3.7.2 Methods

• The David Burge method should be your starting point. Burge’s method seems to be the standard, to the extent that there is a standard. It is by far the most discussed method. It is therefore very controversial. It also seems to be the most successful. My understanding of the history is very sketchy at best: it all started in the early 80’s with Burge’s original short book, Perfect Pitch: Color-Hearing for Expanded Musical Awareness (ISBN: 0942542975 [Amazon.com listing]). This book is long out of print. The publication date listed on Amazon is Feb 1983. It can be found from time to time on eBay or through Amazon’s network of used book dealers. It tends to be pretty pricey. Next, if my surmises are correct, the same book was published along with a set of two cassette tapes. Later, Burge created a full-blown tape course with six tapes. Amazon lists two other books by Burge, The Official Transcript of the Perfect Pitch Workshop (ISBN: 0942542983 [Amazon.com listing]) and The Official Transcript of the Perfect Pitch Master Class (ISBN: 0942542991 [Amazon.com listing]) I have never seen either book and for all I know they may be different printings of that same book. Amazon lists both as published Feb 1984, but they do have different ISBN numbers. I don’t know. One or both may have been included in the large tape course. Finally, sometime in the last few years, Burge has come out with a second and, he claims, final version of his course, "Burge 2.0" as some call it. It is officially called The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse, Version 2.0. It has a small booklet and 8 cassettes or compact discs. This last is the only absolute pitch training product currently sold by Burge’s outfit at the link above.
• Byron Duckwall’s method. There used to be a two-tape course (ISBN: 1883617014 [Amazon.com listing]). It seems to be very hard to find now. I have no real idea what is on the tapes. See Peter de Vetten’s page (see above under "General" for more info).
• Kirk Whipple’s tonal memory hypothesis. This is an article by a ‘born with’ absolute pitch possessor. The last part of the article has a system he believes could work for developing absolute pitch. It is interesting, but pretty unproven so far, I believe.
• The Lola Cuddy method. Anyone care to provide an explanation/links?
• Zoltán Kodály’s ‘method’ (?) I don’t know anything, really, about Kodály’s famous pedagogical system, but I have a little book I was issued in school of solfege exercises called 333 Reading Exercises (Boosey & Hawkes). Half of the exercises just have rhythms and solfege syllables above the notes. In the preface to the 1961 edition Kodály refers to this as sol-fa notation, and writes:

"The children should sing the music in staff notation to sol-fa, and the music in sol-fa to the fixed pitch letter-names (A-B-C) always in different but predetermined keys and invariably at the actual pitch level; if we say C it should really be C. "This is the way towards acquiring the sense of absolute pitch."

So the method is to pick a key and give the starting pitch, see just rhythms written out along with solfege syllables, then sight-sing this, but don’t sing the syllables, sing the actual pitch names. So, if you see a quarter note with the word la over it, and you are singing in the key of F# major, you sing "dee-sharp" as you hit the note, which, because you gave yourself the correct starting pitch, you know really is a D#. As of this writing I haven’t tried it and have no idea if it is useful.

• monosonic.com. David M. Griswold’s recordings of pop songs all in the same key. I have no idea if this sort of thing works.
• Tuning fork methods. Here’s one example. I will be looking for some links on this (any help?). Basically there are a number of flavors of "grandma’s recipes" for developing absolute pitch. Most involve a pitch pipe or a tuning fork, or hitting random notes on a piano. There are rumored to have been methods used by Nadia Boulanger and/or Paul Hindemith either or both of which likely fall into this category. Whenever the subject of Burge’s course comes up on Usenet, someone usually pipes up with a story about their college professor (or childhood piano teacher, etc.) having them (or someone they know) memorize the sound of A440 with a tuning fork (try to sing it every hour, then check with the fork, etc.), or telling them to hit a key on the piano whenever happening by and trying to name it. People have gotten pretty creative with this, actually.
• A course listing from the New England Conservatory for a class on developing absolute pitch used to exist, but is a dead link now.