Postscript to "Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch" (JMTP vol. 21, 2007)

Abstract

I am writing to correct an omission from my article "Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch," published in the most recent issue of Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy (vol. 21, 2007). Among the strategies I suggested for teaching relative-pitch skills to students with absolute pitch were (1) the use of scale-degree and roman-numeral singing and dictation without staff notation or key specified, and (2) the use of dictation excerpts drawn from music literature (for the variety of timbres and textures). I discussed these strategies with reference to several sight-singing and dictation textbooks: Wittlich and Humphries (1974), Yasui and Trubitt (1989), Karpinski (2000, 2007), and Phillips et al. (2005).