Absolute Pitch Possessors Research Articles

Absolute Pitch: An Approach for Identification of Genetic and Nongenetic Components

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to recognize a pitch, without an external reference. By surveying more than 600 musicians in music conservatories, training programs, and orchestras, we have attempted to dissect the influences of early musical training and genetics on the development of this ability. 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. We developed a simple computer-based acoustical test that has allowed us to subdivide AP possessors into distinct groups, on the basis of their performance. Investigation of individuals who performed extremely well on this test has already led us to identify several families that will be suitable for studies of the genetic basis of AP.

The factors governing the degree of difficulty in memorizing melodies by absolute-pitch possessors

The factors governing the degree of difficulty in memorizing melodies by absolute-pitch possessors

An illusory reconstruction of auditory elements

A new pattern of auditory illusion was invented, proving that the perceptual system reconstructs auditory elements, such as onsets, terminations, and pitches. A typical stimulus pattern comprised three harmonic components (fundamental, second, and third), changing their frequencies in the same rate in the same direction. The duration of the lowest component was 1800 ms. The second/third component occupied the first 1000 ms and the third/second component occupied the last 1000 ms, thus making an overlap of 200 ms in the middle. Eight subjects listened to the stimulus patterns and expressed their percepts by drawing and aural reports. The general tendency was that they perceived one continuously ascending or descending tone and a short independent tone with a clear pitch in the middle. Since there was no actual short tone in the middle, it can be concluded that an illusory tone was created perceptually by connecting an onset of one component with a termination of another component. Absolute pitch judgments of the middle tone by absolute pitch possessors showed no consistent tendency. Connection between an onset/termination and its pitch does not seem strong.

Frequency and frequency-ratio resolution by possessors of absolute and relative pitch: Examples of categorical perception?

The methodology derived from the trace-context theory of intensity resolution (Durlach and Braida, 1969; Macmillan et al., 1988) was applied to resolution over an octave range along two continua: a sequential-frequency-ratio continuum for possessors of relative pitch (RP), and a pure-tone frequency continuum for possessors of absolute pitch (AP). The performance of both RP and AP possessors was exceptional in that total identification sensitivity along both continua was much greater than identification sensitivity along unidimensional psychophysical continua characterized by the 7 +/- 2 rule. In addition, the performance of RP possessors was exceptional in that, on average, total sensitivity for identification resolution was greater than sensitivity for resolution in discrimination. Finally, identification sensitivity between category prototypes (chromatic semits) along both continua was approximately the same as identification sensitivity between phonemic category prototypes along speech continua, despite the fact that both the discrimination ranges and the total number of categories are much larger for the two pitch continua.

Observation of a reversible, medication-induced change in pitch perception

This paper reports a study of an absolute pitch possessor who, upon administration of the psychoactive drug Tegratol (carbamazepine), experienced a significant change in her pitch perception. The subject's performance both in producing, as well as in identifying, random-frequency tones was measured, covering the period of administration of the drug, as well as control periods before and after. The main effect of the drug was a downward shift of the perceived pitch as compared to the two control periods. The magnitude of the shift was observed to increase with increasing fundamental frequency of the stimulus; the average shift was about one semitone. Detailed results on the frequency dependence and time dependence of the pitch shifts are presented. This may be the first documented report of a significant, reversible change of pitch perception caused by a medication.

Absolute pitch—electrophysiological evidence

People who have the ability to label or to produce notes without any reference are considered to possess Absolute Pitch (AP). Others, who need a reference in order to identify the notes, possess Relative Pitch (RP). The AP ability is assumed to reflect a unique, language-like representation of non-lexical musical notes in memory. The purpose of this study was to examine this assumption by comparing Event Related Potentials (ERP) of musicians with and without AP, to lexical and non-lexical representation of musical material. Subjects were eighteen young adult musicians. Seven were AP and eleven RP. Auditory stimuli, presented through earphones, were piano notes (non-lexical) or a voice saying the note's name (lexical). Visual stimuli, presented on a computer display were note symbols (non-lexical) or letters (lexical). Subjects performed a number of tasks, combining the two modalities (visual and auditory) and stimulus types (lexical and non-lexical), and reaction times (RT), performance accuracy and evoked potentials were recorded. The tasks forced the subjects to transfer mental representations of musical material from one mode to another. Our most important findings were the differences, between groups, in the scalp distribution of P300 amplitudes. We conclude that absolute pitch possessors use the same internal language as relative pitch possessors, when possible, but the distribution of the underlying brain activity is different between AP and RP subjects.

The interdependence of pitch and temporal judgments by absolute pitch possessors.

