Absolute Pitch

Ward, W. Dixon

doi:10.1016/b978-012213564-4/50009-3

Cited by 107 publications

(133 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…For instance, if the phenomenon of AP was largely accounted for by individual differences in auditory working memory capacity, then one might expect AP to be much more common than the often cited statistic of one in every 10,000 individuals in Western cultures (e.g., Ward, 1999). That being said, an additional factor that might contribute to the rarity of ''true'' AP could be the prioritization of relative pitch information in early musical training, as relative pitch category learning has been shown to develop at a direct cost to absolute pitch sensitivity (e.g., Dye, Ramscar, & Suh, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Absolute pitch (AP) is often defined as the ability to name a pitch using the category of a musical note, or to produce a musical note without the aid of a reference note (e.g., Ward, 1999). The ability is reported to be remarkably rare in Western cultures, with an estimated prevalence of less than one in 10,000 individuals (e.g., Bachem, 1955;Deutsch, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Auditory working memory predicts individual differences in absolute pitch learning

et al. 2015

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory working memory predicts individual differences in absolute pitch learning

et al. 2015

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“…Absolute pitch (AP), the rare ability to name a musical tone in the absence of a reference tone, has attracted the attention of researchers for over a century and generated speculation about its utility in musical processing (Bachem, 1955;Ward, 1999). However, studies exploring the relationship between AP and musical proficiency have yielded mixed results, and this relationship remains unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Absolute pitch correlates with high performance on interval naming tasks

Dooley

Deutsch

2011

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Absolute pitch, the rare ability to identify or produce a musical tone without a reference tone, has been shown to be advantageous in some musical tasks; however, its relevance in musical contexts primarily involving relative pitch has been questioned. To explore this issue, 36 trained musicians-18 absolute pitch possessors and 18 non-possessors with equivalent age of onset and duration of musical training-were tested on interval naming tasks requiring only relative pitch. The intervals to be named were either ascending or descending with separation ranging from 1 to 12 semitones and equally involved all 12 pitch classes. Three different conditions were employed; these used brief sine waves, piano tones, and piano tones preceded by a V7-I chord cadence so as to establish a tonal context. The possession of absolute pitch was strongly correlated with enhanced performance on all these tests of relative pitch. Furthermore, no evidence was found that this absolute pitch avantage depended on key, interval size, or musical context.

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“…The second source of evidence for absolute pitch processing biases during early development comes from the tiny minority of individuals (1 in 1,500 or 1 in 10,000 according to Profita and Bidder (1988) or Bachem (1955), respectively) who have absolute pitch (AP), which enables them to identify or produce isolated pitches within the musical range (Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993;Ward, 1999). Because intensive music training by 6 or 7 years of age is the best predictor of AP, the presumption is that the early years involve enhanced attention to absolute cues (Chin, 2003;Deutsch, 2002;Levitin & Rogers, 2005;Miyazaki & Ogawa, 2006;Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%