Papa Blows His Nose in G: Absolute Pitch, Essay Example

Summary

Among musicians absolute pitch is more common then among the vice versa, because this type of gift as a result can be identified as a factor of musical talent development. In today’s fast moving world an individual has to prove his being unique in order to play a role among the highly-competitive society. The author, Oliver Sacks, also brings out the main reasons of how this ability gets developed among individuals. He describes genetic reasons, lingual peculiarities of different nations, and child development specialties. Besides portraying various absolute pitch musicians Oliver Sacks also describes how people owning this ability go on after going deaf, how musicians are still able to do what they are best at. He describes the difference in world views of people with absolute pitch, their relation and reaction to people who don’t possess such capabilities.

It is quite remarkable knowing that people with absolute pitch are able to define the pitch of any sound, note, noise without comparison. People having absolute pitch notified how remarkable this developed sense was, and they described how unordinary it was and how special this sense showed. The author described some examples in his article, where some people having absolute pitch used it in their professions. Gordon B. a professional violinist remarked to the author that when he had his tinnitus it was specifically a “high F-natural”, which is very odd when someone identifies the pitch of his tinnitus. When you have absolute pitch, you can define the tone of any sound, whether you hear it in your everyday life or you even from your head. People with this ability can differ up to 70 tones, and they can identify their differences with high precision.

The author tells how the “Oxford Companion to Music” was a sort of story book to him as he was a boy, which included multiple examples of absolute pitch. Oliver Sacks loved the example of Sir Frederick Ouseley, who was once a professor at Oxford. Sir Ouseley mentioned that at a very young age of five e already remarked that, “the pope blowed his nose in G, the wind whistled in D, the clock struck in B minor.” When these effects were tested later on, they appeared to be correct. To ordinary people, who don’t have absolute pitch, these abilities seem marveling odd, as if these people have a sort of sixth sense, similar to “x-ray vision”.

The author also gave an example of Olavi Sotavalta, a Finnish entomologist, who did studies on insects. Sotavalta was greatly assisted by his absolute pitch in his studies, he used his precise hearing in identifying the frequency of insect wingbeats by knowing the pitch of the hum. He did not make any musical notations, but with his hearing he precisely identified the amount of wingbeat cycles per second. This example proved that by having absolute pitch and knowledge on frequency scales and their correlation, one can make fascinating studies.

People with absolute pitch hear pitches of various sounds as normal people see various colors. It is like we see green or any tones of green, that people with absolute pitch hear notes. This is the key wonder about having absolute pitch, that the ones wielding it have an almost completely different world view.

However the few problems of having absolute pitch especially among musicians are of those that Mozart had. When people who have absolute pitch hear a song in a specific pitch, they cannot apprehend the same song when it is a half-tone different, it does not seem right to such people. These problems are more distinctly viewed when it goes to tuning instruments. The author remarked, when the composer Michael Torke heard his old piano with the original nineteenth-century strings, he encountered that it played a third of a tone flat. A sharpness or flatness of such would have been notice by an ordinary person with great doubt.

When an absolute pitch person visits a concert and hears music at a quarter of a pitch different than he is accustomed to, he feels awkward and sometimes agitated, as if someone had painted fruits or vegetables in opposite to their natural colors. Musicians often modify music by transposing from one key to another, however people with absolute pitch see to each key a special character, and they can only perceive a musical piece right if it is played as they are accustomed to hearing it. When drawing parallels, this is like “drawing a picture in the wrong colors.”

People with absolute pitch are very sensible to the tones of music they hear, this means that when two pitches are played creating a tritone, the person with absolute pitch may fail to notice that, while an ordinary person will sense a dissonance and as a reflex will wince. This was especially characteristic to neurologist and musician Steven Frucht who had difficulties in hearing musical harmonies and intervals because he was so aware of flats and sharps of notes.

However this does not mean that people with the lack of the following ability cannot be gifted musicians. Genius composers like Schumann and Wagner were great without this ability, talent is what matters. Although when an individual with absolute pitch for some reason loses this sense, severe privation is felt. It is like going “colorblind” when you loose a sense you have grown with from your childhood. These losses may most likely occur when a person receives mechanical injuries of the brain, whether they are from surgeries or some kind of accidents leading to traumas, or when a person goes deaf (recalling Beethoven). The greatest characteristic viewed in such matters is concerning the fact that people with absolute pitch have amazing memory to the pitches of instruments or pieces. They recall the pitches they once known, and often reproduce them, sometimes only from the music going in their heads. The sad part is that each key of a piano or any other instrument was so distinctly different from each other, and now these distinctions are lost for such musician.

