site banner
TracingWoodgrains  the leaves that are green turn to brown  2yr ago (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)   2805 thread views

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

furiouslyrotatingshapes.sub...

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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

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

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

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats