Speaker 1: Hello. There, It's me Josh, and I'm doing my live
Speaker 1: show The End of the World or How I Learned
Speaker 1: to Start Worrying and Love Humanity on June in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: and in Washington, d C. Go to the Miracle Theater
Speaker 1: dot com for d C tickets and the Parkway Theater
Speaker 1: dot com for tickets to the Minneapolis show. I'll see
Speaker 1: you soon. Welcome to Stuff You should know, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w.
Speaker 1: Chiuck Bryant. F that was nice. And there's Jerry Rowland
Speaker 1: over there the jar stir rolling on as always. Don't
Speaker 1: look at me like that weirdly, I said, F what
Speaker 1: was it? I don't know. Let's see you don't know.
Speaker 1: This made me think a lot about and singing and
Speaker 1: pitch and stuff, and made me think about you and
Speaker 1: singing and pitched too, did it? Because I tried? I
Speaker 1: know I don't have absolute pitch, but I tried. I
Speaker 1: was just like, well, let me test myself. And I
Speaker 1: went to the little quiet room here, and the only
Speaker 1: way I knew how to test it was to think
Speaker 1: of a song. I know, that starts and like, see that,
Speaker 1: I know how to play and sing, And then I did.
Speaker 1: I sang a see and then I hit the play
Speaker 1: button on the YouTube clip of a C and the
Speaker 1: C was way higher than I was singing it. But
Speaker 1: I think I was in just a different key. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like off like oh, it was like, oh, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a C in a different octave. So the
Speaker 1: way all that works is confusing. Have you have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of Charlie Pouth? No, so you we found
Speaker 1: this guy. She watches the um John Mayor. You know,
Speaker 1: John Mayor has an Instagram TV show every week. I
Speaker 1: did not know that, but I know he's big on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's actually pretty well. He went so far as to
Speaker 1: create a show good for him. He had a guy
Speaker 1: on named Charlie Pooth and Charlie Pooth is has maybe
Speaker 1: the most perfect pitch of anybody on the planet. And
Speaker 1: there's videos of this guy like kidding a note and
Speaker 1: he's like here's enough, and like he's got a um
Speaker 1: what would you call that thing? A little magic machine
Speaker 1: that shows you exactly what the pitch is? Okay, that
Speaker 1: thing it just peeped like the needle just goes right
Speaker 1: to act or e or whatever, and he just like
Speaker 1: he's not even looking. It's it's just out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: It's really impressive. Does you mean like John Mayer? She
Speaker 1: actually has become a fan of John Mayor. All right,
Speaker 1: his show is actually worth watching. Yeah, current mood got.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about perfect pitch or absolute pitch, and
Speaker 1: that is we're going to define it right away here,
Speaker 1: unlike us, and that is to do like the poof
Speaker 1: does pouf pouf um, which is, if someone says hit
Speaker 1: a c with no uh and he with nothing to
Speaker 1: compare to, I can just belt out of sea or
Speaker 1: recognize the see if someone says what notices, it goes
Speaker 1: both ways. It's a double edged talent. It's a double
Speaker 1: edged talent. That's what absolute or perfect pitches. So you
Speaker 1: might say, like, okay, there's some aliens walking around among us,
Speaker 1: and this is how they show themselves. They're able to
Speaker 1: produce a no at will. Right, But really, if you
Speaker 1: step back and the grabster put this article together for us,
Speaker 1: he did a good job. He did. He went to
Speaker 1: great links to point out that having absolute pitch, or
Speaker 1: what's also called perfect pitch, really is kind of useless.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I agree with that he went
Speaker 1: to such links. I became to wonder if the grabster
Speaker 1: is actually jealous of people who well, he makes a
Speaker 1: point quite a bit that you know, it doesn't help
Speaker 1: you wrote a song. It doesn't make you anymore creative.
Speaker 1: So what it sounded like when you're reading it a
Speaker 1: little bit? And that is quite true. It does not.
Speaker 1: But make no bones about it. If you're a singer
Speaker 1: in a band, having perfect pitch is an asset. It
Speaker 1: might be annoying to your bandmates, right there's I saw
Speaker 1: this video, these two Japanese kids, and it was what
Speaker 1: annoying things that people with perfect pitch to? And uh
Speaker 1: yeah it was this one kid was annoying the Jesus
Speaker 1: out of another. I could see that cute. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's got to be an asset, I would guess. So
Speaker 1: sure you know, well you like, let me give you
Speaker 1: an example of relative pitch that it gives if you're
Speaker 1: in the shower. If if I'm in the shower and
Speaker 1: I start singing, um, some Morrissey song. Let's say it
Speaker 1: starts out pretty normal, but there's some high notes in there.
