absolute pitch
DESCRIPTION
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 - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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 orderPseudo-AP• Ability to name only A, but then relativePiece-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
talkersDeutsch, 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 discriminationEnglish discrimination
1 ... 3 … 5 … 7
F3
/ra/ /la/
50
Phonemes by 12 months
Hindi adults YesEnglish 6-8m YesEnglish 8-10m a bitEnglish 10-12m NoEnglish 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