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An Elusive Musical Gift Could Be at Children's Fingertips
A 'Perfect' Way to Teach Music
A Japanese method of training may help young music students learn "perfect pitch," a skill that many thought was only innate. The method, as shown in this video, teaches children to raise a certain color flag when they hear a specific chord, starting with the red flag and the C chord. Throughout the training, more flags and different chords are introduced.Video courtesy of Ichionkai Music School, Edited by Ashley Barnas/The Washington Post
By Kathryn Tolbert Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 27, 2009 TOKYO
If you could give your child the gift of perfect pitch - the ability to identify a note simply by hearing it - would you? The few who are born with perfect pitch say notes have a concrete identity and presence, almost like colors, and being able to intuitively recognize them gives music an almost three-dimensional quality.
To put it simply, "if you taste a dish and you can name every ingredient - that is like having perfect pitch," said pianist and music teacher Chizuko Ozawa.
It is widely accepted that you cannot learn perfect pitch as an adult. But your child, it appears, can.
Kazuko Eguchi started developing a method 40 years ago, when she was a young college music instructor frustrated both by her own lack of perfect pitch and the weaknesses she saw in her students. She attributed the problem to poor early training.
U.S. piano teachers will get a glimpse of her eventual solution this week. Tomoko Kanamaru, pianist and assistant professor of music at The College of New Jersey, will give a presentation titled "Can Perfect Pitch be Taught? Introduction to the Eguchi Method" at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy in Lombard, Ill.
The Eguchi Method is used by more than 800 teachers around Japan to teach perfect pitch to very young children, claiming a success rate of almost 100 percent for those who start before they are 4 years old. At the end of the training, which starts by matching chords with colored flags, a teacher will play random notes on the piano and the child, without looking, can identify them.
Once learned, perfect pitch stays with a child for life, the teachers believe. But attaining it is not quick or easy, even for a 3-year-old. It also requires a committed and patient parent willing to invest a few minutes several times a day for up to two years. And it is all separate from learning to play the piano or any other instrument. In fact, the child never touches the keyboard during these ear training sessions.
The teacher starts by playing the three-note C major chord on a piano, and the child is instructed to raise a red flag. (It doesn't have to be red, or even a flag; any simple symbol will do.) At home, the parent carries on the instruction by playing the C chord and the child, sitting where he cannot see the keyboard, raises the red flag. They do this a few times every day.
After a couple of weeks, a second chord and flag are added. Now the child has to raise a yellow flag for an F major chord, and the red for a C. Then a third and fourth chord join the mix. Eventually all the white-key chords are associated with a colored flag, then all those with black keys. The child names the chord only by its color.
Training sessions are meant to be quite short, a few minutes each, but repeated frequently. Chords are played in random sequence, never in the same order, to prevent the child from identifying any chord by its relation to another.
Later, the child calls out the individual notes that make up the chord. For C major, which is C-E-G, or do-mi-so, the child raises the red flag and says, "red, do-mi-so," for example.
Eventually, the parent or teacher, after playing the chord, takes the highest note and plays it separately. The child names the chord, the individual notes, and then upon hearing the single note, identifies that one.
The Eguchi Method - a course for children that focuses on the piano and includes perfect pitch development as part of ear training - differs from other pitch training by focusing initially on chords instead of single notes. Eguchi says that starting with notes instead of chords leads some children to identify the note by its relative position to another note. Ozawa says remembering chords is easier for children; she compares it to remembering a face rather than just the eyes.
But other than the perceptual satisfaction of having perfect pitch, what are the benefits?
Eugene Pridonoff, a pianist and artist in residence at the University of Cincinnati who visits Eguchi's Ichionkai Music School in Tokyo twice a year as a guest piano teacher, says he can see the results from early ear training.
"I'll explain and demonstrate: They understand, are able to absorb, hear it and immediately reproduce it on their piano," he said. "These kids were remarkably consistent and remarkably quick in that respect - in how sensitive their ears are to nuance.
"It's clear that the musical ears of these kids are so well developed. Is it the Eguchi Method? To a great degree, it's because they start so young," he said. "That sort of discerning differences in groups of chords has to be activating brain connections beyond what most kids are getting."
The music school has about 1,500 students, from toddlers to high-school teenagers. The ideal starting age is 2 1/2 to 3, and training is not effective after 8, said Kanamaru, the College of New Jersey professor.
A recent study by Ken'ichi Miyazawa and Yoko Ogawa published in the journal Music Perception looks at the incidence of perfect pitch among Japanese children who started music lessons at age 4 at an unnamed music school "run by the largest music corporation in Japan." They reported that the accuracy of pitch improved from near-chance at age 4 to around 80 percent at age 7 and did not improve much after that.
Eguchi, 67, who is confined to a wheelchair because she suffers from acute articular rheumatism and can no longer play the piano or teach, said in a telephone interview that because of her illness, she was only able to give her daughter, Ayako, partial training.
But her grandchildren have learned at her music school.
"Ayako's daughter can harmonize to the melody very smoothly. It's almost like when she sees the music, she hears it," Eguchi said. "She has a good ability to make judgments in sound. She can come up with different harmonization than she sees. When the key changes, it is very natural to her."
