Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/04/259552442/want-perfect-pitch-you-could-pop-a-pill-for-that?sc=ipad&f=1001

by bane • 13 years ago

80 45 13 years ago

Don't need to look far to find claims of some fairly serious side effects of the drug in many contexts, but it's interesting to hear that it's possible to tamper with neuroplasticity artificially.

lsv1• 13 years ago

I never figured I'd need to hack my vocal cords... or that I'd see a post like this on HN...

rosser• 13 years ago

For reference, valproic acid (and/or its salt) is sold under the trade name Depakote. This is not a drug you should consider taking lightly, whatever neuroplasticity benefits it might confer.

midas007• 13 years ago

Cosmetic neuropharmacology seems to have a miracle drug for everything and the side-effects to match: ie armodafinil, adderall, on and on.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

It's mainly prescribed a mood stabilizer. They'll commonly give it to you with lithium or such things.

The list of side effects is rather long, just like most of these psych meds. There's a reason bipolar folks tend to not want to take their meds or go off them.

cosmic_shame• 13 years ago

While it is often used as a mood stabilizer, it's actual pharmacological class is an anticonvulsant (i.e. an antiepileptic).

wavesounds• 13 years ago

I'd really love to have perfect pitch but I always thought it was genetic until just a few months ago. Does anyone know any adults who were able to teach themselves perfect pitch, without the aid of mind altering chemicals, and if so how'd they do it?

triplesec• 13 years ago

TL;DR: Anecdotes of how my perfect pitch does and doesn't work

I discovered I had perfect pitch as a 7-year-old on the way back from church. I was newly a cathedral chorister annd had had a lot of classical music lessons (piano, singing, even recorder) and exposure since I was 4. I just remembered what C was, assuming other people could do that.

However, it's variable, and I had to work on tuning over the next few years to calibrate my sense of pitch, because choirs go out of tune when unaccompanied, as we sometimes were. It was good practice, but I did become somewhat obsessed with knowing "correct" pitch. There are others with much more finely-tuned perfect pitch, including some who claim to hear 1/8 semitone very easily. I was never that precise, and even having not played or sung much music for a few years recently (never really bought into the magic, but loved the music, so not much church really) found my pitch calibration had dropped a semitone, although this could be general memory confusion because of all the Baroque music I did at one point in time.

webwielder• 13 years ago

If there's a pill that allows me to learn stuff as readily as a child, perfect pitch is kinda low on my list of to-do's.

sjtgraham5• 13 years ago

I'm guessing you're not a musician.

acjohnson55• 13 years ago

Perfect pitch is impressive and handy in some cases, but it's a lot more useful as a musician to spend your time perfecting skills based on relative pitch perception.

daeken2• 13 years ago

This has been covered on HN a few times, and I should point out that the sample size on this is in the low tens, so don't get too excited.

But every time I see it, I remember a really odd side effect that I had while on a mood stabilizer (not sure which -- could well have been valproic acid, the same drug referenced in the article). A few days into taking the drug, I found that music that I knew well sounded different; specifically, it sounded like it was being played back too fast, as if you were playing 44.1khz audio at 48khz. I initially figured I screwed something up on my machine, but tested myself with various other songs on other devices, and every one of them was too sharp.

This continued for several days and was the primary reason I ended up switching to a different medication; I don't have absolute pitch but I have very finely tuned relative pitch and that's not something I would be happy about giving up. Discontinuing the meds fixed it within a day, but I've always wondered exactly why that happened. Very odd.

baddox2• 13 years ago

Fascinating. Did it seem like a fixed pitch increase on everything, or did it actually mess with your relative pitch? Did you play around with a musical instrument during this?

daeken2• 13 years ago

Intervals seemed to remain the same, but it was like the root was shifted up, IIRC. I really wish I had studied it more when it was going on (not sure I did anything but listen), but I was a bit too freaked out, honestly.

jrockway• 13 years ago

This happens to me in the morning sometimes; songs seem to be in the wrong key for a bit after I first wake up.

ewoodrich2• 13 years ago

I've had a similar experience after a minor head injury, and thought I was losing my relative pitch (and since I sing, this was somewhat worrying). After some experimentation, I realized that I was hearing a slightly different pitch in each ear [1], and this had the effect of producing on oddly atonal perception of music (almost like a record playing at the wrong/inconsistent speed).

