Songs, cell phones, absolute pitch: Long-term pitch memory for familiar stimuli

Abstract

Absolute pitch (AP) is a rare phenomenon as formally defined, but long-term pitch memory appears much more common when tests involve familiar musical material and do not require the use of formally learned pitch labels. It is unclear whether AP possession confers additional advantages to long-term pitch memory in such tasks or merely combines a rare ability to form pitch-label associations with a more general capacity for pitch memory. To test this, 36 trained musicians—18 AP possessors and 18 non-possessors with equivalent age of onset and duration of musical training—were asked to recall and vocalize a familiar song, and their responses were compared with the pitches of the actual recordings; this was repeated with their cell phone ringtones. Both groups were significantly more accurate than chance on the song task, but only the AP possessors performed above chance on the ringtone task. The findings confirm the existence of widespread long-term pitch memory but also point to an AP advantage under some circumstances.