"I have no idea whether perfect pitch can be taught later in life. I know it’s a pretty straight-forward development when someone is younger, but I just don’t know how it translates…the brain hardwires itself pretty solidly after 5 or 6, so it’s hard to say. That said, it’s really no different than teaching the human brain to recognize various wavelengths of light as specific colours. Even by the time most children leave kindergarten, they could identify probably 40-50 colours by name; when you consider the process, it’s no different than learning to label pitch, or perhaps temperature. By the time the information reaches your brain, its just variable wavelength, in two different mediums, being translated into neural data by different organs – but your brain will recognize it simply as sensory input. We spend probably 1-2 hours every day reinforcing colour for multiple years, through day-care, pre-school, and kindergarten. I have every reason to believe that we would have an equal success rate at teaching pitch if it was done as methodically and as repetitiously as colour at the age of 5 or earlier. For an adult, it could be quite difficult…just imagine how you might begin teaching someone colour who had never ever thought to label or categorize colour? How do you teach someone what red is, and label it red?

"Here is my own personal experience, and how I believe I obtained perfect-pitch. When I look back at my child hood experience, my development of perfect pitch was very methodical – indeed nothing mystical or unique about my aural capacity whatsoever – it was because of the sheer volume of time my mother spent reinforcing the music I was practicing by recordings well-tuned to A440. In my youth, I would have been practicing / playing 5-6 pieces at a time, and my mother obtained recordings of the pieces I was learning. At the same time, we were working on rudimentary theory, constantly engraining the idea of harmony. Those recordings were the only thing I heard as I fell asleep EVERY night, it was playing before I got up every morning, and in the car, we only listened to these recordings. This was the process from the age of 2 ½ to 7 or 8. It is entirely feasible to say that for every piece I played, I heard the recording literally thousands of times, in various states of consciousness. I believe the fact that I was studying and playing the pieces that I was hearing helped to form all the cross-associations required to hold a permanent set of labels for the tonal spectrum.

"That said, even at 3 years old, I was still inundated with methodical bombardment of tonal reinforcement and confirmation. So a method for adults would have to be, if anything, even more strict and involved than 2-3 hours of listening every day, combined with playing. I would certainly not go and spend a wack of cash on a method – the process seems pretty logical, and a good regimen could be developed. I do believe that development does involve a LOT of listening, and you may have to create some specific recordings…and as voodoo as it sounds, I would suggest listening to tonal reinforcement in various states of consciousness within the sleep cycle."

~ Stu Harrison
(teacher, pianist)
www.stuharrisonmusic.com/