Part 2 of my review of Dr. Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.
Pitch…Perfect?
Absolute pitch has always sounded like such a wonderful gift to me, but there are problems associated with it that I’d never considered. Absolute pitch is when you hear a single note and know exactly which note it is, without having to think about it. It’s very rare (occurs in less than one person in ten thousand).
Think of it as a colour analogy- we look at blue and call it blue, without having to compare it to other colours. People with absolute pitch hear middle C and know it’s middle C, without having to compare it to other notes.
One problem with this is that instruments go out of tune constantly. If this happens, even slightly, to someone with perfect pitch it can be extremely irritating. If a piano is tuned a little bit differently than they are used to, it can be extremely difficult to play because everything just sounds ‘off’.
They can’t transpose familiar pieces (move them to different keys/positions than where they were written). Even if someone else transpose them, they find it difficult to enjoy because it sounds so wrong to their own ears. If a piece is written in the key of ‘green’ then of course it would sound wrong hearing it in the key of ‘orange’. Absolute pitch is more common in native speakers of Vietnamese and Mandarin because their languages are tonal.
Beyond hearing
There are so many interesting things that happen in regards to music and the brain! Dr. Sacks talks about synesthesia (yet another topic that has always intrigued me). This is when people experience instantaneous conjoining of the senses. The most common is seeing colours when hearing music. Some people even experience different tastes with certain music.
Musical hallucinations are much more common than you might think. They’ve found that these are not imaginary or psychotic, but real and physiological. They often occur in people who have experienced hearing loss. It’s as if the brain (deprived of its usual auditory input) is trying to entertain itself! A third or more of the human cortex is concerned with vision, and if visual input is suddenly lost, very extensive mental reorganizations and brain mappings may occur. Your brain literally rearranges itself, so your sense of hearing is truly heightened.
There are many blind musicians, probably because children who lack a visual world will naturally discover or create a rich world of touch and sound. They are drawn to music and motivated to make it central to their lives. It has even been discovered that dystonia (a severe cramping of the hand due to repetitive movement) is due to a disorganization in the sensory cortex of the brain. It’s not just a physical issue like they originally thought.
It’s been proven that racers (swim, bike, run) are most often able to reach their best times when listening to music with a strong beat. Using five-finger piano exercises as a training test, Harvard studies have shown that the motor cortex in the brain can show changes within minutes of practicing simple sequences. This occurs not only with physical practice, but even just with mental practice.
“It’s not surprising that anatomists today would struggle to differentiate between the brain of a visual artist, a writer, or a mathematician- but they could recognize the brain of a professional musician without a moment’s hesitation.” I’m sure everyone has heard that ‘music makes you smarter’. This is quite a summarized statement, but there is most definitely truth and proof behind it. Music awakens parts of your brain that would have otherwise remained dormant. What a powerful thing!