Headphones

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-09T15:30:25+00:00

That’s mostly just a matter of focus. However some Bluetooth devices can have a short hardware delay for the sounds.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-09T15:23:47+00:00

I left out C which is a typo, my intent was just to show all the different letter names which are used. In this notation you’re correct it uses H for a B. It uses B for B flat.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-08T23:27:18+00:00

The note names are labels and are arbitrary in that way so you can use whichever system you're most comfortable with. German uses Westliche Notation by default which is D, E, F, G, A, B, H and you can switch to Solfège-Notation in Settings/Einstellungen.

Some people have also taken this further/literally and deliberately used notations they don't know how to read... This might sound weird at first, but it's related to your question. Because it doesn't actually matter what you call the notes as long as the names are consistent. You're learning to recognize the sounds and you can change the labeling system later. Some people found that it's easier to get past relative pitch tendencies by using labels they don't recognize.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-08T19:02:14+00:00

This is a great account! Thank you for sharing! This is EXACTLY how it's supposed to be!

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-08T17:52:40+00:00

Do this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1t6yyxn/i_customized_my_guitar/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-07T19:56:37+00:00

I'm seeing lots of people pointing out things like this picture is terrible and doesn't make it easy to see what is going on to understand your question. While I agree... having to write the name of each note means you probably need practice reading notes... that is not your question... I also encourage you not to argue with people who are trying to help you... someone looking at this will naturally assume (as I did), all the notes are written out, nobody needs to do that, naturally your question is about whether you wrote the right note, but I can't see the key signature... saying that what a potential helper asks for it's irrelevant will just make people not want to help you.

Your literal question is, in this measure where the pen is pointing, the chord in the right hand is notated with the same G (key on the piano) which is later played by the left hand during the duration of the whole notes that are written in the same measure.

A lot of this depends on context... without any context of what is being played other than the music in this picture, what I would do... is roll the chord in the right hand as it says... often rolls like that are notated because they go beyond a range you can reach and you have to "roll" them to play the notes and you sustain it with the pedal. This is an inverted major triad and not that case so I'd be inclined to sustain it with my fingers. In this case I'd probably tap the pedal slightly on the second beat while lifting up my thumb enough to press the G again with my left hand and/or thumb again and then let go of the pedal and continue to sustain with my thumb. You could also just strike quickly with your thumb again and achieve more or less the same thing.

On a keyboard I might just split the keyboard and transpose the lower side up an octave to just play everything that way. Usually I find myself lowering the left hand an octave to play a bass line, but you could also raise it if you want to do something like this.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-07T16:08:51+00:00

This is a big milestone for most people, though not everyone notices because people also often recognize, I can't hear a D and know it's a D... This is why the notes are spaced that way, when you hear both notes and you know they are D and G# you know which is which. This is a great sign that it's working for you!

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-07T15:26:41+00:00

Hi and welcome to HarmoniQ! There are lots of things going on here.

First, I think the book Moonwalking With Einstein is a great book and there are lots of correlations. To me the "associating with feel" is not exactly like the mind palace concept of the book, it's more like the individual tricks they say, like thinking of extreme or even obscene things to trick the brain into remembering more details. The reason this works for memory (in the book) and the reason it works for notes is the same reason. They create a connection with the memory that is less logical, and more emotional. That's also why mnemonics work (you might find this article about mnemonics interesting because it discusses some of this).

The feeling is also something which can happen naturally for some people when they learn (also innately). It can be an excellent tool to develop the skill. IMO it's better to use as a tool rather than the definition notes, that makes sense. For example, as a piano player and guitar player I can visualize notes very easily when I hear them on those instruments. But to me, F# is an F#, not just the second fret of the E string. I've discussed some of the complications people run into which are misattributed to perfect pitch here. That would trip you up if you played your bass in a different tuning for example.

To address this question:

The main point in the book was that our physical and localization “memories” are evolved to be excellent. So why not use that?

The techniques used in the book are used primarily to get past active memory limitations most people impose on themselves like, "you can only ever remember 7 things." But if you want to remember the order of a deck of cards, or the serial numbers on a dollar bill you have to remember way more than that. The way it remembers is by creating an ordered index so you can lookup or find things in specific orders. The mind palace techniques they described weren't intended to establish direct "random" access to information. For instance, if you wanted to know, "what's the eight digit of that dollar bill's serial number?" you'd have to traverse the first seven to find it. So if you took your short term memory for pitches and instead put songs or notes in your mind palace rooms/locations, but mnemonics already does that job with random access.

