Perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) is one of those talents that appear almost mythical in nature, but musicians often find they can develop it, or something very similar, through practice and exercise. The process involves associating notes with particular sounds and teaching your ear to remember them, and one good approach is to pick a note (usually C or A) and listen to it every day. If you sing, hum or play the note on your instrument every day, you’ll soon come to recognize it as readily as you recognize the sound of your own voice. You can extend this process to other notes by practicing the notes next to your “home” note and then checking back to make sure you still recognize it. I think this approach is effective because it doesn’t present your ear with too many options, and in doing so, it helps you avoid the confusion and frustration that can come with a large number of notes.
Frequency matters more than quantity. Better to spend time every day singing scales than sporadic long practices because the brain strengthens neural pathways through repetition rather than marathon efforts. The brain learns more by the number of days it is asked to perform a task than by the amount of time spent on that task. If I sing scales in the morning, try to identify random notes with a piano app on my phone in the afternoon, and attempt to identify the pitch of a doorbell, a car horn, or a phone chime at other times during the day, the ability to perceive a pitch seems more applicable. And over months, it becomes almost easy, which is where I want it to be. I don’t want to have to struggle to produce or identify a note. I want it to be as automatic as breathing.
Some students are worried that learning perfect pitch will somehow ruin the music and make it too mathematical or something, but I think it’s the other way around. When you learn perfect pitch, you start to hear the color or intention of each and every note when you listen to recordings or when you play music. The major third sounds bright and cheerful, the tritone sounds dissonant and ominous, etc. I think you’ll enjoy music more, not less, and be more musical when you play music.
There will be times when you feel like you aren’t making any progress. This is okay. Sometimes your brain just needs to chew on the new stuff it’s learned for a while. Just keep up with your practice and don’t push too hard in those times. Every time you get a note right in a song you’ve heard a hundred times, or nail one without checking a tuner, that’s a victory. Listen to as much music as you can with clear, defined notes to give you lots of chances to practice, and don’t check with a tuner too much.
Eventually, the conscious effort of practicing perfect pitch will become an unconscious knowing that will be as natural as breathing. You will be able to transpose a melody in your head without any effort, write a melody with specific pitches to evoke a specific mood or emotion, and to verbally describe musical passages with specific pitches. But perhaps most significant, you will begin to notice a more vivid musical soundscape around you, for every note will have a name, a personality, and a function. Acquiring perfect pitch is less about attaining some mystical ability than it is about connecting with music. So make the effort, and you will be surprised to discover that you have had perfect pitch all along.