I disagree. Absolute pitch is a neurological phenomenon. People who have it experience the world differently. It's not a party trick like you're talking about here to name a note in isolation.
There's a fascinating phenomenon known as the Stroop effect[0], where if you get people to read a series of color words (e.g. "purple blue green red"), where the words are colored, but in the wrong color, it slows them down quite a bit. This was used to identify Soviet spies by showing them colors written in Russian; native Russian readers were slowed by the incorrect coloring, people who didn't know Russian could read it quickly.
Well, the Stroop effect applies to music notes, too! People with absolute pitch are impaired from reading a sequence of note names when a non-matching pitch is played at the same time. People without AP can read it just fine.
People with true absolute pitch can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has. It taps into the language center of the brain. Does your song trick give you such an overwhelming sense of the note, that if someone played a different note it would be noticeable and distracting enough that you can't read a simple word or music note on the page?
No, you've misunderstood. What people with perfect pitch are doing is a fast and more fluent version of what the other commenter describes. They may not experience or describe it that way but it's an area of interest for a lot of people and the research is clear.
> can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has
Well, and what note does a sound have? What is "a note?" Is it just a name for a specific frequency? Then why enharmonics. Is that D a little flat, or are you just tuned to A 442? Oh actually we're in 24TET over here, that's simply a quarter tone.
Sound is just a sound, you need other context to make a note. To infer a note from a pitch, someone (with perfect pitch or not) knows already or is assuming a lot of context that makes that work.
But that context isn't universal, and if it has changed they'll need to find out how and adapt to it. The fact that they can adapt is because there's no universal mapping from frequencies to notes, either in their mind or anywhere.
Having (a) talked with acquaintances who have absolute/perfect pitch (b) read a fair bit of research (c) practiced the “trick” under discussion (d) had a brief mid-adolescent period where I experienced tones as having an extra layer of color/personality that was definitely distinct from note memory, everything points me toward the idea that it’s a different way of experiencing the sound itself. Like the difference between “they all look the same to me” vs frequencies having faces you recognized or if numbers came with fixed colors. Honestly the experienced part was a bit jarring and I think that’s part of why it didn’t take.
> This was used to identify Soviet spies by showing them colors written in Russian; native Russian readers were slowed by the incorrect coloring, people who didn't know Russian could read it quickly.
Hold up, I’m confused. How could people who didn’t know Russian read them at all? There’s probably something obvious I’m missing, but I just can’t parse this at all.
I think the idea is that you're reading out the color of the printed word, not the word itself (despite the fact that the word is the name of a different color).
So you might have, in a red font, the word "blue", followed by the word "green" in yellow letters. The correct response is to say out loud "red, yellow". This is hard to do when the words are in your native language. So if the words are in Russian, it's an easier task for someone who doesn't read that language, because they aren't distracted by the meaning of the word and can just see the colors.
Yes. And btw that is what naturally happens after about age 40, together with presbyopia. So real absolute pitch people stop enjoying listening to music at some point... it is a curse, not a gift!
More difficult. Also little people affected, so not much research going there, and most important, is just a nuisance, not a problem like not being able to see.
No. I think a lot of people would notice. Especially string players.
A lot of orchestra musicians don't like listening to recordings that deviate too much from their preferred concert pitch. I don't like listening to British or American recording where a equals 440 or some old German ones at 445-446. That is less than 20 cents.
Yep. There's so much ignorance around this topic it's kind of insane. I have no idea why so many people have such a vested interest in absolute pitch being something magical instead of a learned skill.
I've spent a lot of time with musical people, and it's very clear that it functions similarly to a foreign language: it's a learned skill that is easiest to pick up in childhood. Like distinguishing /r/ and /l/, if you start young you can do it, if you start late it may always be difficult.
Why we would assume that it functions differently is beyond me.
I made the exact same language comparison in another reply. Learning a foreign language after the age of 9 means you most certainly never will sound like a native speaker. I think perfect pitch is the same. But if you have something that is functionality perfect pitch, why is it not perfect pitch?
> Why we would assume that it functions differently is beyond me.
The cognitive bias to put some people on a pedestal and worship them for being extraordinary. The perceived rareness and specialness of absolute pitch.
Ah, bummer. Looks like it might be a factoid. I can't find it confirmed anywhere. This discussion[0] quotes a textbook giving the story, but says "whose veracity we cannot vouch". I forget where I heard it, and I took it for granted because it was interesting and made sense, but maybe it never happened.
There's a fascinating phenomenon known as the Stroop effect[0], where if you get people to read a series of color words (e.g. "purple blue green red"), where the words are colored, but in the wrong color, it slows them down quite a bit. This was used to identify Soviet spies by showing them colors written in Russian; native Russian readers were slowed by the incorrect coloring, people who didn't know Russian could read it quickly.
Well, the Stroop effect applies to music notes, too! People with absolute pitch are impaired from reading a sequence of note names when a non-matching pitch is played at the same time. People without AP can read it just fine.
People with true absolute pitch can't help but know immediately and automatically what note a sound has. It taps into the language center of the brain. Does your song trick give you such an overwhelming sense of the note, that if someone played a different note it would be noticeable and distracting enough that you can't read a simple word or music note on the page?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect