How perfect pitch can hurt pianists

Only a small proportion of people have perfect pitch, and the majority of people who have perfect pitch are autistic. Still, most musicians who don’t have it, want to get perfect pitch. After all, Mozart had it.

This study led by Anna Lambrechts at the Autism Research Group in City University London recruited 18 adults who had Asperger’s and 18 adults who were neurotypical.

In the experiments, the participant would hear two tones played, then indicate if they thought the second tone had changed in pitch or duration.

While the neurotypical group had a different brain response depending on the tone they heard, the autistic group had the same brain response no matter what. This suggests that neurotypical people can adjust the resources they use for different tasks, and autistic people cannot.

The autistic brain was naturally better at processing pitch, but when they tried to guess the duration, they were way off.

When we consider all the benefits and downsides to perfect pitch, we can see that it’s not all that beneficial to have perfect pitch. A person would be a better musician without perfect pitch if it means you would have better judgement on rhythm or other aspects of music.

The brain gives up so many other processing resources just to be able to process pitch this way. Look, your brain is trying to juggle data that’s worth a million processors and 1,200 circuit boards in today’s terms.

We are always giving something up to get something. Women who have kids give up their bodies. Kids who spend a lot of time in the practice room miss out on sports or other instruments or playing with friends. Pianists who reach 11 notes have trouble playing tiny chromatic chords. Musicians who are extremely great at pitch, suck at rhythm.

This shouldn’t be discouraging, though. It should make us more intentional in making the best out of the resources that we do have. We could look for areas that we are strong in and work on them, because we had to give something up to get there.

In my second piano lesson ever, when my teacher played a melody on the black keys of piano, I copied the notes correctly. She said it was wrong, then played it again. And I couldn’t figure out what was different between my playing and hers. It was the rhythm. She was looking for rhythm and I had no natural sense of rhythm. I’ve always known that I struggled with rhythm. I even struggled with rhythm in a jazz band. Eventually, I spent so much time with the metronome that I could perform Bach onstage, but it was excruciating.

But I am thankful that I have a sense of pitch. I am thankful that I can play composers like Chopin or Rachmaninoff so I can play whatever rhythm I like.

Gratitude is a reminder of what we do have because we all had to give up so much to get here. We are just not thinking about it all the time.

Sometimes, I think about the things that I want or don’t have and how impossible it would be to get there. It makes me think about what I would give up in my life to get something that I want. There is nothing that I would want to give up. Having Asperger’s is difficult but it makes me, me.