This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment List, I received this post from a customer with perfect pitch. I thought it = might have some interest to the List. David I. David, We were talking about perfect pitch at rehearsal last week, and a few = days later a friend send me a photocopy of the following article from = the December 2001 issue of=20 Discover magazine. I found it online, and am sending it on, as I = thought you might find it interesting.=20 Judy=20 =20 =20 The Biology of ... Perfect Pitch=20 Name That Tone=20 Can your child learn some of Mozart's magic?=20 By Michael Abrams=20 The psychology annex building at the University of California at San = Diego=20 has no elevator, but it has something even better: a singing = stairwell. "It's a=20 low F, I think," Diana Deutsch says, pausing on the top step to listen = to the=20 wind's howl. Deutsch has a face as round and sprightly as a sixteenth = note, a=20 red bob of hair, and a doctorate in psychology. She also has perfect = pitch. "I=20 realized I had it when I began taking piano lessons at the age of 4," = she says.=20 "It was a great surprise to me that other people could not name notes. = It was=20 as if everyone around me was unable to name colors."=20 Mozart must have known how she feels: He could name a single note from = a=20 tolling bell or a chiming pocket watch. Yet only one in 10,000 = Americans=20 has perfect pitch, and even professional musicians tend to make do = with=20 relative pitch: They can name only the intervals between notes. To=20 approximate perfect pitch, some musicians memorize just one note, = usually=20 middle C, and then use relative pitch to navigate to others. But these = pitch=20 estimators need a moment of thought to name a note, and they tend to = be=20 slightly off. (Granted, the notes themselves are a bit off: In = Handel's time, an=20 A above middle C had a pitch of 422.5 vibrations a second; these days, = that=20 same A has climbed to 440 vibrations a second.) People with perfect = pitch=20 name notes instantly and they're invariably correct.=20 For decades, biologists thought that perfect pitch was a genetic = anomaly,=20 passed on from generation to generation. Identical twins are far more = likely=20 than fraternal twins to have perfect pitch, and nearly half of all = people with=20 perfect pitch have relatives who have it. But studies by Deutsch and = others=20 have shown that perfect pitch is far more common than it seems. It's a = form=20 of speech rather than a feature of music-and like speech, it can be = learned.=20 The essential idea began to take shape in Deutsch's mind three years = ago,=20 when she was studying music perception among people from Vietnam. The = study subjects, she found, had no trouble=20 understanding her Vietnamese when she spoke at the correct pitch. "But = when I deliberately shifted my pitch-to an=20 extent that would be barely noticeable in English-it was as if I'd = said, 'I like your beat,' or 'I like your bite,' when=20 I'd meant to say, 'I like your boat.'" Just to communicate, she = realized, Vietnamese have to identify pitches correctly.=20 What seems like magic to Americans is just second nature in other = parts of the world.=20 "The real puzzle about perfect pitch is not why so few people possess = it but rather why most people do not,"=20 Deutsch says. "Everyone has an implicit form of perfect pitch, even = though we aren't all able to put a label to notes.=20 It's as if people suffer from a kind of anomia: They can recognize the = note but can't label it. What's learned as a child=20 is the ability to label." In a study published in 1994, psychologist = Daniel Levitin at the University of Oregon asked=20 subjects to sing hit songs such as "Hotel California" from memory. = Forty percent came within a semitone (the=20 change from F to F-sharp, for instance) of the first pitch on the = recording. If someone was a little off-key, it was=20 probably due to their singing ability: They could hear the correct = pitches in their heads; they just couldn't reproduce=20 them. "I have perfect pitch, but I sing terribly out of tune," Deutsch = says. "Toscanini had perfect pitch, but I've heard=20 it said that he insisted on humming out of tune . . . very irritating = to the players. There really is a difference between=20 perception and production."=20 Deutsch has spent the past few years circling in on this innate sense = of pitch through a series of experiments. To=20 demonstrate, she sits me down in front of a microphone and digital = audiotape machine and asks me to talk about=20 anything I wish for five minutes. Although she seems interested in = hearing about my flight from New York and the=20 malfunctioning flaps on the airplane, she's really after my pitch = range. Most people's voices, she says, stay within a=20 single octave-a do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, identified by the = name of its first and last notes. "Congratulations,"=20 Deutsch says, after analyzing my soliloquy, "you're a G-sharp, just = like me."=20 Pitch ranges are often a handy way for people to distinguish males = from females and very young children from adults.=20 But Deutsch thinks the distinctions we make are far more subtle. "You = can evaluate whether a person is speaking=20 your dialect based on the range of their voice," she says. "Supposing = you want, as birds do, to judge if someone's=20 from the same geographic region. You may be able to do so by evoking a = pitch range."=20 The best example of this ability is what Deutsch calls the "tritone = paradox." Imagine two tones played one after the=20 other. The first tone is actually two separate notes an octave apart-a = high and low C, say-played in perfect unison=20 so that they sound like a single tone. (When Deutsch performs the = experiment, she plays six octaves at once, but=20 they still sound like one.) The second tone is a "tritone": a note = exactly halfway between the two octaves-a G-flat=20 in this case. Although the G-flat is between the two Cs, some = listeners hear it as higher and some as lower,=20 depending on their pitch range. More intriguing still, their responses = vary depending on where they were raised.=20 Pitch ranges are so clearly tied to geography that Deutsch can often = guess where her subjects or their parents grew=20 up. Californians tend to have a pitch range that starts and ends = around C-sharp; Vietnamese have a range that starts=20 and ends around E. The predictability of those ranges suggests, in = turn, that people develop a sense of pitch at a very=20 early age, perhaps even in the womb. "Children probably pick up their = pitch range from the voices they hear around=20 them," Deutsch says. "The noise of the mother's voice comes through = very loudly during pregnancy."=20 For most of us, learning to keep within a certain pitch range-and to = identify that range in others-is all the voice=20 training we really need. When Deutsch recently asked English speakers = to read the same list of words on different=20 days, she found that their pitch for any given word could vary by as = much as two notes. But speakers of certain tonal=20 languages, such as Vietnamese and Mandarin, don't have that much room = for error. In Mandarin, for instance, the=20 word ma can mean "mother," "horse," "hemp," or "to scold," depending = on its pitch. In a study presented to the=20 Acoustical Society of America, Deutsch found that tonal speakers hit = the same pitches dead on, day after day, and an=20 unusual number of them have perfect pitch.=20 Certain genes may help some people acquire perfect pitch more easily = than others, but Deutsch's findings suggest=20 that almost anyone can learn to label notes-provided they start young. = Children who don't learn to do it by the time=20 they learn the rudiments of language may never gain the ability. = Deutsch thinks that parents should give young=20 children access to musical instruments, preferably with labeled notes, = to help the process along. "I often wonder if I=20 acquired my perfect pitch because I had a color-coded xylophone as a = kid," she says, noting that people with perfect=20 pitch have a higher incidence of synesthesia: When they hear a sound, = they see a color. Even when they don't, she=20 says, their gift adds an extra dimension to their listening = experience, revealing the music's architecture as well as its=20 sound. "It's as though you are seeing the musical score scroll past = your eyes."=20 =20 RELATED WEB SITES:=20 Details of Diana Deutsch's study of Vietnamese and Mandarin speakers = can be found at=20 www.acoustics.org/press/138th/deutsch.htm.=20 To learn about perfect pitch, visit www.provide.net/~bfield/ = whatabs.html and www.provide.net/~bfield/=20 abs_pitch.html.=20 =20 =20 ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/ce/95/da/e8/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC