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But it's not just pianists. It is also conductors. Bernstein was a hummer and sometimes grunter. (And I REALLY enjoyed Berstein as a conductor.)

Years ago I was accompanist for a choir under a VERY fine conductor, someone I also hugely admire. Early in his career he had a habit of tapping his foot, so his podium had something to dampen the sound. (I talked to him a couple years ago, asked him about it, and he said he eventually broke the habit.) I think it was sometimes hard for him not to hum at times.

We all know about Gould and his humming.

As a brass teacher when I wanted to make a point about hearing a line and being able to reproduce it I would play only on a mouth piece.

I still insist that IF you play an instrument that requires intense listening to nail pitches, if you can hear everything you have to play, you don't NEED solfege or anything else. It just gets in the way.

If you sit in on a sight-singing course on a university level, the very WORST are singers. You can depend on it. They don't have anything physical to link to. The exception will be singers who are fine pianists or play something like a wind or stringed instrument. These people generally are the best. For people who only play piano it is very unpredictable. If find that people who do not sing and who ONLY play piano are usually weak - those who are not intensely interested in non-piano music and who stay almost completely within the world of piano music.

It's not about "hearing" or "talent", though those things play a huge role. It's about having the ability to link a note on a page to the exact pitch that belongs to it.

And any way that gets that done is good.

That's false, or I would be both a lousy sight-singer and would have little ability to audiate. But I CAN sing anything, if I Have to. I do it just humming the notes. It involves lots of falsetto and register changes. I hate doing it because I do not like my voice.

I would wager that if you find 1000 people who auditate amazingly well, some use solfege, some like to sing everything, and some are like me, not doing either.

That's true, the part about not being able to hear sing what you can't hear. But if you are a brass player, you can't PLAY what you don't hear.

And by the way, if you are a singer you obviously can't sing what you can't hear. Any singer who sings in tune has a superb ear. But that alone does not give the ability hear what they seen on a page, so it is common to have a breakdown between notation and realizing the pitches.

Then "getting by" is pretty awful. If you are supposed to be playing an A, and you are producing a pitch that is 455, you pitch is 60 cents sharp, which is closer to Bb. So you are fully useless to anyone as a musician. (Not "you" but anyone who is this far off.)

The real problem is that pianists who only play piano don't have to hear what they play. So what they CAN hear is pretty much hit and miss. If that's your point, I agree. And singing everything would certainly help.

But I would argue that playing another instrument, or singing (if the player has the talent and will) will trump any system.

We have one member, here, Morodiene, who may consider voice her first instrument, but she is also a serious pianist and teacher. It is very likely she has exceptional hearing because of that combo.

Then if you take someone like Domingo, who plays piano VERY well and also conducts, there is not going to be any problems hearing. This is obvious.

Such a man (or woman) is going to end up with a superb ear because of huge talent + piano + vocal control.

Solfege is one method of trying to get there. I'n not arguing against it. I'm just saying that there are a lot of people who get to the same place with other things.

I agree 100% with everything in your post.

I especially agree with the idea that singers with no other background do not sightsing well. There must be some that do, but I've yet to run into one, including a couple of superb sopranos who sing with us regularly.

They don't hit pitches, which I understand, and they also don't count, which is a completely mystery to me. That should be a teachable skill. Maybe the two are related somehow.

But they can do something I can't do. There seems to be a separate skill that allows a singer to follow in almost real time. I don't understand how this is done. We have a number of people in the church choir who can sing well provided they have a strong leader to follow.

Just a thought.

If hearing notes through seeing notation is important to a pianist, might transcribing be a possible path to get there?

You don't understand how a singer follows the choral director?

What is it specifically that you would like TimR to understand about this? I am curious myself.

I thought I was clear, but perhaps I need to specify.

I do not understand how one singer who does not know the tune can sing along with another singer who does know it (or sightreads it well.)

Following the director can give you the correct speed, should you choose to do so, and provided you are not a soprano. But the director will rarely be able to give you the pitch.

I am well acquainted with following the director. I play or sing in a number of ensembles. I also direct, and can sometimes get them to watch me! I give them the beat, and I give signals for dynamics, sometimes cue an entrance, but I do not give pitches. Normally.

If you can already hear everything you have to play, of course you don't need solfège. Solfège is just a way of getting to that point, and I agree it's not the only one.



