So, years before I realized I was autistic, and years before I was diagnosed with autism, I found out I was actually neurodivergent in another way. That is, I have absolute pitch. So, does this give me a massive advantage when it comes to music? No. Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your day.
Oh I’m going to have to elaborate I suppose. Very well then.
So, first of all, what is absolute pitch? But before I even explain that, I’ll just explain another relevant point. Aren’t I referring to the thing that is usually called “perfect pitch?” Yes I am, but I refuse to use the term perfect pitch because it’s abject nonsense. It makes about as much sense as referring to left handedness as perfect handedness, or brown hair as perfect hair, or having freckles as perfect skin. Basically, it is completely arbitrarily applying the term “perfect” to something for no reason at all. Now, usually I’m quite happy to use the commonly used terms for things out of convenience, after all, we’ve known the term “sunrise”, didn’t make sense since we realized the Earth revolves around the sun. But the reason I won’t use the term “perfect pitch”, is it reinforces the idea, the idea that I’m trying to get people away from, that people with absolute pitch automatically possess some kind of amazing god like musical ability that mere mortals will never be able to achieve.
Now I should say, that I believe I do have some advantages with regard to music, but equally, plenty of musical disadvantages, but I think that’s related to the “spiky skillset”, that autistic people tend to have rather than absolute pitch. I’ve written about that here:
So what is absolute pitch then? Well, sing a musical note, or if you’ve access to a keyboard or other musical instrument, hit one of the keys randomly, without knowing which key you hit. If you have no idea whether you hit a C, a Bb or an Ab, if you have no idea what note you just hit, you’re not alone. Even if you don’t know the names of the musical note names anyway, learning the names of the musical notes might well not change the fact that you don’t know what note you just played. But I do, I’ve known since I learned the names of the musical notes when I was 13, I know it to within a semitone, ie, if I’m telling you a note is D, the note isn’t going to be flatter than Db or sharper than D#. A significant margin of error I’ll grant, but consistently getting it this close is very rare in the human population.
So, how do musicians, whether they be beginners or top level musicians, navigate their instrument if upon hearing a C, or an F#, or an A, they don’t know what it is? Well, it’s got a lot to do with the fact that people have things backwards. Absolute pitch, in my experience, is at worse, a party trick, and at best, a mildly useful attribute in certain very limited situations. Musicians who complain that they “only have relative pitch”, don’t grasp that relative pitch is infinitely better than absolute pitch. And the best thing about it is, the vast majority of humans have relative pitch.
Relative pitch is being able to gauge the distance between two notes. So for example, someone with relative pitch, which is most people, with proper training, can tell you extremely useful information about the notes they are hearing. If you just play a C note, someone without absolute pitch can’t give you any information (this isn’t strictly true, but I’ll cover that later). If you play the note C, followed by the note D, they will not be able to tell you that you played a C followed by a D. However, what they can tell you is that whatever notes you just played are two semitones apart, or another way of saying it is that they form a major second interval. Or to put it another way, they known that the two notes are either C and D, or C# or D#, or D and E, or D# and F, well you get what I’m saying. So why is this a bucket load more useful than absolute pitch?
Think of your favourite song. Now think of if you were subjected to hearing just one note from your favourite song, over and over again. All of a sudden it’s not your favourite song any more, is it? That’s because musical notes, on their own, are pretty much meaningless. Even though I’ve absolute pitch, I couldn’t for the life of me pick a favourite note, in isolation, they just kind of sound the same. But it’s the distances between notes, that’s where music happens. That being said though, I should point out that one of the most exciting aspects of being a music fan is being proved wrong, so, maybe somewhere there is some really cool music that uses just one note, but as far as I know, one note music wouldn’t sound good. Perhaps it could work in music where there is a greater emphasis on rhythm than on melody or harmony, but even in that case you’re probably focusing more on the rhythmic and percussive elements more than the one note that is used.
So in general, it is the distance between notes that matters more than which specific notes you use. Think of the first line of “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. It doesn’t matter whether you sing the notes B, A, G , A , B, B B, or, for example, E, D, C, D, E, E, E, it’s still going to sound right, but get those note distances wrong, it won’t sound right at all. So, B, A#, G#, A, B, Bb, B would not sound like Mary Had A Little Lamb at all! I just tried humming it there, and it sounds like, “Mary’s little lamb was actually a zombie and Mary ran from the evil zombie lamb, praying that she would live through the night!”
