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TracingWoodgrains  the leaves that are green turn to brown  1yr ago (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)   2029 thread views

How One Woman’s Children (n=2) Acquired Absolute Pitch

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Many of you are familiar with some of my writing on early childhood education. Here, someone I’ve chatted with explains at some length her process for helping her children acquire absolute pitch. This is something possible for almost everyone during a narrow window of time; it and similar time-sensitive skills are worth serious consideration if you are a parent of a young child.

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So she didn't go to music school, she took some music classes and was so bad she had the drop out.

She has no musical ability, so is unable to evaluate the ability of her children.

There are musically talented people in both her and her husband's family and one person with absolute pitch.

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Ask people at any music school, everyone learns either relative pitch or absolute pitch. Most people in your average amateur choir has decent relative pitch. This isn't a hard to acquire skill!

I know a bunch of people with AP and they aren't any better at music than those without, at least not in the way she describes.

It is possible that absolute pitch can be taught, and it is possible that it helps musical ability but that has certainly not been shown here and nothing from my extensive experience with music and musically talented people suggests this. This reads as an untalented parent being amazed by and overestimating the abilities of her kids, it's a tale as old as time.

There are musically talented people in both her and her husband's family and one person with absolute pitch.

So it seems her mother, who knows nothing of music, claims that some great uncle "may have had absolute pitch".

Most people in your average amateur choir has decent relative pitch. This isn't a hard to acquire skill!

Yes, for some definition of "decent relative pitch", I am sure this statement is true. Yet, like before, the statement remains somewhat vague.

I know a bunch of people with AP and they aren't any better at music than those without, at least not in the way she describes.

Or they are at the same level as others around them, but have spent an order of magnitude less effort to get there.

The claim that absolute pitch is a significant advantage is in no way reliant on this one blog post. Here is a study describing how people with AP are better at a dictation task: http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/pdf/JASA-2010_128_890-893.pdf

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