Dial A440 for absolute pitch: Absolute pitch memory by non-absolute pitch possessors

Nicholas A. Smith, Mark A. Schmuckler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

43 Scopus citations

Abstract

Listeners without absolute (or "perfect") pitch have difficulty identifying or producing isolated musical pitches from memory. Instead, they process the relative pattern of pitches, which remains invariant across pitch transposition. Musically untrained non-absolute pitch possessors demonstrated absolute pitch memory for the telephone dial tone, a stimulus that is always heard at the same absolute frequency. Listeners accurately classified pitch-shifted versions of the dial tone as "normal," "higher than normal" or "lower than normal." However, the role of relative pitch processing was also evident, in that listeners' pitch judgments were also sensitive to the frequency range of stimuli.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)EL77-EL84
JournalJournal of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume123
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2008
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics

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