Perfect pitch – a connection between language and music.
Diana Deutsch is a professor at UCSD specializing in the psychology of music. She studies how humans perceive sound. In her research, she “loops” recorded sounds in order to listen to them over and over. She loops the spoken phrase “sometimes behave so strangely”, listens to it for a while, and then leaves it on and goes to the next room to make some tea.
Suddenly, she hears someone singing. But as she listens, realizes it is not singing at all, but rather, the loop has begun to sound like singing. And in fact, each of the words has pitch, and she can play it on the piano. The spoken words had become music. What made it turn into music? In other words, what is music made of?
Neuroscientists who study how humans perceive sound tell us that when we speak, we sing. We use pitch in our speech to convey emotion and meaning. We raise the pitch at the end of a sentence to show we are asking a question.
In tone languages (like Mandarin Chinese), words take on different meanings, depending on the pitch of the syllable. The word “ma”, depending on the pitch used, can mean “mother, hemp, horse or a reproach”.
Diana Deutsch was working with some Mandarin speakers. She noticed was that there were words, that when they were spoken, the speakers would all hit precisely the same pitch, even on different days. Dr. Deutsch concluded that this was a form of what musicians call “perfect pitch”. Someone with perfect pitch can hear a note (anything with a pitch – a horn honk or an elevator ding or a faucet drip), and know exactly what pitch it is, and even how much out of tune it is.
Perfect pitch is very rare. Only one person in every 10,000 in Europe or North America has perfect pitch. Every famous composer, i.e. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, had perfect pitch. 
Diana Deutsch then decided to compare Chinese music students from Bejing to American students who were studying at the Eastman School of Music, to find out which group had more people with perfect pitch. Of the students who began musical training at the age of 4 or 5, 74% of the Chinese had perfect pitch, but only 14% of the Americans had perfect pitch. As a whole group, the Chinese were 9 times as likely to have perfect pitch as the Americans.
The difference? The Chinese students all spoke a tone language. Here is Dr. Deutsch’s explanation: It is well-known that in the first year of life, from 6 months to a little past a year, infants learn features of their native language. Infants who learn a tone language are really learning two languages – one of those being music, as syllables in tone language have pitches. Think about it – we often stereotype tone languages as being “sing-songy”. It can be theorized that these infants might also get a leg-up on other musical skills as they learn their tone language.
So, what does all that really mean for parents who don’t speak a tone language at home? Do we start our children in language school by 6 months? Rosetta Stone for infants? Move to China? Are our children to be forever at a disadvantage? Of course not! (Though advertisers may tell you otherwise.)
What is the one thing universally available that will assist in developing language in your children? Research tells us that it is music. So, play lots of variety of music for your children. Bring your child to Kindermusik. I recommend beginning at least by 4 months, and even earlier should your baby have a somewhat predictable schedule.
-posted by Miss Analiisa, who thinks that perhaps her oldest Nathan had a little too much music as an infant, as she sometimes can’t get him to stop talking!
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