I'll take your word for it, although I'm having trouble understanding how this can be true. Aren't singers supposed to develop a mental "sound map" that's linked to their use of vocal technique? If they don't have that, how come they can sing in tune at all?



Where did I say that singing is the only way to develop audiation? It's not.



Really? How does that work? I'm honestly curious.



Granted, the numbers are off here. But the question remains: if you start out not hearing when a note you just produced is sharp, flat, or spot-on, then how do you develop that ability? Are people just born with or without it, or can it be taught? If it can be taught (which I know it can), how do you teach it? The answer to that is probably in part: through lots of playing, careful listening, and appropriate feedback on sharpness or flatness and how to correct it. But it can't hurt if you already have a sound map in your head that tells you what to aim for when you see a note on the page. That's what I think you learn through sight-singing, first with accompaniment (for guidance), and later without.



I agree.

Melodic dictation as we do it in solfège class is like transcription for dummies, and yes, it does help with learning to audiate — at least in my experience.

There has to be some kind of starting pitch. Either there is accompaniment, where often there is an introductory instrumental part which gives the singers the harmonic context. Barbershop quartets, since they sing a capella, usually have some kind of starting note. So you can't be talking about that.

I don't think he's talking about singing harmonies "out of the blue" without a starting pitch. I think he's talking about people who will accurately sing a melody they don't know, as long as they have someone else singing alongside them who does know the melody.

I think that's partly about following, and partly about predicting where the music is about to go (which is not exactly rocket science, if you think in functions). But actually, the only thing you really need in order to do this is the ability to match pith in a fraction of a second. I'm not saying that's easy. But I understand how it's done.

I think so, Tim. In fact, that's the idea behind "dictation".

There are two things that I know were crucial to how I hear today.

First, I started tuba when I was around 12. (This also strengthened my bass clef reading to the point that it was as fast and accurate as treble clef.) Later I switched to euphonium, which is a bit like a cello in the brass family. Brass makes you hear clearly because there are only 7 fingerings, just as trombone uses 7 positions. We have this in common. If you are aiming for high C on trombone, the best position is normally 1st. But obviously there is also D above and Bb below. You can't GET that C if you can't hear it.

You know all this, but non-brass players do not.

And it gets worse if you are a jazz band player who regularly hits high F, because by that time you have Bb C D *?* F, all with the same position. The "?" refers to a note that is almost exactly half way betwee Eb and E, so now you dealing with the three notes where there is a "wrong" one below F and another *wrong" one above it, now about a "3/4" step just reading to produce two equally ugly "clams".

Who has it worse? A singer, because a singer has an infinite number of possible wrong pitches, and NO physical help. String players can play any pitch, but when they are off, they are still reaching for a physical spot.

This makes singing (or whistling) actually more difficult than playing most instruments. The famous trumpet player, Clark Terry, was not allowed to play trumpet until he FIRST could play any tune on his mouthpiece. That's WAY harder than actually playing on trumpet.

The other thing that strengthened my ear hugely was transcribing things that were not available in score. You just can't listen to something intensely with the intent of either writing it down or memorizing it, never seeing a source.

My brass teacher had me do this too when I first started playing trumpet, though not with everything (not even close). He did make me sing everything before I was even given a mouthpiece. I'm convinced the singing helped me hugely with the mouthpiece playing.

What produces the hearing is the success of writing down what you hear. So long as you keep getting better at it, your method does not matter. Anything that helps is good.

For me solfege is absolutely useless because using it means having to remember names that just get in my way. When I hear a pitch it produces in my mind, simultaneously, a picture in my mind of what I have to press to get that note. That means that when I hear middle C, I see that key, on piano. But I also see, a whole step down, Bb, which is what a C is on trumpet. I see both. The fingering "open" exists on the Bb key. Then I know what to write down. C for piano, C also but an octave below for trombone. These things are instance, because I have both played and taught these instruments. Horn is also easy, tuba. Clarinet (Bb) is the same as trumpet. All the concert pitch instruments are automatic. I change registers instinctively.

Sax is harder because I have only accompanied it. Even then you have to hear it, because when helping people you have to hear their parts in order to correct, or even to stay fully synced.

The things that drive me nuts are the instruments that can transpose almost any place, such as the old valveless trumpets that can be in any key with the addition of crooks.

I ran into an unusual transcription example a few years ago.