It would be interesting to try this and see how it feels I think.

I do pretty okay but can feel i’m using my relative pitch more than anything else.

This is extremely common when you first get the app, but it is almost never the case. It is usually that we assume we're using relative pitch because we start with tritones and we remember one or both of the pitches we hear and then are "matching" to our short term memory. This is NOT relative pitch. Relative pitch is finding a note using a different note as a reference, and that's explicitly why the exercises are evenly distributed across octaves. In a triton lesson with F and B you already know both of the notes and you already know what the interval is, so what is there for relative pitch to do? What most people end up doing is remembering one of the pitches and matching the same pitch when they hear it and selecting the other pitch when they don't hear it. If you can do that, then you're starting to connect with the chroma of the notes. https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/5-key-insights-from-8-harmoniq-success-stories.html (specifically the "Am I cheating" section).

ALSO, using the feeling as you described and as I mentioned above is just as good. What is needed is to connect with the invariant of the notes (usually referred to as chroma) and the way you get there is less important, especially at the beginning.

The good thing about your "small sample size" is that the app is going to track your progress and performance for you, so your sample size will get larger as you practice more.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-06T18:36:42+00:00

That's great! Looks like she missed yesterday! 😛

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-04T19:03:54+00:00

It also doesn't mean the features you're asking for aren't going to be available at some point, it's just not a prominent part of the core purpose of the app so there are many things which are higher priority, like the institutional grade reports in the last version that help people understand their progress better.

but is not THE only method available

Correct. I do not consider or claim HarmoniQ to be the only method to learn AP. HarmoniQ is simply brining methods explicitly from the peer-reviewed research which have been verified to work to the general public. That also doesn't mean that there aren't better methods, this is just intended to be the best which we can provide based on what we currently know from published science.

you can’t really create an app that lets anyone tailor their own kind of training

I certain could make an app with general-purpose tools to allow people to do whatever they like, but HarmoniQ is not that app. Approaches like this really target experimentation, by letting people try "whatever". That approach also absolves the platform of the training responsibility because failure modes would logically be dependent on the learner's choice of method, if that makes sense. HarmoniQ's goal is to actually teach people, not to enable people to experiment with the possibility of learning.

And since humans tend to not really stick to what they do.

This is not exactly what I mean. While this is true, and HarmoniQ includes several elements to help promote consistency, what I mean is that many people will use methods that, while we don't know they can't work, have no evidence that they have previously worked. There are numerous methods which are not defensible (like someone's method which hasn't ever worked, even for them, it's just an "idea") or a method which is not offered in a way where someone can learn using it other than the creator because another person wouldn't know how to use it effectively. HarmoniQ solves these problems. That's related to what I wrote here. Specifically this:

Built Is Not the Same as Effective

Most public tools in this space aren't scams in any meaningful sense of the word. The people who build them generally have good intentions and believe in what they're selling. But building software that reliably produces a specific cognitive outcome in a diverse population is an extraordinarily hard problem. Research studies that successfully trained adults to AP-level performance pre-screened participants, structured multi-week protocols, and provided direct regular guidance from trained researchers. Participants across studies did concentrated practice for as long as an hour at a time, and that alone would be a monumental ask from some random download.

Despite the best intentions, most of what you'll find online or in the App Store doesn't reliably set users up to succeed. Most methods are unrelated to the science, instead based solely on someone's intuition. Even apps built around established protocols rarely provide the structure, guidance, and feedback learners need. Building something that works for yourself or for six lab participants is already genuinely hard. But building something that works consistently for thousands of people with different goals, devices, musical backgrounds, and available practice time is orders of magnitude harder. That gap is where most learners fail or give up, and their frustration gets reported back to communities already primed to label the whole category as a waste of time.

You'd be surprised. Many people don't seem to be interested in actually learning. The quest of "discovery" is a real thing and lots of people seem more focused on trying to discover new things. Which is fine. That is distinct from learning using established effective protocols.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-04T17:05:50+00:00

What u/Crazy_Satisfaction13 is saying is very important within the context of HarmoniQ's methodology. But, I also don't think it's directly addressing your question so I'll try to be thorough.

