For decades, people believed absolute pitch was an exclusive ability granted only to those with the right genetics or early music training. But new research from the University of Surrey proves otherwise.
It’s been a long-held belief that absolute pitch — the ability to identify musical notes without a reference — is a rare talent limited to those with specific genetic traits or early musical training. However, new research from the University of Surrey challenges this idea, showing that adults can develop absolute pitch through dedicated training.
The study, published today in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, followed 12 adult musicians with varying levels of experience as they completed an eight-week online training program. Unlike previous research, which often focused on recognizing exact pitch heights, this program emphasized learning pitch classes — the core of absolute pitch. To prevent reliance on relative pitch strategies, participants were trained without external cues or mental note comparisons. They also had to complete the final level multiple times to rule out lucky guesses.
Despite the common belief that absolute pitch cannot be learned in adulthood, the participants showed remarkable progress. On average, they successfully identified seven musical pitches with at least 90% accuracy. Two individuals even demonstrated perfect recognition of all twelve pitches, performing at a level comparable to those naturally possessing absolute pitch.
Dr. Yetta Wong, principal investigator and lecturer at the University of Surrey said:
“Our findings provide compelling evidence that absolute pitch is not limited to a select few. With focused training, adults can acquire this remarkable skill, much like how they learn other complex cognitive skills.”
Dr. Alan Wong, co-author of the paper and senior lecturer at Surrey’s School of Psychology added:
“This research has significant implications for our understanding of musical cognition and learning and opens doors for musicians of all ages to explore and develop their musicality to its fullest potential.”
Reference: “Learning fast and accurate absolute pitch judgment in adulthood” by Yetta Kwailing Wong, Leo Y. T. Cheung, Vince S. H. Ngan and Alan C.-N. Wong, 12 February 2025, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-024-02620-2
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.
12 Comments
Well, how come half of the pop artists ain’t got it, then?
I mean, auto-tune isn’t popular for nothing.
You seem to be confusing perfect pitch with singing ability. Perfect pitch refers to the ability to identify tones, not the ability to sing them.
Yup – thanks for the clarification
On what evidence may one conclude that pop artists can sing? If adults can obtain fluency in Vietnamese, a 6-tone language, with some serious work, then learning the pitch of musical notes can’t be that hard.
There are only four geographical directions, north, south, east west. If you were blindfolded and spun around a few times could you (still blindfolded) point out the direction you are facing? Suppose you worked on this ability? Probably not.
And how can you nail the right pitch if can’t hear it for a feedback, pray tell?
Sure, but when you meet someone who was born with perfect pitch recognition it’s noticably quite different than those who were taught. After 10,000+ hours playing piano, I have semi-reliable pitch recognition for one single note. In contrast, I knew someone in college who (with no significant instrumental ability or training) could perfectly ID up to three tones at once across the entire keyboard. The ability to develop perfect pitch may not be truly exclusive to those people, but those born with it are clearly on a different level.
The experiement was with musicians – a very biased sample. Somehow I doubt that this could be replicated with a truly random gorup of adults. (Full disclosure – even with 10 years of piano lessons, and a full year of “ear training” I was unable to develop even a relative pitch sense.)
This isn’t new studies. Yes relative pitch can come “very” close to perfect pitch, and is pretty much equally as useful in most applications anyway. The best way I think to determine perfect pitch is by having someone listen to a song (a few times even so they remember they key), then play that exact same song days, weeks, or even months later a half-step lower or half-step higher. Someone with perfect pitch would immediately recognize it’s different.
Alternatively, people with perfect pitch actually have a very difficult time transposing songs. Those will relative pitch could do it without a second thought, whereas someone with perfect pitch has to individually calculate each note and how far it would be from the original piece.
I went to a Liberal Arts College in the 80’s and my piano professor told me anyone can study it and obtain perfect pitch so acting like this is some “new scientific” discovery is laughable. Journalism used to involve research which was followed up by fact checking. This article did neither.
For me it’s not just about identification of the notes, it’s also about duplicating the pitch from listening to the music or a song.