Got perfect pitch? Think again

[faulty_damper]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130611122011.htm

People who have perfect pitch aren't born, they're made.  In this experiment, a long musical piece (Brahms Symphony No.1) was played and slowly detuned so that it became 33 cents flat. (A semitone is equivalent to 100 cents.)  None of the PP subjects could tell that it was out of tune by the end of the piece and could not even tell when played back snippets of the musics.  And strangely enough, when played back music that was in tune, they identified it as out of tune after listening to the Brahms symphony.

What this means is that PP is malleable and subject to change depending on musical exposure.  It also strongly suggests that PP is learned, not an inborn talent.  So if you're proud of your PP, don't be so certain you're right.

[teran]

Tbh the idea that it's learned and not inherent should be greater cause for pride if anything.

[ted]

Having probably one of the worst ears on Pianostreet hardly qualifies me to comment with any certainty. However, years ago in an idle moment I looked for possible subdivisions of the octave which would embed more or less conventional musical sounds. The surprising division was twenty-nine, 2^(17/29) being really close to 3/2, i.e. a fifth. Accordingly I wrote another program to invent and play music in this scale. I gave some of the more conventional sounding results to friends with very acute ears and was most surprised to find none of them realised the music was modulating through twenty-nine keys instead of the usual twelve. I had thought it would upset those with absolute pitch but it didn't, which still puzzles me.

I really don't think I could develop my own aural acuity much more though. I tried when I was younger and gave up.

[iansinclair]

If one thinks about it for a bit, one has to wonder just what, exactly, is one talking about when one talks about perfect pitch?  Many of us a are aware that, over time, the accepted pitch associated with our western notation has changed in terms of frequency.  We now accept A = 440 hertz as "concert pitch" and most modern instruments are tuned to that.  Around a hundred years ago, A = 435 (sometimes "International Pitch") was common for pianos.  I have played a couple of organs in Germany tuned to about A = 430 or thereabouts.  One could make an interesting argument for A = 427 as a "North American" pitch (that setting makes the North American 60 hertz power line hum into a B )

It's a convention.

That said, however, I have known a few people -- not many -- with absolutely superb relative pitch, and pitch memory.  This could be taken as a form of "perfect pitch".  One soprano I knew some years ago could retain a pitch, apparently unconsciously -- that is, she wasn't rehearsing it, for several days without any difficulty.  She was uncommonly handy in the choir I led at the time -- I didn't need a pitch pipe!

[perfect_pitch]

No offense... but there are different magnitudes of perfect pitch...

Granted there are people who can tell an A when they hear an A, but there are some who can identify jazz chords without thinking... and those who can literally identify when a note if even a 5 cents out of tune.

No offense, but I'd like to know more data about this supposed study. It doesn't mean that Perfect Pitch is malleable... it means there are different degrees of their aural abilities.

[lateromantic]

People who have perfect pitch aren't born, they're made.

Has anyone claimed to the contrary?  Although there may possibly be a genetic component to perfect pitch, it is well-known that it is related to musical training (or exposure to certain Asiatic languages) during the so-called "critical period" in childhood learning.

The term itself is a misnomer; a better term would be "absolute pitch," contrasted with "relative pitch."  No one has a truly perfect sense of absolute pitch.  Even if you can tell, without a prior context, the difference between 440 cps and 441 cps, you may not be sensitive to the difference between 440.0 cps and 440.1 cps.  I think that most people consider you have absolute pitch if you can identify a tone to within the limits of categorical perception, which in Western music is the semitone.

[faulty_damper]

No offense, but I'd like to know more data about this supposed study. It doesn't mean that Perfect Pitch is malleable... it means there are different degrees of their aural abilities.

No, it's pretty clear from the study that they couldn't tell that it was detuned and their pitch identification afterward had changed.  The detuning occurred over 15 minutes and became 33 cents flat.  The subjects were all objectively tested for PP before they started the study so their skill in identifying pitches was very high.

[faulty_damper]

Has anyone claimed to the contrary?  Although there may possibly be a genetic component to perfect pitch, it is well-known that it is related to musical training (or exposure to certain Asiatic languages) during the so-called "critical period" in childhood learning.

There are some threads in the history of PF that claim just that, that perfect pitch is something you're born with.  Some studies claim that as well and have found genes linked to it, though correlation does not equate to causation.

And I take issue with the "critical period" for language development.  The brain is far more malleable than was once believed as the researches are finding as well:

"The researchers are now experimenting with people who have more limited pitch identification ability and are finding that their pitch identification can be improved."

[perfect_pitch]

No, it's pretty clear from the study that they couldn't tell that it was detuned and their pitch identification afterward had changed. 

So they got people who don't have an exceptionally high level of perfect pitch - seems like the study has a few flaws.

[oxy60]

We also must factor in the passage of time. If one takes their violin out of the case and play it every day, using a pitchfork as reference they will know if it has changed from the first plink before they compare it to their pitchfork.

What if there is a gap of a week or more?

What about those subjects who could take note dictation? How long have they studied?

[lateromantic]

There are some threads in the history of PF that claim just that, that perfect pitch is something you're born with.

I'm still pretty new here, so that's possible.

Some studies claim that as well and have found genes linked to it, though correlation does not equate to causation.

