I don't agree with this - I think that practicing your listening skills will make a huge difference in this area. I've been teaching guitar and music technolog

I don't agree with this - I think that practicing your listening skills will make a huge difference in this area. I've been teaching guitar and music technology for about 20 years (and playing for 35), and it all comes from practice if you haven't got perfect pitch (I don't). Doing ear-training drills (listening for intervals, starting out with a simple one, such as the difference between an octave and a fifth) and slowly building on this so that you can quickly (and eventually, instantly) tell the difference between any of the diatonic intervals makes a huge difference. I've had kids who started out literally not able to know if a note was 'up' or 'down' from a previous one eventually be able to accurately discern any of the 12 semitone steps in an octave up or down, just by weekly practice using GNU solfege. Yes, some just 'get it' and don't know what they're doing - particularly with the voice - but most need fine-tuning and practice both in their heads and on their instruments, but after doing it for long enough it's possible to get really, really good at it.