Perception of Musical Intervals by Absolute Pitch Possessors

Previous studies have demonstrated that absolute pitch (AP) possessors can directly perceive the musical pitch quality (pitch class) of a tone presented in isolation. However, an isolated tone without musical context has no relevance to music, and AP ability should be examined in musically meaningful situations. In this study, AP possessors tried to identify the musical intervals between pairs of successive tones. The first tone (a reference) was either in-tune C according to the conventional pitch standard or out-of-tune C (a quarter-tone higher than standard C). The identification performance was less accurate and slower in the out-of-tune reference condition than in the in-tune condition. In contrast, AP nonpossessors showed no significant difference in performance in the two conditions, as predicted by the principle of equality under transposition. These results suggest that AP subjects tend to adhere to AP in relative pitch tasks, and that at least some AP listeners may have developed a strong dependence on AP at the sacrifice of relative pitch. AP may not have any advantage in music, in which relative pitch, not AP, is essential. Rather, AP may conflict with relative pitch and, in some cases, harm musical pitch processing.

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Absolute Pitch and Relative Pitch in Music Students in the East and the West

Music Perception An Interdisciplinary Journal ◽

10.1525/mp.2018.36.2.135 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 135-155 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ken'ichi Miyazaki ◽

Andrzej Rakowski ◽

Sylwia Makomaska ◽

Cong Jiang ◽

Minoru Tsuzaki ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Music Education ◽

East Asian ◽

Absolute Pitch ◽

Music Students ◽

Asian Countries ◽

Japanese Students ◽

Relative Pitch ◽

Cultural Conditions ◽

The Usa ◽

Musical Context

Absolute pitch (AP)—an ability to identify an isolated pitch without musical context—is commonly believed to be a valuable ability for musicians. However, relative pitch (RP)—an ability to perceive pitch relations—is more important in most musical contexts. In this study, music students in East Asian and Western countries (Japan, China, Poland, Germany, and USA) were tested on AP and RP abilities. In the AP test, 60 single tones were presented in a quasirandom order over a five-octave range. In the RP test, ascending musical intervals from 1 to 11 semitones were presented in four different keys. Participants wrote down note names in the AP test and scale-degree names or musical interval names in the RP test. The conservatory-level Japanese students showed the highest AP performance and more than half of them were classified as accurate AP possessors, but only 10% were classified as accurate RP possessors. In contrast, only a small percentage of participants from Poland, Germany, and the USA were identified as accurate AP possessors, whereas many more were accurate RP possessors. Participants from China were typically intermediate on both measures. These noticeable contrasts between AP and RP performance in different countries suggest influences of the underlying socio-cultural conditions, presumably relating to music education. Given the importance of RP in music, the results suggest that more emphasis should be place on RP training, particularly in East Asian countries.

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Neural patterns reveal single-trial information on absolute pitch and relative pitch perception

10.1101/672675 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Simon Leipold ◽

Marielle Greber ◽

Silvano Sele ◽

Lutz Jäncke

Keyword(s):

Absolute Pitch ◽

Pitch Perception ◽

Single Trial ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Pitch Processing ◽

Time Frequency ◽

Relative Pitch ◽

Perception Time ◽

Early Processing ◽

Beta Frequency

AbstractPitch is a fundamental attribute of sounds and yet is not perceived equally by all humans. Absolute pitch (AP) musicians perceive, recognize, and name pitches in absolute terms, whereas relative pitch (RP) musicians, representing the large majority of musicians, perceive pitches in relation to other pitches. In this study, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the neural representations underlying tone listening and tone labeling in a large sample of musicians (n = 105). Participants performed a pitch processing task with a listening and a labeling condition during EEG acquisition. Using a brain-decoding framework, we tested a prediction derived from both theoretical and empirical accounts of AP, namely that the representational similarity of listening and labeling is higher in AP musicians than in RP musicians. Consistent with the prediction, time-resolved single-trial EEG decoding revealed a higher representational similarity in AP musicians during late stages of pitch perception. Time-frequency-resolved EEG decoding further showed that the higher representational similarity was present in oscillations in the theta and beta frequency bands. Supplemental univariate analyses were less sensitive in detecting subtle group differences in the frequency domain. Taken together, the results suggest differences between AP and RP musicians in late pitch processing stages associated with cognition, rather than in early processing stages associated with perception.

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The Alpha and Omega of Musical Pitch Processing—Absolute Pitch and Congenital Amusia

Medical Problems of Performing Artists ◽

10.21091/mppa.2009.3029 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 141-150

Author(s):

William J Dawson

Keyword(s):

Performing Arts ◽

Absolute Pitch ◽

Research Topic ◽

Performing Arts Medicine ◽

Pitch Processing ◽

The Past ◽

Congenital Amusia ◽

Musical Pitch ◽

Process Music

The neurobiology of music has been a prolific source of publications in performing arts medicine over the past 15 years. A common research topic in music neurobiology is how humans perceive and process music. This review concentrates on two opposite aspects of pitch processing—heightened ability (absolute pitch) and absent ability (congenital amusia). From the bibliography of performing arts medicine found on the website of the Performing Arts Medicine Association, 165 citations were identified (as of February 2009) that deal with these topics, 149 on absolute pitch and 70 on congenital amusia, and form the basis of this review.

