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The uncanny ability to recognise any note has long been associated with musical genius. But the real mystery is why we can鈥檛 all do it

MOZART had it. Beethoven probably had it. Most musicians agree that, even though they鈥檇 had no formal musical training, Jimi Hendrix and Ella Fitzgerald probably had it. I am talking about absolute pitch, the uncanny ability of some musicians to name any pitch they hear. As it happens, I have it too, and have often wondered why every note has its own distinct character, like a flavour, or a smell.

Musicians, psychologists and neuroscientists have struggled for decades to work out what causes absolute pitch and whether it really does contribute to exceptional musicianship. Now they are finally coming up with some answers, with numerous studies suggesting that brains like mine are wired in a different way. It turns out almost everyone may have had the prerequisites of absolute pitch at the start of their lives, pointing to the tantalising possibility that many more may be able to learn the skill.

At least one thing is certain: the secret to absolute, or perfect, pitch doesn鈥檛 lie in the ear. Assuming no hearing impairments, everyone鈥檚 ears pick up the same sounds. That means the difference must lie in the brain, somehow allowing people with absolute pitch to recognise that a sound with a frequency of 440 hertz is an 鈥淎鈥� in the same way that we all consider light of 660 terahertz to be 鈥渂lue鈥�.

Name that tone

Most people, including many trained musicians, can鈥檛 make this connection, and instead focus on the relationship between the notes 鈥� whether they are higher or lower than one another. This is called relative pitch. A good singer might be able to give you an 鈥淓鈥� if you played them a 鈥淐鈥�, for example, since they know it is two whole tones higher. But if you asked them to sing an 鈥淓鈥� without the guidance of a starting note then they would struggle.

Historically, psychologists studying absolute pitch tested for the ability simply by asking people to identify and name musical notes on demand. This inevitably excluded people who had had no musical training, so the number of people with the ability was thought to be small, perhaps as low as one in 10,000.

By the 1990s, however, researchers began to realise that people without musical training may also have some of the prerequisites for absolute pitch. Cognitive psychologist and musician at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, provided some of the most convincing evidence for this when he asked a group of non-musicians to learn a tone from a tuning fork. A week later, half of them were asked to pick out 鈥渢heir鈥� tone from a selection, while the other half were asked to sing it. Almost all of the volunteers did this successfully. To confirm the point, Levitin then asked a larger group of students to sing their favourite pop songs from memory 鈥� which many did with a surprisingly accurate and tuneful performance ().

The results led Levitin to conclude that absolute pitch arises from two distinct abilities: a long-term memory of pitch, which many people have, and an ability to link this memory to a verbal label. It is on the second hurdle that most people, including many trained musicians, fall.

Studies of the brain would seem to back up Levitin鈥檚 hypothesis. at the University of Melbourne, Australia, recently found that, when they listen to music, people with absolute pitch tend to show greater activity in a region of the left hemisphere known as the superior temporal gyrus. This area, which runs down the side of the skull, is thought to analyse and filter the different sounds hitting our ears. Importantly, it is also thought to be crucial for language processing (). The team conclude that the region may hold a 鈥減itch template鈥� in these people 鈥� a memory of the tones that binds each sound to its verbal label. So why do some people have this template while others don鈥檛?

Genes certainly play a part. Elizabeth Theusch, Analabha Basu and Jane Gitschier, at the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California in San Francisco, studied 73 families with absolute pitch. They found four different regions of the genome that might be involved in the skill 鈥� though their analysis wasn鈥檛 fine-tuned enough to locate individual genes ().

None of the genetic links were strong enough to suggest a definitive 鈥渙n-off switch鈥�, however, suggesting absolute pitch hinges on a variety of traits. These genes might encode for an abundance of white matter in the sound processing areas of the brain in people with absolute pitch, which may explain why it is common in conditions like synaesthesia and autism (see 鈥淗yper-connected鈥�). Alternatively, they may predispose someone to certain cognitive quirks that help them build an absolute pitch template.

A tendency to focus on fine details seems to be one such quirk. at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, and at Texas University in Austin recently compared standard psychological tests of children aged between 4 and 8 who had either absolute or relative pitch, including some who hadn鈥檛 had any musical training. Among non-musicians, those with absolute pitch were much better at tasks that required them to consider the fine details of a problem, while those who relied on relative pitch were better at tasks that required them to see overarching patterns.

This makes sense. An eye and ear for detail makes people more likely to focus on the sounds of individual notes rather than the relations between them, which would help them to then classify and name the tones. Those who are more likely to look for patterns would concentrate on the relationships between the notes, so they would use relative pitch when appreciating music.