The auditory tau and the kappa effects show that there is time-pitch interdependence in our perception. Our judgments of pitch separation between two tones depend on the temporal interval between them (the auditory tau effect), and our judgments of the tones' temporal interval depend on their pitch separation (the kappa effect). The mechanisms underlying this interdependence were investigated by studying the auditory tau and the kappa effect in three experiments. Comparisons were made between results obtained from subjects with absolute pitch and those who did not have absolute pitch, and two frequency ranges of pure tones (octave and whole-tone conditions) were selected. The procedures had been used in previous experiments (Shigeno, 1986), in which the auditory tau and the kappa effects were compared in speech and nonspeech stimuli. The present results demonstrate that the auditory tau effect does not occur when possessors of absolute pitch judge the closeness of stimuli in pitch, except when the stimulus continuum consists of tones that do not correspond to musical notes in the whole-tone condition. The kappa effect was obtained in the judgment of possessors of absolute pitch in both the octave and the whole-tone conditions. These findings suggest that the interaction between temporal interval and pitch judgment might be explained in terms of the two different memory modes for retaining the pitch of tones, and that these effects occur at the precategorical level.

Absolute Pitch and Event-Related Brain Potentials

An event-related brain potential (ERP) component called mismatch negativity (MMN) is elicited by physically deviant auditory stimuli presented among repetitive, "standard," stimuli. MMN reflects a mismatch process between sensory input from the deviant stimulus and a shortduration neuronal representation developed by the standard stimulus. The MMN amplitude is known to correlate with pitch-discrimination performance. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the MMN is different in absolute pitch (AP) possessors and nonpossessors. ERPs were recorded from AP and non-AP groups, which were matched with regard to musical training. It was found that deviant stimuli differing from standard tones by a quartertone or a semitone elicited an MMN irrespective of whether the stimulus was located on (white key/black key) or off the Western musical scale. These results were obtained with both sinusoidal and piano tones. The MMN was larger and earlier when the stimuli were piano tones than when they were sinusoidal tones and when the standard-deviant difference amounted to a semitone rather than a quartertone. However, differences between the groups were not found in auditory information processing reflected by the MMN component of the ERP. In the light of the earlier MMN results showing a close correlation between the MMN and pitch- discrimination accuracy, it might be concluded that pitch discrimination and identification are based on different brain mechanisms. In addition, the differences in the MMN amplitude and latency between sinusoidal and piano tones might be interpreted as suggesting that sensory memory traces, as reflected by the MMN, are capable of storing information of very complex sound structures also.

音高2次元性と絶対音感保有者における音高認知

According to the view that the attribute of tones has two components: & ldquo;pitch & rdquo; (tone height) and & ldquo;chroma & rdquo; (tone chroma), absolute pitch (AP) is to be defined as the ability of & ldquo;chroma & rdquo; identification. The purpose of this study was to examine how well AP possessors of the ability to identify & ldquo;chroma & rdquo;, and non-possessors of no such ability could identify & ldquo;pitch & rdquo;. Subjects were 20 non-possessors, 10 AP possessors who were able to identify all tones' chroma (AP possessors [all]) and 10 AP possessors who were able to identify only white key tones' chroma (AP possessors [white]). According to our study, a pitch identification task showed differences among groups. AP possessors [all] showed to be superior to non-possessors. By contrast, AP possessors [white] proved to be the same as non-possessors. The results suggested that AP possessors [all] identified pitch absolutely, and non-possessors did it according to its relative heights of tones. AP possessors [white] showed confused error patterns.

Absolute pitch.

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify a tone's pitch or to produce a tone at a particular pitch without the use of an external reference pitch. AP exists in varying degrees among people generally described as AP possessors. AP possessors vary not only in the accuracy with which they can identify pitches but also in their ability to produce pitches absolutely and in their ability to identify tones of various timbers and in various pitch registers. AP possessors' memory for pitches is mediated by verbal pitch names; they do not have superior memory for pitches per se. Although the etiology of AP is not yet completely understood, evidence points toward the early-learning theory. This theory states that AP can be learned by anyone during a limited period early in development, up to about age 6, after which a general developmental shift from perceiving individual features to perceiving relations among features makes AP difficult or impossible to acquire.