Speaker 1: Maybe if I really stretch, I can hit. Once I
Speaker 1: get to those high notes, I can't even come close.
Speaker 1: The reason why is because I started in a higher
Speaker 1: key than I should have, because I had no reference
Speaker 1: point whatsoever, and it just started singing a big male
Speaker 1: strikes again. Oh no, eight, that's way too low, right,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do that. I mean, like that sounds perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually do a pretty good Morrissey. Oh yeah, let's
Speaker 1: hear it. Oh I can't do it right now. My
Speaker 1: voice is all podcasted out. I'm not gonna humiliate myself
Speaker 1: on here. I'm sorry. I'll do it for you later
Speaker 1: in the shower. Um be like you got some soap,
Speaker 1: you have some soup on your own. Sorry, that's my Morrissey. Alright,
Speaker 1: So we should talk about reference um, relative pitch and
Speaker 1: having a reference point. That's you can be a great
Speaker 1: singer and not have perfect pitch. Um. It is right
Speaker 1: in that, like you know, it's not like, oh, you
Speaker 1: know a perfect pitch, you're probably not gonna be a
Speaker 1: good singer. Or you do a perfect pitch, you're like
Speaker 1: such a great creator and songwriter. Those don't have any
Speaker 1: to do with one another. But if you've ever been
Speaker 1: to see a vocal group, sing like star Land Vocal Band.
Speaker 1: Never seen them, but Emily, my wife was in a
Speaker 1: show choir and high school, so that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they did. Um. I believe they had piano accompaniment.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was acapella. But but but if you've seen
Speaker 1: an acapella group, you will almost always see a pianist
Speaker 1: hit a single note before they start playing. And here
Speaker 1: that or they might have like akrat tuner, which is
Speaker 1: one of those little things you hold up to your mouth.
Speaker 1: It's like a round harmonica pitch pipe. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a type of pitch pipe. What did you call
Speaker 1: it a krat tuner? It was It's like a that's
Speaker 1: probably like saying band aid or something or Kleenex proprietary epidemic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Uh, They're all kind of pitch pipes,
Speaker 1: but this is a little cool round one. It's like
Speaker 1: a round harmonica. Yeah. Yeah, and they usually wear it
Speaker 1: like a medallion around their net. The choir director, do
Speaker 1: they I've seen it? Okay? Um. So they would either
Speaker 1: blow into one of those pitch pipes or they would
Speaker 1: hit a piano key and the choir would all know
Speaker 1: in their head they would have that reference point. Then
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, here's here's where we start with
Speaker 1: our barbershop quartet song. Right. That's either the first note
Speaker 1: of the song or the key that the song sung in.
Speaker 1: But either way, once they have that and they're like
Speaker 1: hey or whatever, they can sing the rest of the
Speaker 1: song and key relative to that note. That alone, to
Speaker 1: me is impressive. So even relative pitch is impressive to me,
Speaker 1: let alone absolute pitch. Well, I mean everyone has relative pitch,
Speaker 1: I guess. But if somebody who's like, here's an apoo,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, what do you want me to do
Speaker 1: with that? Oh, I see what you mean? Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: you know. I wouldn't be able to necessarily keep up
Speaker 1: with the rest of the song just because I heard
Speaker 1: the first note. Yeah, I almost feel like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know the song. So like, once you have your
Speaker 1: starting point, you're good. I guess. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Practiced it. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: about any smoke could do this. Um. I was inquired,
Speaker 1: but we always had piano accompaniment and the piano led
Speaker 1: the song. Like, I don't remember a single song we
Speaker 1: did Inquire that started with just the vocals acapello. It
Speaker 1: was always like a piano intro, so you know exactly
Speaker 1: where you are. I was just trying to come up
Speaker 1: with a song that starts out like that Bohemian rapid. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know what's funny. I was just thinking of the
Speaker 1: other Queen song, I Want It All. Oh Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I believe starts talking Queen. I thought that was a
Speaker 1: Burger King adds Burger Queen. Alright, so h relative pitch,
Speaker 1: that's the deal. I feel like we should cover some more,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like the other half of this episode
Speaker 1: should be tone deafness. We did one on tone deafness.