So, people have it backwards, it’s relative pitch, the thing that most humans have, that really matters, and you can even train yourself to get better at recognizing note distances, or intervals, and even recognizing tiny note intervals like less than a quarter tone, at which point we’re outside of Western music. But absolute pitch, the thing that few humans have, there just doesn’t seem to be any conclusive evidence that it provides an advantage for most people that have it. But Beethoven had it you say! Okay, but do you really think the reason Beethoven was so exceptional was that he could recognize a Db on it’s own without any further context? Seems unlikely. Also, look at this list of people with absolute pitch on Wikipedia. (I know, I know, don’t trust Wikipedia, but all these examples have sources.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_absolute_pitch
Mozart, Yo-Yo Ma, Whitney Houston, Brian Wilson, very highly regarded musicians to be sure. But looks who’s not on the list. Paul McCartney, Miles Davis, Karen Carpenter, James Hetfield, Igor Stravinsky, Jeff Beck, Tracy Chapman, Geddy Lee, Daryl Hall (six hours later) John Coltrane, Chris Cornell, Joan Baez, Robert Plant, Bob Marley. Have I made my point yet? Sure, a lot of high level musicians have absolute pitch. But a lot of high level musicians also have brown hair, are short, or are English, but we wouldn’t say this is why they are extremely good at music. But, how do we know that many of the musicians I just mentioned actually have absolute pitch and we don’t know? This is certainly possible, and I may learn that some of the people I just mentioned do in fact have absolute pitch at a later date. However, the reverse is also true, it’s also possible to train your ears so well that it can seem like you have absolute pitch when you don’t, so it’s equally possible that many of those labelled as having absolute pitch, don’t actually have it. So let’s talk about that.
If You Don’t Have Absolute Pitch, You Might Well Be Able To Recognize One Note In Isolation
Take On Me By A-Ha has not just a high note, but a famously high note. The chorus ends with a high sustained note that I would not want to attempt if I had a cold or my hayfever was playing up. So what note is that? It’s an E. So how is this relevant? If somebody’s favourite song was Take On Me, there is a good chance that they have quite well internalized what the note E sounds like. This is because it’s a sustained note, so it gives the brain plenty of time to learn what it sounds like. There are many songs that provide this. The opening note of Tom Sawyer by Rush is a very sustained low growl on a bass synth, it’s also an E. And I have a theory, though I don’t know for sure, that pretty much every uillean piper can recognise the note D. That’s because usually the drone note on the uilleann pipes is D. You could get the same effect simply by hitting for example the C note on your piano, or your guitar, or any other instrument, every single day. You are likely to internalize the sound of a C quite well by doing that.
So, what does it matter? Who cares if you can recognize one note? Well, quite simply, if you can recognize one note, you can recognize every note. If somebody has learned quite well the distances, or intervals, between notes, one note is all they need. Somebody with good interval training who hears a D note, can just compare it to the E note in for example Take On Me, and know that it’s a D. And here’s the thing that might come as a surprise to people who think absolute pitch is king. The ability to learn one note, and get the rest through interval training, sometimes called “pseudo absolute pitch”, is often derided as a second rate ability. People who have gone to the trouble of learning so called pseudo absolute pitch well, which, incidentally, is a much bigger achievement than simply having been born with absolute pitch, often wish they had the “real deal”. Well, what I’m about to say might not be what you’re expecting. I have both, “true” absolute pitch, and “pseudo” absolute pitch. So, I have gone to the trouble of learning “pseudo absolute pitch” despite having “true” absolute pitch. And let me tell you, “pseudo” absolute pitch has proved way more useful than having “the real deal”! Let me explain why.
With absolute pitch, ie, the neurological difference I was born with, I can tell you if a note is a D, an F, a G#, granted I could be a semitone off, but no more than that. But here’s what I can’t tell you from the ability I was born with. I can’t tell you if it’s a low D, a high F, or a moderately high G#. You can tell these things somewhat with or without absolute pitch, or without musical training. For example, someone can quite easily say that Eddie Vedder’s voice is typically a much lower pitch than for example, Kate Bush’s voice. What is more difficult is saying how high or low a note is with precision. Is a C note, a C4, or a C5 (C5 being an octave above C4.) Is that Bb you heard a Bb3 or a Bb2? This is where pseudo absolute pitch has been a godsend. With “true” absolute pitch, I can you if a note is B. With “pseudo” absolute pitch, I can tell you if it’s a B2.
