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TracingWoodgrains  10mo ago (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)   1614 thread views

How One Woman’s Children (n=2) Acquired Absolute Pitch

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Many of you are familiar with some of my writing on early childhood education. Here, someone I’ve chatted with explains at some length her process for helping her children acquire absolute pitch. This is something possible for almost everyone during a narrow window of time; it and similar time-sensitive skills are worth serious consideration if you are a parent of a young child.

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Can anyone give a summary of this post from before it was taken down? I'm really interested in trying to teach my kids to have perfect pitch, but I have no clue how to do it. At what age do you start lessons? What do the lessons consist of? It's hard to separate out "likely to work" from "complete BS from people who want to sell you a training course".

There are much better ways to spend time on your child. But Rick Beato has some videos on the subject if you are interested.

I don't trust Beato. I've caught him demonstrating he doesn't know anything on more than one occasion.

Archive.is is a website that archives URLs, on user demand. Luckily, it occured to someone to save it: https://archive.is/ru6sw

I wish many more parts of the internet had a norm of habitually archiving stuff. These days, anything posted is lucky to stay up for a day before getting taken down for one reason or another.

Speaking of fundamental things I'm missing out on... I can't figure out how to click this link? It looks like it's pointing toward "furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com," and when I click on that, it takes me to a Motte page search. When I paste it into my browser, it takes me to a substack that appears empty. This is not the first time this has happened to me. What am I missing?

The author deleted the page, unfortunately.

That's unfortunate. I don't suppose you have any idea why? It looks like the whole substack has been wiped, but I guess I don't know for sure that there was anything else on it to begin with.

It’s mostly my fault, alas—she’s a private person who was understandably a bit overwhelmed by the flood of attention the post drew. I’m hoping she’ll be comfortable republishing the info in yet more anonymized fashion somewhere later, since it was a fantastic and useful post, but for now it’s down.

Ah, alright.

My 18 month old seems like she might benefit from pitch training -- she really likes musical tones, from when she was one day old and they were playing noises in her ear for the hearing test -- but I am very unmusical, and probably wouldn't stick with it anyway.

From the front page of themotte.org:

  • Clicking on the title of the submission sends you to the comment thread.

  • Clicking on the "N comments" text sends you to the comment thread.

  • Clicking on the image next to the title sends you to the linked page (which seems to have been deleted by its author).

From the comment thread:

  • Clicking on the title of the submission sends you to the linked page (which seems to have been deleted by its author).

Very helpful, thank you!

This is something possible for almost everyone during a narrow window of time

Something I read a while ago:

Some studies have suggested that valproate may reopen the critical period for learning absolute pitch and possibly other skills such as language.

"Some studies" appears to be just one study. This paywalled article talks about the topic, but I'm not sure if it's just about that one study or if there are others. When I first heard of this I tried to find if Scott Alexander had written anything about it because this seems like it would be right up his alley but there doesn't seem to be anything.

This would be one of the greatest discoveries of all time. Seems unlikely.

My reaction to this is "that's nice, dear" but I honestly don't see the applicability, unless it's meant to be "growth mindset! grit! you can if you think you can!" notion of "mould your kids early into the genius, athletic, attractive, popular kids you want".

What's the purpose of acquiring absolute pitch? One kid seems to be talented for music, at least at this early stage, but he could still have been musically talented without absolute pitch. I found it to be a humblebrag: "oh yes, my trilingual kids learning Mandarin and composing their own music because of absolute pitch which I taught them to acquire".

Well that's nice dear, now are you going to tell us next about how they're whole-food organic vegan eco-warriors inventing the next AI advance to save the planet from climate change, all before the age of twelve?

EDIT: I realise the above sounds churlish, and I'm delighted that children get the chance to be exposed to an entire range of non-conventional educational attainments, but at the same time that piece does veer too near, for my comfort, to the "you can make your baby genius success for life" notion of what kids are for. Tiger moms are not the kind of role model I think we need.

