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Absolute Pitch

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Music Perception 21, 105 110. Tone-language talkers ... Multiple coding strategies in the retention of musical tones by possessors?of absolute pitch. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: 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.h
tm
4
(No Transcript)
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) lt4 years of age
40 reported AP gt9 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 Perception 21, 105110
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
Categorical Perception - 2
2. Run an identification experiment
100
Sharp phoneme boundary
/ba/
0
17
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
/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 lt20 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, 803806
23
Who has it? NatureLinks 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 dont 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
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