telephone conversations, the squeal of zippers, and so on. . Learn to separate sounds from general noise and memorize them. Do the same while sitting at home: an apartment building is full of sounds that make up an incredibly interesting palette.