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Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

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Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#181

Post by ibawt »

amelius wrote: post #76

Can anybody explain what is so useful about having absolute pitch? And is there a visual equivalent to perfect pitch? E.g. you see a color and you say it's #f3eb20 ? Or you taste a soup and say it's 2 grams of salt on 1L of soup?

One of my high school teachers ( at a special public arts high school ), heard the lawnmower going outside. He darted to the piano and immediatley conjugated the chord then exclaimed the cadence. I was kind of dumb founded at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence if you think it's tempo it's not.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#182

Post by ryeights »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #177

About this time I always "begin" to wonder how helpful would it really be for someone born with perfect pitch today at A=440 if they would have instead been born during a previous century when the recognized standard pitch was seldom A=440? I would have to imagine it would drive some of them nuts.

I don’t think that’s how perfect pitch works, it might be more accurately described as tone memory. For example I’ve “memorized” the sound of standard C=262Hz and can work to other notes from there. But I imagine if C=259Hz instead it would have made no difference to my ability to recall it.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#183

Post by samstave »

nostrademons wrote: post #101
bjoli wrote: post #50

I am a professional musician (bassoon player in a symphony orchestra). I can, if I practice it a couple of times a week, achieve and sustain perfect pitch. I had no semblance of perfect pitch until I decided to practice it at age 24. Before that the only chance I had to guess a note was to put in in relation to my own voice. Even though I don't practice this anymore (it isn't very useful), I still often just instinct…

I took a music theory class in college that had a very heavy ear-training component. The TA in the course would often talk about the concept of "pitch memory", both absolute and relative. In other words, perfect pitch isn't a binary concept of you either have it or you don't, but it's your ability to remember and reproduce absolute pitches from memory. What we think of as "perfect pitch" is the extreme version of thi…

I wish I was in this class?? LINK????

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#184

Post by humanizersequel »

Engineering-MD wrote: post #175

Normally perfect pitch is thought to only be able to be picked up during a critical period in early life. However, there was a fascinating study that showed that an anti epileptic/bipolar drug (sodium valproate) can reopen the window to gain this skill! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/

>sodium valproate

Wow, thanks for the link. Hopefully this doesn't leak too much medical information, but I used to take valproate for epilepsy and the time when I was on it almost directly corresponds to an unexpected and sharp rise in my musical ability/accomplishment. How much of this is attributable to the drug, I don't know — high schoolers discover they're good at something and throw themselves into it all the time — but I had piddled around the typical childhood music lessons a bunch as a child without demonstrating any remarkable talent. Certainly my trajectory was unexpected, this is very interesting.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#185

Post by samstave »

nostrademons wrote: post #101
bjoli wrote: post #50

I am a professional musician (bassoon player in a symphony orchestra). I can, if I practice it a couple of times a week, achieve and sustain perfect pitch. I had no semblance of perfect pitch until I decided to practice it at age 24. Before that the only chance I had to guess a note was to put in in relation to my own voice. Even though I don't practice this anymore (it isn't very useful), I still often just instinct…

I took a music theory class in college that had a very heavy ear-training component. The TA in the course would often talk about the concept of "pitch memory", both absolute and relative. In other words, perfect pitch isn't a binary concept of you either have it or you don't, but it's your ability to remember and reproduce absolute pitches from memory. What we think of as "perfect pitch" is the extreme version of thi…

Wow, but YES, but NO at the same time ::

there are the certain skills which can be "forgot" but can be picked up {"like riding a bike"}

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#186

Post by hashmap »

hluska wrote: post #108
helaoban wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on your method? That's quite impressive considering it's widely believed to be untrainable past a certain age (at least that's layman my understanding). Did you start with a complete inability to identify notes, and now are able to identity them immediately (i.e like acquiring a new language?).

The idea that you cannot attain perfect pitch as an adult has been thoroughly debunked. The University of Chicago’s study is most famous but results have been replicated at many other schools. Adults can develop perfect pitch just fine. The issue seems to be that most adults find it useless and as artists they’re better off spending their time elsewhere.

This isn't quite right; the University of Chicago study replicates what has already been known for a long time - that musicians can develop their pitch memory around the timbral context clues of a particular instrument. However, this learned pitch does not generalize to other instruments and/or common everyday sounds (train horns, washing machine vibrations) in the way that people with absolute pitch can instantly identify.

