Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-024-02620-2

by dr_dshiv • 1 year ago

174 131 1 year ago

link.springer.com

zx2c4• 1 year ago

By the end of the training, they learned to name an average of 7.08 pitches (ranging from 3 to 12) at an accuracy of 90% or above and within a response-time (RT) window of 1,305–2,028 ms.

That doesn't actually seem very promising, or at least useful at all. It still seems way less useful than my accurate and near instantaneous relative-pitch. What could I do as a musician with 2 seconds of latency to be wrong some amount of the time.

neuralkoi• 1 year ago

I don't understand (I am not a musician). This was an 8-week training program (21.4h). How long have you spent perfecting your relative pitch?

groby_b• 1 year ago

Your relative pitch gets decent within a few weeks of practice (<10h).

Getting it always right takes longer, and so do "weird" intervals, but the basic intervals are not that hard. Also, basic knowledge of song structure, phrases, and chords helps with relative pitch, because it narrows down the set of choices in many circumstances.

After all, the most useful exercise of relative pitch is "what's that melody", not "what's that random interval".

As for precision of relative pitch: After a year of weekly training, most people are able to tune a guitar to within 2-3 cents. Which is, granted, a very specific form of relative pitch, but it shows you can get pretty good precision at that. It probably extends further. (IDK, I have seen no examples of people explicitly practicing microtonal relative pitch outside of "tune an instrument")

pazimzadeh2• 1 year ago

Pretty sure you don’t lose your relative pitch, and the better you are at relative pitch the better results you’ll have anyway

wrs• 1 year ago

Yes, thank goodness relative pitch is trainable, because that’s all you need, almost all the time. This new ability would let you come in on the right pitch for your first note, which is a cool trick. But after that, relative is fine. Indeed, it would be awful if you heard everything absolute and had to translate to relative (I’m guessing you can do both at the same time, though).

dr_dshiv• 1 year ago

I wonder if they combined this with Valproic acid, which supposedly can help adults learn perfect pitch https://www.npr.org/2014/01/04/259552442/want-perfect-pitch-...

d1sxeyes• 1 year ago

Interesting. Word of caution though, valproic acid is teratogenic, and should not be taken by anyone who may become pregnant. The linked article suggests it could be a “wonder drug” to enable learning, but there are also downsides to taking it.

pazimzadeh2• 1 year ago

Yeah, until they figure out how to target it to your ears/brain/whatever I would not take something that wipes your body’s epigenetic slate

ydnaclementine• 1 year ago

Is this type of training more beneficial to do first rather than recognizing intervals?

beepbooptheory• 1 year ago

I think its gotta be just interesting on the theoretical side around learning/cognition. Otherwise yeah, its like learning exactly how salty something is when you taste it: not a total waste of time maybe, but not directly beneficial for you as the cook.

In school, at least when I was there, ear training was a combination of recognizing harmony, rhythm, and simple melodies with an arbitrary key, ontop of, of course, sight singing. It is of course quite sufficient to have this skill with all of that, but hardly necessary!

olddustytrail• 1 year ago

It's not beneficial at all. Don't do it. The only music that will sound "right" is autotuned crap from the most boring types of music. Anything interesting will sound "out of tune".

2c2c2c3• 1 year ago

i made https://perfectpitch.study a week or so ago. i am old and musically untrained and wanted to see if rote practice makes a difference (it clearly does).

most of the sites of this type i found annoying as you can't just use a midi keyboard, so you just get RSI clicking around for 10 minutes.

I tried getting adsense on it, but they seem to have vague content requirements. Apparently tools don't count as real websites :-(. I couldn't even fool it with fake content. what's the best banner ad company to use in this situation?

jawon• 1 year ago

Gave it a try. After a few minutes I felt more like I was recognising the samples than I was recognising the notes. Not sure what you can do about that short of physically modeling an instrument.

yojo• 1 year ago

Latest browser APIs expose everything you need to build a synth. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...

There are some libraries that make it easy to simulate instruments. E.g. tone.js https://tonejs.github.io/

It should be possible to generate unique-ish variants at runtime.

2c2c2c3• 1 year ago

I am using midi and open source instrument packages, so this is all handleable. There's a few instrument options to choose from in the top right settings.

