Why can some people name any note they hear?
Perfect pitch isn't sharper hearing. It may have more to do with the language you babbled in as a baby.
▶ Start the storySome people can name any note they hear because they learned, very early in life, to attach a label to each pitch, the way everyone learns to call a certain color "blue". This ability, called absolute or perfect pitch, is not sharper hearing: people who have it usually hear no better than anyone else. It is a kind of memory and categorization, and it seems to be learned during a critical window in early childhood.
Absolute pitch
- Names a note with no reference
- Can name a car horn's pitch
- Learned in early childhood
Relative pitch
- Needs a reference note
- Hears the distance between notes
- Identifies intervals directly by their sound
The strongest clue comes from language. In tone languages such as Mandarin or Vietnamese, the pitch of a syllable changes its meaning, so babies must pay close attention to pitch. A study led by the psychologist Diana Deutsch compared music students in Beijing and in New York State. Among those who started lessons at age four or five, about 60 percent of the Mandarin speakers had perfect pitch, against 14 percent of the Americans. For students who started at eight or nine, it was 42 percent versus zero. And it is not genetic: people of East Asian ancestry raised in North America are much less likely to have it.
Most of us have a faint version anyway. People who can't sing well often still sing their favorite pop songs in the right key, and notice when a TV theme is played too high or too low.
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Recap
Perfect pitch isn't better ears; it's an early-learned label for each note.
Surprising fact · Speakers of tone languages like Mandarin are almost nine times more likely to have perfect pitch, and the effect comes from experience, not ancestry.
Sources (2)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (16 claims) cites at least one of these.