It cleared up in a few days, but was very disconcerting while it was happening (especially as I was in the middle of composing a piece of music).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplacusis

ismarc• 13 years ago

I was on a medication that did something similar (I believe it may have been depakote or gabapentin). Thing is, I have absurdly good relative pitch, and combined with an 'internalized' sound of 60Hz (I've worked around a large number of generators and high voltage equipment over the years), I have the same net effect as perfect pitch (60Hz is roughly a quarter step above B-flat, a quarter step below B).

What bugged me was the intervals were off. It's hard to describe, but, for those not familiar with how the notes are laid out, 60Hz is quarter step below B, 120 is quarter step below B, 240 is quarter step below B, and so on. However, as you get higher, the frequency difference gets larger (B is actually 61.75ish Hz and B flat is 58.25ish Hz, next higher is 123.5ish Hz and 116.5ish Hz, and so on). Things were translated ~1/4 octave higher, which completely threw everything off because the 60Hz sound no longer fell evenly between two notes or even directly on a note, it was an 1/8th step away. This meant that as the notes got further away from 60Hz (higher or lower), the distance to the note got larger. So while everything was still evenly in tune, my guidepost began to really suck.

Long story short: I have no idea why it did what it did, but it was freaky. However, it was probably the most amenable side-effect I had from the medication.

enf• 13 years ago

Did tempos sound faster too, or did just the pitches change?

jabgrabdthrow2• 13 years ago

This is very interesting to me. A while back I was fascinated with the concept of absolute pitch (some people have a qualitatively different, categorical perception of pitch) and did quite a bit of research on the topic. One resource that I invite anyone that is interested to read is the research done by this guy:

http://aruffo.com/eartraining/

Ignore the fact that he has a "learn AP here!" link - usually that is a signal that it's a scam of some kind, but in this case he has quite a bit of interesting material to back his theories if you go to "AP Research".

losvedir• 13 years ago

Wow, now that's a blast from the past! Never really thought I'd see this on HN.

I heartily recommend Chris Aruffo's work, as well. All the stuff in Research Phases 1-17 in "AP Research" is really quite fascinating and well cited. I hung on every new post as they came and was convinced that by the end of it he'd have acquired perfect pitch, but alas 10 years later it seems it was not to be. Still an interesting read, though.

treetrouble3• 13 years ago

There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously.

I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are people who have an innate talent for that too, but it's unrelated to perfect pitch.

jabgrabdthrow2• 13 years ago

I'm interested in it from a purely philosophical / phenomenological point of view. It is as if most people are colorblind, and some people can see colors. You certainly don't say that yellow is "higher" than red but "lower" than blue.

If you listen to how people with absolute pitch describe their experience, you will realize that they are experiencing perceptions that you cannot. That is interesting.

treetrouble3• 13 years ago

Sure, I just wanted to point out the phenomenon of conflating it with musical talent. I'm not suggesting it's an uninteresting concept or isn't worthy of thought/discussion

sjtgraham5• 13 years ago

Do you have perfect pitch? How can you assess the utility if you don't possess it? Perfect pitch would be very useful IMO, can you imagine what it would do to one's compositional abilities for example?

Relative pitch is just recognition of intervals between notes and the qualities of different chords, but you're right in that perfect pitch and relative pitch are quite unrelated.

70forty• 13 years ago

How do you think it would help with composition?

ewoodrich2• 13 years ago

It would likely have a negligible benefit for composition, even if notating unassisted by any pitch aid.

Since the intervals (not frequencies though) between scales are consistent regardless of the pitch of the tonic, one could compose a piece using relative pitch that they believe to be in the key of C, when actually they are "hearing" it in Bb. Precise relative pitch ability has much more utility in composition, absolute pitch would have more advantage for performance (choral starting note, woodwind tuning, on-the-fly assessment of string fingering).

It would only be useful if for some reason you needed to compose and then perform a piece without a reference pitch.

ek2• 13 years ago

You refer to perfect pitch and absolute pitch like they're different things -- do you realize that they're the same thing?