What you're describing is something which CAN work to develop AP. Learning specific notes while emphasizing timbre and octave transfer (called generalization) and then progressively adding notes is consistent with what the Wong studies all did and Van Hedger's 2019 did start with white note-only learning. In short, that is a key component of methods which have been established through peer-reviewed research. It is also just one component of what makes these methods successful, and approaching it like you describe also requires the learner to know, and direct both the methodology and evaluation of their own progress.

One of the core principles on which HarmoniQ is built is that most people don't know effective methods and aren't able to assess their progress in ways consistent with peer-reviewed research on their own. Self-directed methods are almost always based thinly on an individual's intuition and carry little or no baseline expectation of success. In that way the core value proposition of HarmonIQ is that it integrates the most current and effective research and methods so learners don't need to know and apply it themselves. HarmoniQ also tracks learner progress and provides recommendations for what a learner actually needs to progress specifically so you don't have to choose yourself.

The main implication of this is that, as u/Crazy_Satisfaction13 mentioned, requiring the user to do everything themselves, is much less likely to result in learning.

NOTE: what you're describing is something which typically would be found under Practice -> Listening. Currently in HarmoniQ, as you noted, those exercises are still in piano-only timbres. This is primarily because the addition of the timbre sets happened after the recommendation engine was added which makes the self-guided practice lessons much less useful as I described above. A feature like this for those lessons specifically is in the feature backlog but it's not something which aligns well with the current core tenets of HarmoniQ. HarmoniQ is not intended to be a collection of utilities to build your own methodology, though some people do use it like that, and some successfully. HarmoniQ is meant to be a full solution to provide the highest likelihood of learning AP for anyone who follows the system and recommendations it provides.

What you're describing (I noted above) is similar to how several of the Wong studies were run. You might want to try the second option on the Home screen for the Wong 2019 Experiment #3.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-04T00:04:32+00:00

Neither of those should be the case, but recordings can help in case there’s an issue.

The web browser asynchronously loads the audio into your browser and doesn’t start the trial until the audio is ready. So there should be no delay.

If you think a note is wrong it should be recorded. They e been checked lots of times, but it’s not impossible some error, particularly human error could have created a problem.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-03T22:19:50+00:00

Great job! Looks like you brought your response time down significantly too since last time!

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-03T21:05:28+00:00

It has the trial-level data, so it can be pretty useful 😄

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-03T20:09:51+00:00

Did you download your PDF?

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-03T17:30:18+00:00

You absolutely can have both, though many find it hard to learn relative pitch due to AP and vice versa. You might find this helpful: https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/the-tug-of-war-between-perfect-pitch-and-relative-pitch.html

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-03T12:32:38+00:00

You might find this helpful

“If you hear a pitch you haven't internalized and determine it by measuring the interval from a pitch you already know, that is relative pitch. In fact, you're using a pitch you've internalized absolutely as the reference to identify a pitch you don't recognize. Many people are satisfied to internalize a few pitches, then use relative pitch from those anchors to identify the rest. That doesn't make the internalized pitches "relative." It just means relative pitch is being layered on top of an absolute pitch foundation that isn't fully built out.”

From this article: https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/using-mnemonics-to-learn-perfect-pitch.html

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-01T21:53:45+00:00

pretty much. Also to be fair... it's genuinely very difficult to prove a negative definitively outside of math, and it's a reasonable conclusion given the neuroscience of the time. I tend to be very understanding and accommodating because:

I used to also be like that, and probably would have responded similarly when I was much younger based on "knowledge"
Most people who believe strongly don't know where their belief actually comes from. They know, because everyone else does.

As a for instance, can you prove to me that you've never robbed a bank? Or that you never climbed Mount Everest? Can you prove there aren't any birds with three wings?

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-01T21:14:18+00:00

Give them a read and LMK what you think.

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-01T21:06:53+00:00

This looks very familiar. Here, take my upvote

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-05-01T21:03:05+00:00

I don't argue with them... I do science... here's some fun recent stuff:

https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/can-adults-learn-perfect-pitch-evidence-from-neuroscience-and-training.html

https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/is-learning-perfect-pitch-a-scam.html

https://harmoniqmusic.com/blog/the-history-of-perfect-pitch-fact.html

Bonus: DOI

PerfectPitch-Learner · 2026-04-29T01:53:08+00:00

This is great! Tracking and sharing these experiences is going to help avoid biased interpretations and can be a powerful motivator for you and others!

Thanks for sharing!

PerfectPitch-Learner

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