Perfect Pitch Explained: Here's Why Some People Can Instantly Recognize Musical Notes

Perfect pitch refers to the rare ability to produce or identify certain musical notes without having to reference a note.

The phenomenon is extremely rare. In fact, there is only 1 in 10,000 who is capable of recognizing musical pitches right then and there.

Perfect Pitch

Diana Deutch, an adjunct professor from the Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustic and a psychology professor emerita from the University of California, San Diego, says that people who have perfect pitch can name notes as effortlessly and immediately as most people can identify colors.

Perfect pitch, which is also called absolute pitch, may also refer to the ability of singers to sing a note that is just given on cue.

Perfect pitch differs from relative pitch, which refers to the ability of a person to differentiate between the pitch of at least two notes. The latter is a crucial skill for musicians who are part of an orchestra.

However, for absolute pitch, there is just one in 10,000 people who have such an ability.

ALSO READ: The Neuroscience of Music Appreciation: How the Human Brain Listens, Learns To Predict in Order To Appreciate Music

Why Some People Have Perfect Pitch

While the cause and source of the ability still puzzles scientists, there are a number of theories.

The first one is linked to genetics, as this ability could run through families. However, it has been difficult to pinpoint the exact genetic cause.

Deutch says that researchers have tried to search for the DNA marker for this ability. While there have been various suggestions, none of them were proven to be conclusive.

It is also hard to tease apart genetic influences from the environment of a person. For example, a person who has absolute pitch could have a higher likelihood of spending time teaching their children.

Another hypothesis is the critical period. Similar to humans' capacity to learn language, there could be a certain developmental stage where humans have a higher likelihood of developing perfect pitch based on exposure to particular influences.

For instance, a study discovered that 40% of musicians who started training at four years old or younger had perfect pitch. This was in comparison to 3% who began to train after the age of nine.

The critical period theory has been supported by some research on Deutch in tonal language speakers, such as Cantonese, Mandarin, and Mandarin.

Deutch said that for these languages, the meaning of words is taken differently depending on their lexical tones, which refer to word pitches.

Hence, as children learn the language, they may associate a word's meaning with its tone of being spoken. If they opt to take music lessons later on, they could end up using the same principle for musical tone acquisition.

One study by Deutsch's team discovered that students who spoke Mandarin in Chinese music conservatories had a higher likelihood of having perfect pitch compared to students who spoke English in American music conservatories.

However, another study found that students who spoke English and who had perfect pitch were also quite good at remembering a lengthy spoken number list.

Deutsch explains that this could have fostered association developments between spoken names and musical notes. Hence, it is possible that having such an unusually strong ability to remember speech sounds could affect a person's perfect pitch acquisition.

There are also some scientists who think that with sufficient training, anyone can get perfect pitch at any time. However, little success has been observed in attempts to prove this.

Interestingly, Keith Schneider, a professor of brain and psychological sciences from the University of Delaware, found that professional musicians who had perfect pitch have a significantly bigger auditory cortex. This specific brain part is responsible for sound processing.

This is in comparison to musicians without absolute pitch and individuals with no musical training.

However, Howard Nusbaum, a psychology professor, said that losing absolute pitch is possible. In a certain study involving the detuning of music for people with absolute pitch, they discovered that the participants lost their capacity to detect note tuning.

He explained that flat tones sounded like they were in tune, while in-tune sounds seemed to be sharp.

Nevertheless, whether a person does or does not have perfect pitch does not necessarily have to affect their musical stardom.