Speaker 1: We did I Swear to God. We did one called
Speaker 1: his tone deafness Hereditary, and we talked about how in
Speaker 1: the Philippines, if you sing my way in a tone
Speaker 1: deaf way at karaoke, you may get stabbed because people
Speaker 1: have been stabbed before. I don't remember that one. You
Speaker 1: don't remember that, not at all. We talked about tone
Speaker 1: deafness for sure, So your plan just fell apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean there's a lot of I never study
Speaker 1: music theory, so I'm an air learner as far as
Speaker 1: guitar and all that stuff goes. Did Jarry just preview right, yeah,
Speaker 1: she just faced me. Um, but it gets a little
Speaker 1: like convoluted when you start talking about keys and octaves
Speaker 1: and half steps and whole steps and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The thing that calms me down is when you talk
Speaker 1: about science, right, So let's talk science here. When you
Speaker 1: talk about pitch pitches all relativity, right, Yes, you're talking
Speaker 1: about one note in relation to another note. Is that
Speaker 1: other note higher or lower? That's really what pitches, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's the gradations of notes and relations to one another. Right. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: if you if you look at what you're talking about scientifically,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a sound wave. So really what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is the frequency of a note is what
Speaker 1: gives it? It's A or it's B or is it
Speaker 1: C sharp or something like that, And there is a
Speaker 1: whole step between an A and a B, but there's
Speaker 1: actually a half step in between. Okay, you know all this? Okay,
Speaker 1: how am I doing so far? Am I explaining it? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean like if you sit at a piano, a
Speaker 1: half step is the very next key, whether it's a
Speaker 1: black or white, and a whole step is skipping a
Speaker 1: key and going to the second key. But I thought
Speaker 1: there were some stretches where there are two white keys together,
Speaker 1: and that was a full step, which are called natural tones.
Speaker 1: There's no half step in between those notes. That's not
Speaker 1: how I understand it. That's the that's the piano demo
Speaker 1: I saw. Yeah, and the other thing that struck me too.
Speaker 1: I never knew this before ever. So you know, like
Speaker 1: there's a B B flat and a C sharp or
Speaker 1: actually I think could be a B sharp and a
Speaker 1: C flat same note. Yeah, what with the whole reason
Speaker 1: those things exist? And it's a half note sharper flat is,
Speaker 1: but the whole reason it exists to tell you which
Speaker 1: way to go on the scale up or down a
Speaker 1: half not a half note. Yeah, like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think about in band, you can play an A and
Speaker 1: if you move that up one bar, that's an A sharp,
Speaker 1: but that's also a B flat because B would be
Speaker 1: the next thing up from that middle point. So I
Speaker 1: never really knew there were rules for why you would
Speaker 1: refer to it as an A sharper a B flat.
Speaker 1: From what I understand is to know, all right, you
Speaker 1: want to go down, So you're going to going down
Speaker 1: to A sharp from a B or you're going up
Speaker 1: to a B flat from an A interesting that I
Speaker 1: think I probably just got it wrong, that we're mangling
Speaker 1: so many things. But what we're talking about is is
Speaker 1: what's called the Western musical scale. It's a twelve note
Speaker 1: scale and it's made up of ten octaves that humans
Speaker 1: can hear. And if each note is a specific wavelength
Speaker 1: of frequency of a sound vibration that's the same every
Speaker 1: single time, and A always has the same frequency and
Speaker 1: B always has the same frequency. If you double that frequency,
Speaker 1: you've just gone up an octave, right, And that scale
Speaker 1: repeats itself and ascends or descends going into higher lower octaves.
Speaker 1: So that was good. People with perfect or absolute pitch
Speaker 1: will be able to hear any note on at any
Speaker 1: octave on that scale and say, oh that's a A
Speaker 1: seven or a B six sharp right, Um. They just
Speaker 1: from hearing it, or they'll be able to reproduce it.
Speaker 1: So it's not like they can just memorize twelve notes.
Speaker 1: They can memorize twelve notes over say ten octaves, they
Speaker 1: can recognize them. Yeah. And if you're someone who plays
Speaker 1: instruments by ear and sings by ear and can't read music,
Speaker 1: um it can you really appreciate Um? Two things, the
Speaker 1: simply city of people who write three chord major songs,
Speaker 1: and then the complexity, even though it's frustrating of like
Speaker 1: an Elton John. So like, if I sit down to
Speaker 1: play guitar to an Elton John song, I'll look up
Speaker 1: the chords and the words, and nine times out of
Speaker 1: ten I'm like, I don't what. I don't even know
Speaker 1: this chord. Yeah, and I gotta like go to a
Speaker 1: chord book and figure it out. He did all kinds
Speaker 1: of crazy chords. That's really diminished minor. I mean, minors
Speaker 1: are simple enough, but but but that's in that's it
Speaker 1: was still in the Western musical scale, or was incorporating
Speaker 1: tones from other musical scales that weren't. No, it was
Speaker 1: still the Western. But you know, instead of playing an
Speaker 1: F it would be like an F sharp minor seventh
Speaker 1: or something. So what do is minor and major? Then? Well,
Speaker 1: minor is the saddest of all keys. A minor that's
Speaker 1: his final tip reference. So you still get it. Thank
Speaker 1: you for explaining it though, and not just letting all
Speaker 1: the listeners right in and laugh at me. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know how to explain. I mean, a
Speaker 1: minor is variation of the major, but it sounds completely
Speaker 1: different and much more like it does sound more sad
Speaker 1: and like if I played you in a in an
Speaker 1: A minor in a B and a B minor, you go, oh,
Speaker 1: we need to get a piano in here for this one.
