Perfect pitch could be attainable for adults through training: study

A recent experiment helped enable a group of adults to attain the prized musical talent of perfect pitch -- the ability to identify a note upon hearing it.

Just one in 10,000 individuals possesses the rare aptitude of perfect pitch -- also called absolute pitch -- and within this elite circle stand celebrated artists the likes of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven.

Previous assumptions have labeled the skill as either in the genes or trainable within a critical period during childhood through early musical training but lead author of this recent study, Howard Nusbaum, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, declared it to be "an ability that is teachable, and it appears to depend on a general cognitive ability of holding sounds in one's mind."

Prior to the current study, which involved a total of 47 participants, it was believed that adults are not able to acquire perfect pitch.

In the study, Nusbaum (who earlier worked on a project that scrambled the perfect pitch of his participants, demonstrating that it might not be so perfect) helped adult participants of varying musical backgrounds achieve the level of note recognition.

And while a 2013 Harvard study had indicated that a drug to treat epilepsy could possibly be used to develop perfect pitch, no drugs were used in Nusbaum's experiment.

Students from the University of Chicago -- none of whom had perfect pitch -- listened to notes played on instruments using studio headphones.

After a brief moment during which the note was played, it was masked by white noise and participants were asked to recreate it.

Next, the research team led participants in a similar exercise using piano notes and asking participants to identify them by name, such as C or F-sharp.

Training then began, in which participants were asked to classify 180 piano notes in three 60-note blocks.

They were told immediately whether they had classified them correctly or not, and listened to the note a second time, which resulted in significant improvement in not identification, according to the study.

Several months later, some participants were retested, and although their note identification ability had waned slightly, they appeared to retain the brunt of it.

Thrilled with the results, Nusbaum says his study, published in the journal Cognition, demonstrates three important findings.

"First, in contrast to previous studies, we are able to establish significant absolute pitch training in adults without drugs," he says. "Second, we show that this ability is predicted by auditory working memory. Third, we show that this training lasts for months."