An analogy to this might be that a colorblind person if shown enough fabric and told what the colors were can eventually associate the texture of the fabric with a given color and can learn to do this translating in their head, but they will not be able to train their eyes to see color no matter how much practice takes place.

Rick Beato covers the subject rather well in his video "Why Adults Can't Develop Perfect Pitch" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM

If it were the case that such a substantial number of amateur test subjects could develop absolute pitch from doing a few exercises, we would expect to see commensurate numbers of musicians who spend thousands of hours playing music to also develop this skill, but this is not and has never been the case.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#187

Post by cardy31 »

vnorilo wrote: post #111
nostrademons wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a music theory class in college that had a very heavy ear-training component. The TA in the course would often talk about the concept of "pitch memory", both absolute and relative. In other words, perfect pitch isn't a binary concept of you either have it or you don't, but it's your ability to remember and reproduce absolute pitches from memory. What we think of as "perfect pitch" is the extreme version of thi…

I think pitch memory is not at all the same neural phenomenon as perfect (absolute) pitch. I had an ear training teacher who would play a bunch of random atonal notes on the piano between exercises to "reset" our ears. Only works for relative ears. Similarly I (relative pitch) retain the key of a piece I practice. But if someone plays a random sequence of pitches it pretty easily makes me lose my anchor or at least m…

I’m a former pro musician. I’m a drummer so lol I don’t have perfect pitch, but I met a few folks who did. Having true perfect pitch sounds awful honestly. The world is constantly out of tune and it takes effort to ignore it.

I knew many more people with very good relative pitch. In school those people would get a middle C at the start of ear training class and ace every note after that because they knew where that C was.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#188

Post by maroonblazer »

klipt wrote: post #113
vnorilo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pitch memory is not at all the same neural phenomenon as perfect (absolute) pitch. I had an ear training teacher who would play a bunch of random atonal notes on the piano between exercises to "reset" our ears. Only works for relative ears. Similarly I (relative pitch) retain the key of a piece I practice. But if someone plays a random sequence of pitches it pretty easily makes me lose my anchor or at least m…

> Whereas the "real" perfect pitch people are always anchored, no matter how much noise anyone throws at them Actually they're not immune to being thrown off, there was an experiment where people with perfect pitch were played a long orchestral piece that very slowly detuned, e.g. over the course of half an hour dropped one semitone. The study found this also detuned their sense of absolute pitch, not just immediatel…

A good friend of mine in high school had perfect pitch. We played music together and he would complain about his 'anchor' of pitch getting thrown off if/when we wouldn't tune to A 440Hz but instead something else slightly up or down from A440.

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#189

Post by gabereiser »

bjoli wrote: post #50

I am a professional musician (bassoon player in a symphony orchestra). I can, if I practice it a couple of times a week, achieve and sustain perfect pitch. I had no semblance of perfect pitch until I decided to practice it at age 24. Before that the only chance I had to guess a note was to put in in relation to my own voice. Even though I don't practice this anymore (it isn't very useful), I still often just instinct…

I would imagine relative pitch is more useful/practiced? I was a musician in a rock band for many years (you never heard of) and I have relative pitch. I started in orchestra on the cello at age 7. Banged on drums during middle school. Picked up guitar in high school and formed a band. I can identify chords and I can tell you what note if I have another note as a reference (like you do with your voice).

Re: Children aged 2-6 successfully trained to acquire absolute pitch (2012)

#190

Post by smeej »

maroonblazer wrote: post #188
klipt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whereas the "real" perfect pitch people are always anchored, no matter how much noise anyone throws at them Actually they're not immune to being thrown off, there was an experiment where people with perfect pitch were played a long orchestral piece that very slowly detuned, e.g. over the course of half an hour dropped one semitone. The study found this also detuned their sense of absolute pitch, not just immediatel…

A good friend of mine in high school had perfect pitch. We played music together and he would complain about his 'anchor' of pitch getting thrown off if/when we wouldn't tune to A 440Hz but instead something else slightly up or down from A440.

My choir director finds it easier to transpose organ pieces on the fly than "set the organ to a different key" and just play the keys as written for that reason: There's too much dissonance between what his fingers know they're playing and what his ears are hearing.

He was one of those little kids who had absolute pitch from the start, though, and he definitely views it as a two-edged sword!

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