[Phys-l] Perfect pitch (Was: Student engagement)

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

OK look at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041114235846.htm

The first large-scale, direct-test study to be conducted on perfect pitch,
led by psychology professor Diana Deutsch of UC San Diego, has found that
native tone language speakers are almost nine times more likely to have the
ability.

Results will be presented Nov. 17 (2004) at the meeting of the Acoustical
Society of America in San Diego.

So maybe they don't usually have perfect pitch, but that they are much more
likely.  Mea culpa, I had forgotten some of the details.

The paper is at:
http://www.aip.org/148th/deutsch.html.

And James Levine commented that he had lost perfect pitch which actually
made him a better musician.  So it can be acquired or lost.

Did Sachs look at the physics journals for his evidence?  Did he cite this
paper.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> > There are a lot of things that are assumed to be inborn, which clearly
> > are
> > not.  A good example here is perfect pitch.  It is completely
> > trainable.
> > Mandarin is a language which uses pitch to discriminate between words.
> > Testing has shown that Mandarin speakers usually have perfect pitch.
>
>
> The recent reference
>
> Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition
> by Oliver Sacks
>
> To the contrary.