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DEFINITION Absolute pitch, or '''perfect pitch''', is "the ability to attach labels to isolated auditory stimuli on the basis of pitch alone" without external reference.1 Possessors of absolute pitch exhibit the ability in varying degrees. Generally, absolute pitch implies some or all of the following abilities:
Individuals may possess both absolute pitch and Relative Pitch ability in varying degrees. Both relative and absolute pitch work together in actual musical listening and practice, although individuals exhibit preferred strategies in using each skill.2 Full text Distinctions The musicologist Richard Parncutt and the cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin introduced the following distinctions in their entry on absolute pitch in the New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians . "Passive" People with passive absolute pitch are able to identify individual notes that they hear, and can identify the key of a composition (assuming some degree of musical knowledge). Some may be able to identify several notes played simultaneously, and therefore identify complex Chord s. Those with passive absolute pitch are not always capable of singing a given note on command. "Active" People with active absolute pitch are able to sing any given note on cue, without prior pitch references. Not all people with active absolute pitch are Musician s. However, musical training is necessary for full development of the auditory potential of a person with absolute pitch. Among Autistic s and Savant s, the incidence of absolute pitch is considerably higher. Absolute pitch is common among those with Williams Syndrome . SCIENTIFIC STUDIES As difference in cognition, not elementary sensation Physically and functionally, the auditory system of an absolute listener does not appear to be measurably different from a non-absolute listener.3 Rather, "AP perception is not dependent on a special kind of ear; it reflects a particular ability to analyze frequency information, presumably involving high-level cortical processing."4 Full text 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 range of sound encompassed by that categorical label. Absolute pitch may be directly analogous to recognizing Colour s, Phoneme s (speech sounds) or other categorical perception of sensory stimuli. Even as most people have learned to recognize and name the colour ''blue'' by its frequency, it is possible that those who have had early (somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6)5 and meaningful exposure to the names of musical tones will be likely to identify, for example, Middle C . Absolute pitch, however, may be genetic, possibly an Autosomal Dominant Gene tic trait,67 Full text though it "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." As influenced by music experience Absolute pitch sense appears to be influenced by cultural exposure to music, especially in the familiarization of the equal-tempered C-major Scale . Most of the absolute listeners that were tested in this respect identified the C-major tones more reliably and, except for B, more quickly than the five "black key" tones,8 which corresponds to the higher prevalence of these tones in ordinary musical experience. One study of Dutch non-musicians also demonstrated a bias toward using C-major tones in ordinary speech, especially on syllables related to emphasis.9 Full text Linguistics Absolute pitch is more common among speakers of " is unusual among native speakers of these languages. Speakers of Sino-Tibetan Languages have been reported to speak a word in the same absolute pitch (within a quarter-tone) on different days; it has therefore been suggested that absolute pitch may be acquired by infants when they learn to speak in a tonal language10 Full text (and possibly also by infants when they learn to speak in a pitch stress language). However, the brains of tonal-language speakers do not naturally process musical sound as language;11 Full text perhaps such individuals may be more likely to acquire absolute pitch for musical tones when they later receive musical training. It is possible that level-tone languages which are found in Africa—such as Yoruba ,12 with three pitch levels, and Mambila,13 with four—may be better suited to study the role of absolute pitch in speech than the contour-tone languages of East Asia. Further, speakers of European languages have been found to make use of an absolute, though subconscious, pitch memory when speaking.14 Full text Perception Although absolute pitch is predicated on the ability to perceive and identify "tone chroma"15 Full text Full text (English) — where "tone chroma" is a psychological interpretation of a fundamental vibratory frequency16 — absolute pitch is not a heightened ability to perceive and discriminate fine gradations of sound frequencies,17 but rather the ability to mentally categorize sounds into predefined pitch areas.18 An absolute listener's sense of hearing is no keener than that of a non-absolute ("normal") listener;19 Full text furthermore, the tasks of identification (recognizing and naming a pitch) and discrimination (detecting changes or differences in rate of vibration) are accomplished with different brain mechanisms.20 Race and absolute pitch See Also: Race and intelligence (test data) The prevalence of absolute pitch is considerably higher among individuals with early childhood in East Asia than among other groups 21 22 Full Text 23 Full Text 24 Full Text . This difference has been suggested to be racial in origin 25 Full Text . However, individuals of East Asian heritage with early childhood in the United States or Canada do not have a higher prevalence of absolute pitch than do Caucasians with early childhood in the United States or Canada ; this difference in prevalence therefore cannot be explained on genetic grounds. It should be noted that many East Asians (such as those in China) speak tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese, while others (such as those in Japan and certain provinces of Korea) speak pitch accent languages; this prevalence difference could therefore be due to exposure to pitches together with meaningful labels very early in life Full text . Nature or nurture? Many people have believed that musical ability itself is an inborn talent.26 Full text Some scientists currently believe absolute pitch may have an underlying s that are both impractical and unethical. Researchers have been trying to teach absolute pitch ability for more than a century,31 Full text and various commercial absolute-pitch training courses have been offered to the public since the early 1900s .32 Full text It has been shown possible to learn the naming of tones later in life, although some consider this skill not to be true absolute pitch.33 Full text No training method for adults has yet been shown to produce abilities comparable to naturally occurring absolute pitch.34 For children aged 2-4, however, recent observations have shown a certain method of music education35 to apparently be successful in training absolute pitch,36 but the same method has also been shown to fail with students 5 years and older, suggesting that a developmental change in perception occurs which favors relative learning over absolute and thus supporting the theory of the "critical period" for learning absolute pitch.37 Potential problems Persons who have absolute pitch may feel irritated when a piece is transposed to a different key or played at a nonstandard pitch.38 They may fail to develop strong Relative Pitch when following standard curricula, despite the fact that maintaining absolute strategies can make simple relative tasks more difficult. For instance, transposition of music from one key to another may prove more difficult for an individual who interprets music as a fixed sequence of absolute tones rather than relative patterns of notes. Absolute pitch possessors have been known to find it difficult to play with an orchestra that is not tuned to Standard Concert Pitch A4 = 440 Hertz (442 Hz in some countries); this may be due to a perception of pitch which is categorical rather than freely adjustable.39 CORRELATION WITH MUSICAL TALENT Absolute pitch is not a prerequisite for developing a high level of talent as a musician or composer, and musicians may disagree about the overall value and relevance of absolute pitch ability to musical experience. Due to uncertainty in the historical record, and, until recently, lack of objective tests, it is often impossible to determine whether famous composers and musicians had absolute pitch or not. Since absolute pitch is rare in European musical culture , claims that any particular musician possessed it are to be doubted, unless there is clear contemporary evidence. Among composers of the and John Philip Sousa , it became more common for the presence of absolute pitch to be recorded. Relative pitch Many musicians have quite good Relative Pitch , a skill which can 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.40 Unlike absolute pitch, this skill is dependent on a recently-perceived Tonal Center . REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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