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I always thought perfect pitch was a lot like language - it's significantly easier to learn/retain if it was learned as a child, but it's still possible to learn as an adult.

However, there are some musicians who believe either is has to be learned as a child, or you have to be born with it.

Are there any cases of adults learning to have perfect pitch, or any studies which suggest that they can't?

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BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
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    I'm the youngest of 7 and have near-perfect pitch. We all play instruments and there was always lots of music in the house as I was growing up. Most of my family has pretty accurate pitch, but they aren't as confident as I in the pitches. It seems to me like it has more to do with early environment than anything else. – mellamokb May 16 '11 at 18:46
  • Good question. But doesn’t the incredibly well-sourced Wikipedia article (in particular the sections dealing with genetics and culture) answer it? – Konrad Rudolph May 16 '11 at 19:19
  • @Konrad: The wiki article says *"This presents the likelihood that the difference is explained by cultural experience rather than genetic heritage."* That is hardly conclusive, and also doesn't address at all the question of whether it's possible for an adult to learn to have perfect pitch. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 16 '11 at 19:33
  • @BlueRaja True. But did you also notice the next paragraph? I believe that the uncertainty expressed in the text accurately reflects the current state of the art. Let’s see if somebody here can come up with a recent review. – Konrad Rudolph May 16 '11 at 19:43
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    I prefer to call this "absolute pitch". My pitch was never perfect in the sense of being dead on, but I can recognize notes from how they sound with no comparison. – David Thornley May 17 '11 at 12:28
  • @Noldorin - Look at the link in my answer; I think it does not support your view (sorry!), but it's pretty decent-looking data. – Rex Kerr May 17 '11 at 15:23
  • @Rex: It's ok. I'm happy to have some eminent musicians on my side anyway. :) (Perhaps I can find some references.) It seems there's stil conflicting views too, as M. Werner highlights. I'm not sure I can be easily convinced that perfect pitch doesn't require some innate ability anyway. Mathematics, science, poetry, composing, etc. all require some god-given talent...why not perfect pitch? –  May 17 '11 at 21:52
  • @Noldorin: *Anyone* can learn mathematics and science; it's just a matter of whether they have the motivation to dedicate themselves to it. Poetry... well, anyone can write poetry, even without special training.. but whether it's any *good* is another question... – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 17 '11 at 22:00
  • My implication was that one would be decent at the subjects. Sure, even a chimpanzee could do basic arithmetic, but does that count? The modern tendency to dismiss natural talent is an unfortunate one perhaps. Some (many) people need to be told "sorry, no matter how hard you try, you will never be good at this". I for one recognise that I will never be good at most things in life, while I have a talent for just a few! –  May 18 '11 at 00:57

4 Answers4

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Sakakibara, A. (1999). A longitudinal study of a process for acquiring absolute pitch. Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology 47.

lists that everyone is born with the ability to learn absolute pitch and

Saffran, J. R. & Griepentrog, G. J. (2001). Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: Evidence for developmental reorganization. Developmental Psychology 37: 74–85. Abstract

lists that people can learn absolute pitch just like they learn color names, but they are, however, a lot behind. Imagine yourself learning color names at your current age: it's hard, but it's not impossible.

Blue-shaded square http://www.color-hex.com/colorimg.php?color=abcdef

That's not just blue, it could be one of the many shades of blue. Is it baby blue, maya blue, sky blue, light blue, or powder blue?

Tamara Wijsman
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    Hm. It's a kind of grey/green, isn't it? Yes, I'm colorblind, but you think everybody could learn color names? – user unknown May 17 '11 at 00:18
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    @user: We're not talking about disabilities here. – Tamara Wijsman May 17 '11 at 00:34
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    `Disability` and `impossible to learn` if you happen to don't have some genes would be the same - wouldn't it? You made the analogy to colors. – user unknown May 17 '11 at 00:45
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    `Impossible to see` and `impossible to learn` are different, the analogy to colors is irrelevant. – Tamara Wijsman May 17 '11 at 00:50
  • From the question: `Are there any cases of adults learning to have perfect pitch, or any studies which suggest that they can't?` If they can't, it is a disability - isn't it? – user unknown May 17 '11 at 01:04
  • @user unknown - It's not a disability if it's something that happens to everyone. Like how everyone loses the ability to both gain native intuition in a language past a certain age, as well as the ability to pick up certain sounds making pronunciation of learned languages hard. – Kit Sunde May 17 '11 at 01:56
  • @Kit: Pardon, what is happening to everyone? If it is like learning colors, and some people can learn the colors, and some people don't, then the conclusion is, that some people can't learn a perfect pitch. Else, the analogy is wrong. – user unknown May 17 '11 at 02:16
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    @user unknown - I was only commenting on your retort that being unable to learn something as an adult means it's a disability. Which is not the case of native intuition in language (I'm not sure if the same applies to identifying colors), so I didn't think your argument held. Colorblindness is an outlier and not the average case. Are you reading the question as having having an implied learn at the end: "Are there any cases of adults learning to have perfect pitch, or any studies which suggest that they can't [learn]?"? – Kit Sunde May 17 '11 at 02:38
  • A missing ability isn't a disability, if it is final? Why? I don't undersand (maybe poor english) what 'native intuition in language' means. Isn't it a tautology, that adults can't learn something as childs? I read the question as: You gain perfect pitch from birth, or the disability to get a perfect pitch lays in your genes, or everybody can learn it, or everybody can learn it - but just as kid. But if it was analogous to learning colors, you would have to consider colorblindness. However, TomWij speaks more about learning names for colors, which is not what perfect pitch is about. ... – user unknown May 17 '11 at 03:05
  • The latter is about reproducing the sound, not naming it (c", c', C, c, c#, b). – user unknown May 17 '11 at 03:06
  • @user unknown: The analogy of partial color-blindness to hearing tones would be [medical tone-deafness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deafness), the inability to distinguish between tones (*complete* color-blindness would be analogous to [amusia](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPRW0wZ9NOM)). Like color blindness, this is a physical disability that occurs in a minority of the population, and renders these people physically unable to learn absolute (or even relative) pitch. Obviously, I am not including them in this question. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 17 '11 at 03:44
  • Well, that's an inherent problem of analogies: You don't have an objective, functional mapping from one scope to the other and back. – user unknown May 17 '11 at 03:53
  • @TomWij: Could you detail the supporting evidence given in those studies? Saying that they "list" something as a fact doesn't really explain much. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 17 '11 at 03:55
  • @BlueRaja: That text is translated from the Dutch Wikipedia article for Absolute Pitch. – Tamara Wijsman May 17 '11 at 10:55
  • @user unknown: the question is whether **an adult** can learn perfect pitch, not whether **any adult** can learn it. It is sufficient to have an adult learning it to answer yes to the question. If the question was: can **anyone** learn perfect pitch, surely the answer would be no, as deaf or tone-deaf people cannot. – nico Jan 07 '12 at 13:05
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    I don't understand the difference in disability which is made up here. If some adults aren't able to learn it, it is a disability, and as such similar to partial colorblindness. – user unknown Jan 07 '12 at 17:42
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You raise several interesting questions. The questions will undergo a modest redirection, but I hope that I will not lose the intent of the OP.

