Almost 40 years ago, a young Japanese music teacher, Kazuko Eguchi, frustrated by her own lack of perfect pitch developed an early learning program, the Eguchi Chord Instruction Method, to help young students attain perfect pitch.  People with perfect pitch can recognize music notes by ear without seeing someone play the notes on a musical instrument. Perfect pitch is so rare that only 1 in every 10,000 people have this ability and most people believe that you are either born with this ability or not. Mozart, Beethoven, Maria Carey, Jimi Hendrix and Yanni are a few musicians who have perfect pitch. The Eguchi method has been successful with thousands of young Japanese children.

In 2012, researcher, Ayako Sakakibara, published a study of 24 young children using Eguchi’s chord instruction method. Twenty-two children completed the study, and all achieved perfect pitch. The study demonstrated perfect pitch can be developed with the right exposure and training and is not just a special talent of a few lucky people.

What does all of this have to do with achieving our goals? One of the lessons learned from the perfect pitch study is that we are not limited in what we want to learn or achieve, but more important is how we approach our goals. The children at Eguchi’s school did not approach learning in a haphazard way but underwent a system of deliberate practice to acquire the ability of perfect pitch.

According to Anders Ericsson, the leading researcher on expertise, experts in many fields develop their high-level abilities through dedicated training, (deliberate practice), that drive changes in the brain and body to achieve very high levels in their sport or skill.  

Deliberate practice involves breaking a skill down into parts or chunks and using focused practice, immediate feedback and increasingly challenging levels with the intention of mastering the skill. The take-away for us is that when pursuing goals, we should work on individual skills, be purposeful in our practice, have a coach or some feedback mechanism to correct us in the moment and constantly challenge ourselves to achieve the highest possible level with our goals.

For more information on how to achieve your goals in fitness and life, contact Jim@strengthforlife.us.

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