However as statistics show how rare absolute pitch is met among people (less than 1 out of 10000 people), it brings out curiosity of what is the factor influencing this kind of special hearing development. Questions among scientists occur of why this ability is not characteristic to most people, how come it is so rare.

As Diana Deutsch wrote, she did not know that she had absolute pitch before she realized how complicating for her siblings at age 4 was to name the notes played. She realized the presence of absolute pitch when viewing how children named notes at class with extra trouble and required to look at the keys struck on the piano.  Absolute pitch draws so much attention because it offers hearing of enormously high to the ordinary precision, almost the same as the precise vision of an eagle.

Diana Deutsch described how strange it seems to people with absolute pitch to observe others who lack this ability. She made examples as if someone lacked the ability to identify colors. Think how strange it would be if you show a person one color and the following person would be perplexed. Then you show that same person another color and you tell him that it is blue, the reaction you would expect, is that the person figures that if the second color is blue the first must be logically red. Now that would be a really strange situation for the ordinary person. A perplexed reaction is met by a person with absolute pitch to people who cannot define with ease tones. People with absolute pitch can identify the tones, their intervals, and with the same ease can place them onto a musical scale. A person with absolute pitch can be familiar with the F-sharpness as an ordinary person can recognize a familiar face.

When studying the origin of absolute pitch development, scientists learned that it is often genetically based. Most likely absolute pitch is among musicians, which has been proved by multiple studies, however this is characteristic for musicians who have started training at early age, preferably starting at the age of four. At the same time this is a question of individual matter, because there are numerous talented musicians who have not even developed absolute pitch, despite the intensity of training. Statistics also show that a great percentage of children obtaining absolute pitch suffered early blindness. Scientists also discovered that linguistic background also affects the development of the following skill. As studies showed, native Vietnamese and Mandarin speakers have outstanding abilities to developing absolute pitch. When comparing US and Chinese music conservatories, tests showed that Chinese students from the age of 4 to 9 are more likely to develop these abilities then American students. This proves that nontone language speakers have a less susceptible background, while languages which include quarter tone variations have the advantage.

Diana Deutsch discovered that learning a multitonal language at early age is equal to receiving musical knowledge, when it comes to the development of AP. The best age to acquire this ability is by the age of eight, when a child starts to find the learning of a new language with a presence of a native accent more difficult. Concluding these statistical facts it is easy to say that practically all infants have the potential in acquiring AP.

When comparing brain activity using MRI, Gottfried Schlaug in 1995 proved that people with absolute pitch had an asymmetry in the part of brain important for the perception of music and speech, the following asymmetries in size and brain activities were also characteristic to other people with AP. Tests using MRIs also showed that the ability to differ tones does not mean that this is absolute pitch, you must be able to automatically identify and line tones in a musical scale. MRIs showed focal activation when asking a person with absolute pitch to name a tone or interval, while the focal activation among people with relative pitch was only viewed when naming intervals.

Scientists studied the acquisition of absolute pitch among infants. Studies showed that infants highly relied on absolute pitch cues. Infants categorized unaware the tones they heard, and when they heard a melody or words of the same sequence in different tones, they often distinguished them to being different. This also proves the fact of how infants seem to remember the voice of their mother for years.

Studies showed that eight-month old infants relied most of the time on absolute pitch cues than adults who had and hadn’t any musical education, this proved that infants unconsciously rely on AP as a form of attaining the vocal characteristics of their parents and their surroundings. Even though the ability to acquire AP is lost with age and infants with potential become ordinary people with relative pitch hearing, they can still retain their lost ability in unusual conditions. Frequently the conditions improving to retain AP are the presence of a tonal language.

Thereby theories have occurred where it is thought that absolute pitch has evolutionary origins. It is thought by Steven Mithen that the Neanderthals had this ability due to the absence of a tonal language. Since they spoke in mumbles and hums of different tones, this made it possible for the development of AP among the greater percentage of inhabitants.

In conclusion, compositional languages have the advantage of enriching their owners with this ability. If there only existed a place with a language where it seemed that one would say the same word, and it would have numerous meanings due to being said in different tones, we would have the conditions to developing AP abilities among infants. People will live in a different world view to some things. All have the potential to evolving ourselves and our descendents, training is all that is required.