Aspergers and Perfect (or absolute) Pitch

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You probably have atypical pitch. While it can be considered an LD at first, it can also be gift. It means you conceptualize music differantly than those with perfect pitch or even relative pitch. Both atypical and perfect pitch are extremely common for folks with ASD.

By the way certian peoples voices and certian types of music bug the hell out of me.

Most people do not know about atypical pitch, because it is less common than perfect pitch. Its also less common in classical musicians, and appears with improv musicians (rock and jazz). The best example I have is Kevin Shields from my bloody valentine.

I have something kind of like 'perfect pitch'. Sometimes I can often pull the note names out of the air, and most of the time I can just tell you whether the note you're playing is out of tune or not, and which direction you need to go to fix it. I play piano and viola, and I think my obsessive practicing probably helped me train it. My mom once got this really awful guy to tune our piano, and he tuned it all way out of tune, especially down at the lower octaves. When I sat down that afternoon to play, it was awful, and we made him come back... and I tuned the piano. (I did check with my tuner both before and after the tuning, and I was right on. He was way off.) I guess you could say I have trained, rather than inherent, perfect pitch. I can, of course, figure out intervals given a note. But I can produce a 440 A (tuning pitch for strings), so I can go off of that relatively without having to hear an A pitch, so it takes me more time to pull the name out of the air, but I can usually do it.

I'm sort of borderline on the spectrum, I think. Is it unreasonable for me to consider my absolute pitch to be the "nail in the coffin" for me being on the spectrum?

     I'm belatedly coming in on this, but I think I have an unusual angle on this. I will begin with a bit of personal background on perfect or absolute pitch first.

     For as long as I can recall, I have had perfect pitch, in that, whenever I can hear a piece, I can tell what key it is without even thinking about it, because each key just sounds subtly different from any other.
     I am a pianist and composer (or at least was until more recent years, when these have faded, for a variety of reasons), but I don't know whether this has cultivated my perfect pitch, or whether I would have had that anyway. I suspect that people who have perfect pitch but who never train as musicians may never recognize that they have this. After all, maybe I can tell if a piece is in C major, not D-flat major or B major; but a person who doesn't even know what the concepts of "C major", "B major", etc. mean would never even know if they have the inherent ability to tell the difference between them.
     But I have noticed a change in my faculty in the last few years which I would find profoundly worrying if I were still active as a musician - and that is that my sense of absolute pitch seems to have shifted by one semitone. The meaning of this is best illustrated by an example: I might hear a piece on the radio and get the feeling that it is in B major, in just the way that I have always been able to do; but so often now, when I go to the piano to test it out, I find that it is in fact in B-flat major, a semitone lower. (And I know my piano has not shifted, in every one of its keys, by an exact semitone, and it still tests correctly the key of pieces whose key I *know* anyway.)
     But even after I've confirmed that the piece is in B-flat major, it still *feels* like B major to me - and if I visualize what the score of the piece might look like (something I find difficult to avoid doing), I involuntarily see the 5-sharp key signature of B major instead of the 2-flat key signature of B-flat major, and I hear all sorts of passing chords a semitone out too. If the leading note of the relative minor appears in the melody, I actually hear it as an F-double-sharp instead of just F-sharp - and so on. It's across the board, and I don't have to think about it - these things just spontaneously come into my mind as I hear the piece.
     So I have frequently found myself hearing C-major pieces as being in C-sharp major, F-major pieces as in F-sharp major, and so on. As a result, I very frequently hear pieces as being in very remote sharp keys. (I am thoroughly familiar with all 30 key signatures from 7 flats to 7 sharps, so this causes me no difficulty.) Also, the C-sharp major perception remains resolutely in C-sharp major, and I cannot shift it to the much commoner and slightly less remote enharmonic equivalent key of D-flat major. In other words, the shift is always by a chromatic semitone, not a diatonic one (for those musical people who know what the difference is).
     However, this is not invariable, and sometimes I do get it right. So I was a bit confounded when, a few years ago, I first heard the Beach Boys' "California Girls", and thought to myself, "That's odd - that seems to be in B major - a very unusual key for a popular song" - but my piano showed that this song is indeed in that key.
     I don't know why my absolute pitch has shifted by a semitone like this, and don't entirely like it. I have never heard of this happening to anyone else at all. Weird. Has anyone heard of this before?
     I even wonder if it could be a symptom of deteriorating hearing. (I am 55, so this is a possibility.)

Regards, Michael.

Yes, I have. I've read a number of studies that show that this shift in perceived pitch is very common with age. I can't recall the exact reason. Oliver Sacks discusses it in his book Musicophilia ; if I can find my copy I'll read what he says to remind myself. I believe that hearing things up to a minor third higher than they actually are is quite normal.
If you hear a note in isolation, can you tell what it is? The ability that you described sounds like absolute tonality, which is related to, but not the same thing as absolute pitch.

     Always higher? - never lower?
     I should read that book - it sounds as if it might be interesting. I'd be interested to know if a reason for this is known, and whether there is any remedy for it. If not, and if it is age-related, this is just yet another thing that increasingly convinces me that ageing absolutely *sucks*.

     It would be less likely heard in isolation without any harmony accompanying it, and less likely outside of at least a brief surrounding musical context. Even so, I think I'd probably usually get it right if it was a single note on the piano, my own instrument. Even for other instruments used in classical music, I might do it more often than not; and if I failed, it would probably be only by a semitone or two. And it would be less likely still in an instrument strongly different from those I'm used to (electric guitar, for instance) - and less likely yet further still if someone sung the note. My skills in this are weakest of all with singers - possibly because their pitch is more liable to waver than almost any instrument.

