Name that note

Hearing a musical note and naming it (that’s a C sharp) is beyond the listening expertise of most people. People with absolute pitch, also known as perfect pitch, possess the rare ability to identify musical notes without a reference tone, a skill shared by classic composers like Mozart and Bach and modern musicians such as Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson.

Some researchers believe that it is a genetic trait that is inherited, while others believe that it is a result of early exposure to music and musical training. Indeed, perfect pitch was long thought to be a rare ability that only some children could acquire through genes passed down by a parent. More recently, additional research postulates that an perfect pitch ear can be developed through the right musical training in early childhood.

Timbres —which are conferred by upper harmonics in sound frequencies and give instruments their unique, familiar rings— play an important role in pitch recognition. That implies that experience is probably involved in pitch recognition, since even people with self-reported perfect pitch weren’t accurate when the notes were produced in an unfamiliar way. In a controlled study, those with perfect pitch averaged 98% accuracy with piano generated notes and 77% for computer generated sine tones,

“As many fields in the behavioral sciences are discovering, it may not be possible to fully understand cognition or perception without considering a dynamic interaction between multiple variables.”

The old piano, have mercy

Growing up there was a lot of music in the house. Acoustic music. A violin, a flute and a piano are being played daily, good times. A hobo is also in the mix for a few years, but don’t ask the neighbors. They were pleased to see it exchanged for a classical guitar.

The piano is from 1920, old but reliable. It survives a world war, but only just. Like other pianos from that era, it has 85 keys and 220 strings, between 2, 3 or even 4 strings per key. Those strings put a considerable stress on the part wooden, part metal frame. About twice a year the strings need to be adjusted, tuned.

I recall the discussion about a drastic alteration: Because the combined strain of the strings was so high, either the piano needs to be rebuilt, or, have mercy, it can be tuned lower than the standard tuning to reduce tension. Rebuild is way too costly, so the piano gets tuned a halftone below normal, the other instruments will need to follow.

Dad had perfect pitch ears

My farther had perfect pitch. I would often go to the piano, pick a note, and he would tell me the name. Never ever failed, except that he was always a halftone off. That is until after our piano’s re-tuning. From then on he would always be exactly right! Turns out the piano of his childhood was also tuned down a halftone to release tension: history repeated.

I always thought that this gift was genetic and wondered why it wasn’t passed on to the children in our family.

Practice makes perfect

Psychologists and neuroscientists at the University of Chicago have studied perfect pitch for years. One researcher, Nusbaum, concludes: “Our study provides further evidence that while the differences in people’s ability to categorize notes are real, and related to cognitive processing, our brains develop in tandem with the skills we practice over our entire lives. So, when it comes to pitch learning, practice, in a sense, really does make ‘perfect.”

So much for longing, wishing, that you could just inherit the right genes from one of your parents and voilà, perfect pitch ears.

While my musical ears are pretty good and are serving me well, I never reached my dad’s perfect pitch level. Perhaps I should have studied even more!