My brother and I are both musicians with perfect pitch, and we've found it useful in a variety of circumstances. To name a couple, it really helps if you're jamming and want to pick up a progression quickly, or if you're DJing and want to key match. I will concede that Traktor recently got key detection, which is nice, but especially when playing live I find that key segues will pop into my head without having to search for the next song in the right key.

Even the best relative pitch cannot help you exactly memorize a melody -- if you are unable to remember what note it actually starts on, you haven't remembered it fully.

sjtgraham5• 13 years ago

I think they are different things. Knowing the sound of a perfect fifth is not perfect pitch, but relative pitch. One could transcribe a piece of music from memory with just very good relative pitch, with the caveat they probably will transcribe it in the incorrect key.

girvo• 13 years ago

Also, the key detection in Traktor (and Torq, tho it's a little better) isn't perfect either, so it helps to have the ability yourself.

treetrouble3• 13 years ago

You refer to perfect pitch and absolute pitch like they're different things -- do you realize that they're the same thing?

Are you referring to someone else's comment? I use them interchangeably in the first paragraph

msluyter• 13 years ago

Classically trained musician without absolute pitch here. I would say yes and no to your comment. My undergrad degree was in flute, and I can assure you that absolute pitch can be quite helpful for wind players especially. My teacher had it, and would be able to tell you if you were out of tune even if you hadn't played with a piano or other reference point.

On the other hand, I once sat between two flutists who both claimed to have absolute pitch but were playing out of tune relative to each other (and each refusing to adjust to the other since... they had absolute pitch). So, it doesn't actually mean you're going to be perfect.

By "inexpensive electronic tools," perhaps you mean these tuners that you can attach to guitars and whatnot? These are certainly helpful for stringed instruments, but are basically irrelevant if you play a wind instrument. Most musicians with relative pitch only need a single reference note and then they're ok. Where relative pitch tends to fail you, however, is over longer periods of time when the pitch tends to drift. You hear this in lots of school orchestras. The pitch will tend to drift upwards (at least in the strings) over a long work. Here, no mechanical/electronic device is going to help you.

andrewflnr• 13 years ago

There's a strange preoccupation with being able to fly through willpower. It's not very useful today since there are (relatively) inexpensive devices that let you fly anywhere in the world.

Perfect pitch is a real-life superpower for musicians. I'll grant, like another commenter said, that if I had child-like neuroplasticity, attaining perfect pitch would just be icing on the cake.

bloometal• 13 years ago

The comments really confused me. I thought the article was about delivering a pitch for your startup.

I have a habit of reading the comments on HN before reading the article. Helps me confer some context to it usually, and also see if it's worth spending my time. (Yes I know I should be making my own decision.)

sjtgraham5• 13 years ago

I think perfect pitch can be acquired as an adult, I just think it becomes exponentially harder. I started to learn guitar around 12 years old, and became interested in perfect pitch after reading Steve Vai internalised A=440Hz by having a tape start to play the tone as he slept. I definitely don't have full perfect pitch, but after a while I could:

- Tune a guitar, no matter how out of tune to concert pitch without a reference pitch.

- Recall the pitch of any song I heard once, not by name, but by singing it in the key I heard it in, this includes different versions, e.g. covers, transposed into different keys. I'm not sure how common that is, but a singer I was dating could also do this too.

Most excitingly I was recently listening to Spotify while out walking when "Mr. Crowley" began to play. As Ozzy began to sing it instantly came into my head that the root of the song is D. Obviously, I was hugely excited by this!. I checked it against an instrument when I got home and sure enough I was correct. I was delighted!

mbenjaminsmith• 13 years ago

After studying guitar in high school for several intense years (was a Steve Vai fan as well) I was able to tune a guitar without a reference -- even playing all of the stings simultaneously and tuning each "through the noise".

For me it didn't extend beyond that however.

colmmacc• 13 years ago

It took me about 2 years, starting at age 25, to acquire perfect pitch. I didn't try the Vai trick, instead I ran an exercise at last once every few days that challenged me to name the note associated with a tone (out of all 12 equal-temperament tones). At first I got right about 20% of the time, but I was able to get to 100% over those two years.

