Language and music

In my opinion, one of the best podcasts is WYNC Radiolab. On April 21, 2006, their episode "Musical Language" was released.  Diana Deutsch, a Professor of Music Psychology at USCD, was interviewed.  Among other things, she discussed absolute pitch, more commonly known as perfect pitch.   It is the ability to recognize or sing a particular pitch without a reference note.  It is estimated that less than 1 in 10,000 have this ability.

She tells about tone languages, such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, which rely on pitch to convey the meaning of a word. She studied children who start musical training at the age of four and five. In those whose primary language is a tone language, like Chinese, she found 74% had perfect pitch  Those whose language was intonation, or non-tone, like English, only 14% had it.  She maintains it is because the children who speak a tone language have to learn the "musical" sounds in that language.  Those of us who speak English do not.

To listen to the 20 minute segment, go here:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21

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There are other experiments that Professor Deutsch has performed which can be found on her web site.  In one of them, she discovers that when the same tone is played over headphones, but in different octaves, we can usually hear which ear is getting the higher pitch.  And when we switch the headphones around the opposite way, it usually doesn't change. Most righthanders hear the high tone on the right and the low tone on the left, regardless of how the earphones are positioned. Lefthanders and ambidextrous people are more varied in terms of where the high and low tone appear to be coming from.  They are also more likely to hear complex sounds, such as three different tones that often seem to change their locations in space.

Here is the site to try this out for yourself.
http://philomel.com/musical_illusions/example_octave_illusion.php

This one made me laugh.  Listen to the two very short sound files in order. Then listen to the first again.
http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/deutsch_research7.php

Now you've heard something interesting.