Yes, that's why I said, "there may possibly be a genetic component to perfect pitch." But the title you gave the thread made it sound as if it really isn't "perfect pitch" if it turns out to be "made" rather than inborn.  Hence my comment.

And I take issue with the "critical period" for language development.  The brain is far more malleable than was once believed as the researches are finding as well

I don't doubt that one can continue to learn languages past the critical period.  (I'm in my sixties; I studied Russian when I was around 50, and and I plan to learn Spanish in the next few years.)  But there is a well-known period during which the brain has heightened sensitivity to language acquisition, and I think it is no coincidence that that seems to be the period during which absolute pitch is typically acquired.  (More generally, my point of view is that language processing and music processing are closely connected within the brain.)

[jy_]

I tend to term this as 'relative' perfect pitch, in that you can't really tell if a note is out of tune (you can only tell tones and semitones). It's a bit like that for me - I can tell an "A" from an "Ab", but if its in between that I might not necessarily be able to, something like quarter tones perhaps.

Then again, I consider myself to have (relative) perfect pitch because I can tell a note immediately from the piano. But somehow I think that 442Hz is more accurate than 440Hz (which sounds a bit flat to me)... so I might not have perfect pitch

Also, the fact that it was slowly de-tuned makes the experiment kind of 'inaccurate'. I don't know how plausible this is, but its just that I heard some people saying that if you put a live animal (e.g.: frog) into a frying pan and gradually turn up the temperature, it won't be able to figure out that you are going to cook it until it's too late (rather than turning the temperature up v. quickly).

The link that I'm trying to draw here is that people may not realise that the piece is slowly getting out of tune

[iansinclair]

This is an extremely important question in vocal music -- and to a lesser for instrumentalists playing instruments, such as the violin family (or dobro!) which have infinitely variable pitch.

One of the major aspects of my vocal training was to develop my ability to retain pitch memory, and it was one of the things I really looked for in singers for one choir I once led, which performed a great deal of music either all "a cappela" (in the manner of the chapel; that is, without accompaniment) or with long stretches of it.  It is, in fact, essential that singers of such works have a superb sense of relative pitch, and an equally superb sense of pitch memory.  If you don't, my friend, when an accompaniment comes back in you have something between a catastrophe and a disaster.

Is this "perfect pitch"?  There you run into a question of meaning.  If by that you mean someone who can, on demand, sing a note which you designate as a concert A (or whatever), then if the ability is well enough developed (such as that soprano I mentioned in an earlier post) then it certainly is.  On the other hand, if what you mean by "perfect pitch" you mean someone who is naive but who, on hearing a tone, can identify it as, say concert A, it isn't.

I very much doubt, since our notion of named pitch is clearly an agreed convention, that there could be such a thing as "perfect pitch" in the second sense above.

In the first sense, though, it is a trainable ability -- but like most other trainable abilities, one which some people have a better ability at to begin with than others.

I would add that the ability to discriminate between two tones very close together in frequency is also something which appears to be trainable, but which some people have better inherent ability in than others -- and it is a completely different ability from the ability to pick up relative pitch, and to remember pitch over time.

[lateromantic]

Very interesting article on perfect pitch here:
https://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/index.php

One point the article touches on, which I've also seen discussed elsewhere, is that in older listeners the sense of perfect pitch tends to go sharp with aging.  For example, I've found that if I hear an unfamiliar piece on classical radio nowadays and it sounds like it's somewhere between A major and B-flat major, it turns out to be in A major (if the announcer identifies the key at the end).  The researchers observe:  "Absolute pitch possessors sometimes indicate a frustration with their pitch perception as they get older....  We discovered that pitch perception tends to go sharp as subjects age. Some subjects name notes consistently a semi-tone sharp by middle-age, while others name tones a full tone sharp as they enter their 60's. We suspect that there is some property in the ear that changes as people age to cause this perceptual shift."  I'd like to think that the fact that my deviation isn't up to a full tone yet indicates that I'm not aging very fast.

Regarding genetics vs. environment, they say:  "Together, these observations implicate a genetic predisposition to the development of absolute pitch, which, when coupled with an environmental stimulus such as early musical training, can give rise to the perceptual trait."  That combination of genetic and environmental factors would be consistent with how a lot of other human traits work.

[oxy60]

Yes, Ian you've got it right. Those of us who have been to school know how to fix those problems of drifting during long passages so we all come out where we started.

As far as aging is concerned we seldom form senior choirs, except in retirement communities.

You gotta know when to hang it up. 

[faulty_damper]

The test subjects who lost their sense of pitch was still able to accurately tell, using different instruments played out of context, the pitch identification after hearing the Symphony.  They just weren't able to tell that the Symphony was out of tune.  This shows that they didn't lose their sense of PP but that the Symphony caused their shift in perception to that piece.

As to pitch memory, I have a distinct sense of it from singing in choirs.  I know at the end of a movement that we are flat.  But I can't identify notes very well; I don't have PP even though my pitch identification is higher than chance.  All this says is that I know how it feels in my voice to sign off pitch as this provides a perceptual cue.  I know how a certain note feels like to sing it.

That combination of genetic and environmental factors would be consistent with how a lot of other human traits work.

I don't believe that there is a genetic component to it unless that genetic component is the ability to hear or retain memories, I doubt we'll ever find a set of genes that specifically controls PP.  And genetics influence all aspects of behavior so technically it's correct to say that genes influence PP, but that's not saying very much or anything new.