Does absolute pitch have a heritable component? Yes, according to this University of California Genetics of Absolute Pitch Study. Both European families and East Asian families had a “linkage peak” at 7q22.3. In an important sense, Yes, perfect pitch is something you are literally born with.

Is tone deafness something you are born with? Yes, according to the article Tone Deaf by Hazel Muir in the New Scientist, which compared identical twins (who share 100% of their genes) and fraternal twins (who share 50% of their genes). The study suggested that “your genetic make-up largely determines your ability to perceive pitch. Spector's team concludes that this skill is roughly 80 percent hereditary.”

This study would suggest that if you (or your identical twin) were tone deaf, then there would be very little chance that you could learn AP, no matter how hard you tried. Life has dealt you a weak hand; stay away from the musical arts. This would be similar to a comment made by a color-blind person. This sex-linked genetic trait will prevent him from a career in interior design. (While I am guessing that user unknown is male, the odds are in my favor.)

What if you’re not tone deaf but desperately want to impress that dazzling violinist? Can you learn how to fake AP as well as a Chinese concert pianist who started at the age of four? Maybe, according to Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies by Daniel Levitin. You could work on your pitch memory, which is more common. Maybe you could conceal a hit tuning fork, hit it in the bathroom, and hum the issuing note sub rosa before you come to the piano. Maybe you could have a mirror or confederate help you figure out what note is being played. Or, barring that, maybe you could memorize the answers for this AP test.

rajah9
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Oliver Sacks (psychologist) wrote a book called "Musicophelia" which addresses how our brains process and are affected by music:

http://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Revised-Expanded/dp/1400033535/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305586514&sr=8-1

He also talks about things that go wrong...

He mentions the incidence of "perfect pitch" or more properly "absolute pitch" as a rather small percentage of the population. Most can accurately sing a melody they've heard only one time or so... But the ability to accurately name pitches is considerably rarer.

That is... "That's a B-flat above middle C"

This ability can degrade; he lists cases of individuals with the ability who will loose part of the listening range at various points in life.

He does think that this is an ability that a percentage of the population is simply born with.

M. Werner
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    An anecdotal account from Oliver Sacks does not qualify as good evidence when there are other much more robust findings out there (especially since they contradict his hunch that this is an inborn ability). – Rex Kerr May 17 '11 at 13:40
  • Well it's nice that he thinks that, but does he have any actual evidence? – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jul 22 '11 at 18:08
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There is good evidence that, in practice, one should not expect to learn perfect pitch as an adult. One relevant study shows a very clear decline in the rates of having perfect pitch as a function of when musical training began--but that downward trend is swamped by the huge influence of being a native tonal language speaker. Thus, it is quite clear that perfect pitch is not rare given appropriate experience as an infant, but there's a strong suggestion that it gets increasingly hard to learn as one gets older.

If you look hard enough, you can probably find an instance of someone learning perfect pitch as an adult, but that would be extraordinary; normally, by the time you're an adult, your opportunity to develop perfect pitch has passed.

Rex Kerr
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  • *"One relevant study shows a very clear decline in the rates of having perfect pitch as a function of when musical training began"* - this is actually a very strong argument that perfect pitch is learned, not inherent. The same trend can be seen with language - the older you are when you start learning a second language, the **significantly** more difficult is it to actually become fluent in it. However, it *is* still possible to learn a new language as an adult - it just takes a lot more effort. Fortunately, effort is something I have, as long as I can believe it will pay off :) – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jul 22 '11 at 18:03