I taught myself to read chant ten years ago. I found the books available then confusing for the solo learner, until there was a reference to "do" as an early form of "C" in the intro to the L. Usualis. I then based my learning on the keyboard.

Physiological psychology studies since then have determined what any language learner knows: your sense of pitch is fixed by how your learned it before puberty. (That's why someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger can speak so much more literately and idiomatically than most American politicians or actors and still sound the way he does. He learned English at 17, too late to get rid of the Austrian accent. We'll just skip over questions of what he DOES with his considerable language skills, which are not the same as acting skills or political competence.)

Anyway, I did not come from a musical family, and so my sense of pitch is tied exclusively to the keyboard. Studies apparently indicate that will always be true. After ten years (with some time for illness), I only recently liberated myself from the keyboard for Chant. I felt to lazy one morning a few months ago, didn't want to walk over the keyboard, so I just picked "do" out of the air and started singing on LA or whatever. Then I checked the melody--I was right. I had sightread some complicated chants a year earlier, but not forced myself to keep it up. In short, it took a long time to get to that point. I suspect it will be some time before it is natural.

Which is a long way of saying that it is wrong to demand that someone of average musical skills in my position be a purist and learn strictly from a demonstration of the scales.

HOWEVER, it would seem that for someone who was raised singing, some ear method would work fine, and would save a lot of time.

What methods are there for developing that ability for someone who already can hear music strictly by ear?

Thanks.

Kenneth