Talk:Absolute pitch

Semitone/Half step?

Semitone = Half step in the States. Should it be notated or change? Ich 00:47, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)

Absolute pitch?

My father told me the names of the white notes on a piano when I was five years old. For many years after that, I could identify white notes on a piano when I heard them, but with black notes, I could tell only that they were black notes. And it didn't work with other instruments. During my 20s, "C"s on a piano began to sound almost, but not quite, a full tone higher than "C"s, and ever since then I get confused and cannot identify notes. How does that fit into theories about the origin and nature of this phenomenon? -- Mike Hardy

Different pianos may be tuned a semitone higher or lower than "concert pitch", which may cause this phenomenon. -- tk1@despammed.com

"Usually, people with active absolute pitch will not only be able to identify a note, but recognize when that note is slightly sharp or flat." You need not actually identify the black keys to have perfect pitch, but only know that they are indeed black keys, if that makes sense. Jendeyoung 18:33, 26 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed many people with perfect pitch (absolute pitch) complain that they begin to hear notes up to a whole step higher as they enter early middle age. It's probably a relatively common aging process, just like losing hair and eyesight. Perhaps you can pick up the clarinet, since it's a Bb instrument.--69.226.242.31 08:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's scary; I've actually noticed something like this myself, but I attributed it to listening to so much early music where A = Ab or somewhere in between. Interesting! Antandrus (talk) 15:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

re: Changes by JonKDan@msn.com

Regarding the new edits made May 28/29 in the definition: I actually quite liked the definition of AP that was there, and all the moreso because it was properly attributed:

Absolute pitch has been defined as "the ability to attach labels to isolated auditory stimuli on the basis of pitch alone".^[1] A person with absolute pitch might be able to, for instance, identify the pitch of a car horn, or confirm whether a piece is played in its original key.

It seems to me that it should be retained.

I take issue with the changing of the definitions of "Passive" and "Active" AP, because although I am not the one who contributed them to this WP article, I am the one who defined those terms (with my colleague Richard Parncutt) in the Grove Dictionary of Music. I'd prefer that we left those passages the way they were. Specifically, the very definition of passive AP does require instantaneous labeling; if it requires "more of a conscious effort" it is what Bachem (1954) referred to as "quasi-AP". Under "Active" AP, equal temperament is not necessary. The new note about the impossibility of making an accurate assessment -- the way it is worded now -- implies that it should be attributed to my colleague Oliver Sacks, which it isn't. But in fact, stratified random sampling theory ensures it is just as possible to assess AP in the general population as it is to assess the incidence of Down syndrome, diabetes, or left-handedness. -- User:Daniel Levitin 29 May, 2006

Sounds convincing to me. Important changes should be discussed first too. I'll revert it for now. Stephen B Streater 13:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect pitch

This article uses the oft considered inaccurate term perfect pitch throughout its text. Any reason?-Hyacinth 21:04, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Probably because it is in more common usage, even though it is irritatingly imprecise. I tried to train my students to use the term "absolute pitch" but it was a losing battle. Google for perfect pitch = 87,000; absolute pitch = 20,000, as of today. Antandrus 17:04, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Don't be fooled. Absolute pitch and perfect pitch are not the same thing. Relative pitch is when you are able to relate the pitch of one note to another (intervals). Most good musicians can do this. Absolute pitch is the ability to remember a certain pitch (eg, remembering exactly what a note sounds like or the frequency of a note). Some musicians with good knowledge and experience can do this. Perfect pitch is a little more difficult to explain, you just know what the note is without relating it to any other note or remembering what it sounds like. It's an intuitive thing. a person is born with this ability (genetic - if a parent has perfect pitch, the child if 15 times more likely to have it), or it can be environmental but it is something that cannot be taught. A person has to work it out and understand it for themselves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 144.138.204.246 (talk • contribs) .

