Subject: Re: Absolute pitch discussion From: Martin Braun <nombraun@xxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 15:54:27 +0200 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Dear Leon and list, > What you will use is determed at the moment your brains get wired. If some > one tells you around your third year: this tone on the piano is do, this > one is re, this one is mi, etc. you will pick that up very easily." Quite right. But what we are struggling with is the "annoying" fact that - wherever we look - only a minority of such children develops absolute pitch (AP). Even in China, and even in the most musical families. I agree with you on the value of AP. Our data indicate that it may be caused by a minor neurodevelopmental pathology, quite similar to those causing one of the many types of synesthesia. Those who are affected by AP can have minor advantages from it, but also major disadvantages. The universal myth of a connection between AP and musicality should perhaps be one of our incentives to be careful and clear about the wealth of data that we already have. Martin --------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin Braun Neuroscience of Music S-671 95 Klässbol Sweden web site: http://w1.570.telia.com/~u57011259/index.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leon van Noorden" <leonvannoorden@xxxxxxxx> To: <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 11:38 AM Subject: Re: Absolute pitch discussion Dear List, I cannot see how the relation between frequencies and their note names is genetically coded. The bimodal distribution shows simply that there are two ways to deal with pitches: in an absolute in and a relative way. What you will use is determed at the moment your brains get wired. If some one tells you around your third year: this tone on the piano is do, this one is re, this one is mi, etc. you will pick that up very easily. If no one tells you, which is the case in many families, you will learn probably to sing in kindergarten with several songs which do not attach specific sillables or vowels to specific tones. On top of that you will probably hear the song on different absolute pitches. In this case you wil learn to use the relative relation between pitches. The latter has turned out to be much handier in our (western) musical practice. I do not understand people who think that absolute pitch is a sign of a high degree of musicality. Absolute pitch can be very annoying, I can tell you. At my 8th I could not play on my cello together with the piano in my grandfather's house which was so old that it was about a whole tone lower than normal. I could not adapt to the fact that my cello (which was tuned to the piano) gave another note than I expected. At my 18th I could not sing a song 'a vue' without first learning the melody by singing the note names. The words of the song would interfere with the notename and therefor the 'targeting' of the note. I could go on with summing up negative points about AP, such as no 'official' names for the raised or lowered tones and confusions between notes with the same vowel (fa/la and mi/si) in reaction time experiments. It is true that when you get older AP weakens and drifts upwards. Given the fact that AP is so common in Chinese and Japanese people, I would like to know how they teach the musical basics to children. I do not understand how the simple fact that their language is a tone language explains the possession of AP. I would like to know e.g. how many chinese families have an instrument with fixed pitches around in their home. In any case they have to learn only five tones, while we have seven. (On the other hand it is sometimes said that the dialects around my birthplace, Maastricht, are also tone languages). Kind regards, Leon van Noorden