Absolute pitch: Encyclopedia II - Absolute pitch - Scientific studies related to absolute pitch

Absolute pitch - Scientific studies related to absolute pitch

Absolute pitch - Absolute pitch as a special case of sensation

Absolute pitch is not limited to the realm of music, or even to humans. Songbirds and wolves have exhibited the ability. In fact, studies indicate that absolute pitch is more a linguistic ability than a musical one. Absolute pitch is an act of cognition, needing memory of the frequency, a label for the frequency (such as B-flat), and exposure to the common range considered a note. (A note in modern tuning can vary in its exact frequency.) It may be directly analogous to recognizing colours, phonemes (speech sounds) or other categorical perception of sensory stimuli. And while most people have been trained to recognize and name the colour blue by its frequency, it is possible only those who have had early, somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6 (reviewed in Takeuchi and Hulse 1993), and deliberate exposure to the names of musical tones—usually musicians—will be likely to identify a middle C. Absolute pitch, may, however, be genetic, possibly an autosomal dominant genetic trait (Profita and Bidder 1988; Baharloo et al. 1998), though, "Absolute pitch might be nothing more than a general human capacity whose expression is strongly biased by the level and type of exposure to music that people experience in a given culture."

Absolute pitch - Absolute pitch and linguistics

In addition, perfect pitch is more common among speakers of tonal languages such as most dialects of Chinese or Vietnamese, which depend heavily on pitch for meaning. "Tone deafness" is unusual among native speakers of these languages. In addition, there are a number of Japanese speakers who have perfect pitch; Japanese is a pitch accent language, in which pitch is also involved in conveying the meaning of words (though less heavily than in tone languages). Speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages have been reported to speak a word in the same absolute pitch (within a quarter-tone) on various days (Deutsch, Henthorn and Dolson, 2004). It has therefore been suggested that absolute pitch may be acquired by infants when they learn to speak in a tone language (and possibly also by infants when they learn to speak in a pitch stress language). Such individuals may be more likely to acquire absolute pitch for musical tones when they later receive musical training .

Absolute pitch - Nature or Nurture?

Until the middle of the 20th century, most people believed that musical ability itself was an inborn talent. Some scientists believe absolute pitch is due to genetics and are trying to map the gene for it; others believe most humans do not typically develop this ability because there is no social use for it, and are trying to teach adults how to develop it. The debate is not yet settled, as data on this highly specialized ability are quite scarce. It is nevertheless becoming increasingly apparent that people can acquire perfect pitch (at least for single instruments) through learning. It has also become apparent that a critical period in early childhood is involved in the acquisition of absolute pitch; this critical period may be related to that for acquisition of speech. Pitch recognition is now taught at the Eastman School of music and various "perfect pitch" courses have been offered since the early 1980s.

Many musicians, and most jazz musicians, have quite good relative pitch, a skill which can certainly be learned. With practice, it is possible to listen to a single known pitch once (from a pitch pipe or a tuning fork) and then have stable, reliable pitch identification by comparing the notes heard to the stored memory of the tonic pitch. Unlike true perfect pitch, this skill is dependent on a recently-perceived tonal center.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Scientific studies related to absolute pitch", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki