The Gravity Concept: Acquiring Relative Pitch for the Bandstand

Jamie Taylor shares his personal approach to ear training, focused on acquiring relative pitch — the skill that lets you identify the real music you hear on the bandstand. Aural awareness may not be a level playing field at the outset, but anyone can develop it with the right methods, and Jamie speaks from experience: his own musical hearing had to be acquired.

You may have heard that you can recognize intervals by relating them to famous songs — an augmented 4th as the opening of The Simpsons theme, say. That's fine for getting started, but it ignores context: like navigation, measuring the distance between two points doesn't tell you where you are. This class teaches a better way — using the natural tonal gravity that pitches are subject to in tonal music as fixed reference points.

In the full 53-minute class

• The benefits and limitations of the "famous melody" approach
• Which pitches exert tonal gravity, and why (it starts with the overtone series and the major triad)
• Recognizing those pitches as absolute points from which distances can be measured
• Practicing together with a wide range of on-screen examples you can use as ear tests
• Recognizing even complex altered dominant sounds with this method
• A rigorous relative-pitch workout exercise using tonic sol-fa

"I can't stress this enough though, the importance of those first fundamental steps. If anything in the class feels too challenging at the moment, go back to those major triad inversions. I promise it will bear fruit in the long run." ~ Jamie Taylor

The class includes a 20-page PDF booklet, referenced throughout with captions and synchronized on-screen notation, plus a bonus Q&A session recording. The material suits a wide range of experience — beginners building good aural habits early, and advanced players who want to test whether they'd really know a G7b13 from a G7b9 in a blindfold test.