Pridonoff says he is impressed with Eguchi's success in Japan. But he is not sure how adaptable the method is to American society. "Very few children in the U.S. are able to start so young with such intensive guidance in the combination of teacher and parent," he said. "What we have seen in Japan is that the mother is working with those children on a regular basis every day in addition to their having lessons."
He added: "In our culture, in many families both parents are working, and we seem to want our children to be well-rounded, involved in a multitude of activities. It is rare in our country for children to start to specialize at such a young age."
See video of flag training at http://www.washington post.com/science.
To see if you have perfect pitch, Diana Deutsch of the University of California, San Diego, has a test at http://deutsch.ucsd.edu, clicking on the article "Perfect Pitch: Language Wins Out Over Genetics" and then going to the bottom of the page. Or go directly to http://www.acoustics.org/press/157th/deutsch3.htm.
Perfect Pitch Program
Developed by Japanese master pedagogue, Kazuko Eguchi, the Eguchi Method has proven that anyone under the age of six can acquire perfect pitch. To this date, more than 20000 children have acquired the perfect pitch through the method.
This method was first introduced in the U.S. at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, held in Chicago in July and August 2009, by faculty of Ichionkai: Ayako Eguchi, Ph.D (Ochanomizu University, Tokyo Japan) and Tomoko Kanamaru, DMA (currently also teaches at The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ). This workshop offered an oppotunity to become familier with this unique training, and was accepted with a great interest from an audience.
What is Perfect Pitch?
Perfect Pitch is the ability that a person can identify tones as a pitch name without any reference or external standard. In the Eguchi Method, we use the single-note labeling test (presented below) to recognize if a person has the perfect pitch ability. We consider him/her having perfect pitch by answering all the questions correct. In the test, he/she names (labels) several single pitches without any standard tone given. He/she is not allowed to realize if the answer is right or false until she/he finishes all the questions.
What advantages come with Perfect Pitch?
You can identify the tone as a pitch only by hearing it, without any reference. In other words, perfect pitch gives you the ability to image the right pitch without any instruments or tuners. This gives you an easier time to playing the music by ear, and writing the music onto the score. In addition, you will be able to memorize the music in pitches as well as you can obtain the stronger image for tones. This ability can preserve your memory fresh for a long term. All musicians will appreciate how it is useful to have perfect pitch for many kinds of musical activity, such as singing and composing.
So everything depends on perfect pitch?
Obtaining perfect pitch is not a goal for the overall musical skill. It is rather a tool to develop the musical sense and makes the further musical development smoother. In Eguchi method, we do not consider the perfect pitch as a goal for children, but recognize it as one of the general musical abilities.
As talked about in 「What advantages can you have with Perfect Pitch?」, the student with perfect pitch can participate the music only by "ear" - their internal perception. This allows them to have quicker and easier time for playing, singing and composing. In many cases, these students even become more careful and sensitive for sound. We believe that this skill encourages their musical independency for their further musical studying.
Perfect pitch is not a special ability for only a few people naturally given it. For anybody, it can be achieved under the proper training environment, at the certain stage of children's development. Not only for professionals, but also for anybody who love music, perfect pitch will be a useful skill to enjoy the music.
What kind of training process?
The main procedure of Eguchi Method Perfect Pitch Training System is listening to the chords and labeling them in "color" but not an actual pitch name. Each chord is applied different colors. Children do not perceive the chords as pitch names at first, but identify as a "color" image.
The internet lessons are easily accessible and will cause no difficulty for children. Access to our Perfect Pitch Training System website, and type password. Then start training! It requires no complicated process, but simply clicking the answers. The result needs to be sent to us, and we will give a feedback for each lesson.
Under what condition, can children have the training?
Since 1960s, one of the leading Japanese music pedagogues, Kazuko Eguchi, has started employing the perfect pitch training in her piano teaching.
The procedure was presented in public at the International Music Psychology Seminar in Czech Republic in 1981, for the first time. In the following year, Japanese academic journal "Music Pedagogy Studying" had featured about Eguchi's perfect pitch training. In 1991, a book about know-how of perfect pitch training had been published: "Tones flying to you like a rocket" by Niki-Publishing in Japan (current version: "New Perfect Pitch Program" by Zen-on Publishing). Later, Ayako Eguchi, psychologist, had started to systematize the perfect pitch training through a point of view as a psychologist.
She introduced and discussed about the method three times in the academic journal "educational psychology study", and five times at international conference (ICMPC). In 1999, the effectivity of Perfect Pitch Program is proved and accepted as a result of her Ph.D dissertation at Tokyo University. By 2002, Kazuko and Ayako Eguchi had published four books about Eguchi method Perfect Pitch Training System (all in Japanese).
The training method has been frequently introduced in the newspaper and media, and widely accepted in Japan.
Also in 2009 July, it has been introduced in Washington Post for the first time in United States.
At Ichionkai Music School, we are currently teaching about 1500 students.
All of them either acquired the perfect pitch by this training system or continuing training currently. Also other 500 students participate the training through the Internet perfect pitch program. So far, there a re total 20000 students who acquired the perfect pitch through the Eguchi Method Perfect Pitch Training System.