I sometimes played with a trumpeter who had some good chops but no education or musical background. He was obsessed with Herb Alpert style music and put together his own band, and I played a few gigs with him. To get the music, he transcribed the parts from old LPs. That was quite an achievement for someone with zero theory background and no piano, but he taught himself.

The interesting thing was to see the guitar chords - in Bb treble. He wrote everything transposed one step, because as a trumpeter if it sounded like a Bb he called it a C.

Yes. A trumpet player would write a C chord as D F# A.

As a euphonium player I had to learn to read in concert pitch in bass clef but in treble up a step. I mentally transposed for a long time, but in the end it was harder for me to play concert pitch when in treble, because that transposition is so second nature.

I never figured out how trumpet players could just move when they played C trumpet. When I see C, I hear Bb (on trumpet), and that immediately produces the instinct to press no valves. But when I see the same pitch on C trumpet, I miss it every time because out comes a concert C, and my mind tells me that this can't be right - it has to be 13.

That is one of many reasons why I think a very strong absolute pitch sense is a PROBLEM for musicians who continually have to transpose. I have never understood how sax players flip from #b to Bb sax. Bb sax sounds the same as clarinet and trumpet, no problem, but how do people move back and forth when the same fingering change a 4th?

It's a hard thing to do. Terry was amazing at it. I know that's how he was taught because he told me during a break at a local jazz club here. The fact that he took the time during a break to talk to me amazed me. It still does. What a fine gentleman!

You're not the first person I've heard this from. It's why I'm grateful for not having perfect pitch. I have good ears, in that I can easily sing in tune once I've been given a starting pitch. This holds unless I'm pushed to go out of my range, in which case I can hear myself going out of tune due to technical limitations. I also hear how the notes on the page relate to each other just by looking at them. But ask me to sing a C out of the blue, and you're about as likely to get an F#, A, Bb, or any other note (and all of them might be several cents out of tune) as you are an actual C.

Going from Bb to C trumpet doesn't bother me (although I haven't done it very often), because all the intervals are still the same: C to E, which is actually Bb to D on Bb trumpet, translates to no valves, then 1+2. C to E on C trumpet: same thing. Both are major thirds, so both sound "right" to me. On C trumpet, everything is shifted up by a whole tone, but because pitches have no names in my mental sound map, that's OK. If I'm playing in a band and reading Bb trumpet music, I'll read C, think C and play C (no valves), even though what actually comes out is Bb. If I'm playing piano, I'll read C, think C and play C, and an actual C will come out. But you could theoretically tune my entire piano two whole tones up, and I wouldn't know the difference until I tried to play along with someone else.

If you play me a C, and then an E that's a little flat, I'll tell you you've gone up a major third, and that the second note was flat in relation to the first. But I won't be able to tell you that your second note was an E, unless I know (because you told me) that the first one was a C. I also won't know by how many cents the E was off, but I'll sing you the "correct" E if you ask me to. This is why it bothers me greatly when my piano starts going out of tune unevenly (as it usually does), even though I can't name any note played or sung in isolation.

I once told my solfège teacher that I have "chromatic scales" in my head, and she, having perfect pitch herself, looked at me like I'd grown a pair of antennae. But on a basic level, that's how my inner ear works: I count semi-tones. I can hear major and minor seconds and thirds, perfect fourths, fifths and octaves without "counting" anything, simply because I've had lots of practice identifying (and while reading scores, mentally hearing) those intervals "at a glance". If you play me a major sixth, I'll think: that's a fifth plus two semi-tones, so if the first note was a C, the second must be A. Or a major seventh: that's an octave minus one semi-tone, so the second note must be B. The thing is: if you play a C but call it F, and then ask me what those next notes are, I'll tell you they are D and E, respectively.

I'd wager that's how most people's musical hearing works, although they aren't all equally conscious of it, and therefore not all of them are able to use it very efficiently. But this is trained rather easily. In Belgium, the tools used to train it are solfège (sight-singing) and music dictation. As you've convincingly argued, those are by no means the only useful tools in developing a good inner ear, but they do work. If they didn't, our music schools wouldn't have thousands of kids every year developing the type of inner ear I described above.

Saranoya, your experience is similar to mine (apart from the trumpet bit, which I have no experience with!). I also don't actually count semitones so much as recognise intervals, and, as you say, I can identify a second note if I've been given the name of the first. Even if I was told C is F, I too would then identify D-E as G-A. I can sight sing in any key I choose to read the music in, which has proven useful, probably more useful to me than absolute pitch would have been.
What may be somewhat surprising is that I don't have your background in solfege (fixed do), but a little background of movable do, and lots of time spent singing and messing around on the piano as a child. So I conclude, as both you and Gary have, that there are many ways to the end of hearing what you read.