I've never heard a distinction made between absolute and perfect pitch--what's your source? Grove makes no distinction, except to say that the term "perfect pitch" is misleading, in their article. Antandrus (talk) 04:58, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe there is a distinction. As for 144.138.204.246's comments: the phenomenon I believe he is referring to is that many good musicians begin to acquire absolute pitch in a weak or not very reliable way, as opposed to the people who have had fast and reliable recognition since childhood (and there is a minority that has acquired this later in life). However, I don't think it's appropriate to make this distinction by the choice of one word. "Perfect pitch", as he described, is really just strong "absolute pitch", or perhaps absolute pitch with good musical training. I have seen this kind of usage, but I believe it is a misusage. What 144.138.204.246's definition is doing is trying to distinguish between the two extreme ends of what should collectively be known as absolute pitch, and there is a very continuous overlap between these two groups, so I don't think it's necessary to include an alternate definition for this common confusing misuse. - Rainwarrior 13:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tones

It is possible that you learned to name tones (a collection of characteristics) instead of pitches (a single characteristic of a tone). When musical contexts change-- most typically, timbre and harmony-- the perception of a tone also changes.

Perfect pitch and absolute pitch have become interchangeable terms. I suspect that "perfect pitch" is used throughout the article because it is a less clumsy term than "absolute pitch"-- it's alliterative and has a nicer rhythm.

cheers chris http://www.acousticlearning.com

But the pitch is the fundamental, unless it is a bell or something with an irregular overtone series. When I hear a C# I first hear the C#, whether it is a piano, an oboe, a tire squeal or a modem trying to connect; the perception of timbre comes later. Interesting though. Antandrus 05:41, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Melody trigger: Prolobe.com

The melody trigger technique is now being used (successfully) to gain absolute pitch at Prolobe.com

-Pete

1 in every 10,000?

Active absolute pitch possessors in the United States number about 1 in every 10,000.

I am somewhat doubtful that this is actually true. Throughout my secondary school life I've known quite a number of people who can sing whatever note you tell them to. I can too and even now in a small choir of only roughly 20 people there is also someone else who can. Although I was in Hong Kong in secondary school and in Australia now, surely even in the United States there are many more than 1 in 10,000. -- KittySaturn 09:55, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

I also see this statistic mentioned frequently. My own experience (which I can't put in to the article, since it's original research) is that possessors of perfect pitch may be far more numerous than this, based on how many I knew in graduate school. I taught at a large music conservatory, and I'd say that maybe 1 in 20 of the students in the advanced theory/sight-singing sections that I taught had "active" perfect pitch, and maybe one in ten had "passive". No students in the lower sections did. Overall, maybe one in 50 or 100 students in the school had the ability. The 1:10,000 statistic holds up only if it possible that the students in the school were a tiny subset of the general population. I also observed that students from East Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Singapore especially) were much more likely to have pitch than those from the west; I have no idea why, since not all those places have tonal languages. Antandrus (talk) 15:47, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Although the statistic is probably inflated to some extent, your case is probably above average. But you must also take into account that you are not only in an academic environment, but also in a musical one. In this environment, although the percentage of people possessing absolute pitch from birth should be unchanged, the percentage of people who develop absolute pitch should be much higher. You must remember that the majority of the population does not study music seriously. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.92.40.30 (talk • contribs) .

I have active absolute pitch, being capable of identifying keys, notes, and producing any notes. I recently participated in an All-State Mixed Chorus ensemble, and approximately 10% of those in the chorus had absolute pitch. The general population might be 1:10,000, but musical population, much higher. Artvandelay 02:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

10% is pretty impressive. That's about the number of people who had absolute pitch in graduate classes I taught, as well as when I taught Advanced Ear Training. (I have it myself, and have had since about age 12.) Always found it a liability when singing in a cappella vocal groups though, and drove me crazy when I tried to learn to play transposing instruments. Antandrus (talk) 02:43, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Learnable Vs. Genetic Only

I am very interested in knowing if Absolute Pitch can be learned, and more about what absolute pitch exactly means.

I have listened to some CD's from the Perfect Pitch Super Training course that claim to be able to teach absolute pitch. On their website they claim that anyone can learn Perfect Pitch, and have 2 University studies that seem to agree with them.

