# How long should it take to memorize note sounds?



## GrandMasterK

I took some piano lessons for a couple of weeks earlier this year. Whenever I'd screw up, without even looking, my teacher would go "nah that's supposed to be a C E and G, you hit C, F and A". Sometimes he'd ask me a question like "that was a B, didn't that sound like a B to you?". It'd make me feel stupid because the only sound I can remember is middle C. How long is it supposed to take before I can just stare at a note on a keyboard and I'll know what it'll sound like before I strike it? How about being able to write music on paper and hearing everything I'm writing in my head, how long is that supposed to take? Is that a common skill?

I'm new and I can only compose when I'm at my computer. If I hear something in my head, I desperately have to search for it on the piano roll in my production application and I'm always in danger of losing it in my head before I find it and that's happened quite a few times. 

I'll admit I'm still not great at reading staff, It's been harder to improve now that I don't have a teacher anymore. I can only look at middle C and know immediately what it is, for most other things I have to go through a quick process in my head. Like "It's 3rd space up, so, F...A....C! It's a C! ....now....which C is that on the board....is that one C above middle C or two Cs? Hmmmmm.. one octave above middle C!."


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## Frasier

GrandMasterK said:


> I took some piano lessons for a couple of weeks earlier this year. Whenever I'd screw up, without even looking, my teacher would go "nah that's supposed to be a C E and G, you hit C, F and A". Sometimes he'd ask me a question like "that was a B, didn't that sound like a B to you?". It'd make me feel stupid because the only sound I can remember is middle C. How long is it supposed to take before I can just stare at a note on a keyboard and I'll know what it'll sound like before I strike it?


Don't be too hard on yourself! It may take a day, many years or never. Only a few people have 'perfect pitch'. Those who don't, get away with "relative pitch." This means if you hear several successive notes, you know how they relate through their invervals, not the absolute pitch. As long as you're roughly right, like you aren't seeing notes but hearing them about two octaves up or down in your mind. 


> How about being able to write music on paper and hearing everything I'm writing in my head, how long is that supposed to take? Is that a common skill?


Nope, it's a skill that might take a long time to develop. It comes with experience and practice. Though it does come more naturally to some it can be acquired.

It isn't so different from when you learned to write prose. Your head is full of things you want to say but you had to learn vocabilary and how to spell and write before you became fluent at it. In many ways, reading music (and turning it into sounds in your head) isn't so different from reading text and perceiving what it's trying to say. Just the small problem that music is no longer taught when we're young, not in the UK anyway. 



> I'm new and I can only compose when I'm at my computer. If I hear something in my head, I desperately have to search for it on the piano roll in my production application and I'm always in danger of losing it in my head before I find it and that's happened quite a few times.


I'm still in the pencil and paper age partly because I haven't patience with computers. Ideas come and I need to get them down quickly. I don't want to wait for a computer to grind into action and lose them. Besides there will be times when you're nowhere near a computer. It's a good idea to develop some kind of shorthand so you can jot the outline of a tune or even note letter-names. Carry a notebook or small music book always. 



> I'll admit I'm still not great at reading staff, It's been harder to improve now that I don't have a teacher anymore. I can only look at middle C and know immediately what it is, for most other things I have to go through a quick process in my head. Like "It's 3rd space up, so, F...A....C! It's a C! ....now....which C is that on the board....is that one C above middle C or two Cs? Hmmmmm.. one octave above middle C!."


Strive to be patient and know that every effort you make will add to your growing skill. Perhaps some rudimentary theory might help...some 4 part harmony (I think the Americans call this Voice Leading). Piano has the advantage that you can see what you've written and how it lies on the keyboard. You don't have to go into its finer details (you might want to later), just some basic "rules" - guidelines really, to help develop a good musical sense and get to know how progressions work, how to lay out chords etc.

 But this all takes time - frustrating, every composer goes through it. Keep things simple at first - better to write a short easy piece that you can complete quickly than go for something like a symphony. As you move on, the faculties will come.

Any practice at developing aural skills is helpful. If you can isolate part of a song on your computer, play it back and try to write it on paper....doesn't matter if you get the overall pitch wrong so long as, with trial and error, you get the intervals and durations right; so the song sounds the same even if not in the same register. Or find the first note on a piano and "take the dictation" knowing the first note. 
Better still, record a song melody using midi so you can change the playback tempo. Then without looking at the original, try to write it out - don't give up until you can! Don't worry about mistakes - it's when you get something wrong you really start to learn!

 good luck.


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## AndreasvanHaren

Hearing the right note pitch in your head before striking it, is called a perfect pitch hearing. That is not something you can learn but are born with. At least, that is what I know about it. You can develop however a very good relative pitch hearing. I studied the courses that claims to get perfect pitch, but t never worked for me and I know someone who has perfect pitch hearing and is annoyed by it because it confused him all the time.

Hearing your notes in your head and writing things down without piano is a skill that comes in time, don't worry about that. Like sport, you have to practice your brain it in.