Will probably add a "randomize instrument used per round" setting or something to really dial it in. I added a randomize velocity option but didn't test it much

almostnormal• 1 year ago

Starting from the second note the brain switches to reative mode (at least a brain that got some relative recognition trained before) and no AP pitch will be memorized.

hornytoad• 1 year ago

Agree. And for relative pitch training, I love this tool! The creator should read the paper to get ideas on how to turn it into an actual training tool for absolute pitch.

westurner4• 1 year ago

Nice! The keyboard could be larger on mobile in portrait and landscape

Ctrl-Shift-M https://devtoolstips.org/tips/en/simulate-devices/ ; how to simulate a mobile viewport: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode#devic...

/? google lighthouse mobile accessibility test: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+lighthouse+mobile+acc...

Lighthouse: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview

westurner4• 1 year ago

Another metric for changing performance: notes tested before finding the correct note

2c2c2c3• 1 year ago

i had media queries set up and they seemed to show up as working in devtools simulator. but trying on my actual iphone14 pro max doesnt seem to work. devtools seems to imply that an iphones resolution is much lower than the actual resolution

the layout is also tough to reconcile on phone. if you enable a large note range and keep a true piano layout it will not fit on phone. my plan was to break each octave into a row. not very satisfying visually

aqueueaqueue4• 1 year ago

Get sponsored by some kind of music related site? Maybe a music course?

appleorchard466• 1 year ago

The perception of perfect pitch as this magical, unattainable thing always seemed odd to me. Not surprised this reinforces that it's mostly about memorization and practice.

Think of a song you know best, one you've listened to hundreds of times: can you sing it or hear it in your head pretty accurately (edit - not accurate intervals, but accurate pitch)? If so, congrats, you have the capacity for perfect pitch. Learn what note it starts on and you're 1/12 of the way there.

ByThyGrace• 1 year ago

and you're 1/12 of the way there.

I'm afraid my favorite song is on a microtonal scale...

dingnuts• 1 year ago

Think of a song you know best, one you've listened to hundreds of times: can you sing it or hear it in your head pretty accurately? If so, congrats, you have the capacity for perfect pitch

No, this is relative pitch. You might be singing it in the wrong key. That's why you can sing something a capella and it sounds right and then you add an instrument playing the correct notes and it doesn't.

zeroxfe• 1 year ago

It's not. You should actually try out the exercise. (I used this approach to build partial perfect pitch, i.e., to sing/identify a small number of specific pitches.)

Close your eyes and try to imagine a song that you know really well. Imagine the original version playing on your phone/mp3 player/cd/record. Pick a stable note from that song (for me, the third note of the beginning of "Tears in Heaven" is a solid A.) Try to sing it and match the pitch in your head.

As you practice it you'll get better, and do it faster, and over time even be able to recognize it in the wild.

appleorchard466• 1 year ago

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to songs you know intimately enough that you can sing a capella (or at least hear in your head) in the right key. Edited original comment for clarity.

This might not be something you personally can do, but for those who have memorized a song in that way it's a convenient way of demonstrating that perfect pitch isn't as unattainable as it might seem.

stackedinserter5• 1 year ago

The perception of perfect pitch as this magical, unattainable thing always seemed odd to me

Because it is really magical and unattainable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI

Show me an adult that trained to this level.

makeset• 1 year ago

That example is literally Beato demonstrating that it's perfectly attainable through deliberate training. Adulthood is a separate discussion.

perching_aix• 1 year ago

The perception of perfect pitch as this magical, unattainable thing always seemed odd to me.

Not sure why, it's taught and commonly considered to be an ability you're born with rather than something you can develop yourself later on.

However, no adult has ever been documented to have acquired absolute listening ability, because all adults who have been formally tested after AP training have failed to demonstrate "an unqualified level of accuracy... comparable to that of AP possessors".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch

The Wiki article also describes just prior to this cited section that there have been countless attempts at it over the centuries.

Doesn't exactly sound like a learnable skill to me.

appleorchard466• 1 year ago

This is literally what the paper we're commenting on is challenging. The source for that claim in Wikipedia (Levitin & Rogers) is expressly addressed in the paper.