At the same time there are the UCSF studies, which suggests that perfect pitch is rare, and is genetic.

The links from the wikipedia article seem to have some of the same conflicting information.

This has led me to a few hypothesis of possibilities for the conflicting data.

1. The UCSF studies have not taken into account students who have learned through the perfectpitch.com courses.

2. Perfectpitch.com is misrepresenting there information or is lieing in someway. (This is not an accusation, only a possibility. It should be noted that it is also a possibility that the UCSF study could be lieing, but this is not likely, especially with other studies showing similar things)

3. There are more than one form of perfect pitch, one that is genetic and one that can be developed. In Sir James Jeans classic "The Science of Music" he discusses how the eardrum is not perfectly round and so that when you hear a note, you will also hear another note at the same time, just very slighlty. Maybe one form of absolute pitch has to do with the shape of the eardrum, and another has to do with the actual fibers in our ears that pick up tone, or maybe one is how our brains are wired to interpret the information. I'm not sure. I have not seen any studies yet that discuss the physiology, only about testing people to see if they have it or not.

This potential difference in physiological types of perfect pitch could maybe explain active vs. passive perfect pitch also.

I have emailed both perfectpitch.com and UCSF. I will post my findings. But I am also posting this to see if anyone knows of any information that might help bring resolution to this conflicting data.

I'm a skeptic of the claim adults can learn perfect pitch. I started the Perfect Pitch Super Training Course regiment two weeks ago. I remain a skeptic. Here's what I've found for myself. I never realized in my 37 years of existance that I could identify C. Now, I know. And it's only for C. Going through the regimen, I can produce most of the notes of chromatic scale on demand so that I'm either dead on or close enough for my voice and my keyboard to generate beats. My hearing isn't as good. I can only identify a note on the chromatic scale half the time. The other times, I'm off by a half step. I feel like I could do a few things to make myself look like I have perfect pitch. In reality, I'm nowhere closer to perfect pitch than when I started. C is still the only note that I can immediately tell like I can identify colors or shapes. Identifying other notes is more like recalling the meaning of words in a foreign language with a mental dictionary, although the mental dictionary could get faster with constant practice. Producing notes feels more like I'm being lucky with a guess than something that feels natural. I think I'm only honing an advanced form of relative pitch. The Perfect Pitch Super Training Course and others should be put to shame for selling their courses to desparate musicians. I'll still continue with the regimen because it's fun to see results, and I feel like I'm developing an interesting (non-musical) skill. But it has nothing to do with perfect pitch. I still remain a skeptic.--69.20.170.196 08:05, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned about the statement in the article that "Independent research at Ohio State University and the University of Calgary demonstrated statistically significant improvements in absolute pitch skills among students using a perfect pitch method by David Lucas Burge. [10]. " This is straight out of Burge's training materials, but I've read those two reports carefully and they do NOT show that absolute pitch can be learned, as Burge has claimed. I know this is rash, but I'm going to take down that claim later this week unless there are any objections. Daniel Levitin

