EQ Magazine - July 2008 - (Page 64)

Save The# $ Publishe 30 iv 27th Ann Discount! r’s ersary 1World Best-Selling Ear Training Method for 27Years They laughed when I said they could have Perfect Pitch until I showed them the simple secret — they heard it for themselves! —and David-Lucas Burge G Name any note or chord — by EAR! G Sing any desired pitch at will G You’ll hear it for yourself — immediately. G Copy music straight off a CD G Play by ear — instead of searching by hand G Identify keys of songs just by listening G Perform with confidence G Compose music in your head G Enjoy richer, finer music appreciation G You’ll open a new door to new talents . . . The true story behind the worldwide #1 best-selling ear training method by David-Lucas Burge It all started in ninth grade as a sort of teenage rivalry . . . I’d slave at the piano for five hours daily. Linda practiced far less.Yet somehow she always shined as the star performer at our school. It was frustrating. What does she have that I don’t? I’d wonder. Linda’s best friend, Sheryl, bragged on and on to me, adding more fuel to my fire. “You could never be as good as Linda, she would ” taunt. “Linda’s got Perfect Pitch.” “What’s Perfect Pitch?” I asked. Sheryl gloated about Linda’s uncanny abilities: how she could name exact notes and chords—all BY EAR; how she could sing any tone—from memory alone; how she could play songs—after just hearing them; the list went on and on . . . My heart sank. Her EAR is the secret to her success I thought. How could I ever hope to compete with her? But it bothered me. Did she really have Perfect Pitch? How could she know notes and chords just by hearing them? It seemed impossible. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. So one day I marched right up to Linda and asked her point-blank if she had Perfect Pitch. “Yes,” she nodded aloofly. But Perfect Pitch was too good to believe. I rudely pressed, “Can I test you sometime?” “OK,” she replied. Now she would eat her words . . . My plot was ingeniously simple . . . When Linda least suspected, I walked right up and challenged her to name tones for me—by ear. I made her stand so she could not see the piano keyboard. I made sure other classmates could not help her. I set up everything perfectly so I could expose her Perfect Pitch claims as a ridiculous joke. With silent apprehension, I selected a tone to play. (She’ll never guess F , I thought.) I had barely touched the key. “F , she said. I was astonished. ” I played another tone. “C,” she announced, not stopping to think. Frantically, I played more tones, skipping here and there all over the keyboard. But somehow she knew the pitch each time. She was AMAZING. “Sing an E ,” I demanded, determined to mess her up. She sang a tone. I checked her on the keyboard— and she was right on! Now I started to boil. I called out more tones, trying hard to make them increasingly difficult. But each note she sang perfectly on pitch. I was totally boggled. “How in “How in the world do you the world do you do it?” I blurted. I was totally do it?” I blurted. boggled. (age 14, 9th grade) “I don’t know, she ” sighed. And that was all I could get out of her! The dazzle of Perfect Pitch hit me like a ton of bricks. I was dizzy with disbelief. Yet from then on, I knew that Perfect Pitch was real. I couldn’t figure it out . . . “How does she DO it?” I kept asking myself. On the other hand, why can’t everyone recognize and sing tones by ear? Then it dawned on me. People call themselves musicians, yet they can’t tell a C from a C ? Or A major from F major?! That’s as strange as a portrait painter who can’t name the colors of paint on his palette. It all seemed so odd and contradictory. Humiliated and puzzled, I went home to work on this problem. At age 14, this was a hard nut to crack. You can be sure I tried it out for myself. With a little sweet-talking, I got my three brothers and two sisters to play piano tones for me—so I could try to name them by ear. But it always turned into a messy guessing game I just couldn’t win. Day after day I tried to learn those freaking tones. I would hammer a note over and over to make it stick in my head. But hours later I would remember it a half step flat. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t recognize or remember any of the tones by ear. They all sounded the same after awhile; how were you supposed to know which was which—just by listening? I would have done anything to have an ear like Linda. But now I realized it was way beyond my reach. So after weeks of work, I finally gave up. Then it happened . . . It was like a miracle . . . a twist of fate . . . like finding the lost Holy Grail . . . Once I stopped straining my ear, I started to listen NATURALLY. Then the simple secret to Perfect Pitch jumped right into my lap. Curiously, I began to notice faint “colors” within the tones. Not visual colors, but colors of pitch, colors of

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - July 2008

EQ Magazine - July 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Louis XIV, Four TET and Steve Reid, Can Your Record Go Gold in the Digital Age Tool Box Death Cab For Cutie Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Propellerhead Reason 4 Sony Acid Pro 6 EDAX Audio Labs VTP-100 M-Audio Profire 2626 Tape Simulator Shootout Tape Simulators Sounds Room With a VU: Infrasonic Sound Recording Company, Los Angeles, CA.

EQ Magazine - July 2008

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