Speaker 1: Can we expense a piano? Maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: break while we go get a piano. Let's do it, okay?
Speaker 1: In things like chuck and chuck. Sorry, alright, so one
Speaker 1: thing we should say chuck when we're talking about as
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, absolute, Do you feel like people are keeping
Speaker 1: up with this or we just throwing out so much
Speaker 1: random information? A little both. I think that music majors
Speaker 1: are really just like, oh guys, oh lord, nobody likes
Speaker 1: them anyway. But for normal people, you think that they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: now I understand what pitches because that's really the goal
Speaker 1: here a little bit. We're not we're not explaining anything
Speaker 1: to music majors that they don't already know, and we're
Speaker 1: actually mangling the stuff that they do know. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: One thing we can say that's pretty easy to understand
Speaker 1: is though, is that perfect pitch is? Um, it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a on a sliding scale. It's hard to
Speaker 1: define like it's either perfect or not perfect, because you
Speaker 1: have a range from tone deaf to perfect pitch, and
Speaker 1: you may be way closer to perfect pitch and may
Speaker 1: even say I have perfect pitch, but not have like
Speaker 1: absolute perfect pitch at the time when tested right exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not binary, right, there's it's not
Speaker 1: whether they're one of those you have it or you
Speaker 1: don't have it kind of things. And it's suggested, is
Speaker 1: when we'll talk about it a little more, that everybody
Speaker 1: has some level of absolute pitch. It's just some people
Speaker 1: are way better right than others, so so much so
Speaker 1: that they seem like they have perfect pitch compared to
Speaker 1: everybody else. Yeah, I'm not sure I understood that part either,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that. Um. And it's interesting to
Speaker 1: note too that this, uh, even if you do have
Speaker 1: absolute pitch, you might have trouble identifying the same notes
Speaker 1: at different octaves. Um, you're not supposed to. You can't
Speaker 1: call yourself a perfect pitch person. Yeah, I guess so right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to hang your head in shape. But that's tough.
Speaker 1: Identical notes and different octaves are tough, and it results
Speaker 1: in some weird um phenomena like the Shepherd tone, which
Speaker 1: is really neat um. If you've ever been to a
Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan movie, Um, specifically dune Kirk. Did dun Kirk
Speaker 1: use it? Well, he uses it all the time, Like
Speaker 1: the sound of that motorcycle had a specific name, but
Speaker 1: the one batman rides with the two big fat wheels
Speaker 1: the cycle. Yeah, I think that's what it's called. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I had another name, didn't it? Or no,
Speaker 1: well maybe I think of the Adam West's bat cycling
Speaker 1: so um, but he uses that sound. Um, it's called
Speaker 1: the Shepherd tone, and it's basically several tones from different
Speaker 1: octaves layered on one another. The highest tone gets quieter,
Speaker 1: the middle tone stays loud, and the bass tone uh
Speaker 1: as sinds and volume, and if you play them all together,
Speaker 1: it's this mental trick that your mind can't process. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like something that's either going up or down
Speaker 1: into infinity basically right, But it's really just the same
Speaker 1: thing on a loop over and over again. But it sounds, yeah,
Speaker 1: clearly just going up and rising in pitch constantly for infinity.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting, really tension creating it really puts you
Speaker 1: on edge, not like nails on a chalkboard on edge,
Speaker 1: but more like like what's gonna happen? This is still
Speaker 1: going on? Uh, And shout out to um Roger Shepherd
Speaker 1: from Stanford. He's a psychologists in who I guess discovered
Speaker 1: this audio illusion. There also another shout out to Diana
Speaker 1: Deutsch who was a researcher for m audio illusions, which
Speaker 1: are really interesting. It's like the sound version of an
Speaker 1: optical illusion and reveals a lot about how the brain
Speaker 1: processes information. Um. She has a site I guess that
Speaker 1: you see San Diego that I want everybody to go
Speaker 1: to right now, pause the pause the episodes and go
Speaker 1: to Deutsch d e U T s C H dot
Speaker 1: U C S D dot E d U slash psychology
Speaker 1: slash pages. Here's where it gets tricky dot pH P
Speaker 1: question mark lowercase I equals to one too. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you get a your L shortener for that? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Just do it and and thank me later. But it
Speaker 1: has She has these um these audio clips that show
Speaker 1: how when you hear something spoken over and over again
Speaker 1: enough times, the same thing over and over again, it
Speaker 1: turns into music to you. It turns into being sung interesting,
Speaker 1: and the way that she has it laid out and
Speaker 1: demonstrated it is the most mind blowing thing I have
Speaker 1: heard in ages. I loved. I went right. I was
Speaker 1: like you, you've got to hear this, and it's it's
Speaker 1: like I'm watching John Mayre. Shut up, who sings better
Speaker 1: than him? This Diana Deutsch, Lady, Wow, I'll have to
Speaker 1: hear that. That's pretty cool. You're you're gonna love it.