If I'm following the article history correctly, this statement was placed in the article as a "compromise" for an editor trying to linkspam various articles relating to pitch and Ear training. The compromise was also based on the fact that this article apparently alludes or links to a competitor of PerfectPitch.com[mercial]. Therefore, we are supposed to give them equal license, apparently. I would support edits that ensure factual information is recognized, and that we don't worry about giving equal time to commercial interests who want to slide their way into this article, but have no a priori justification, per WP policy, for being included at all. (Now if established research happens to be coming from a commercial source, then fine). Full discloure: I'm the original linkspam remover. Regards, Outriggr 04:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up: the statement in question was actually placed by the party I'm calling the "spammer", after discussions on talk pages of a couple of earnest Wikipedians trying to come to a compromise with him/her. Outriggr 04:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added the link to the references to reduce its profile in the article and also because it claims to contain research. I would rather link to this research directly, but haven't had time to dig it up or verify its existence. PS I know several people who have learned perfect pitch, so the claims seemed plausible to me. Stephen B Streater 12:32, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I should clarify my earlier comment. I read the Ohio State and U of Calgary articles very carefully, and they did NOT show that the Burge method works. Burge has been claiming for years that they show something that they do not. I agree that this article (like all WP articles) needs to give a fair treatment to different sides of an issue, but this particular sentence goes against fact. As to Stephen's note that he knows several people who have learned perfect pitch, I think one needs to be precise about what is meant by "perfect pitch" (or "absolute pitch", and I'm using the terms interchangeably as I think Stephen intended for our TALK purposes here). I don't know of any documented case of an adult who learned perfect pitch with a degree of accuracy and speed-of-naming that was equivalent to someone learning it before the age of 8. In every scientifically documented case, the adult had slower responses, suggesting that (s)he had learned only a few "landmark" tones, and was using relative pitch to calculate the remaining pitches from there. This is what Bachem (1954), Ward (1982) and others have called pseudo-absolute pitch. I am emphatically NOT saying that Stephen is mistaken, and I am NOT saying that adults cannot learn AP; rather, I am saying that there are no scientifically documented cases of adults learning AP. This is the reason that I think the misleading quote about the OSU and UC studies should be removed. I also would like your permission/consensus to clean up the discussion of "perfect pitch" versus "absolute pitch" and to clarify "white keys" vs. "black keys," "absolute piano" (timbre effects), and pseudy-AP, but of course I will propose any changes here in TALK before actually posting them. Daniel Levitin

Content in the article

Most of the content in the "Definition" section seems to be less about describing absolute pitch and more about the author(s) passing the ability as an unnecessary annoyance. The author seems a tad envious of the ability and appears to be, "playing it down", so to speak.

For example, while a musician with absolute pitch might feel "off" if a piece is not exactly tuned properly, it is not a constant annoyance. That's like saying a bicyclist will continiously feel uncomfortable if he or she rides a new bike--obviously it will be distracting for a while, but the cyclist can (usually) quickly become adjusted to it.

A revision would be helpful.

As someone who is said to possess a very extreme form of "active" absolute pitch, I can tell you that what you have identified as complete nonsense is, in fact, complete nonsense. I can instantly discern the key of a piece and can tell you if a piece normally played in one key has been transposed to another, but it's simply just an observation I can make. It doesn't cause me any emotional distress when a piece is transposed to an unusual key. Neither am I put off by performances on historical instruments which use a different tuning system than modern instruments. I can tell that the pitches are slightly different, but the important thing is really the relationships between the pitches, so it doesn't bother me at all. The assertions in the article about people with absolute pitch not being able to identify intervals as easily as people with only relative pitch are, from my own experiences, also fictitious. I can analyze notes relatively or absolutely with equal facility. Unless I possess some form of pitch recognition which hybridizes relative pitch and absolute pitch that someone with just absolute pitch doesn't necessarily have, I can tell you that what is written in the article is just false. Batman Jr. 23:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree fully with this (as another person with absolute pitch). I don't think I would discredit the things said in that definition, as there are cited sources and they are more or less common-sense deductions, but I would definitely assert that potential problems arising from the ability are not its definition. I've moved them to the scientific studies section. Rainwarrior 18:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely wouldn't want to change the article based on my own personal experiences as I can't cite any scholarly sources verifying them, but they can at least serve as a hint to someone else who might be interested in studying the validity of the claims in the article in further detail and either conclusively affirming them or debunking them. Batman Jr. 06:43, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As someone with relative pitch, however, I can say that even a slightly out-of-tune instrument can disturb me. If a piece is transposed to a different key, that's no disturbance, but if one were to take a mallet instrument where every key is in tune except C4, every time C4 was played would bother me. I don't know if that's common to persons with "just" relative pitch, though (I have no absolute pitch at all), or just a coincidental peculiarity. The Dark 07:11, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The reason why it's disturbing for one note to be tuned slightly off-key is because you're changing the intervals between that note and the rest of the notes on the instrument. If you were to tune all of the rest of the notes so that they were also slightly off-key so that every one note related to every other with the proper interval, I would expect the disturbance to be ameliorated (after all, certain tuning methods deliberately tune notes slightly off-pitch to make an instrument sound better). If you have free time, maybe you can try that and tell me if my hypothesis is right. Take care. Batman Jr. 06:43, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In general I agree with Batman Jr's original comment - I think that to emphasise the disadvantages of absolute (or perfect) pitch is to miss the point. I also suspect (from my own observations) that those people with absolute pitch who are disorientated by music played in a different key from the one they expect or by instrumental tuning that is correct in relation to itself but slightly sharp or flat compared with some standard reference pitch (as often happens with 'period' instruments, for example) are more likely to be people without a lot of musical training or experience. Experienced musicians usually (?always) have a well-developed sense of relative pitch, whether or not they possess absolute pitch. Certainly if I hear a piece of music in a strange key it generally takes me but a moment to adjust to the new tonality. (There are some exceptions to this - all pieces of music that I knew as a very young child, interestingly.) Similarly, if I have to play or listen to music on an instrument that is not tuned to 'standard' pitch, it doesn't take me long to adjust to the new pitch. Where I have had to work to overcome problems with changes of pitch was in transposing music at sight from one key to another (particularly keyboard music). I suspect that most musicians have to work at this, but I wonder if the problems confronting the absolute pitch musician are different from those confronting other musicians when it comes to this particular skill. ChristopherW, 28 May 2006