A tendency to see the trees, rather than the forest, has also been associated with many other skills, such as the exceptional artistic abilities of savants (New Scientist, 6 June 2009, p 30). The results may also explain why children are much more likely to develop absolute pitch if they start musical training at a young age. That鈥檚 because our brains tend to have a more focused approach when we are younger, and only gradually grow into a mindset that is better at looking for patterns.

The brains of people with absolute pitch 鈥渕ay be somewhat different to begin with, filtering information in a slightly different way to the average鈥�, says , also at McGill University. If you then expose that brain to a musical education at a very young age, he says, the result would be absolute pitch. The hunt is now on for other traits that might lead to the pitch template.

Intriguingly, the diffuse nature of absolute pitch suggests that many other environmental factors, besides early music training, may also play an important role in developing the pitch template. Understand these, and we may find ways to train more people to have the ability.

One of the chief candidates for such a factor is a child鈥檚 first language. , a psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, has found that absolute pitch appears to be more common in people who grow up speaking tonal languages such as those spoken in China, where the meaning of a word depends on the pitch of the sound (). 鈥淪peakers of non-tone languages such as English, who do not have the opportunity to associate pitches with meaningful words in infancy, are at a disadvantage,鈥� she says.

Mistaken identities

The mechanism behind this link isn鈥檛 clear, but Deutsch thinks that early exposure to a tonal language encourages children to develop the necessary mental machinery that links words to pitch. Not everyone is convinced, however, with sceptics like Bermudez pointing out that these languages tend to rely on relative rather than absolute pitch.

Fortunately, there may be another, easier way to encourage the brain鈥檚 language centres to forge the necessary connections between a note鈥檚 pitch and its name. and colleagues at the Gabriele d鈥橝nnunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Chieti, Italy, recently took a close look at the kinds of mistakes musicians without absolute pitch make when naming tones using the solfeggio notation (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti 鈥� think The Sound of Music). They found that these musicians are much more likely to mistake two tones if their names have the same vowel sound 鈥� the part that is often prolonged when singing a note. Do (C) and sol (G) were confused roughly 50 per cent of the time, for example, while re (D) and la (A) were confused in less than 20 per cent of the trials (). The confusion may be even greater when musicians use the standard letter notation in the English speaking world (C, D, E鈥� etc), in which five notes all have the same 鈥渆e鈥� vowel sound.

The team conclude that someone attempting to learn absolute pitch would do well to concentrate on differentiating between those particularly tricky notes. Alternatively, they could try to create their own naming system that uses a different vowel sound for each note 鈥� a proposition that promises to be a ripe area of future research.

Finding out why absolute pitch exists and how you can improve a child鈥檚 ability is all very well, but it doesn鈥檛 answer one of my most vexing questions: why the ability seems to be linked with excellent musicianship. It isn鈥檛 nearly as obvious as it sounds, since people with absolute pitch say that it can be a mixed blessing in their musical careers.

Leo Ginsborg, a 22-year-old student at Trinity College of Music in London, describes it best. When I call, he is in a rehearsal working with actors who can鈥檛 read music, and his ability to sing a tone from memory is proving useful. 鈥淗aving absolute pitch cuts a step out of the process,鈥� he says. Yet it can also be a headache when he is working with a conductor who decides to transpose a piece into a different key, making each note higher or lower by a set amount. People with relative pitch find it easier to adapt to the new key, because they remember the interval between notes, which doesn鈥檛 change.

While the overall benefit of absolute pitch may be elusive, there are some subtle effects that might tip the balance towards musical genius. For example, people with absolute pitch seem to have an improved long-term memory for pieces. Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan, recently asked a group of musicians to learn to play along to some melodies. The team then measured their brain activity as they listened to some recordings of the same melodies 鈥� this time with some subtle variations in the tune. Those with absolute pitch showed a greater response to the variations, suggesting they remember pieces better and can more easily anticipate which notes should come next (). This may go some way to explaining the exceptional musical memory of Mozart, who famously transcribed Gregorio Allegri鈥檚 Miserere 鈥� something prohibited by the Vatican 鈥� after hearing it just once. It also explains how Hendrix could learn a band鈥檚 entire repertoire in one sitting.

Absolute pitch also frees up a musician鈥檚 short-term working memory by offloading some of the tasks to the superior temporal sulcus, which is used in language processing (). This short-term memory is often described as the mind鈥檚 workspace, since it determines our capacity to juggle different pieces of information while we reason, learn and react to our surroundings. If absolute pitch allowed musicians to free up their working memory, they might be able to devote more of their finite mental resources to the finer aspects of their performance.

All of which makes me wonder about my own musical prowess. Why am I sitting here at my keyboard, reporting on musical genius, rather than taking centre stage at London鈥檚 Royal Albert Hall?

Unfortunately, it looks like I am living proof that there is more to musical genius than pitch recognition. I might have taken to music more easily than most, but even absolute pitch can鈥檛 make up for the hours of hard graft needed to become a master musician.