Memorising Two Melodies of Different Style

Thirty one freshmen of the Academy of Music, classified either as possessors of absolute pitch (N=5) or non-possessors (N=26), memorised two melodies: one having a clear tonal structure, another one based on a modal scale. Generally, the culturally remote (modal) melody was more difficult for both groups of subjects, and the rhythm of the melodies caused more trouble in reproductions than pitch. Qualitative analysis of the measures sung during reproductions suggested that the musical material and individual character- istics of the subjects not controlled in the study influenced strategies of learning applied during the experiment, rather than the possession of AP per se. Results of a MANOVA showed no significant indication that the possession of AP modifies the proportions of contour, interval and rhythm errors during melodic memorisation of both melodies, though AP subjects memorised both melodies faster than non-APs. They also scored signifi- cantly better in retaining the key and storing pitch information when they recalled the melodies from long term memory.

Perception of Musical Intervals by Absolute Pitch Possessors

Previous studies have demonstrated that absolute pitch (AP) possessors can directly perceive the musical pitch quality (pitch class) of a tone presented in isolation. However, an isolated tone without musical context has no relevance to music, and AP ability should be examined in musically meaningful situations. In this study, AP possessors tried to identify the musical intervals between pairs of successive tones. The first tone (a reference) was either in-tune C according to the conventional pitch standard or out-of-tune C (a quarter-tone higher than standard C). The identification performance was less accurate and slower in the out-of-tune reference condition than in the in-tune condition. In contrast, AP nonpossessors showed no significant difference in performance in the two conditions, as predicted by the principle of equality under transposition. These results suggest that AP subjects tend to adhere to AP in relative pitch tasks, and that at least some AP listeners may have developed a strong dependence on AP at the sacrifice of relative pitch. AP may not have any advantage in music, in which relative pitch, not AP, is essential. Rather, AP may conflict with relative pitch and, in some cases, harm musical pitch processing.

Observation of a medication-induced change in pitch perception.

This paper reports on a study of an absolute pitch possessor who, upon administration of the psychoactive drug Tegretol (carbamazepine), experienced a significant change in her pitch perception. The subject’s performance both in producing as well as in identifying random tones was measured, covering the period of administration of the drug, as well as control periods before and after. The main effect was a downward shift of the pitch perceived when a synthesized tone was heard, as compared to the perception during the two control periods. The magnitude of the shift was observed to increase with increasing frequency of the stimulus; the average shift was about one semitone. Detailed results on the frequency dependence and time dependence of the pitch shifts are presented. An upward pitch shift of comparable magnitude was observed when the subject was requested to produce a musical note identified by its name. To our knowledge, this is the first documented report of a significant, reversible change of pitch perception caused by a medication. [Work partially supported by the University of Washington Graduate School Research Fund.]

Absolute-Pitch Judgments of Black and White-Key Pitches

Absolute-pitch possessors have been reported to identify black-key pitches less quickly and accurately than they identify white-key pitches. However, it is possible in these experiments that the greater speed of identifying white-compared with black-key pitches was due to a motor response bias because the motor requirements for indicating a black-key pitch were more difficult than those for indicating a white-key pitch. The greater accuracy in identifying white-compared with black-key pitches may have been due to a choice response bias favoring white-key pitch responses. We compared absolute- pitch judgments of black-and white-key pitches in a task free of motor response biases. Subjects compared the pitch of an auditory tone with a visually presented pitch name and responded Same or Different. The absolute- pitch possessors responded significantly more slowly to black- key auditory pitches, and to black- key visual pitch names, than to white-key pitches and pitch names. These differences may have been due to perceptual and retrieval processes associated with the frequencies with which black-and white-key pitches and pitch names occur in music literature. Another possible explanation is that absolute-pitch possessors may learn absolute pitch for only white-key pitches in development and may interpolate blackkey pitches from neighboring white-key pitches. Experiments to test these alternative accounts are proposed.

The Speed of Musical Pitch Identification by Absolute-Pitch Possessors

Three experiments on absolute- pitch identification were performed to examine how quickly and accurately subjects with absolute pitch could respond to different pitch classes. Sixty different pitches in a five-octave range were tested. Subjects with absolute pitch tried to identify the tones as rapidly as possible by pressing corresponding keys on a musical keyboard or a numerical keypad, or by naming vocally. Converging evidence was obtained indicating that the speed and accuracy of responses were directly related. In general, responses to the white-key notes on the musical keyboard were faster and more accurate than those to the black-key notes, C and G being most quickly and accurately identified. This seems to reflect the differential accessibility of pitch classes in the long-term memory of the absolute-pitch possessors, which may be interpreted as a consequence of the acquisition process of absolute pitch in early life.