I remember sitting next to a girl (long ago) who said the same thing. She said she could not tell a C from an F#. But she had absolutely reliable relative pitch. I don't think I heard differently from her. I think the way I heard was just different.

I don't have that "freak" kind of perfect pitch that is infallable. My relative pitch is very good, and it can slip. I never know when this will happen, but it is always 1/2 step, and it is when I am disoriented by being locked into relative pitch. If, for instance, I hear something before I think about pitch, I can be off 1/2 step. I don't know why. But if I am looking at music, not hearing any pitch first, then my mind will grab onto the pitch very accurately.

It's very strange. The other night I was ready to watch The Daily Show, a popular show here. I had never thought about what key the theme is in. I had not yet turned up the sound, and I had the opening frozen. I started to pre-hear the theme, and if I was off at all, it was a matter of a few cents, at most.

So I pre-hear things every accurately.

If I am thinking of a famous symphony then start a recording, if it is off pitch (1/2 step), it will jolt me. It sounds too high or too low.

Somewhere in YouTube there is a video of Horowitz playing the very famous Chopin Mazurka in A minor. I know it is in A minor. But there were two copies, and one was 1/2 step high, in Bb minor. That jolted me.

But a practical question: if you have to start a performance nailing a high A (12), can you do that without hearing a pitch first? Because if I try to hit a high note like that, I have to hear it. If I heard a G, I would land on G, with 12, which is a harmonic but very flat, and obviously the wrong note. Then there is B right above, normally 2 but playable with 12 (which we use when doing lip slurs and playing through all the harmonics). Since high A, B and C# all play well with 12 (though I would normally use 2 for B and C#, it seems you only have about a one in three chance of hitting the right note if you can't hear it clearly. Do you always get the pitch from a pitch before it, even if it is the first note you play?

I THINK this is the way trumpet players have to hear who are continually changing instruments. Even if I could physically play an Eb trumpet, I would hit every note wrong because I would grab for the fingering that is right for Bb trumpet. But if I could accept that C is really Bb AND that C is really Eb, depending on the instrument, then I would not have this problem.

If I'm holding a trumpet in my hand, I HAVE to play play C open. I can't put down 13, because I hear Bb when I see it, and that's what open goes to. I understand how it works. I just can't do it.

Most likely the reason is that my instrument was not trumpet. You have to think like a Bb trumpet player, in treble clef, but like a tuba player in bass clef. It's a different kind of flexibility because the same valve is always linked to the same pitch, regardless how it is written.

I tried to play F horn in high school. I could not find the notes. One day someone gave me a double-horn, and then I could instantly play it. The concert pitch links up with the same pitches. Then I memorize the different fingerings for F horn in the small pitch areas where it is used on double-horn.

I understand what you are saying. In the world of totally relative pitch it all makes sense. Again, I would DISCOURAGE any kind of perfect pitch development for people who play trumpet if they are doing to switch from Bb to C to Eb. (I don't know if it can be suppressed.)

You are bothered by the out of tuneness of relative pitch on your piano. But if someone tunes it to 438 or 442, both will sound equally correct, right?

Sure, but we have thousands of kids developing the same thing here. Is it from solfege? Maybe. But I think it is more generic.

I would not want to argue about what country has more people who "hear well". I tend to think it is something that is more or less linked to becoming a fine player and using the ear actively rather than passively.

I started transcribing things or simply copying things by ear by high school. I was taught nothing. I simply did it. At first I was slow, then later pretty good, then later very fast.

At first it was hit and miss. I played a little of something, a recording, then imitated what I heard. I could only get a couple notes, memorize those notes, then add to it by listen over and over again. It's mostly practice. I started with the Hadyn trumpet concerto. I had no music to it. I just imitated what I heard, and eventually I nailed it all. I remember thinking it was a piece of cake compared to piano because there was only one line. Later I started hearing melody as a single line, bass line as another, then I picked up chords, not knowing exactly how the notes in the chords were voiced. From that I started to get inner lines, counter-melodies, and it all started to go together.

