Abstract
Four experiments were conducted to examine the ability of people without "perfect pitch" to retain the absolute pitch of familiar tunes. In Experiment 1, participants imagined given tunes, and then hummed their first notes four times either between or within sessions. The variability of these productions was very low. Experiment 2 used a recognition paradigm, with results simi-lar to those in Experiment 1 for musicians, but with some additional variability shown for un-selected subjects. In Experiment 3, subjects rated the suitability of various pitches to start familiar tunes. Previously given preferred notes were rated high, as were notes three or four semitones distant from the preferred notes, but not notes one or two semitones distant. In Experiment 4, subjects mentally transformed the pitches of familiar tunes to the highest and lowest levels pos-sible. These experiments suggest some retention of the absolute pitch of tunes despite a paucity of verbal or visual cues for the pitch.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bachem, A. (1955). Absolute pitch.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,27. 1180–1185.
Clynes, M., &Walker, J (1982). Neurobiologie functions of rhythm, time, and pulse in music. In M Clynes (Ed.)Music, mind, and brain: The neuropsychology of music (pp. 171–216). New York: Plenum.
Cuddy, L L. (1970). Training the absolute identification of pitch.Perception & Psychophysics,8, 265–269.
Cuddy, L. L., &Cohen, A. J. (1976) Recognition of transposed melodic sequences.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,28, 255–270.
Deutsch, D. (1970). Tones and numbers: Specificity of interference in immediate memory.Science,168, 1604–1605
Deutsch, D. (1972). Mapping of interactions in pitch memory store.Science,175, 1020–1022.
Dowling, W. J. (1978) Scale and contour: Two components of a theory of memory for melodies.Psychological Review,85, 341–354.
Dowling, W. J., &Bartlett, J. C. (1981). The importance of interval information in long-term memory for melodies.Psychomusicology,1, 30–49.
Dowling, W. J., &Harwood, D. L. (1986).Music cognition. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Halpern, A. R. (1988a). Mental scanning in auditory imagery for songs.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,114, 434–443.
Halpern, A. R. (1988b). Perceived and imagined tempos of familiar songs.Music Perception,6, 193–202.
Halpern, A. R. (1988c). [Stability of mental tempo]. Unpublished raw data.
Klein, M. Coles, M. G. H., &Donchin, E. (1984). People with absolute pitch process tones without producing a P300.Science,223, 1306–1309.
Krumhansl, C. L. (1979). The psychological representation of musical pitch in a tonal context.Cognitive Psychology,11, 346–374.
Krumhansl, C. L., &Shkpard, R. N. (1979). Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,5, 579–594.
Lindley, M., &Wachsman, K. (1980). Pitch. In S. Sadie (Ed),The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians (Vol. 14, pp. 779–786) London Macmillan
Lockhead, G. R., &Byrd, R (1981). Practically perfect pitchJournal of the Acoustical Society of America,70, 387–389
Siegel, J. A. (1974). Sensory and verbal coding strategies in subjects with absolute pitch.Journal of Experimental Psychology,103, 37–44
Vernon, P. E. (1977). Absolute pitch: A case study.British Journal of Psychology,68, 485–489.
Ward, W. D, &Burns, E. M. (1982) Absolute pitch. In D. Deutsch (Ed.),The psychology of music (pp 431–451). New York: Academic Press.
Weber, W. J., &Brown, S (1986). Musical imagery.Music Perception,3, 411–426.
Zakay, D., Roziner, I., &Ben-Arzi, S. (1984). On the nature of absolute pitchArchive fur Psychologie,136, 163–166.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8607405.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Halpern, A.R. Memory for the absolute pitch of familiar songs. Memory & Cognition 17, 572–581 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197080
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197080