How to improve note recognition

In order to play fluently especially when sight reading a musician needs to be able to recognize notes instantly. 

I have in the past taken over students when they have changed teacher and noticed that when they are learning a new piece, or when they are sight reading, they will use acronyms such as "FACE" or "All Cows East Grass" when working out the notes. 

Maybe this describes you or if you are a teacher, describes some of your students. This technique would be fine if you were doing Music Theory, but for playing, it is a very limited approach. 

With this in mind I have prepared a "Note Recognition Flashcards" video where a note will appear on the screen for just a few seconds. You will need to play the note instantly before the next one appears. You can even use this video away from your instrument by simply naming the notes that you see. If you struggle with, or have a student that struggles with recognizing notes quickly, repeat this exercise a few times and you will soon be able to improve your note recognition.




Please let me know in the comments below if it has helped you to improve your note recognition.

The Art of Sight Reading

Sight Reading is a skill in which many people concentrate just on the pitch and forget about the rhythm.

With this in mind I am developing a new series of videos in which you play along with the test to force you to keep in time. Added to this, the skill of sight reading is developed by reading ahead  of what you are actually playing and so in these videos notes will disappear - just before you play them.


Give it a try with these pilot videos (more to come) and let me know what you think.

Perfect Pitch - can it be learned?

Perfect Pitch, also known as Absolute Pitch is the rare ability to sing a note without reference to any other note. Some say that you are either born with it or not, but according to a recent poll I took with my subscribers, 55% of you said you believed it can be learned. So lets find out.

The method we will use is called association which, in psychology refers to a mental connection between concepts, events, or mental states that stems from specific experiences. A little like Pavlov's dog. Let me explain. Have you ever made a mix tape or playlist that you listen to over and over again? After a while, at the end of any song in that collection you  can already hear the first note of the next song. Your mind has associated them, by them being repeatedly next to each other. The songs may even be in totally unrelated keys. In our experiment you are going to associate a sound of indefinite pitch, in this case, that of running water with the note A. Also, at the same time, whenever you watch the training video I want you to imagine the colour green and when you try to reproduce the note, imagining this association will help trigger those connected pathways in your mind.

At the end of this post there will be a  training video. You will need to listen to it many times daily, to train your memory to reproduce the note A. I would suggest the best time to listen to the training video is just before bed, so that your subconscious mind can absorb the new associations as you sleep. You could even go to sleep listening to it. However, the more times you can listen to it, the better the results will be. You can listen to it whilst you travel, when doing the ironing, when you're in the gym. Any time your mind is free. If internet access is a problem  and you can't watch the training video , I have also produced a downloadable audio on  which you can put on your ipod or phone to listen to offline.
This audio track repeats a few times with ever increasing periods of silence to develop your longer term memory and  the YouTube version will also contain some deliberate mid roll adverts. You are welcome to skip or listen to these adverts, either way the extra distraction will help train you to focus on that one note. Additionally, if you feel that the training is becoming easy, you can increase the periods of silence by pausing the video for a few minutes during the silence. I would suggest that after a month of repeated practice YOU too can develop perfect pitch. 

So ARE you ready. Please do come back here and let me know how you are progressing with the experiment. Good luck.

You can either watch the training video on YouTube below or download the audio file to use Offline HERE