I can't hear orchestral scores with the same clarity as piano scores. For things like symphonies I have to hear a group of instruments that work together, get another group, catch the melody and strong inner lines, get the bass. Then it comes together for me.

I assume that great conductors look at a full score and just hear the whole thing, instantly. I can't do that at all. I don't know how they do...

Not always, but in the scenario you are describing here: yes. If I have to nail a C (open valves) out of the blue, I won't miss and play G instead, because C and G are sufficiently far apart that I can differentiate between them based on embouchure. But if it starts on high A, I might instead play G with 1 and 2, unless I'm playing with accompaniment. In that case, there will usually have been an intro I can use to orient myself. The intro doesn't need to contain the actual A I'm about to start my performance on, but I do need *something* to help me get a sense of "where the A is".



Actually, I think perfect pitch is more of a curse than a blessing to *anyone* who might ever have to play something in a different key than written. I'm thinking pianists accompanying singers, for example: the singer wants to transpose up or down for reasons of vocal range, so the accompanist is asked to go along with that. But (s)he can't (at least not on the spot), because for someone with perfect pitch, it's neigh impossible to read C, but think and play Bb. That person is mentally hearing C, so "must" play C.

Although I have nothing even close to perfect pitch myself, I must conclude that most people who have it would probably be better off without it. But perfect pitch, unlike relative pitch, seems to be something a person is either born with or not, so like you, I'm not sure that it can be suppressed.



Yes.



Since I'd be hard-pressed to call myself a "fine player" on any of the instruments I've ever tried, I'd argue that it's more about listening than playing. But you're right: you do have to be active, rather than passive, in that listening.



I only recently started transcribing things. But I remember having been somewhat famous as a child for my ability to memorise melodies after having heard them only once. I was playing bagpipes at the time, for which there were no formal lessons outside of yearly week-long "summer camps". These were mostly filled with adults who brought tape recorders, got the instructor to play them a bunch of tunes, and then practiced alongside the recording for God knows how many hours. I just sat there, no tape recorder, but I'd still be singing all those melodies to myself days later. And as long as I could sing them, I could figure out how to play them, usually pretty quickly (because playing bagpipes isn't all that challenging in a technical sense).



Well, yeah. That's exactly how I feel about that, too. Monophonic instruments are *so* much easier!



That's about where I am with piano music now. I can hear and remember a lot, and I can figure out how to play anything I'm able to remember. But it often takes me ages to transfer what's in my head to the piano, because my technical skill is nowhere near as developed as my ability to memorise music. It probably never will be, if only because I'm physically disabled, so there are limits to what I can do. That often makes this a frustrating endeavour.



Practice, practice, practice . Alternatively, I know of many conductors (though of course, they are not the "great" ones) who just listen to recordings a lot while following along with the score. In this day and age, they can do that, even (if they really want to) with scores that haven't been recorded yet: just feed it into a music notation program. I don't know how they did it before the recording age.

All of that said: from both your story and mine, it seems that there's still an element of "innate talent" involved. Nobody taught you how to copy or transcribe: you just did it. Nobody taught me how to memorise. I just did it. And I still "just do it". Other students in my solfège class, and other piano students at my school, sometimes ask me to explain to them how I memorise. I can't tell them, because I myself don't know. It's something that "just happens".

The question, then, is how do you develop these abilities in people for whom it doesn't "just happen"? I mean, it probably didn't "just happen" for me either, but I (like you) was somehow always drawn to "exercising that muscle". And for the most part, I did it at a young enough age (starting Suzuki violin at four) that I can't even remember what it took, now.

I think that's a problem for most music teachers: it might be the ability to memorise effortlessly for one, great hearing for another, mad sight-reading skills for a third, and a combination of some or all of the above for a fourth. But probably anyone who makes a decent living as a music teacher will have areas in which their musical "genius" developed spontaneously, or else it happened so early in their lives that they don't remember how. And yet, somehow, they have to transfer these skills to their students.

The interesting question for a teacher's forum is: how do you do that? And maybe that's the appeal of solfège: in countries where it's used extensively, I think its popularity derives in part from the fact that there are published "methods" you can use to teach your students how to read, sing, listen and write through solfège. And then when you're done with the method, those who've made it to the end will be able to identify notes on the page, notes being played to them, and notes in their heads. Or that's the idea, anyway. There are still huge differences in actual ability among even those who went through the entire curriculum. But it's a place to start, for teachers who don't know how else to do it.