Absolute Pitch

1. Absolute Pitch Chris Darwin Perception of Musical Sounds: 2007

2. 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 none Tone & Pseudo may be better for particular instruments

3. 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

5. We all have it (badly (done)) X • Levitin, D. J. and Rogers, S. E. (2005). "Absolute pitch: perception, coding and controversies," Trends in Cog Sci 9, 26-33. Lockhead, G.R. and Byrd, R. (1981) Practically perfect pitch.J. Acoust. Soc. Am.70, 387 • Hall, D. E. (1982). Practically perfect pitch': Some comments, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 71, 754-755.

6. Done better ? 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. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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. • Musically trained listeners were presented with excerpts of Bach preludes at original key or shifted by a semitone • 30% of those without absolute pitch could do it • Terhardt, E. and Seewann, M. (1983). "Aural key identification and its relationship to absolute pitch," Music Percepn 1, 63-83.

9. But those that have it, have it

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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 Perception21, 105–110

13. 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.

14. Digression into speech perception

15. Categorical Perception - 1 1. Set up a continuum of sounds between two categories /ba/ - /da/ 1 ... 3 … 5 … 7

16. 1 ... 3 … 5 … 7 Categorical Perception - 2 2. Run an identification experiment 100 Sharp phoneme boundary % /ba/ 0

17. 1 versus 3 Categorical Perception - 3 2. Run a discrimination experiment 100 Discrimination peak % difft 0 1 ... 3 … 5 … 7

18. Different languages make different regions of acoustic space distinctive

19. 1 ... 3 … 5 … 7 /r/ - /l/ - 3 English identification 100 English discrimination % difft or % /ra/ Japanese discrimination 50 0 F3 /ra/ /la/

20. Phonemes by 12 months Discrimination of Hindi /t/ from /T/ Head-turning: Werker & Tees 1981

21. Back to Absolute Pitch

22. Who has it? 12 of 21 early-blind trained musicians had AP compared 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.Neuroreport15, 803–806

23. Who has it? Nature:Links to autism • Absolute pitch possessors • 46% Socially eccentric • Relatively good at Block Design (autism indicator) • Musician Controls • 15% Socially eccentric • Relatively bad at Block Design 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.

24. 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.

25. 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 possessors
of absolute pitch. Memory and Cognition 17, 582-589.


26. 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.

27. fMRI