Alleged capabilities

JS Bach is noted here as having absolute pitch, but this may be speculative. A reference should be provided.

I thought all but a handful of major composers had perfect pitch and that it is insanely hard to compose anything good without it.

There are many, many, many composers who would be angry at you for saying that. Not me, though, I actually have pitch. ;) The answer to your thought, though, is: no. Most music was written by people who did not have absolute pitch. I would doubt that anyone can tell the difference (in a suitable blind test) between the music of a composer with pitch, and a composer without. Rainwarrior 17:58, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Asian languages

The part in the article about absolute pitch being more common among native speakers of Asian languages sounds pretty bogus. What's the basis for this, just Diana Deutsch of UCSD? She seems to have a lopsided understanding of how Asian languages work.--69.20.170.196 05:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I have noticed this trend, personally, so I wasn't immediately skeptical about the suggestion. The reasoning that the languages are more tonal seems a possibility, but what if a genetic predisposition for better pitch sense is the cause of a more tonal language and not the other way around? I would guess that the statistical advantage is probably sound (it could easily be studied whether Asian-language-speakers have a higher rate of absolute pitch), but the reasoning is just conjecture (it would be much harder to prove, but if someone did a really good experiment I think I could be convinced). Rainwarrior 18:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, as a linguist, coming across the line "what if a genetic predisposition for better pitch sense is the cause of a more tonal language and not the other way around?", I have only one thing to say, which is itch itch itch itch itch itch. There is no relationship between genetics and ability to learn a tonal language, and if I could make the word "no" any bolder than that, I would. If you raise an infant of Caucasian descent in Beijing, in a Mandarin-speaking home, they'll end up speaking perfect Mandarin. It doesn't matter if their parents couldn't tell a tritone from an octave. If you are seriously claiming that Mandarin is a tonal language because the Chinese are genetically predisposed towards perfect pitch, then I must inform you, with all respect, that you have no idea what you're talking about, and should be quiet now. In other words, if there is indeed a correlation between the ability to speak a tonal language and absolute pitch - and if so, it needs to be way more convincingly cited - then that proves absolute pitch should have little if anything to do with genetics. However, I think that's really, really far from proven. Cultural differences aren't being accounted for, for one. Do "Asians" (and I use the word in the sense the article does, to mean "East Asians whose languages are in some way or another kind of like a tonal language") put a higher value on musical ability in general, and absolute pitch in particular? Are these same effects seen in tonal languages elsewhere in the world - like, say, West Africa? And then there's the simple fact of the matter, which is that tonal languages do not rely on absolute pitches, but on relative pitch differentials. Otherwise, men and women would speak different languages! Plus you wouldn't be able to inflect things differently to form questions, or sing, or what have you. I'm not ruling out the possibility that learning a tonal language - hell, maybe even a pitch stress language - might be of some small use in priming the infant to listen for tones, but I certainly can't see strong evidence being presented to back up the audacious claim that there's a clear correlation visible here. 69.140.12.199 07:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't making any claims, just a sort of wandering thought process... you seem to have taken this quote from me to mean something I didn't quite intend, but I don't think it's important enough to retread at the moment. If you think the source is bad, look it up, change the article, and tell us about it here. It's really not worthwhile quoting my talk page mumblings when you could be quoting the article. Just pretend I didn't say it. I was mostly trying to provoke someone who knows more about the study to respond.