Aurornis3• 1 year ago

Think of a song you know best, one you've listened to hundreds of times: can you sing it or hear it in your head pretty accurately (edit - not accurate intervals, but accurate pitch)? If so, congrats, you have the capacity for perfect pitch.

Absolute pitch can't be self-assessed subjectively like this. Hearing a song in your head is meaningless because you don't have an absolute reference to compare to.

Also, please read the first line of the abstract: Absolute pitch in this context also specifically refers to identification of heard tones, not ability to produce those tones yourself (in your head or otherwise). The test for absolute pitch involves playing different pitches spanning an octave and measuring how accurately and quickly the candidate can identify each pitch.

The first line of the abstract:

Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability to identify the pitch of a tone without external references.

Even studies of students at prominent music Conservatories have shown low prevalence among their students. These are people who have been training for years and started at a young age. So you can't expect to come anywhere near perfect pitch as a casual person singing a song in your head.

Absolute pitch isn't a strictly defined trait. The participants in this study improved their pitch identification abilities after intense training, but they still haven't approached the thresholds of absolute pitch identification used in many of the studies of music students.

A common theme among absolute pitch studies is that people who started music at a young age (typically less than 5) score higher on absolute pitch tests. This study doesn't undermine that fact.

pclmulqdq3• 1 year ago

I had a music theory teacher who suggested that to acquire absolute pitch, you listen to a tuning fork at A = 440 for 10 minutes a day. Everyone in the class could do all the intervals by ear, so with a strong memory of an A reference, you can fake it.

However, my sister does have absolute pitch (I don't), and the difference between "studying a known reference and knowing the intervals" and true absolute pitch is crazy. She can tell you what pitch the fluorescent lights are vibrating at, she can tell you what pitch your speaking voice is at, and all sorts of other things. My understanding of the psychology is that this is more like synesthesia than like something that you can study.

There are some people who suggest that kids who hear a lot of "atonal" music (modern jazz, modern classical, etc. - things whose pitch is hard to predict) at a young age are more likely to develop absolute pitch, which makes sense to me but also seems like it might be pseudoscience.

mquander• 1 year ago

A lot of people arguing in this thread. I'm an adult who started learning piano about two years ago. I found that the following exercise was immediately easy for me with no special practice:

- Learn a piano song, memorize it, play it many times.

- My wife plays random keys on the keyboard.

- I tell her when she got to the opening note of the song by comparing what she played to my memory of the sound.

So then I was confused because aren't I not supposed to be able to do that?

After reading online it became clear to me that this is called "pitch memory" by musicians and it's a totally normal ability that anyone should be able to do if they remember a sound well enough, and it's distinct from "absolute pitch" because people with "absolute pitch" don't try to remember a sound and match it up. They just know what a D sounds like abstractly and can identify any D based on that feeling. It would be like the difference between me knowing what green and red look like, and me identifying green and red things by imagining whether they look similar to traffic lights.

The study linked is also aware of this distinction:

It remains unclear whether the participants [in prior research] really learned the chroma of the tones, which is shared by notes that are one or more octave(s) apart with the same pitch name and considered the essence of AP (Bachem, 1955; Zatorre, 2003), or they merely learned to name a highly specific set of tones based on pitch height.

lolinder7• 1 year ago

and it's distinct from "absolute pitch" because people with "absolute pitch" don't try to remember a sound and match it up. They just know what a D sounds like abstractly and can identify any D based on that feeling. It would be like the difference between me knowing what green and red look like, and me identifying green and red things by imagining whether they look similar to traffic lights.

What you're describing is the same concept as fluency in a language. You're at the place where you are still translating the language in your head, but once someone becomes fluent it just comes out in the second language.

That there exists a lower bar of skill is actually evidence that it is a learned skill, not evidence that the higher bar is only attainable by some select few who were chosen by genetics or something. We'd expect it to be relatively teachable to young children and rather difficult to pick up as an adult, like languages, and that's pretty much what I've seen in my experience with a lot of very musical people.

PaulHoule2• 1 year ago

Actually many ordinary people have perfect pitch when it comes to hearing a song and singing it

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/singing-memory-u...