Categorical perception revisited, yet again: Frequency and frequency ratio resolution by “possessors” and other musicians

Macmillan et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84, 1262–1280 (1988)] recently demonstrated the advantages gained by applying experimental techniques and analyses derived from a model of intensity resolution to the phenomenon of categorical perception of speech. In this paper, the application of these techniques to both the perception of musical intervals (frequency ratios) by musicians with relative pitch, and the perception of frequency by musicians with absolute pitch is discussed. The results suggest that the perception of frequency ratios by musicians differs from perception along most unidimensional psychophysical continua (characterized by the “7 ± 2” principle) in two ways. First, identification resolution for frequency ratios is much better than for stimuli along 7 ± 2 continua. Second, musical interval perception seems to be a case of ideal categorical perception (as originally defined) in that musicians apparently can discriminate between two musical intervals only to the extent that they can differentially identify them. Although the identification resolution for frequency by absolute pitch possessors is much better than that of nonpossessors (whose identification resolution is consistent with the 7 ± 2 limitation), their discrimination resolution for frequency remains much better than their identification resolution. [Work supported by NIDCD.]

Multiple coding strategies in the retention of musical tones by possessors of absolute pitch.

Eighteen musicians with absolute pitch (AP) confirmed by screening tests participated in tonal and verbal short-term-retention tasks. In the tonal task, subjects identified three successive piano tones by their letter names. Recall of these note names after 18 sec of counting backwards was near perfect. Recall after an 18-sec delay filled with random piano tones was also near perfect. In contrast, the same subjects demonstrated significant forgetting when required to retain letter trigrams while counting backwards for 18 sec. These results were essentially replicated in a second experiment using longer (27 sec) retention intervals, a more demanding verbal interference task, and an active musical interference task (singing a descending scale). We interpret these results as indicating that retention of note names by possessors of AP is not limited to verbal encoding; rather, multiple codes (e.g., auditory, kinesthetic, and visual imagery) are probably used.

Absolute and relative pitch identification by absolute pitch possessors

The identification of absolute and relative pitch was investigated with absolute pitch (AP) possessors and nonpossessors as subjects. In an AP experiment, isolated tones of different pitches (including microtonal pitches) were presented as stimuli in random order. Subjects were requested to select and press a key corresponding to each stimulus on a musical keyboard. While the responses of non‐AP subjects were widely dispersed, the AP subjects could categorize the presented tones quite consistently. Specifically, they identified white‐key notes more correctly and rapidly than black‐key notes. In a relative pitch experiment, isolated melodic ascending intervals from the minor second to the octave were randomly presented. The lower tone of an interval was either middle C, F♯, or a 50‐cent higher D♯. Then non‐AP subjects performed more or less successfully and almost equally regardless of transposition. On the other hand, the AP subjects made more errors and gave longer response times when the lower tone of an interval was F♯ or the higher D♯ than when it was C. These results suggest that at least some AP possessors have difficulty in dealing with musical intervals and tend to rely upon their AP sense in the face of a relative pitch task.

Musical pitch identification by absolute pitch possessors.

Musical pitch identification was investigated in two experiments in which absolute pitch (AP) possessors and nonpossessors categorized tones presented in isolation into predetermined pitch classes. Stimuli consisted of 60 different tones per octave (at intervals of 20 cents). The experiments were designed to minimize the possibility that subjects could use strategies other than AP in performing the task. The results clearly differentiated AP possessors from nonpossessors in accuracy and speed of responding. Those subjects who had AP could categorize the tones quite consistently by using musical qualities of the tones (tone chroma). However, they did not respond uniformly to all stimuli; they responded more accurately and quickly to some musically important tones in a C-major mode (C, E, or G).On the other hand, those who had no AP showed almost random response patterns. In the absence of a tonal context, they could not use tone chroma, but onlytone height. It is argued that tone chroma should be defined as the musical characteristics of tones in a tonal context, and that AP possessors are unique in that they can perceive it absolutely in the absence of any musical context. Although AP was believed to be very rare, it was proved here that a phenomenally large proportion of the subjects tested had AP. The correlation was observed between AP possession and early musical training that started at the age of 3 to 5.

Absolute pitch: A methodological fallacy

The research on absolute pitch (AP) has already celebrated its first centenary. So far, researchers (and the public) have divided listeners into AP possessors and non‐AP possessors. Analyses of the tasks included in AP performances show that it is unsuitable to speak about AP or RP (relative pitch) without qualification. Certainly there are large individual differences in the capacity of naming the pitch of a tonal sound presented without prior reference. But responses are bound to be (more or less) normally divided, with the standard deviation as measure of performance. In such a view, the decision of whether or not a person is an AP possessor depends on the category width of the labels, which means that the distinction between AP and non‐AP is relative, not absolute.