     I've never heard a distinction made before between absolute tonality and absolute pitch. What is the difference between them?

Regards, Michael.

I heard a really cool study recently that found that people who speak a tonal language as their first language (such as Mandarin) are 5 times more likely to have perfect pitch than those who speak a Latin language for their first language (English). The scientists think this is because in tonal languages, the ability to differentiate slight variations is a matter of comprehension of the mere words, so those people are better at it. I wonder if there's a link to type of language you spoke first and Asperger's expression, because tone of voice is something that a lot of us struggle with. I don't know. I think that might be a topic for another thread, but its a cool idea.

All the cases that I've read of were higher. You should read the book, it was very interesting.

     It would be less likely heard in isolation without any harmony accompanying it, and less likely outside of at least a brief surrounding musical context. Even so, I think I'd probably usually get it right if it was a single note on the piano, my own instrument. Even for other instruments used in classical music, I might do it more often than not; and if I failed, it would probably be only by a semitone or two. And it would be less likely still in an instrument strongly different from those I'm used to (electric guitar, for instance) - and less likely yet further still if someone sung the note. My skills in this are weakest of all with singers - possibly because their pitch is more liable to waver than almost any instrument. [/quote]
That's interesting; you're partially the opposite to me in that harmony accompanying a note makes it more difficult for me to determine its pitch.

     I've never heard a distinction made before between absolute tonality and absolute pitch. What is the difference between them?

Regards, Michael.[/quote]

Absolute pitch: the ability to identify a note upon hearing it (passive absolute pitch) or to produce any note with one's voice (active absolute pitch) without a reference pitch.
Absolute tonality: the ability to identify what key a piece is in by hearing it (again, without any reference being given).
Absolute pitch implies absolute tonality, but the reverse isn't always the case. I've known people with absolute tonality without absolute pitch. Related to this is the (very common) ability to hear that different keys sound different, while not being able to tell exactly what key a piece is in.

Izzy_Dolphin: I read that study. I also read more than one that said that generally speaking, musical training before the age of 6 is needed if perfect pitch is to occur. It was hypothesised in one such study that this is because of a shift after that age from processing things in absolute terms to processing them relative to each other: hence, the reliance of most people on relative rather than absolute pitch structures.

I used to say that I had it.

I know what C sounds like, and I can judge any other note by reference to it. I've also noticed that I have an unusual ability to recall the exact tones of movie lines. (Maybe it's just because I watched them so much!)

I have perfect tonal memory, but I can't match them to notes unless I refer to when I used to play the violin and slowly go through the notes in my head.

I think my fascination with sounds from a really early age led me to be a great imitator. As result, I suspect this is why I never had a flat effect... maybe a "weird effect" but not a flat one.

Maybe this is related, but I can effectively "turn off" my absolute pitch if the note is up to a semitone sharper than it should be. If it's a semitone flatter, however, it's much harder to do. I have to rely more on the tactile shape of a known piece rather than actually listening to it.

My situation is a bit odd, and I've never heard of anyone else with the same issue. First off, I don't have absolute pitch or tonality. Despite having a music degree and 6 semesters of ear training under my belt I have a lot of difficulty with relative pitch (well, had...I don't really use it much anymore). I can tune a guitar to itself, but I'd need a reference note to make sure it was "in tune." I can usually learn something by ear, but I generally have to use a phrase sampler I have that lets me slow down music without changing the pitch. Sometimes I can hear an arrangement and tell if something is a little off, but I wouldn't be able to say how it was off.

Here's where it gets interesting. Out of frustration I went to several of my teachers for help with this problem during office hours. One of them had a very interesting theory. He had me sing a major scale up and down. He said I had it right, more or less, but I slightly flatted a couple of notes. He said that the notes I actually sang were the same as the overtone series of the root note. He theorized that my ears were too sensitive to pitch and that I was hearing the overtones and that was making it hard for me to get a solid lock on the fundamental.

This was interesting because I remember a group practice session I had with some other students from one of my ear training classes. In the group we had a more experienced student from a higher level class acting as a tutor. During the session another student and I sang a melody. I thought I was singing the same notes, but the tutor said that we were actually singing parallel perfect 5ths (I was the one singning a 5th higher).

Has anyone heard of anything like this?

I have relative pitch. That is, I can't identify names of notes, but I can match pitches and tell whether or not something is in tune. If it's not in tune, it bugs me in an OCD way. I play a stringed instrument, and sometimes find myself using open strings because I can't stretch my finger enough sometimes and would rather hit the note, even though the open string is a bit awkward.

How do you feel about quarter tones (as in Swedish music)?

I could completely see how it would be possible to hear overtones over the fundamental. I find that it depends on the timbre of the instrument. Certain very metallic organ pipes have very pronounced overtones (volume-wise) which make it difficult for me to hear the fundamental. Carillons as well have very pronounced overtones. I could imagine that if your sense of what a note really "is" isn't based on volume relative to its overtones, that you would perceive notes the way you describe.

Have you noticed this to be different depending on what kind of notes you are singing back (i.e. the instrument type)? Have you tried doing it with just electronically-generated fundamentals (very minimal overtones)?

On a somewhat related note, has anyone else ever heard the "eternal" scale upwards? It's a series of chromatic notes that slowly morph the overtones over the scale until, at one point, you realize that scale isn't actually traveling upwards... it's just going around in circles.