"Oh, so you taught your child to read. That's nice, dear, but I honestly don't see the applicability of something like literacy. Sounds like a humble brag to me."

The above is approximately how your comment sounds to me. A kid might be talented at something even if he remains illiterate his whole life, but there are most likely multiple things related to the talent that become easier, quicker or even possible in the first place through learning to read and write.

You can probably do most of what people with absolute pitch do by learning to identify pitches relatively, but for some reason it seems that developing this so called "relative pitch" takes a lot of effort, but absolute pitch kind of builds momentum and just grows on its own once you get it started.

I think there might be some kind of fear of inequality behind a lot of the dismissals of absolute pitch, such as there were on hacker news commenting this same blog post. I think the idea of some people being in a completely different category and having an advantage due to it is terrifying to many people, and a way to cope with the terror is to dismiss the existence of such advantage.

Teaching your kids to read is helpful in today's world. Humblebragging about your trilingual kids who have perfect pitch is a bit much. How does it help them? Are they planning to be concert pianists when they grow up? I mean, it's nice to have, but it's more on the lines of "I can wiggle my ears" than "I am not illiterate in today's printed word society".

And yet it is curious how you consider it bragging while simultaneously claiming that you place very little value on the thing being bragged about. If the blog post was about a parent teaching their child to wiggle their ears, would you be commenting about how we don't need tiger moms forcing their children to become geniuses that accomplish great things such as being able to wiggle their ears?

One more thing...

Humblebragging about your trilingual kids who have perfect pitch is a bit much.

"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

Bragging is when you say something positive about yourself. Humble bragging is when you say something negative about yourself, but at the same time reveal things that make it possible for other people to infer some positive thing about yourself. Do you think the blog post we are discussing really is humble bragging, or is it just bragging?

Relative pitch is just knowing what the interval between tones are. This doesn't require some grand effort to learn. Sight-reading/sight-singing isn't some rare skill.

What you said about absolute pitch might as well apply to relative pitch.

Relative pitch is just knowing what the interval between tones are. This doesn't require some grand effort to learn.

Sure, for some definition of "knowing the interval between tones" this is certainly a true statement. But unfortunately until we shine more light on that definition the statement is almost meaningless.

What you said about absolute pitch might as well apply to relative pitch.

But it does not seem to. In the blog post the writers son has "stunning effortlessness when it comes to his music lessons", "finds it easy to [...] improvise in any key", "never struggles with memorizing the music he is assigned", but the writer in the past had to drop out of music school because learning "just the interval between tones" proved to be too grand of an effort.

In the blog post the writers son has "stunning effortlessness when it comes to his music lessons", "finds it easy to [...] improvise in any key", "never struggles with memorizing the music he is assigned",

This describes most people with some of musical talent.

but the writer in the past had to drop out of music school because learning "just the interval between tones" proved to be too grand of an effort.

One has to wonder how she ever got in.. this is a very base line ability.

Not being able to read the post I'm going to assume that she is an (musically) untalented child from a music family whose son merely regressed to their baseline.

This describes most people with some of musical talent.

Again, sure, for some definition of "some musical talent" this statement is definitely true. And, again, without learning more about said definition the statement remains almost meaningless.

One has to wonder how she ever got in.. this is a very base line ability.

One has to wonder why the school was so unable to teach this ability, if it is taught with some frequency and requires no "grand effort".

The post itself is available here: https://archive.is/ru6sw

So she didn't go to music school, she took some music classes and was so bad she had the drop out.

She has no musical ability, so is unable to evaluate the ability of her children.

There are musically talented people in both her and her husband's family and one person with absolute pitch.

...

Ask people at any music school, everyone learns either relative pitch or absolute pitch. Most people in your average amateur choir has decent relative pitch. This isn't a hard to acquire skill!

I know a bunch of people with AP and they aren't any better at music than those without, at least not in the way she describes.

It is possible that absolute pitch can be taught, and it is possible that it helps musical ability but that has certainly not been shown here and nothing from my extensive experience with music and musically talented people suggests this. This reads as an untalented parent being amazed by and overestimating the abilities of her kids, it's a tale as old as time.

