Absolute Pitch

Chris Darwin

Perception of Musical Sounds: 2007

What is it?Tone-AP• Ability to name notes in isolation• Ability to adjust a note to be, say, F#• Ability to sing F# to order

Pseudo-AP• Ability to name only A, but then relative

Piece-AP• Ability to say when a piece is in correct key

Graded rather than all or noneTone & Pseudo may be better for particular instruments

Have you got it?

write down each note 4 practice notes then 3 groups of 12

http://www.aip.org/148th/Test_for_Absolute_Pitch.htm

We all have it (badly (done))

Lockhead, G.R. and Byrd, R. (1981) Practically perfect pitch. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 70, 387

Levitin, D. J. and Rogers, S. E. (2005). "Absolute pitch: perception, coding and controversies," Trends in Cog Sci 9, 26-33.

Hall, D. E. (1982). Practically perfect pitch': Some comments, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 71, 754-755.

X

Done better ?

Zatorre, R. J., et al. (1998). "Functional anatomy of musical processing in listeners with absolute pitch and relative pitch," Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 95, 3172-7.

Zatorre, R. J. (2003). "Absolute pitch: a model for understanding the influence of genes and development on neural and cognitive function," Nat Neurosci 6, 692-5.

Bimodal distribution

of AP &

non-AP

Athos, E. A.,et al. (2007). "Dichotomy and perceptual distortions in absolute pitch ability," Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104, 14795-800.

How about Piece-AP?• 46 subjects sang two different popular songs

• 40% correct pitch on at least one trial • 12% correct pitch on both trials• 44% ± 2 semits on both trials.

Levitin, D. J. (1994). " Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies.," Percept. Psychophys. 56, 414-423.

Terhardt, E. and Seewann, M. (1983). "Aural key identification and its relationship to absolute pitch," Music Percepn 1, 63-83.

• Musically trained listeners were presented with excerpts of Bach preludes at original key or shifted by a semitone30% of those without absolute pitch could do it

But those that have it, have it

Magic number 7(0) ± 2

• Non-AP: Identify c. 8 categories of pitch• AP: c. 70 categories

Zatorre, R. J. (2003). "Absolute pitch: a model for understanding the influence of genes and development on neural and cognitive function," Nat Neurosci 6, 692-5.

Who has it? Nurture Nurture: Early musical training appears to be necessary but not sufficient for the development of AP. Interviewed 600 musicians (conservatoires, orchestras) <=4 years of age: 40% reported AP >=9 years of age: 3%

cf age of acquiring foreign-accent-free second language

Baharloo, S., Johnston, P. A., Service, S. K., Gitschier, J. and Freimer, N. B. (1998). "Absolute pitch: an approach for identification of genetic and nongenetic components," Am J Hum Genet 62, 224-31.

Start of musical training

Levitin, D.J. and Zatorre, R.J. (2003) On the nature of early training and absolute pitch: A reply to Brown, Sachs, Cammuso and Foldstein. Music Perception 21, 105–110

Tone-language

talkers

Deutsch, D., Henthorn, T., Marvin, E. and Xu, H. (2006). "Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical period," J Acoust Soc Am 119, 719-22.

Digression into speech perception

Categorical Perception - 1

1. Set up a continuum of sounds between two categories

1 ... 3 … 5 … 7

/ba/ - /da/

Categorical Perception - 2

2. Run an identification experiment

1 ... 3 … 5 … 7

% /ba/

100

0

Sharp phoneme boundary

Categorical Perception - 3

2. Run a discrimination experiment

1 ... 3 … 5 … 7

% difft

100

0

1 versus 3

Discrimination peak

/l/

/r/

English

/r/

Japanese

/t1/

Tamil

/t3//t2/

/t/

English

Different languages make different regions of acoustic space distinctive

/r/ - /l/ - 3

% difft

or

% /ra/

100

0

English identification

Japanese discrimination

English discrimination

1 ... 3 … 5 … 7

F3

/ra/ /la/

50

Phonemes by 12 months

Hindi adults Yes

English 6-8m Yes

English 8-10m a bit

English 10-12m No

English adults No

Discrimination of Hindi /t/ from /T/Head-turning: Werker & Tees 1981

Back to Absolute Pitch

Who has it?

12 of 21 early-blind trained musicians had APcompared with <20% of sighted musicians

(plus some fMRI evidence of change in STP asymmetry)

Hamilton, R.H. et al. (2004) Absolute pitch in blind musicians. Neuroreport 15, 803–806

Who has it? Nature:Links to autism

Brown, W. A., et al. (2003). "Autism-related language, personality, and cognition in people with absolute pitch: results of a preliminary study," J Autism Dev Disord 33, 163-7; discussion 169.

Absolute pitch possessors 46% Socially eccentricRelatively good at Block Design (autism indicator)

Musician Controls

15% Socially eccentricRelatively bad at Block Design

Who has it? Nature: Gene??

Nature??: Self-reported AP possessors were four times more likely to report another AP possessor in their families than were non-AP possessors.

Baharloo, S., Johnston, P. A., Service, S. K., Gitschier, J. and Freimer, N. B. (1998). "Absolute pitch: an approach for identification of genetic and nongenetic components," Am J Hum Genet 62, 224-31.

How do they do it?18 musicians with absolute pitch (AP) Identified three successive piano tones by their letter names. • Perfect recall of these note names after upto 27 sec of:

– counting backwards– hearing random piano tones– singing descending scale

• But significant forgetting retaining letter trigrams while counting backwards for 18 sec.

Multiple codes (e.g., auditory, kinesthetic, and visual imagery) are probably used.

Zatorre, R. J. & Beckett, C. (1989). Multiple coding strategies in the retention of musical tones by possessorsof absolute pitch. Memory and Cognition 17, 582-589.

Possible cognitive factors

• AP don’t need to refresh working memory in pitch memory tests - less activity in right frontal cortex

• Dorso-lateral cortex (forms associations?) active in AP when labelling individual tones and intervals, but in non-AP only when naming intervals.

fMRI