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TracingWoodgrains  10mo ago (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)   1625 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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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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