But long before I could complete the exercise, I was able to tune my guitar perfectly, and I can still tune it fine in a very loud environment, or on stage without the full ability to hear it myself. After playing it for long enough a good guitar made from good tone-woods will resonate like a bell around the "home" frequencies you play a lot. For me, in DADGAD tuning that's a "D" that makes the rosewood echo, but the "A"'s are plenty strong too. If it's out by even a few cents, the guitar just plain doesn't feel right.

rybosome• 13 years ago

Did you intentionally work on developing this, or did it come naturally?

I've had the ability to name the key of a song by ear for a few years...probably since my freshman year of undergrad. At that point I had been playing guitar for about 7 years, and had somehow internalized key signature.

For me, it feels very calculated, although I didn't begin doing it intentionally. I essentially compare a new song against an internal database of known songs. For instance, my reference song in B minor is "Comfortably Numb". If I hear a new song that sounds like it's in the same key, it must also be B minor. After I built up an internal collection for each key and practiced enough, it went from being a mechanical process to an intuitive one. It's not perfect, though; most of the "boring" keys sound similar. That is, I have a lot of trouble distinguishing between C, G, and F - fewer accidentals means less "color". In addition, keys within a fifth of each other can sound really similar since they're only one accidental apart. I'll often misidentify something in Bb minor as being in F minor, or something in E as being in B. Surprisingly though, half-step differences end up sounding very different. My wife and I watched Pitch Perfect recently, and during a scene where two women were singing "Titanium", the fact that they were singing it in B minor rather than C minor was extremely apparent.

aroman• 13 years ago

At first I read this as "want a perfect pitch?" and I thought the article would be about This One Crazy Drug That VCs Hate™. I was pleasantly surprised.

dizzystar• 13 years ago

I read a quote from Joseph Hoffman about perfect pitch. I can't recall the exact quote, but it was a Q&A in his book on piano playing. It went a bit like this:

Q: Is it necessary for a musician to have perfect pitch?

A: No. I don't think I have perfect pitch, but my father did. It appears to be a double-edged sword. He couldn't recognize a Mozart tune if it was played in a different key.

(I recall the part about how he "thought" he had perfect pitch in particular because I found it odd that he didn't even know, despite his incredible talent

For those not aware, Rachmaninoff dedicated his 3rd concerto to Hoffman, though Hoffman never played it.)

mh_yam• 13 years ago

I have perfect pitch and I find it to be generally enjoyable.

It's useful, to some degree, in a musical setting; I find it very easy to hear music and reproduce it immediately (including chord/key analysis, etc). It's fun to take random songs I hear during my day and go about dissecting them.

However it has its pain points. I waste time analyzing useless things like the hum of the refrigerator or the sound of water dripping because everything sounds like a musical note. Also, I can't stand people / instruments that are not in tune. This includes professional pop artists / singers -- a lot of them sound awfully off key to me, even though in reality they probably are within a tolerance level. Ditto going to karaoke with friends who cannot sing. It destroys my ears and gives me headaches.

tzs• 13 years ago

OK, so suppose you could re-enable child-like neuroplasticity and use it to help learn something that is harder to learn as an adult than as a child. What would you try to learn?

I would go for chess. The age when you start playing chess seriously seems to have a big effect on how strong you can get. If you want to reach world class strength, it seems you have to start when you are 8 or under. Wait until you are 10 or so, and your potential seems limited to strong GM. Wait until mid teens, and strong IM seems all you can shoot for. Later than that, and maybe you will be able to make national master with a hell of a lot of work. (I may have the ages wrong here...I'm going for weak memory)

This doesn't appear to be just one of those 10000 hours types of thing. If it were just that, the early starts would not reach higher peaks--they would just reach the peaks while younger. It seems that age of starting sets your upper limit, and THEN it is a 10000 hours type of thing to reach that limit.

A foreign language would be tempting, but adults can already learn foreign languages effectively. Yes, young enough children become bilingual effortlessly, but that is if they are largely immersed in the second language for years. Arranging to be immersed in a second language for years would be hard.

Dewie• 13 years ago

In the world of music, there is no more remarkable gift than having perfect pitch. As the story goes, Ella Fitzgerald's band would use her perfect pitch to tune their instruments.

Pff. Playing drums like Buddy Rich or showing off while the band tunes their instruments - not really a tough choice (might have been really useful back then but today it seems kind of parlor trickery).

I'm much more interested in (perfect) relative pitch. Thankfully one can get better at that skill.

Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That

Related Stories