Some people do believe absolute pitch is a genetic thing. I don't have an opinion either way, but I do think it deserves consideration. You're right though, no language relies on absolute pitch, but the question is whether a stronger focus on pitch in your native language promotes the learning of absolute pitch. If you think it's not worth suggesting this, take it out of the article. I was merely mentioning that I have, in my own biased and anecdotal way, known more people of Chinese or Vietnamese background to have perfect pitch. I would not suggest this is evidence, I was just saying that this is why I wouldn't [i]immediately[/i] doubt a study that states it. If someone where to quote the study specifically and offer criticism of it, then I might begin to have doubt. Rainwarrior 19:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. In tonal languages, which some Asian languages are, it is imperative to discern differences in tones to communicate. For example: si and si both look the same when written, but when spoken in different tones could mean totally different words in Chinese. I myself have perfect pitch and grew up speaking Chinese; but whether or not I would have perfect pitch if I spoke English instead...I wouldn't know.

But overall, I don't necessarily doubt that this may be true. It would be interesting to do a thorough study on this though. Highconclave 15:27, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm probably formatting this very poorly (someone can correct it for me, I hope), but let me throw in a little bit... the statistics do show that Asian-language speakers overwhelmingly have greater incidence of AP than Western-- 85% (or higher) versus 15% (or lower) in any given population of musicians. Diana Deutsch believes that there is a linguistic correlation; Jane Gitschier believes there is a genetic correlation. Deutsch has told me that she has data (unpublished) which shows that certain Asian children raised in the US have absolute pitch at the same rate as those raised in the original context, but I believe that the most likely factor is a vastly different attitude toward musical training and a very different approach that is culturally pervasive (as East vs West). -Chris Aruffo

Partial Absolute Pitch

I can identify the white notes with absolute accuracy, but can't identify specific sharps and flats (but when a sharp or flat is played I do know that it is indeed not a white key). Anyone else? 71.131.29.225 23:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently so. See above: #Absolute pitch?. Hyacinth 09:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Becoming listless?

I think the list of people with absolute pitch is beginning to overwhelm the article here. What say we split it off into a list... and then go seek out or otherwise demand references for everyone on it so it doesn't become a big unverifiable mess? Mindspillage (spill yours?) 18:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely agree. People keep adding names to it, many unverifiable. Like many other articles that once had "list of whatever"s towards the end, this one could have a List of people with absolute pitch broken out (with references only) ... Antandrus (talk) 21:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I third that. I'm fairly certain that some of them don't belong there... Create a new article and references them. Blahm 22:19, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And the deed is done, or rather the list is split off to List of people with absolute pitch, but the entries aren't yet verified, as I haven't gotten around to that. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 23:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that the list is growing again, one anonymous addition at a time, like a patch of weeds that's been incompletely eradicated. Shall we perhaps not list any famous people that had absolute pitch, but only indicate that many famous musicians did/do? Antandrus (talk) 15:45, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since that section has it's own page, and it's not exactly essential to the topic, I think it might as well contain nothing more than the reference to the other page. Rainwarrior 17:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, here's another thought. Instead of having the other page, why don't we create a category for people with absolute pitch, and add it to the bio pages of these people? That way the list would be maintained automatically, and we'd have a link to it from every appropriate bio page. Anyone think this is a good idea? Rainwarrior 17:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question on link