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Implicit Absolute Pitch Representation Affects Basic Tonal Perception

Music Perception An Interdisciplinary Journal ◽

10.1525/mp.2017.34.5.569 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 34 (5) ◽

pp. 569-584 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Zohar Eitan ◽

Moshe Shay Ben-Haim ◽

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis

Keyword(s):

Absolute Pitch ◽

Occurrence Frequency ◽

Tonal Music ◽

Pitch Class ◽

Harmonic Progression ◽

Relative Pitch ◽

Preceding Context ◽

Tonal Hierarchy ◽

Tonal Perception ◽

Tonal Context

It is undisputed that the cognition of tonal music is primarily established by pitch relationships set within a tonal scheme such as a major or minor key. The corresponding notion—that absolute pitch and absolute key are largely inconsequential for tonal cognition—thus seems inevitable. Here, we challenge the latter notion, presenting data suggesting that absolute pitch and absolute key significantly modify listeners’ judgments of tonal fit and tonal tension. In two experiments extending the probe tone technique (as applied in Krumhansl & Kessler, 1982) participants heard a brief tonal context (a major triad in Experiment 1, a harmonic progression in Experiment 2) followed by individual probe tones, and rated how well each probe fitted the preceding context, as well as the musical tension conveyed by each probe. Two maximally distant key contexts, G major and D♭ major, were used in both experiments and in both tasks. Ratings revealed significant absolute pitch effects in both tasks, though in different ways. In the tonal fit task, diatonic pitches in G major were rated higher than those in D♭ major; in contrast, chromatic pitches were rated higher in D♭ major, compared to G. In the tension task, overall ratings were significantly higher for D♭ major contexts than for G major context (Experiment 1). Importantly, these effects reflect the occurrence frequency of pitch classes and keys in the tonal repertory: frequent pitch classes were rated as better fits than rarer ones, and a rarer key (D♭) rated tenser than a frequently-occurring key (G). Absolute pitch effects were most strongly manifested by participants without formal training, for whom the relative pitch effects of the tonal hierarchy were weak, and were stronger when tonal context was weaker (Experiment 1 as compared to Experiment 2). Results suggest that implicit absolute pitch perception, reflecting key and pitch class occurrence frequency, significantly affects tonal music processing; such absolute pitch effects may be activated principally when tonal perception or tonal cues are lacking.

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Absolute Pitch as an Inability: Identification of Musical Intervals in a Tonal Context

Music Perception An Interdisciplinary Journal ◽

10.2307/40285599 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 55-71 ◽

Cited By ~ 46

Author(s):

Ken'ichi Miyazaki

Keyword(s):

Present Experiment ◽

Response Times ◽

Poor Performance ◽

Absolute Pitch ◽

Relative Pitch ◽

Musical Pitch ◽

Pitch Information ◽

Marked Decline ◽

Tonal Context

Absolute pitch is generally believed to be a remarkable ability, whose possessors can quite accurately identify musical pitch characteristics (pitch classes) of single tones presented in isolation. However, identifying pitch out of context is irrelevant and even meaningless to music. It is unclear how listeners with absolute pitch process musical pitch information in more meaningful musical situations. The present experiment was done to examine how listeners with absolute pitch perform in a relative pitch task. Listeners tried to identify melodic intervals of various sizes (260–540 cents) presented in three different tonal contexts established by a preceding tonal cadence. Listeners without absolute pitch showed equal accuracy and speed in doing the task in the three tonal contexts, as expected from the principle of transposability of musical pitch relations. In contrast, some absolute pitch listeners snowed a marked decline in accuracy and longer response times in the F# major and the out-of-tune E major contexts compared with the C major context. This result suggests that some absolute pitch listeners are relatively poor in identifying pitch relations in tonal contexts and sometimes tend to stick to absolute pitch even in a task that needs relative pitch, resulting in poor performance in perceiving musical pitch relations.

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A Unique Asymmetrical Stroop Effect in Absolute Pitch Possessors

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000153 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 59 (5) ◽

pp. 272-278 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Lilach Akiva-Kabiri ◽

Avishai Henik

Keyword(s):

Selective Attention ◽

Stroop Task ◽

Stroop Effect ◽

Congruency Effect ◽

Absolute Pitch ◽

Naming Task ◽

Color Naming ◽

Reading Task ◽

Pitch Processing ◽

Reverse Pattern

The Stroop task has been employed to study automaticity or failures of selective attention for many years. The effect is known to be asymmetrical, with words affecting color naming but not vice versa. In the current work two auditory-visual Stroop-like tasks were devised in order to study the automaticity of pitch processing in both absolute pitch (AP) possessors and musically trained controls without AP (nAP). In the tone naming task, participants were asked to name the auditory tone while ignoring a visual note name. In the note naming task, participants were asked to read a note name while ignoring the auditory tone. The nAP group showed a significant congruency effect only in the tone naming task, whereas AP possessors showed the reverse pattern, with a significant congruency effect only in the note reading task. Thus, AP possessors were unable to ignore the auditory tone when asked to read the note, but were unaffected by the verbal note name when asked to label the auditory tone. The results suggest that pitch identification in participants endowed with AP ability is automatic and impossible to suppress.

