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