Hi Stefan h, I had checked this site before. What is a bit uncommon is that the summary text is aimed at experts and non-experts. But the two papers he published in ARLO do exist. ARLO is the online branch of JASA, both being peer-reviewed and leading journals in this field. I also checked if this work is referenced by others (I have an interest in AP myself). It is. See recent review article on the subject (refs 63 & 64). So, no danger. We can keep that in. Interesting material, this. DiMare 17:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Start here: [1]. Biograpy? Watch this: [2]. Last but not least, the famous Mozart portrait studies: [3] and [4]. The author is not only an expert in neurobiology, but also in shipbuilding and in biometrics. This all is simply done by pictures downloaded from the net and googling. What is missing on his site tells even more about him. If you really would like to keep the link, keep it. I was just removing the links to his site, especially the "mozart"-links, which are placed on every single wikipedia. --stefan (?!) 13:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Famous possessors of absolute pitch

The list linked from here was deleted. I kind of agree with the deletion, but if I had known it was coming, I would have grabbed the list and pasted it here so we could start work on making it a category instead, and begin inserting the category into pages on the list. - Rainwarrior 04:59, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is/was as follows (Hyacinth 07:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)):[reply]

This is a list of people possessing absolute pitch.

Fictional characters:

See Wikipedia:Deletion review#List of people with absolute pitch. Hyacinth 07:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Add Nicolas Slonimsky (2002): "It was discovered early in my life that I possessed the precious gift of perfect pitch...". Slonimsky: Perfect Pitch, an Autobiography, p.4. ISBN 0825672740. Hyacinth 07:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've created Category:People with absolute pitch, and added Julie Andrews, whose name I've struck off the list above. I'm too tired to continue at the moment, but I'll be back for the rest sooner or later. Out of curiosity, did you have the page cached, or is there some way to retrieve the contents of recently deleted pages? - Rainwarrior 07:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What I like about the category method is that the list is automatically maintained, and we don't have to worry about notability. I was thinking though, if we are worried about citations, where do they go? Should we put them on the category page, or the bio pages? - Rainwarrior 16:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I've finished adding everyone on the list (including Slonimsky), but not Hendrix as there was no citation, apparently, or Liew Koon Ern, since he was a redlink anyway, maybe not notable? I'm not sure what to do with the fictional characters. Is there a way to force the way the name appears on the category page? I tried on The Simpsons to put the category as "|Largo (Fictional), Mr." but the category page just links it as "The Simpsons". - Rainwarrior 17:38, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There doesn't seem to be a good way to set apart the fictional characters. Mr. Largo doesn't have an article to himself, and neither does John Doe, so I've removed them. Charlie Brown I've kept. - Rainwarrior 18:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I raised this question at the Charlie Brown article: What is the basis for listing him here? Schroeder is known to have perfect pitch, but Charlie Brown thought he was talking about baseball. Rockhopper10r 19:25, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

External links to commercial sites

I've noticed a lot of links coming in and out to the same sites over and over again. Can we clarify what is worth putting on the page here instead of having this constant battle? Do we want a comprehensive list of all perfect-pitch training programs that have websites, or do we want none of them? - Rainwarrior 05:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather we had none of them, since they are WP:SPAM. They're not there to provide useful additional content to our encyclopedia, they are there to sell a product. I just removed four that look spammy to me; I welcome other opinions. Antandrus (talk) 18:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention that my opinion is that we shouldn't have these links because they'd clutter the article, but I don't think one link to a well maintained list would be bad. (Someone tried a link like this recently, but it was to a message board, which I don't think qualifies.) - Rainwarrior 18:41, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you would rather have none of them, why does aruffo.com remain? And my ear training blog http://www.grahamenglish.net is a good free source to learn absolute pitch. I also post research on absolute pitch so I'm not sure why it keeps getting removed. - Grahamenglish 4 May 2006