It's the being able to name a note and sing it or hear a note and give the name that's rare.

lolinder7• 1 year ago

Right, but their point is that if what the article you link to is true—if 44% of people are right on key when singing a song—then it should also be just a matter of collecting 12 songs with different starting pitches and mapping songs to notes and now you've learned a full scale of absolute pitch.

Few people do this because it's simply not practical, but that 44% of recordings match the pitch of their source exactly shows pretty conclusively that there's nothing magical behind absolute pitch, it's just that most of us learn to associate pitches with songs rather than giving them names.

losvedir2• 1 year ago

I disagree. Absolute pitch is a neurological phenomenon. People who have it experience the world differently. It's not a party trick like you're talking about here to name a note in isolation.

There's a fascinating phenomenon known as the Stroop effect[0], where if you get people to read a series of color words (e.g. "purple blue green red"), where the words are colored, but in the wrong color, it slows them down quite a bit. This was used to identify Soviet spies by showing them colors written in Russian; native Russian readers were slowed by the incorrect coloring, people who didn't know Russian could read it quickly.

Well, the Stroop effect applies to music notes, too! People with absolute pitch are impaired from reading a sequence of note names when a non-matching pitch is played at the same time. People without AP can read it just fine.

People with true absolute pitch can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has. It taps into the language center of the brain. Does your song trick give you such an overwhelming sense of the note, that if someone played a different note it would be noticeable and distracting enough that you can't read a simple word or music note on the page?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

smogcutter• 1 year ago

This was used to identify Soviet spies by showing them colors written in Russian; native Russian readers were slowed by the incorrect coloring, people who didn't know Russian could read it quickly.

Hold up, I’m confused. How could people who didn’t know Russian read them at all? There’s probably something obvious I’m missing, but I just can’t parse this at all.

giraffe_lady• 1 year ago

No, you've misunderstood. What people with perfect pitch are doing is a fast and more fluent version of what the other commenter describes. They may not experience or describe it that way but it's an area of interest for a lot of people and the research is clear.

can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has

Well, and what note does a sound have? What is "a note?" Is it just a name for a specific frequency? Then why enharmonics. Is that D a little flat, or are you just tuned to A 442? Oh actually we're in 24TET over here, that's simply a quarter tone.

Sound is just a sound, you need other context to make a note. To infer a note from a pitch, someone (with perfect pitch or not) knows already or is assuming a lot of context that makes that work.

But that context isn't universal, and if it has changed they'll need to find out how and adapt to it. The fact that they can adapt is because there's no universal mapping from frequencies to notes, either in their mind or anywhere.

rectang• 1 year ago

A fun prank to play on someone with absolute pitch is to play a favorite recoding of theirs detuned by 20 cents or so. It will drive them crazy.

This same prank would have no impact on someone who memorized approximately where A440 is by listening to a tuning fork every day for 10 minutes.

Absolute pitch and tonal memory are different physical phenomena.

mattkrause• 1 year ago

Any chance you have a source for the spy bit? (I know it’s obviously not a domain where few things are public).

bjoli6• 1 year ago

I have acquired "perfect pitch" for some notes. I have a problem with this. I know that an F is an F. An A an A. A C a C.

I experience this effect a lot, despite "learning" these notes when I was 21.

TimByte4• 1 year ago

It's probably just a skill most people never consciously develop because relative pitch is so much more useful in practice.

narag• 1 year ago

"Code availability: The codes used in this study were not available to the public."

viraptor2• 1 year ago

Watch out what you wish for though. With age our hearing degrades and the experienced frequency shifts. There's a number of people with perfect pitch recognition who mentioned getting annoyed when they got older and everything sounded slightly off. For practical music, relative pitch is fine and commonly trained.

alfiedotwtf• 1 year ago

Dave Smith restarted making Prophet 5 synthesizers a few ago, and the initial batch of users complained that the high frequencies weren’t like the original but when he tested them he couldn’t see any issue…

Turns out he was testing by ear, and he was a few decades older since stopping the last production run, and his hearing had rolled off on the high end!

Remake users were instructed on how to fix it and newer batches had the fixes built in - maybe by using a younger ear :)

brailsafe• 1 year ago

The existential dread he might have felt after realizing this suddenly would be palpable.

musicale2• 1 year ago

his hearing had rolled off on the high end!