There are musically talented people in both her and her husband's family and one person with absolute pitch.

So it seems her mother, who knows nothing of music, claims that some great uncle "may have had absolute pitch".

Most people in your average amateur choir has decent relative pitch. This isn't a hard to acquire skill!

Yes, for some definition of "decent relative pitch", I am sure this statement is true. Yet, like before, the statement remains somewhat vague.

I know a bunch of people with AP and they aren't any better at music than those without, at least not in the way she describes.

Or they are at the same level as others around them, but have spent an order of magnitude less effort to get there.

The claim that absolute pitch is a significant advantage is in no way reliant on this one blog post. Here is a study describing how people with AP are better at a dictation task: http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/pdf/JASA-2010_128_890-893.pdf

I do feel "that's nice, dear" when people talk about teaching their children to read below the age of four or so. What do three year olds even want to read on their own? My three year old just wants to follow me around all day and climb on me all the time, like those nature videos of the mother and baby dolphin or whale swimming under and over and on the side. They can learn to read by themselves when they're willing to be by themselves.

On the other hand, absolute pitch may have a much shorter acquisition window than reading, so perhaps it makes more sense to really work at it. Also, I'm not a good judge, since I'm personally musically illiterate. I'm good at drawing, which I learned in one semester when I was 16, and seems to generally be a very different developmental process to being good at music.

It has a shorter acquisition window but it's of dubious value as well. If you want your kid to be successful at music the best advice is to listen to a wide variety of music in the home, and sign them up for music lessons and make sure they practice every day. If you have good relative pitch (which can be learned and is taught at the college level) then absolute pitch is pretty superfluous. I still write music occasionally and having absolute pitch might occasionally save me a few seconds of figuring out intervals, and that's only because I'm usually out of practice. Other than that it's mostly a party trick, and completely useless if your kid doesn't end up becoming a professional musician.

Thanks for the perspective!

I tried to take a chanting class from an Egyptian chanter, and also from a (country of) Georgian teacher, and was very, very lost.

The Arab chant would designate a tone, then write out a sequence of up here, down two steps there, up with a trill, and so on, but no other reference point, and no instruments. Sometimes they would use a tuning fork for a moment at the beginning of a piece, or the lead chanter would hum -- I suppose that wouldn't be necessary for someone with perfect pitch? Someone once mistook me for a potential chanter, and gave me a tuning fork as a gift, but I never figured out what to do with it. They talked about taking pitch cues from the priest, and would sometimes complain he was intoning too high or low and making it hard to sing their part.

The Georgians sung three part polyphony, and it seemed extremely interesting, but too far from my skill level to sing a different part than the others.

It would be really cool if my kids could sing polyphonic pieces someday, they sound so beautiful, but I seem to be missing some core ability not to get immediately confused.

I tried to take a chanting class from an Egyptian chanter, and also from a (country of) Georgian teacher, and was very, very lost.

While it's great that you're trying interesting things, if you have no prior musical experience this isn't the place to start, unless you're part of the culture in question and already have a deep personal connection to the music. You have to be especially careful with non-Western music (and Georgian definitely counts as non-Western in this context) because they often use alternate tuning systems that don't follow the system of Western harmony that 95% of music does. The best way to get started in music is, of course, the most boring way—get a beginner etude book for the instrument you want to play and start off with very basic stuff meant to familiarize you with the notes and rudimentary music theory before progressing to simple songs of the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" variety. Guitarists try to cheat and play pop songs from TAB right off the bat but they usually just end up being the kind of people whose guitar skills consist solely of strumming the chords in root position, about which this video is the last word: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk. There are no shortcuts; learning music is hard work, but it's certainly rewarding.

The best way to get started in music is, of course, the most boring way—get a beginner etude book for the instrument you want to play and start off with very basic stuff meant to familiarize you with the notes and rudimentary music theory before progressing to simple songs of the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" variety.

