1) I did the test on the first page and got all 5 right (seriously no cheating) - which only goes to bolster my claim in the other thread that this skill arrives by itself through relative pitch training and instrument playing over time
2) this is the David Burge site mentioned in the other thread you reference
3) I have not used nor interacted with anyone who has used this course to improve their skills so do not have any first hand or 2nd hand knowledge of whether it works or not.
As to whether it can work, it is an interesting set of claims based on a premise that may or may not be faulty: that each note has it's own unique sound.
When we break this down into 12 pitch classes (A-G#/Ab) there is some truth.
But do these tests with sine waves only and I would suggest that the evidence does not appear.
The course has always been targeted at using a piano as the vehicle - now unless the piano is tuned so that every note in every octave is based off the same frequency these assertions do not follow, for the following basic reason:
To make pianos sound more in tune at the extremes, most piano tuners will apply what is know as stretch tuning[sup]
[1],
[2][/sup], making the lower notes fundamental frequency slightly lower and the higher notes fundamental frequencies slightly higher - this makes aligning different octaves of the same pitch difficult to do and actually puts the kibosh on the each note has it's own unique "colour" assertions.
4) On a more firm note: many professors of music theory and aural training insist that their students carry an A 440Hz tuning fork with them and use it at every opportunity to become acclimated to the note so that they can reproduce it at will later in the semester. Just about every scientific study of the performance of students subjected to this regimen comes to the same conclusion:
It takes about 6 months to acquire the ability to sing an A (whether 440 or 220 (male/female differences)). The first few months individual efforts are hit and miss, but as they put in the effort and practice the skill, they become more accurate to the point where all participants are singing within +/-5 cents of true pitch.
my own ear training prof did this to us in 1985 - though many resisted - my cohort was an interesting mix of people, many of whom did not see that they could or should do something that was this "silly" (their words), as a result there were maybe 6 of us out of a class of 25 who followed through and became proficient at doing this (singing an A without external reference). Once you can sing an A, singing a B[sup]b[/sup], as required at the David Burge site, is relatively easy if you understand how to pitch up by a semitone. Same was true for identifying everything else - recognise the pitch and then the tonality and then identify it with reference to my internal A
Put simply - there are cheaper alternatives but not many that are probably as field tested and graduated as the Burge course.
Try
teoria.com and use their ear training exercises - it's free