Depending on the degree of hearing loss, I wonder if hearing aids might have helped a bit?

physicles2• 1 year ago

This is currently happening to me: I’m starting to be off by a half step when I guess what key something is in. I’m 40 now, and I started noticing it a few years ago. Maybe it started early because I don’t play much music so I wasn’t using it much.

This video by Adam Neely was helpful: https://youtu.be/QRaACa1Mrd4

dbalatero• 1 year ago

I'm 38, and my pitch recognition will degrade a half step off sometimes, often when I haven't been playing much.

TheBozzCL• 1 year ago

Interesting… that’s been happening to me but because I’ve been playing a lot with my guitar tuned half-step down.

I hear a note that I associate with a chord in my guitar, and I have to remind myself that I need to compensate for it.

yowzadave• 1 year ago

Absolute (“perfect”) pitch is, for some people, a kind of shorthand for supreme musical giftedness…when in reality it’s more of a curious party trick than a skill that is valuable for a musician or composer. So you can train yourself to do it—what’s the point exactly? Plenty of people who don’t have that skill have an extremely accurate ear for relative pitch, which is the one that actually matters.

yongjik2• 1 year ago

I don't think it's just a parlor trick. (I don't have it, BTW.) Obviously it depends on the instrument: for example, if you're playing the piano you can completely forget about absolute pitch. But if you're singing a long passage without accompaniment, without absolute pitch you may end up drifting.

Also, a lot of classical composers enjoyed elaborate key changes: e.g., you'll have your main theme in A major, and then it appears again in D major, and later it comes back as A major. If you have absolute pitch (those composers likely did), then they all sound different, as if you first see a picture in black and white and later it comes back in blue. If you don't, then that part of composition completely passes over your brain.

crazygringo• 1 year ago

But if you're singing a long passage without accompaniment, without absolute pitch you may end up drifting.

You don't need absolute pitch to not drift.

You just need to maintain relative pitch. That maintenance requires attention and some practice, but it doesn't even remotely require absolute pitch.

And remember that singers with absolute pitch have their own problems, in that singing the same song when accompanied by a new piano that is tuned slightly differently becomes much harder and annoying. Whereas for most people they don't notice and sing in tune with it effortlessly.

Also, people with relative pitch certainly experience key changes, the sense of tension introduced by a new one, and the sense of "returning home" and relief when you go back. Composers write for that sensation which is shared by everyone. Not for any kind of absolute perception. And I don't know why you think classical composers overwhelmingly had absolute pitch. Do you have any evidence?

physicles2• 1 year ago

It can also hurt in some situations. I have absolute pitch, and used to sing in a choir. Sometimes the director would decide to use a different key than the one written on the sheet music, which meant that I’d have to transpose in my head in real time.

Orzelius• 1 year ago

Also, a lot of classical composers enjoyed elaborate key changes: e.g., you'll have your main theme in A major, and then it appears again in D major, and later it comes back as A major. If you have absolute pitch (those composers likely did), then they all sound different, as if you first see a picture in black and white and later it comes back in blue. If you don't, then that part of composition completely passes over your brain.

Even if one doesn't have perfect pitch they'll still notice the key change itself unless it's performed very subtly or after a long pause. If the key change is drastic enough the timbre of the instruments will change as well resulting in a different sound.

jdietrich2• 1 year ago

Absolute pitch is frequently a nuisance. American orchestras tune to A=440, but in Europe A=442 or A=443 are more common. Analog recordings often deviate significantly from any pitch standard, either due to inaccuracies in tape speeds or due to a deliberate stylistic choice. These variations are completely unnoticeable to someone with good relative pitch, but can be a source of confusion or discomfort for someone with absolute pitch.

skulk• 1 year ago

Just to provide a data point here, I have absolute pitch (from a very young age) in that all the different notes FEEL different in an incredibly obvious way the same way different animal noises feel different. I have no issues identifying chords played on pianos, even somewhat dissonant ones. Listening to slightly detuned orchestras doesn't bother me at all. I probably can't tell 440 from 432 or whatever.

xhevahir• 1 year ago

This guy, Chris Aruffo, has an interesting blog about his research in absolute pitch. I don't think it's been updated in quite a while though: http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/

laurieg2• 1 year ago

What's the gold standard for learning relative pitch?

