Absolute and relative pitch processing in tone learning tasks

Abstract

Saffran offers her results as support for ‘the hypothesisthat absolute pitch is present in infancy’ (Abstract).Before evaluating her claim, it is reasonable to reviewsome facts about absolute pitch (AP) and about APpossessors. Since the phenomenon was first submittedto scientific scrutiny (Stumpf, 1883), AP has been definedas the ability to identify a specific tone by its musicalname (e.g. C) or to produce it (by singing or adjustinga tone generator) without using a reference pitch. Theassumption is that individuals with AP have a fixed,or stable, internal template of note names (e.g. C, D, E,F, G, A, B) attached to specific frequencies or pitches(Ward, 1999). When AP possessors wake up in themorning, they can name any isolated tone whose pitchcorresponds to a note on the musical scale. Indeed,such unconventional test procedures have been used topreclude adults’ reliance on reference tones (Petran,1932). More commonly, the test context is configured tominimize the availability of reference tones (Costall,1985). AP is considered special because of its relative rarity(1 in 10,000: Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993). In general,trained musicians or musically educated amateurs haverelative pitch (RP) rather than AP. Instead of the stabletemplate associated with AP, RP involves a movabletemplate corresponding to precise relations among notesof the scale (Ward, 1999). RP possessors recognize themusical interval (pitch distance) between any pair oftones (e.g. perfect fifth, major third), which enables themto name the second of two tones when the first is named.When they hear a single (unnamed) tone, they can pro-duce a second tone to yield a specified interval. The lessdeveloped RP skills of musically untrained individualscan be evaluated in other ways: judging a well-knownmelody as in or out of tune (Drayna, Manichaikul, deLange, Snieder & Spector, 2001), or judging whether theinterval between two tones matches an interval in long-term memory (e.g. the first two tones of