This actually seems backwards. You should start with something that is simple and very familiar, such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb". It should be simple so that it is easy to execute, and familiar so that you can easily tell when you make a mistake when it doesn't sound like you expect it to sound. Then later you might want to look into etudes if you want to work on some technical aspects of playing your instrument.

If the music is already familiar to you then things might be easier, but most likely you will be lost and confused in the beginning, no matter what, and what you really need is the ability to tolerate that. Then you can try out different things and see what happens and little by little the confusion evaporates.

whose guitar skills consist solely of strumming the chords in root position, about which this video is the last word: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk.

That video seems pretty mistaken overall. He first gives two examples of people playing these so called "zombie chords", then starts going on about how they sound bad because the chords are in root position, when actually in the two examples the C and D chords are not in root position, the C major has a G in the bass and the D major has A in the bass. They would probably sound better if they actually were in root position.

I should clarify that when I said etudes I meant the kind of stuff you assign someone with no prior experience the first couple weeks they have their instrument. The goal at that point is simply to get sound out of it (if it's a wind instrument), familiarize them with where the notes are (and you aren't going to start with more than about five), and learn how to read music. These etudes are basically just lines of whole notes or quarter notes or whatever with some rests mixed in. By the third week, though, most beginning books will shift over to simple, familiar tunes and stay there for a while. For old times sake I pulled out my old method books and my first assignment was on 11/30/94, and I was assigned Mary Had a Little Lamb on 12/8/1994. I finished that book in a little over 2 months and moved on to playing books that were mostly etudes.

The problem isn't so much with root position chords in and of themselves, it's with the "Play the Piano Overnight" style of teaching that has people convinced they can play an instrument because they can play a few basic chords behind a melody, abetted by the fact that when you look up music for a lot of these songs on the internet or elsewhere you get basic chord strumming rather than the original part, which actually takes a decent amount of skill to play in many cases. When I was in college you could take music lessons for credit and covered by tuition. I took trumpet which wasn't a problem but they had strict criteria for who could take guitar because a lot of people would sign up thinking free guitar lessons and then wash out when they found out they actually had to read music and play real stuff and not just strum chords or play basic riffs. Becoming proficient at an instrument takes years of hard work and practice, and there's something kind of cheap about strumming a few basic chords that I can tell you the fingerings for (and I don't even own a guitar let alone claim to be able to play one), and while the effect is democratizing to an extent one can't help but wonder if these people are shortchanging themselves.

A man once wanted to learn to play the bass, so he went to a teacher. First lesson they learned to play the open E string, just plucking the string, nothing else. Second lesson they learned to play the open A string, again just plucking the string, nothing else. The third lesson they were supposed to learn the D string in a similar manner, but the student never showed up again.

The teacher bumped into the man on the street one day by chance and asked him: "Why don't you want to learn the bass any more? Was it not a suitable instrument for you?". The student replied: "No, it's nothing like that. I just haven't had time to come to lessons because I have so many paying gigs now."

Now that is a joke, but it can show a different perspective on things.

You can spend six months learning basic chords on the guitar and afterwards you can sing simple songs and accompany yourself on the guitar. At that point other people might want to listen to you, and there is a small chance you might even get paid doing it. Alternatively you can spend six months learning some kinds of finger exercises, but at that point nobody will want to listen to you, and you have to wonder if you wasted your time. So maybe it makes sense to build the minimum viable product first and then add the bells and whistles later, if you think you need them.

I suppose that wouldn't be necessary for someone with perfect pitch?

It wouldnt be necessary for anyone with even rudimentary choir experience. This is very very basic stuff.

It would be really cool if my kids could sing polyphonic pieces someday, they sound so beautiful, but I seem to be missing some core ability not to get immediately confused.

Just sign them up for a choir, almost everyone can sing polyphonically. Choir singing is really wonderful, I highly recommend it and I'm sure @Obsidian who started singing recently would agree.

Is there a reading acquisition window?