Related, how can you learn to hear multiple notes at the same time? It blows my mind that people can hear a piano chord and pick out individual notes.

jdietrich2• 1 year ago

There are lots of different approaches to ear training. A very useful starting point is an app like EarMaster or Perfect Ear, which offer a Duolingo-like gamified course in ear training.

Hearing simultaneous notes is really just a matter of decomposition. Can you sing the first three notes of Kumbaya or Ob-la-di Ob-la-da? If you can, then you already know the three notes of a major chord - root, major third and perfect fifth. If I were to play you a C major triad on the piano (C E G) then you'd easily be able to pick out those individual notes. Most people already have that kind of intuitive sense of pitch, they just need to learn how to name things to systematise that intuition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhDIm_2qS5s

laurieg2• 1 year ago

If I were to play you a C major triad on the piano (C E G) then you'd easily be able to pick out those individual notes

Unfortunately, that is exactly the thing I cannot do. I play the piano but I can't pick out multiple notes. From a simultaneous sound. To me it's like witchcraft. Same with singing. I find it very hard to tell if a recording is one person singing or two people singing in harmony.

lmpdev2• 1 year ago

I’ve learnt absolute pitch for a single note - F3

I was learning to sing for the first time at age 20. Learning Michael Buble’s cover of the jazz standard Fever with my singing teacher at the time Mohini

It took about an hour of reinforcing the first 5-10 seconds of the start of the song on loop

That was almost 10 years ago - still nail that specific pitch every time

From there I can usually sing that scale correctly without reference, but it’s all anchored on the initial interval of F3 down to D#3

Accurate relative ear is more important anyway, I don’t sing anymore but if I was learning I’d focus on intervals and scales/modes over anything else

———

Another helpful interval is just nailing the octave jump, an example is Chet Baker’s You Don’t Know What Love Is

sarreph• 1 year ago

That is not absolute pitch - it’s pitch memory, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_memory

I too have experienced the same phenomenon of being able to recall a particular note.

Agree with you that relative pitch is more important!

mettamage• 1 year ago

Oh, is absolute pitch the ability to recall every note?

I once heard a C on a piano and played it a few times and then remembered it. I thought it was absolute pitch.

lolinder7• 1 year ago

They're the same phenomenon, just different amounts and precision of memory.

Source: my wife and multiple of her siblings have absolute pitch and we've spent hours and hours talking about their experience with it.

TimByte4• 1 year ago

Totally agree that a solid relative ear is more practical for most musicians. Absolute pitch is cool, but, I think, relative pitch and good interval recognition are what actually make someone a great singer...

f1shy4• 1 year ago

Absolute is no cool at all. At age 40, when physical changes deform the ear (same as with the eyes) your absolute scale will shift. People with real absolute pitch have problems to enjoy music (much worst to play) after 40.

I wanted to have my kids have absolute pitch, then I asked around, and was told to me that is not the best idea.

djmips3• 1 year ago

Why aren't you singing anymore?

lmpdev2• 1 year ago

Housing crisis in Australia

My past few rentals are too small to practice at home without annoying the neighbours

Singing practice is really repetitive so even if you sound good it’s irritating to everyone else

anigbrowl• 1 year ago

Code availability The codes used in this study were not available to the public.

Eyeroll

TimByte4• 1 year ago

Many singers can reproduce pitches with high accuracy, even without formal AP. Would love to see a study comparing pitch accuracy in trained singers versus instrumentalists

20k2• 1 year ago

size of error reduced by 42.7% (from 2.62 to 1.50 semitones) for the trained timbre, which generalized partially to an untrained timbre. Overall, results provide more convincing evidence for the learnability of AP judgment in adulthood beyond the critical period, similar to most perceptual and cognitive abilities.
they learned to name an average of 7.08 pitches

Its worth noting that this does not fall under a standard definition of absolute pitch. Being a semitone out with 7 tones of recognition isn't even close

Its always been true that adults can learn pseudo absolute pitch - ie improved pitch classification compared to an untrained adult. What's up for debate is if you can learn true absolute pitch, which has an error of 0 semitones, and you can name all 12 pitches with a 0% error rate

The slightly amusing thing is that the evidence they have is precisely the opposite of the conclusion - you cannot learn absolute pitch as an adult

debeloo2• 1 year ago

you cannot learn absolute pitch as an adult

Why?

