Prevalence of absolute pitch: a comparison between Japanese and Polish music students.

Comparable large-scale surveys including an on-site pitch-naming test were conducted with music students in Japan and Poland to obtain more convincing estimates of the prevalence of absolute pitch (AP) and examine how musical experience relates to AP. Participants with accurate AP (95% correct identification) accounted for 30% of the Japanese music students, but only 7% of the Polish music students. This difference in the performance of pitch naming was related to the difference in musical experience. Participants with AP had begun music training at an earlier age (6 years or earlier), and the average year of commencement of musical training was more than 2 years earlier for the Japanese music students than for the Polish students. The percentage of participants who had received early piano lessons was 94% for the Japanese musically trained students but was 72% for the Polish music students. Approximately one-third of the Japanese musically trained students had attended the Yamaha Music School, where lessons on piano or electric organ were given to preschool children in parallel with fixed-do solfège singing training. Such early music instruction was not as common in Poland. The relationship of AP with early music training is discussed.

Electrophysiological correlates of absolute pitch and relative pitch.

The temporal and spatial characteristics of the cortical processes responsible for absolute pitch (AP) and relative pitch (RP) were investigated by multi-channel event-related potentials (ERPs). Compared to listening, pitch-naming of tones in non-possessors of AP elicited three ERP components (P3b, parietal positive slow wave, frontal negative slow wave) over parietal and frontal scalp between 300 and 900 ms in latency, representing the cortical processes for RP. Possessors of AP elicited a unique left posterior-temporal negativity ('AP negativity') at 150 ms in both listening and pitch-naming conditions, representing the cortical processes for AP that were triggered by pitch input irrespective of the task the subjects were asked to perform. Congruency of auditory Stroop stimuli modulated the amplitudes of parietal positive slow wave (non-possessors of AP) and 'AP negativity' (possessors of AP), confirming that these components reflect the verbal labeling or pitch-to-pitch-name associative transformation that is central to pitch-naming. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that AP is subserved by neuronal processes in the left auditory association cortex that occur earlier and more automatically than the processes for RP, which involve broader areas of the cortex over longer periods of time.