I didn't remove any links myself. I'm just disturbed by the constant shuffle and wonder if we can't set some guidelines down here. - Rainwarrior 01:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed a bunch of them because I came across this article again and was dismayed at the buildup of spam links. I left the aruffo.com link because it was one of the most interesting and applicable in my completely subjective opinion, but probably better if they all went. (There must be better resources to link to, really.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 01:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not extremely opposed to any external link in particular, and concede that people coming here would be interested in learning perfect pitch. WP:EL prefers people not to link to their own sites. If research is not WP:OR it could be included in this article for peer review. Perhaps a compromise could be a link to the free training guide rather than the home page. I couldn't see this clearly amongst the other information (clutter?) on the main page. Stephen B Streater 06:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC

I think there might come people interested in absolute pitch as a learnable concept here. Therfor, I don't think my software list and link to additional information about absolute pitch as learnable concept was useless. It explains all the methods avaible intend to achieve absolute pitch; aruffo.com is basically the same but explains only 1 method. --Frank at 08:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The ideal scenario may be to include the information in this article, and then refer to the websites as supporting information. This allows the information itself to be reviewed by editors here. Stephen B Streater 11:00, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grahamenglish: If you've got information to add to the absolute pitch page, please add it, but continually readding a link to your own site is going to be seen as spamming. See WP:EL#Links to normally avoid: "9. A website that you own or maintain (unless it is the official site of the subject of the article). If it is relevant and informative, mention it as a possible link on the talk page and wait for someone else to include it, or include the information directly in the article.", and "10. Blogs, social networking sites (such as MySpace) and forums should generally not be linked to. Although there are exceptions, such as when the article is about, or closely related to, the website itself, or if the website is of particularly high standard." - Rainwarrior 03:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it would be worth creating a separate section for commercial products that claim to teach absolute pitch? There is no proof that any of them actually work (mine included), but I have the impression that the reason most people look up absolute pitch on the net is because they want to find out if they can learn it themselves. I suspect a separate section for commercial products-- with or without the disclaimer that none of them are scientifically proven to work (yes, none of them, not even the ones that advertise otherwise)-- would be something people would want to look for. Whether or not that section should be created, I wonder if it would be helpful to link to the aruffo.com research page or even the bibliography, rather than the main page which has a direct link to the software. -Chris Aruffo... um.. how do I add the time and date... well, it's 11:25pm on May 8, anyway.

Contributors to the list of famous possessors of absolute pitch

Anyone who had added an entry to that list, would you go to Category:People with absolute pitch and add a citation for entries which were yours on the original page? Questions about sources have been pouring in on its talk page. - 17:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Is the references to Japanese necessart

It says that there are several Japanese speakers who are perfect pitched. My question is who the heck cares? There are I'm sure a speaker of language X who is perfect pitched. And then it goes on to say that Japanese is a pitch accent language. So what? Maybe someone should mention Ancient Greek and Sanskrit too. Japanese is hardly a tonal language and basically it is irrelevant to the paragraph. I'm going to remove this if no one objects. 24.168.151.153 20:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Missing source

From the "Potential problems" section:

Because their comprehension of musical pitch is categorical rather than spectral (Harris, 1974), poorly-trained absolute pitch possessors can find it quite difficult to play in tune with an orchestra which is not tuned to standard concert pitch A4 = 440 Hz.

What is Harris 1974? --zenohockey 01:32, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

^ Ward, W.D. and Burns, E.M. (1982). "Absolute Pitch". In D. Deutsch (Ed.) (ed.). The Psychology of Music. Orlando: Academic Press. pp. 431–452. ISBN 0-12-213562-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[1] Ward, W.D. and Burns, E.M. (1982). "Absolute Pitch". In D. Deutsch (Ed.) (ed.). The Psychology of Music. Orlando: Academic Press. pp. 431–452. ISBN 0-12-213562-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

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