I don't think so? A surface level web search suggests that there are different opinions on the matter, they're mostly highly motivated, but that while adults can learn to read, it's more of a slog than for children. I don't see any sources on whether that's because it's actually harder, or because practicing enough to read fluidly and silently is very time intensive.

This might just be a matter of what people think of the usefulness of perfect pitch. Perhaps I'm just missing some fundamental human experience but I really have never "gotten" what the big deal is with music. I enjoy it, I have songs and artists that I quite like. But the passion with which some people devote themselves to it has always seemed so alien to me. If not for the premium society puts on it I couldn't differentiate it's importance to, like, juggling ability. To compare perfect pitch to literacy to me is like comparing the benefit of having your kid be able to walk to being double jointed in one finger or the ability to very accurately guess the humidity of a room. Like cool, that's probably useful for something I guess but really, you think these things are comparable? I can barely even remember what pitch means most of the time.

Do you think something like the Harry Potter novels and the whole celebrity culture formed around them is useful for something? I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, and I can fully agree with one part of what you said: "the passion with which some people devote themselves to it has always seemed so alien to me"

I, in general, dislike fanaticism - particularly regarding pop culture figures. Although I'll say minus the weirdly fanatical groups there is some value in common touchstones like Harry Potter and other successful memes even if HP in particular is more well suited for children and young teens. Fascination with children's media well into adulthood is its own separate problem. It's good that I can describe someone as "Like Dumbledore" and have practically everyone in my generation know what I mean. It's less good that many thirty year old women see the whole world through the simple good vs evil lens that a children's book hung a coming of age story on.

What if your kid grows up to be Batman? Do you want him to fail Gotham city and get everyone killed because he whistled one note wrong and accidentally set off the question mark shaped bombs lining the levees and seawall?

It's obviously pointless for daughters though, agreed.

What do you mean? Catwoman had to solve the question mark bombs too.

Yeah but nobody wants their daughter to grow up to be a prostitute who pisses off the mob until they kill her and dump her dead body in an alley where she survives by eating stray cats and fashioning a costume out of the remains.

Personally I'd rather that than be Batman's dad.

Yeah? Maybe I'm too nihilistic, but I would rather die knowing my son would be well cared for than live knowing my daughter grew up to be an mad prostitute.

I don't recall well enough whether Thomas Wayne could be sure Bruce would be out of danger, at the moment he was shot.

Also I haven't read the Original Comics(tm), and in the movies Catwoman worked in an office for evil bosses.

Absolute pitch is a fascinating example of a phenomenon that is grounded in nature but dependent on nurture. Some people are substantially tone deaf, in the way that some people are color blind--they can't really differentiate pitches to the same degree as most of us. But many people who are technically "wired" for absolute pitch will not develop it, because they don't receive sufficient musical training--at minimum, you need some words (whether note names, or solfège as in the article) to attach to certain pitches.

(As an aside, I think it would be fascinating to do a study on the extent to which it is possible for people with AP to distinguish frequencies outside the chromatic scale, but I'm not sure how this could be thoroughly accomplished without deliberately training a child to names the sounds they hear as frequencies instead of notes, and just this moment I don't have a baby I can put into a Skinner box...)

I do wonder if

This is something possible for almost everyone during a narrow window of time

is stating matters too strongly; while it is true that speakers of tonal languages are substantially more likely to exhibit AP, even among musically trained children it's not really an "almost everyone" thing:

For students who had begun musical training between ages 4 and 5, approximately 60 percent of the Chinese speakers tested as having perfect pitch, while only about 14 percent of the U.S. nontone language speakers did. For those who had begun training between 6 and 7, approximately 55 percent of the Chinese and 6 percent of the U.S. met the criterion. And for those beginning between 8 and 9, the figures were 42 percent of the Chinese and zero of the U.S. group.

Although:

The discrepancies were greater when the researchers allowed for semitone errors (that is, giving the subjects credit for a note missed by a half-note, or answering "C" for "C sharp"): Fully 74 percent of the Chinese students had perfect pitch if they had started musical training between ages 4 and 5.

