Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Sora Shimazaki
Famous musicians including Ella Fitzgerald and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had perfect pitch, which has been considered a rare ability.
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The Fretting Hand Guitarists of all styles agree that the fingernails on whichever hand you use to press down notes and chords (your left hand if...
Read More »People can, indeed, learn to identify musical notes by ear, but there are some caveats. Previously it was thought that acquiring perfect pitch depended on a “critical period” early in life during which children could acquire perfect pitch with training, or that only some children with a specific genetic endowment could acquire perfect pitch during this period. Adults, it was thought, could not acquire perfect pitch once that developmental window closed. However, a 2013 study argued that a drug called valproate could ‘re-open’ this critical period, allowing some adults to learn to identify notes by ear with training. Later research conducted at the University of Chicago by Prof. Howard Nusbaum, Shannon Heald, Stephen Van Hedger, and Rachelle Koch showed that drugs may not be necessary: With only brief training, some adults learned to remember notes, and could correctly identify them even months later with higher accuracy than they had been able to beforehand. While only a few individuals may become as accurate as individuals who have had absolute pitch their entire lives, according to Nusbaum, ‘perfect pitch’ may be more malleable than previously thought. Having perfect pitch is likely related to a person’s auditory working memory—in other words, their ability to remember and assign meaning to sounds such as musical notes. Other research by Van Hedger, Heald and Nusbaum demonstrated that even those with absolute pitch can be re-tuned, or ‘tricked’ into thinking that music is in tune when it is in fact out of tune, if they first listen to a piece of music that is gradually detuned by a third of a note over the course of several minutes. A person’s first language and previous experience with music and sound may also influence their ability to identify musical notes and their likelihood of having perfect pitch. For example, some evidence suggests that speakers of tonal languages—such as Mandarin—in which the same word can have different meanings depending on the tone in which it is spoken (where tone refers to sound frequency or pitch, rather than emotional quality), may be more likely to develop the ability. Those who learned to play instruments from an early age may also be more likely to have perfect pitch. The best predictor of perfect pitch, according to recent research from Nusbaum’s lab led by doctoral student Katherine Reis, is a brain response measure called the “frequency following response,” which provides a snapshot of the overall integrity of a person’s ability to process and classify sounds. The caveat, however, is that the frequency following response itself is not immutable. Though it might seem “fixed,” individuals can improve this response with practice, and both individuals with and without perfect pitch are better at naming notes produced on a piano, as opposed to computer-generated sounds, suggesting that familiarity with the timbres of musical instruments is important.
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