Absolute or Perfect Pitch

Fellow Vocalists!

Absolute or Perfect Pitch has been a widely understood or misunderstood issue through the ages. Here is some valuable information that should be helpful for us all to get on the "same page" regarding the facts surrounding this issue.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Absolute pitch (AP), widely referred to as perfect pitch, is the ability of a person to identify or sing a musical note without the benefit of a known reference.

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. Possessors of absolute pitch exhibit the ability in varying degrees. Generally, absolute pitch implies some or all of the following abilities.

1)Identify and name individual pitches played on various instruments
2)Name the key of a given piece of tonal music
3)Identify and name all the tones of a given chord or other tonal mass
4)Sing a given pitch without an external reference
5)Name the pitches of common everyday occurrences such as car horns

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

CHICAGO (Reuters)

Musicians and singers work for years to develop their sense of pitch but few can name a musical note without a reference tone. U.S. researchers on Monday said one gene may be the key to that coveted ability. Only 1 in 10,000 people have perfect or absolute pitch, the uncanny ability to name the note of just about any sound without the help of a reference tone.

"One guy said, 'I can name the pitch of anything -- even farts,"' said Dr. Jane Gitschier of the University of California, San Francisco, whose study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

She and colleagues analyzed the results of a three-year, Web-based survey and musical test that required participants to identify notes without the help of a reference tone. More than 2,200 people completed the 20-minute test.

"We noticed that pitch-naming ability was roughly an all-or-nothing phenomenon," she said. That lead researchers to conclude that one gene, or perhaps a few, may be behind this talent.

Gitschier said those with perfect pitch were able to correctly identify both piano tones and pure computer-generated tones that were devoid of the distinctive sounds of any musical instrument.

She said people with perfect pitch were able to pick out the pure tones with ease. And they also tended to have had early musical training -- before the age of 7. “We think it probably takes the two things," she said. They also found that perfect pitch tends to deteriorate with age.

"As people get older, their perception goes sharp. If a note C is played, and they're 15, they will say it's a C. But if they're 50, they might say it's a C sharp."

"This can be very disconcerting for them," Gitschier said. The most commonly misidentified note, based on the study, is a G sharp. That may be because G sharp is overshadowed by A, its neighbor on the scale, they said. A is often used by orchestras in the West as a tuning reference.

Gitschier said she and her colleagues were focusing on identifying the gene responsible for perfect pitch, which will involve gene mapping. Then they will try to figure out what is different in people with absolute pitch.

"We'll have to play it by ear, so to speak," she said.

Linguistics of Absolute Pitch

Absolute pitch is more common among speakers of tonal languages such as most dialects of Chinese or Vietnamese, which depend heavily on pitch for lexical meaning. "Tone deafness" is unusual among native speakers of these languages[citations needed]. 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 language(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; 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,with three pitch levels, and Mambila,[16] 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.

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.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.[43]

In conclusion

I know I do not have perfect pitch. At least I am not Tone Deaf. I would say that Absolute or Perfect Pitch might be one of those unique miracles in some gifted people. When I was a kid, I can remember that my older brother could send a bottle cap spinning through the air by snapping it between his thumb and middle finger. He could also spread his fingers apart, two by two, like Mr. Spock on Star Trek. I was never able and still can’t perform either of these important functions. Some people just aren’t gifted like others!

I got him back by learning how to fly my own plane to distant towns instead of sitting in hot, congested traffic! Ha Ha Ha!

See you next time!

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Jonathan Morgan Jenkins
www.vocaltrainingwarrior.com