This is how it works. I memorized the exact sound of a small number of notes at a very exact pitch, eg. C4, or middle C, not C3, or C2, but C4 was the exact note I memorized the sound of. So by getting C4 really deeply ingrained in my head, I can tell you what any C is. C3? I drop an octave from the C4 in my head. C6? I go up two octaves. And I can do this with any note, not just C. I know a note is E4 by going up 4 semitones from the C4 in my head, I know a note is A3 by dropping down 3 semitones from the C4 in my head. So the “fake” absolute pitch, is quite useful, more useful in fact by far than the supposedly wonderful ability I was born with. So, as well as there being a tonne of musicians who play at a very high level who don’t have absolute pitch, we don’t know that the musicians who supposedly do have it, really have it. They may be simply going from middle C in their head every time. This I think also further contradicts the bizarre narrative about people with absolute pitch being blessed or extremely musically gifted. I use “pseudo” absolute pitch all the time because it’s better than what I was born with!
Do I Have Absolute Pitch Because I’m Autistic?
There are studies that indicate that absolute pitch is acquired before the age of nine, and there are no cases of adults inquiring it. Here’s a paper by Daniel Levitin on the subject, incidentally, Daniel Levitin’s papers and his books have taught my so much on the subject of absolute pitch and on music in general, so I’d very highly recommend them:
http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/Chris_Darwin/PerMuSo/pdfs/Levitin_Rogers_Tics.pdf
So this seems to indicate that absolute pitch, like language, is something that must be acquired early in life. Also, this paper indicates that individuals such as autistic people can acquire it later in life due to being “developmentally delayed”. Now, I’ve written another blogpost, on how, research on autism is well, bad:
So, is it correct to say autistic people are “developmentally delayed?” I don’t know, because the research on us is mainly, and, how do I put this diplomatically, neurotypical people congratulating each other for really bad research. Was that diplomatic enough? I hope that was diplomatic enough!
So I think it’s too difficult to say whether the “developmentally delayed” theory of why I have absolute pitch is correct or not. However, my research on the topic of autism has caused me to come up with a sort of a catchphrase, and that is, “Autism is never just autism.”
Autistic people often tend to be neurodivergent in other ways other than just the autism. For example, I have difficulty with facial recognition, I have difficulty telling where sounds are coming from. Have you heard of the McGurk effect?:
Yeah, that doesn’t work on me as often as it works on other people. And I have suspected for some time that I have ADHD. So when a brain is autistic, it seems to say, I’m lonely and I need other neurodivergences to keep me company! So, that’s my theory on why I have absolute pitch, the tendency for autism to invite other types of neurodivergence over for a visit. I think it’s an incomplete theory, because it leads to a tonne of questions, such as why don’t more autistic people I know have absolute pitch, and it doesn’t answer the question of, why exactly do I have absolute pitch, in the sense of how does the different wiring of my brain cause me to be able to label musical tones without a reference point, but it’s the best I can do for now.
Absolute Pitch, The Weird Anomaly When It Comes To Neurodivergence Discourse
For decades, autistic people, and dyslexic people, and people with ADHD, and all kinds of neurodivergent people, have had to fight to be seen not as lesser, not as broken, not as inferior, but as fellow human beings who are just as valid and just as capable as neurotypical people. Occasionally there are exceptions to this, such as the whole “Autistic people are the next stage of human evolution” thing, which I have written about:
But generally, neurodivergent people have had to fight to not be seen as worse than everyone else. With absolute pitch, it has always been just the opposite. I have talked to people who by many metrics are better musicians that I am, and nothing I can do can persuade them that being able to name an Eb without a reference point provides any serious musical advantage. I have had this conversation so many times, and I don’t know have I ever been able to convince anyone that no, just because I can tell you what pitch the hand dryer is does not mean I’m the Neil Armstrong of music. Also, the hand dryer is playing a G#4, but I got it to that level of precision using pseudo absolute pitch!
So it’s a weird one. I’m certainly not worried about the way people with absolute pitch are perceived the way I’m worried about the way autistic people are percieved. I’m not going to change the name of this blog to “Ponderings of An Absolute Pitchist”, and not just because it sounds shit. But there is something othering about being told I’m amazing or I’m incredible, when all I’ve said is that I recognize a musical note without a reference point. It’s like a person doesn’t see me anymore, they just see a whole bunch of stereotypes about absolute pitch, and they ask me am I able to do various miraculous musical feats such as hearing notes before they happen. It’s like the fact that they know me, and have a general idea of my musical ability, doesn’t matter, as soon as it becomes apparent that I have absolute pitch, the person I am becomes replaced by a bunch of bizarre stereotypes. And I suppose why I worry about that a bit is, if something as simple as being able to recognize an F# has so many misconceptions about it, then the road for getting the general public to understand a condition as complex as autism is long indeed. Well that was depressing, go outside and enjoy the sun!
Ponderings Of An Autist 