From the Far East to the Far West, musicians in over 120 countries have already learned the simple secrets to Perfect Pitch, also known as "Absolute Pitch."

Yet the debate about Perfect Pitch had raged for decades: Could you develop it? Or was it a supernormal hearing skill that only the elite are born with?

Then in March 1981, David Lucas Burge intrigued the music world when he formally released his simple secret to Perfect Pitch acquisition in the March issue of Contemporary Keyboard (now Keyboard magazine). At the time, no research was available to substantiate his methods. Even so, thousands of musicians took up the program and quickly validated the training.

Independent research from two leading universities would later also verify Burge's methods. Here are some highlights from the exciting results -- conclusions that will surely ripple out to the music community for generations to come.

Perfect Pitch is your personal mastery of all pitches BY EAR.

When you have mastered musical pitches by ear, all the tones are yours to command.

Example: When you want to play by ear, transpose, or improvise, your EAR does the work for you — instead of searching for desired tones by hand.

Example: Glancing at a page of sheet music, others may see only black dots. But with Perfect Pitch, you can now mentally hear how each pitch sounds.

Example: Singers say it's cool when their new Perfect Pitch skills enable them to sight-sing, find obscure pitches, stay in tune, and produce a correct pitch out of thin air -- from MEMORY.

Regarding your musical memory: Do you ever have a new melody or chord sequence that comes to your mind -- unexpectedly -- in a flash of inspiration? How do you remember it? When your ear can clearly identify the tones with Perfect Pitch, you can quickly take your new music out of your head -- and onto your instrument -- where it belongs!

Perfect Pitch (known in scholarly circles as "Absolute Pitch") also adds a higher aesthetic appreciation of sound. Acoustical psychologist Bachem found that "particular characteristics of certain keys, e.g., the brilliancy of A major, the softness of D flat major, can only be appreciated fully through Absolute Pitch."

The rich experience of Perfect Pitch extends even beyond the musical sphere into day-to-day living.

Example: As your ear becomes more alert, you suddenly find you can easily recognize voices on the phone -- and more quickly pick up languages and foreign accents.