4gotunameagain2• 1 year ago

You can easily look it up yourself.

   Early musical training appears to be necessary but not sufficient for the development of AP. Forty percent of musicians who had begun training at ≤4 years of age reported AP, whereas only 3% of those who had initiated training at ⩾9 years of age did so. Self-reported AP possessors were four times more likely to report another AP possessor in their families than were non–AP possessors. These data suggest that both early musical training and genetic predisposition are needed for the development of AP.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000292970...

soyyo2• 1 year ago

this is a brain thing, it appears that the neural parts for whatever is going inside to have absolute pitch can only be formed when the brain is still developing as a child.

mandmandam• 1 year ago

you cannot learn absolute pitch as an adult

Interestingly, you maybe can; albeit with chemical help [0] (previously mentioned in the comments).

Unfortunately, the drug involved (valproic acid) also comes with serious side effects including liver toxicity, weight gain, and birth defects.

0 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3848041/

bjoli6• 1 year ago

Of course you can learn absolute pitch. I learned to hit C, F and A 100% of the time in just a couple of weeks without trying very hard at all. I just tried to hear one of them every time I walked past a piano before chilecking if I was right.

Now, that is "remembered" pitch, but to this day - despite not trying to uphold it - I still just know if a note is a C, F or A. I can sing the notes within about 10 cents if you give about 5 seconds to find them.

I am absolutely certain I could learn every other note, because I never mistake an e, B or Ab for any of the other notes. They sound completely different.

A friend of mine - a solfege teacher - said that she realized she had perfect pitch about a year into her education. Her teacher said he could usually stop telling people the key somewhere around that time.

20k2• 1 year ago

There's no scientific evidence that adults can learn absolute pitch with anywhere near the accuracy of people who've had it from a young age, despite a lot of testing. The article we're talking about is a negative result with that respect

I'd love to see any controlled experiment indicating its possible, but every study has turned up a negative here. People can learn pseudo absolute pitch, but its not the same thing

PaulRobinson• 1 year ago

Whenever AP comes up I feel I see the same discussion over and over:

A bunch of people with AP state that AP can't be learned in adulthood, that it is a rare gift that can only be learned in childhood.

Another group of people who enjoy music deeply who did not learn AP as children counter: they have trained themselves to be able to recognise notes well enough that they can play or sing by ear, to a high degree of accuracy.

AP crowd counter: you've learned relative pitch. That's a party trick. The "gift" is being able to hear an obscure note and immediately recognise it out of context and to tell when it's even very slightly out by a tiny amount.

The other group counter that that sounds like a party trick, and anyway, doesn't that make getting old really horrible as hearing changes?

AP group insist that no, it's not a party trick and you can't come in. The difference is like being a native fluent speaker of a language instead of learning it as an adult: when you learn a language you translate it in your head, that's not true fluency, and people with AP have "fluency" in tones in a way that isn't like a "translation step" that learned behaviour is like.

Then the other group come back with "Wait, I know people who became fluent in another language in adulthood by complete immersion and who think and dream in their adopted language, so are you saying that's not real, or that a musical equivalent can't exist?"

AP crowd stand firm: you just don't understand, you can't learn it, please don't say you can, you're doing something different...

And this goes on, and on, and on...

And this thread is just more of that.

People with AP insist it can't be learned in adulthood, but I'm not sure what scientific evidence they have to support this, other than their own (seemingly unscientific) observations and interpretation. Studies that show RP improving towards AP are dismissed because the subjects have yet to reach the same skill level, but without evidence that it can't.

I think most people would argue relative pitch allows you to enjoy listening to and creating music at least as much as AP does, but does not have the downside of hearing degradation causing existential angst and disappointment to the same degree in later life.

As somebody who likes listening to music and occasionally tinkering at a keyboard or bass guitar, I'm a bit confused why this is such a contentious debate every time, and why in particular the AP crowd are insistent they're special even though it seems to be a curse to have AP rather than a blessing, as they themselves describe it.