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Perception and learning of relative pitch by musicians using the vibrotactile mode

Musicae Scientiae ◽

10.1177/10298649211015278 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 102986492110152

Author(s):

Carl Hopkins ◽

Saúl Maté-Cid ◽

Robert Fulford ◽

Gary Seiffert ◽

Jane Ginsborg

Keyword(s):

Hearing Loss ◽

Music Education ◽

Success Rate ◽

Normal Hearing ◽

Pitch Discrimination ◽

Professional Musicians ◽

Profound Hearing Loss ◽

Relative Pitch ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Schools For The Deaf

This study investigated the perception and learning of relative pitch using vibrotactile stimuli by musicians with and without a hearing impairment. Notes from C3 to B4 were presented to the fingertip and forefoot. Pre- and post-training tests in which 420 pairs of notes were presented randomly were carried out without any feedback to participants. After the pre-training test, 16 short training sessions were carried out over six weeks with 72 pairs of notes per session and participants told whether their answers were correct. For amateur and professional musicians with normal hearing and professional musicians with a severe or profound hearing loss, larger pitch intervals were easier to identify correctly than smaller intervals. Musicians with normal hearing had a high success rate for relative pitch discrimination as shown by pre- and post-training tests, and when using the fingertips, there was no significant difference between amateur and professional musicians. After training, median scores on the tests in which stimuli were presented to the fingertip and forefoot were >70% for intervals of 3–12 semitones. Training sessions reduced the variability in the responses of amateur and professional musicians with normal hearing and improved their overall ability. There was no significant difference between the relative pitch discrimination abilities between one and 11 semitones, as shown by the pre-training test, of professional musicians with and without a severe/profound hearing loss. These findings indicate that there is potential for vibration to be used to facilitate group musical performance and music education in schools for the deaf.

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Meta-analytic evidence for the non-modularity of pitch processing in congenital amusia

10.31234/osf.io/8shg4 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Dominique T Vuvan ◽

Marília Nunes-Silva ◽

Isabelle Peretz

Keyword(s):

Meta Analysis ◽

Pitch Perception ◽

Developmental Trajectory ◽

Pitch Discrimination ◽

Major Theme ◽

Performance Gap ◽

Pitch Processing ◽

Congenital Amusia ◽

Musical Pitch ◽

Using Data

A major theme driving research in congenital amusia is related to the modularity of this musical disorder, with two possible sources of the amusic pitch perception deficit. The first possibility is that the amusic deficit is due to a broad disorder of acoustic pitch processing that has the effect of disrupting downstream musical pitch processing, and the second is that amusia is specific to a musical pitch processing module. To interrogate these hypotheses, we performed a meta-analysis on two types of effect sizes contained within 42 studies in the amusia literature: the performance gap between amusics and controls on tasks of pitch discrimination, broadly defined, and the correlation between specifically acoustic pitch perception and musical pitch perception. To augment the correlation database, we also calculated this correlation using data from 106 participants tested by our own research group. We found strong evidence for the acoustic account of amusia. The magnitude of the performance gap was moderated by the size of pitch change, but not by whether the stimuli were composed of tones or speech. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between an individual's acoustic and musical pitch perception. However, individual cases show a double dissociation between acoustic and musical processing, which suggests that although most amusic cases are probably explainable by an acoustic deficit, there is heterogeneity within the disorder. Finally, we found that tonal language fluency does not influence the performance gap between amusics and controls, and that there was no evidence that amusics fare worse with pitch direction tasks than pitch discrimination tasks. These results constitute a quantitative review of the current literature of congenital amusia, and suggest several new directions for research, including the experimental induction of amusic behaviour through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and the systematic exploration of the developmental trajectory of this disorder.

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Absolute Pitch in Oral Transmission of Folk Tunes as Constrained Random Walks

Empirical Musicology Review ◽

10.18061/emr.v10i3.4898 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 178

Author(s):

Klaus Frieler

Keyword(s):

Random Walks ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Empirical Data ◽

Absolute Pitch ◽

Folk Songs ◽

Pitch Class ◽

Oral Transmission

In this commentary, I would like to add a few of our own, still unpublished, empirical observations concerning the possible role of absolute pitch memory (APM) in the oral transmission of folksongs. This empirical data poses some questions on the likelihood of the observed inter-recording tonic pitch consistency of Olthof, Janssen & Honing (2015) and how these could come about. Based on simulations of absolute pitch class of tonics during oral transmission of folk songs, I argue that the interplay of melodic range and vocal range might actually be the main reason for the observed non-uniformity, in contrast to the conclusions presented in Olthof et al. (2015). However, this does not invalidate the therein presented evidence, but makes the case more puzzling, consequently calling for more empirical research on the interaction of melodic and vocal range and latent APM as well as for more detailed modeling of oral transmission of folk songs.

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