On "Perfect Pitch"
by Roger E. Bissell
1/5/97

"Perfect pitch" (which I discovered I possess back in 3rd grade) is actually a cluster of three or more abilities:

(1) the ability to name the pitch of a note that someone else is playing or singing. This is the "purest," least ambiguous and simplest form of perfect pitch. It is an awesome skill, and often leaves people mystified as to how the person does it.

(2) the ability to sing a note that someone else has said the letter name of--e.g., you ask me to sing an A, and I do so, without reference to pitch pipe, piano, or whatnot. (It's equivalent if someone writes a note's letter name, or points to the note as it appears as a notated musical symbol in a musical staff.) Playing the A on piano or whatever in response to someone saying the letter name of a note, however, is not an example of this skill, because it's presumed that someone who plays an instrument knows where that note is through visual and/or tactile memory, which can be accessed before the note is performed, allowing for preparation in pinpointing the note, whereas for voice it's strictly through the kinesthetic memory of the throat muscles, which cannot be accessed prior to singing the note, allowing no opportunity for physical/perceptual preparation before singing it. That's why singing a note is considered a valid test of this form of perfect pitch, whereas playing an instrument is not. It, too, is a very impressive skill, judging by people's reactions I've seen in the past.

(3) the ability to play on an instrument a note that you hear someone else play or sing. Conversely, to (2) above, singing a note that you hear someone else play or sing is not considered a valid test of this form or mode of perfect pitch. Except for the small minority of people who are "tone deaf," almost everyone can do this. It is because auditory pitch memory and the kinesthetic memory of the throat muscles seem to be connected in the nervous system and brain of most everyone, whereas apm is quite rarely connected with visual and/or tactile memory, which is why a person's instrumentally repeating a heard note is evidence of this mode of perfect pitch. It is when you hear a note and immediately know which key or valve to press, which finger or slide position to use, which string or resonant partial to engage, that you have this mode of perfect pitch. A good example is the pianist who hears someone start singing and immediately begins accompanying them in the right key, without "fishing around" for the key.

I've always thought the skill (or cluster of skills) called "perfect pitch" must be genetic, viz., an inherited capacity to tightly link different forms of perceptual and motor and symbolic memory. But what the evolutionary payoff of such a skill or capacity might be, I have no idea. So, it may instead be something that is developed or not at an early age--along the lines of the "sensitive periods" that Montessori identified. For music, according to the Suzuki and Yamaha people, that "absorbent stage" is approximately ages 3 to 5, and there is some thought that "perfect pitch" can be learned. Certainly, many trained musicians have a workable approximation to perfect pitch, usually called "having good relative pitch," but it seems less enduring than the kind that sets in (somehow) early in life (as mine did).

To add to the complexity of the issue, it appears that there are two forms of perfect pitch in regard to transposing music. Some people have a very rigid form of perfect pitch. Singers in a choir sometimes are asked by the director to sing from printed music in a key lower than it is written in. They are given their starting note, then they are expected to follow the succession of intervals in their part, but in the transposed key. Most trained singers are able to do this with no problem. But singers with rigid perfect pitch are very disoriented by this process. They see an A, and their auditory memory "hears" an A, and their muscles want to sing an A, but the other sopranos (for instance) are (correctly, for the transposition) singing a G! On the other hand, singers with what I call flexible or moveable perfect pitch are somehow able to shift their frame of reference. If they are told by the choir director that their starting note--a printed A--has to sound a step lower--a sung G--they somehow are able to temporarily reset the symbolic association of the printed note A to their auditory and kinesthetic memory of a sung G. Thank goodness, this was the form of perfect pitch I developed, or I would have gone nuts on some of the jobs I worked! (To see a photo of me in action at a club where I perform Monday nights, click on this: Big Band .)

All of these complexities aside, though, it appears that pitch memory of this kind is localized in the left brain. This is contrary to most of the conventional wisdom that associates musical skills with the right brain. But pitch is a locational attribute, and a certain structure in the left brain is significantly larger in those people with perfect pitch than in those without it. Now, how that structure got significantly larger is another question. Again, I don't know for sure, but since we know that brain structure does change with experience and cognitive and motor development, it makes sense that it could be a developmental phenomenon, rather than a genetic one. The evidence is not all in, yet.

Copyright 1997 by Roger E. Bissell

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