I'm also not convinced that somebody starting out with RP can't develop "fluency" in terms of AP over time. Instead of everyone just arguing about their own interpretations and experiences, is there clear science one way or the other?

SoleilAbsolu• 1 year ago

Haha that is a great summary, I was disappointed that skimming the paper, it didn't appear to have a link to an online AP course that individuals can try for themselves. I'd happily put in 25 hours over 8 weeks and report back. I'm slightly surprised that no one in these threads has claimed they developed AP through the David Lucas Burge "Develop Perfect Pitch" course that was in 2-page ads in music magazines all through the '80's and '90s.

I have what I consider advanced RP, thankfully my first guitar/bass teacher 40 years ago gave me a list of intervals in popular music (half-step: Jaws, whole step: Sound of Music 'Doe a deer', minor third: Smoke on The Water and so on). I progressed to recognizing interval combos and fairly complex jazz chords. I played in a short-lived group with 2 brilliant AP-ers, and despite their efforts to lose me, I could match them in playing any song by ear (that I'd never played before), though I could only occasionally name a note just by hearing it, or sing, say, an 'A' and have it spot-on to the cent.

soyyo2• 1 year ago

Maybe someone can correct me, but I don't think this is absolute pitch. It is pseudo-perfect pitch, based on pitch memory, and it was already known that it can be trained.

As an amateur musician myself, I understand the desire to have perfect pitch, but it seems that the problem of perfect pitch is seldom mentioned.

Usually, people talk about the common annoyances, such as transposed music, non-standard tuning, choruses that drift in pitch, etc... but the actual hard one is that it fades away with age. First, it starts "shifting," and people will start to believe that a note is actually a semitone higher or lower than it actually is, and then eventually, it is completely lost.

There is research that indicates that this is very common, and people with perfect pitch are more likely to lose it than to keep it. This is a huge blow—imagine a whole life relying on this one skill to support all your music-related activities, and suddenly, it's completely gone.

I think this video gives a nice summary of all this from the point of view of a musician:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRaACa1Mrd4

bjoli6• 1 year ago

I think one problem that the people with extreme sensitivity have is that not only choruses but also orchestras drift in pitch.

I work professionally, and some orchestras are extreme. My orchestra usually starts at a at 442 but end up at 443,5 but I have played in places that start 441 and end up above 445. Good orchestras with very good reputation.

Some are extreme at the other end. I played with the Munich Phil and despite the concert being a killer for every woodwind and brass instrument involved, we didn't drift a cent despite the hall being almost 28c and the end of the concert.

A colleague (now retired) had the crazy kind of perfect pitch where he could say the note and how many cents off it was. At least to something like a 5 cent sensitivity.

Back before we switched to LED lighting that must have been horrible. The stage r got crazy hot during concerts, and I remember having to struggle to not end up at 446.

tzs• 1 year ago

Piano tones from three octaves (C4 to B6) were generated using two different digital pianos (Roland FP60 and Yamaha Arius), and guitar tones spanning the same range were generated by an online synthesizer

B6 would be the 31st fret on the high E string on a guitar, which is why I suppose they had to use a synthesizer instead of a real guitar since real guitars generally have 19 frets (classical), 19-22 (acoustic), or 21-24 (electric). Guitars have been built with more than 24 frets but most guitar players will have never played one or even heard one.

Personally I'd find about half of that C4 to B6 range to be in what I consider to be the annoyingly screechy range which would probably affect my performance on the training.

antoinebalaine• 1 year ago

That's not perfect pitch. 90% accuracy in pitch recognition based on memory retrieval is not perfect pitch. As for the bunch of comments here claiming they acquired AP at adult age for "only" one or two notes: that's not perfect pitch either. AP can't be acquired at adult age - your brain only learns to recognize pitches during your neural plasticity phase as a baby (provided it's exposed to enough variety), just like it acquires speech and color-discrimination. Also, AP is not a party trick. Not having it is akin to being color blind - even if you could "remember" what colors are supposed to look like, you would _still_ be color blind.

That the article's abstract and researchers are willing to claim the opposite despite their own evidence : this smells like butt-hurt denial.

viburnum• 1 year ago

Looking at the graphs it appears that two people had big improvements and the others not very much.

Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood

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