There is also a human biodiversity question, here: does AP confer evolutionary advantage in cultures with tonal languages? Would a white or black baby adopted by Chinese parents be equally likely to develop AP as their own biological child?

Along these same lines: I could discuss the phenomenon of human tetrachromacy all day long, but I imagine this would be much more difficult, perhaps impossible, to teach. The idea that there are people out there whose sensorium literally grasps the world more keenly than my own would probably induce excruciating envy if I weren't just so delighted to know about the phenomenon. It is a special kind of genius, in the most ancient sense of a "'tutelary or moral spirit' who guides and governs an individual through life."

Except that the spirit of AP requires some care and feeding if it is to genuinely blossom. Humans are the coolest.

while it is true that speakers of tonal languages are substantially more likely to exhibit AP, even among musically trained children it's not really an "almost everyone" thing

I do think it’s worth emphasizing the difference between “musically trained children” and “children trained in absolute pitch.” It’s a specific skill related to musicality but neither fully contained within it nor necessary for it; knowing that children receive musical training says relatively little about their specific pitch training.

It’s possible that I’m stating it too strongly! It’s an understudied, underutilized training process, since people have broadly treated it as a mysterious divine gift rather than a specific, trained skill. I think the most precise statement would be “far more people than generally acknowledged can develop absolute pitch during early childhood with relatively low effort.” But mostly I just think people should move from completely ignoring it to studying it enough that we know how prevalent it can be.

knowing that children receive musical training says relatively little about their specific pitch training

While I acknowledge that these are separable, in practice I would be very surprised to meet a child with pitch training who lacked musical training, while all musical training contains at least some passive pitch training (hearing and naming notes, even if not for specific purposes of pitch training). Everyone I know who has AP actually discovered that they had AP, without ever deliberately developing it--they were just musically trained as children, and one day learned they could do something that others could not. (This is often the case with children--they typical-mind so strongly that they often don't even realize they have special abilities, or disabilities, like poor vision or hearing.)

So limiting the sample in this case to musically-trained children is, I think, a way of making the strongest case for "lots of people can do this." In the general population absolute pitch seems pretty rare. This study suggests that estimates of AP prevalence should be revised dramatically upward--to 4%. (It also may be linked in some way to autism.)

It’s an understudied, underutilized training process, since people have broadly treated it as a mysterious divine gift rather than a specific, trained skill.

Well, again--if we could just put some children into Skinner boxes... Seriously, though, as with all the gifts of childhood, the nature/nurture debate is difficult to navigate given that most children are not raised in especially intentional ways. APs prevalence in musically trained children versus children without such training clearly suggests, to my mind, that it is in fact a skill--kinda.

But mostly I just think people should move from completely ignoring it to studying it enough that we know how prevalent it can be

I agree, but I think part of what prevents this from happening, aside from the fact that many children receive no deliberate education prior to showing up at preschool, is that absolute pitch is a surprisingly low-utility ability, far less useful than, say, color vision. I once had a long conversation with a friend of mine about trying to leverage his AP into a mnemonic device, or a career in some kind of audio production, and his position was that it was mostly just a party trick--but also often annoying, because he notices when people transpose his favorite songs into different keys, and finds it jarring. I may have been a bit maudlin about how cool it was that he could literally enjoy music on a level that was beyond my ability, and he was like--eh, I guess. Even my piano tuner said, "it might be useful if we didn't have tuning machines... but we do."

Possibly my friend and I are just insufficiently inventive! But I have yet to actually meet someone with AP who finds it nearly as amazing and interesting a subject as I find it to be.

Yeah, one of my friends with absolute pitch reports the same thing—but relative pitch really is an incredibly useful skill for music, and the former entails the latter. I think those who have it and dismiss it often do so in comparison to “a generally good musical ear” and not something like my own near-tone-deafness and total inability to carry a tune when singing without accompaniment (this despite training early-ish on piano and becoming quite competent at it).

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