André


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## World Violist

I don't know about being born with perfect pitch; I never did until I could hear a piece in my head exactly in the same key that it was originally played in. Then I memorized the notes that were there, what key it's in, and then I'd figure out all the notes and remember what they sounded like. I don't know if it really is perfect pitch, but it's as good as.


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## Saturnus

Perfect pitch is something you are born with, but it is a rather useless atribute although most people with it have also much talent for music. To know when an orchestra plays in 440 or 442 isn't exactly the most useful knowledge. 

Relative pitch is hearing the proportions that links two frequencies/notes together (for an example: the higher note in a major third has 5/4 of the lower note's frequency), people with perfect pitch have to train that as everybody else or be rather quick at math I assume. 

Hector Berlioz was the first great composer to compose everything without an instrument, straight from his head. He achieved this with reading the scores of every music he heard, both before (probably trying to imagine how it would sound), while and after it was performed, of course he trained this skill also directly, starting with simple melodies and progressing towards the Symphony Fantastique and Requiem!


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## GrandMasterK

Thanks for all the encouraging thoughts everyone, I will keep them to mind.


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## Oneiros

Bah, teachers are so annoying sometimes.  I think they sometimes forget what it's like to be a beginner...

Anyway, you might be better off without that sort of discouragement (just my opinion). I find it much more fun and less pressure without someone hanging over my shoulder saying "that's wrong", "what are you doing?", etc.

There are quite a few computer programs around which can develop your aural skills, like Earmaster Pro, etc. If you need a serial key for it let me know, otherwise there should be some free ones around too.

Have you tried composing at the keyboard? I have the same problem as you - to hear something and then try and work out what it is takes too long, so I just muck around at the keyboard and invent things that way - then figure out how to notate them. It's much more intuitive and satisfying, at this early stage.

Anyway, best of luck with it all.


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## Crotchet

I'm an amateur composer and have no problem with using the piano or computer to compose. However, I prefer using the piano if I'm composing for it rather than say an orchestra.

I wouldn't say I have perfect pitch (though for reason I can recognize some notes better than others) but I can come up with a composition in my head fairly well.

Now you probably won't believe me on this, but sometimes in my dreams I compose music. It's just like a film score that suits what I'm dreaming about! How weird is that! And this is even better! One time, my dream included me hearing the finale of Mozart's 39th Symphony in E flat but I'd had never heard it at the time. But about a week before the dream, I had purchased the score and had looked over it carefully! After the dream, I quickly bought the CD and low and behold - what I had dreamed was very very close to the real thing! Do you think that has anything to do with perfect pitch? Or maybe I subconsciously heard it on the radio but I'm pretty confident that I hadn't.

Anyway, that's my story. I know it's weird but I swear it is true!


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## von

hm....your teacher could be refering to the harmony of the chords and the intervals instead of the notes physically wen she said its CEG not CFA...hope this helps


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## cjr3559

It is my understanding that perfect pitch is extremely rare if not unheard of. I believe that individuals with absolute pitch were often mistakenly referred to having perfect pitch, but as an earlier poster mentioned, it would be next to impossible to discern the difference between A440 and A441, unless you are a computer or electronic tuning device. As much as everyone would like to be in perfect tune, it is a nearly impossible feat unless the music is synthesized. 

In regards to absolute pitch and composing, when I was younger and studying composition, absolute pitch didn't help me at all when it came to creating melodies. If melodies come easily in your head, just keep them there until you get to a piano or whatever instrument you write with. I'm confident that once you find the notes, everything will fall into place.

I've found that the only real personal advantage in having absolute pitch is that it helps my listening and score reading skills tremendously. When I come across a work on the radio or wherever that I'm not familiar, recognizing the key or tonal makeup helps in identification when I have to look up the piece at a later date. It's also a fun way to impress your friends...("that piece is in E flat minor...")

Also, I think some are born with natural tendencies to quick tone recognition, however, it is something that can be developed with training, though there will always be varying levels of proficiency from individual to individual. In my case, a piano teacher observed my aptitude for pitch recognition when I was 8.


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## World Violist

I just started thinking about the thing said about perfect pitch being born with, and it makes absolutely no sense! People in the Baroque era used a lower A than we do today, and besides, pitch names are a man-made thing! Little kids and babies might sing something back in the exact same key, but perfect pitch as I understand it refers to naming notes as they are being played; a man-made system.


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## Mr Salek

As I violinist, I don't have perfect pitch but I can hear what notes should be in a piece by the interval between the note and those either side of it. Mind you, I am starting to develop a good pitch, but only with a violin sound for some reason...


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## World Violist

I have read an article on perfect pitch recently, and apparently it has found to be related to an extraordinary ability of the brain to analyze certain sensory details, like note-sounds, speech-sounds, and colors. Thus, one is born with the _ability_ to develop perfect pitch, but one does need to develop it. I dearly hope this clears it all up!


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