<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: [CAUT] Pitch recognition</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Thanks for the reference, Ed. It contains some interesting stuff, but limits itself to the rather crude “recognition of a named pitch” as in “This note is C, this is C#” rather than the finer distinctions we have been talking about. I guess a study to focus on those fine distinctions would have to go to a great deal of trouble in identifying and recruiting subjects, rather than the broadband approach of this study. Those who know 440 from 442 and the like are a small subset of a small subset.     A couple interesting conclusions in the study: “either you have it or you don’t”, meaning there isn’t a spectrum of people who are “close but no cigar.” G# and A# tend to be misidentified as A more often than any other notes are misidentified. And the thing about age causing perception to go sharp (to identify notes as sharp of where they are when older).     Quite a morass of jargon to wade through. Why can’t academics learn to write clearly? Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico On 8/29/07 4:35 PM, "Ed  Sutton" <ed440@mindspring.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>An extremely important study on absolute pitch has been done by the University of California, testing over 2000 subjects. See the report at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0703868104v3 Piano technicians who deal with musical authorities (such as teachers and conductors) need to read this report. Accuracy of absolute pitch deteriorates with age.  No one over the age of 51 in this study was able to attain a perfect score in a test of 36 tones, and many people 50 and older reported that they were aware that their pitch perception was drifting sharp.  This is probably due to age changes in the inner ear which effect all of us. Many of the situations we deal with may involve hearing changes in middle aged people.  I once had an aging choir director claim I was cheating her by charging for a pitch raise because the piano sounded "right on pitch" to her. My ETD measured the piano as over 20 cents flat. Ed Sutton </BLOCKQUOTE> </BODY> </HTML>