Speaker 1: You will love it, Chuck awesome. Okay, it has really
Speaker 1: nothing to do with perfect pitch, but it is just
Speaker 1: kind of one of those things where it's like this,
Speaker 1: this is worth mentioning to the world. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: So there's this guy named Nicholas uh Slanemski who's a
Speaker 1: composer and a music lexicologist and a conductor. He wrote
Speaker 1: in his autobiography about having absolute pitch. Basically how like
Speaker 1: he kind of um, it was a party trick when
Speaker 1: he was a kid, and then when he went to
Speaker 1: school to music school, of course, um, he kind of
Speaker 1: like kind of thought his s didn't stink because he
Speaker 1: had perfect pitch and they didn't have to work his hard.
Speaker 1: And he was a little snotty about it, I think
Speaker 1: from what I gather from ed summation. And apparently while
Speaker 1: he was off just like, hmm, I've got perfect pitch,
Speaker 1: all his classmates are actually busting their butts and working
Speaker 1: hard and actually writing really good music, and he fell
Speaker 1: behind him was like, how could I be falling behind?
Speaker 1: I have absolute pitch and he's just leaning on that
Speaker 1: too hard he was, so he had kind of a
Speaker 1: a moment of inspiration where he's like, Oh, I actually
Speaker 1: have to put in the work too, And I think
Speaker 1: this is where Ed was kind of getting that it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually help. It's good, it's a neat thing to have.
Speaker 1: You can't write your own ticket though in the music business.
Speaker 1: Because he had perfect pitch, it doesn't help you be
Speaker 1: any more creative or anything like that. And as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, Slominski Um points out in that Auto
Speaker 1: by bography that, um, there have been plenty of people
Speaker 1: who were just master composers like Tchaikovsky and Wagner were
Speaker 1: both um. Neither one of them had perfect pitch. And
Speaker 1: yet you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who's like
Speaker 1: those guys were hacks. You know, they were pretty good,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have perfect pitch. So you can do
Speaker 1: quite well in music and not have perfect pitch, especially
Speaker 1: if you have one of those little round harmonic as
Speaker 1: you were talking about Lenny Kravitz harmonica pitch pipe. Um,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell how many people have perfect pitch. Um,
Speaker 1: you hear one in ten thousand a lot, But as
Speaker 1: Ed points out, it's kind of hard to find any
Speaker 1: reference for this that really is accurate or legit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he ran into that same thing where you
Speaker 1: see the same info on the internet in the same
Speaker 1: way everywhere. It means that it's probably not real. I
Speaker 1: think so, um, because it's got to be more than
Speaker 1: one in ten thousand. Well, he said he found one
Speaker 1: that that's found about four percent of the population has it,
Speaker 1: so it would be four hundred and four it out
Speaker 1: of ten thousand, four times greater than what was previously thought.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. And you're more likely to have and
Speaker 1: this is where it gets interesting, of like where does
Speaker 1: it come from? Nature or nurture. You're definitely more likely to, um,
Speaker 1: have perfect pitch if you start your training in music
Speaker 1: before the age of six. Yeah, there's a critical period
Speaker 1: for the brain where it's just mush waiting to be
Speaker 1: molded into smarts. So things like language, foreign languages, music, um,
Speaker 1: basically anything you can think of that requires talent that
Speaker 1: not everybody can do kind of falls into that critical
Speaker 1: period where if you start to learn that early on,
Speaker 1: before age six, you're going to be able to learn
Speaker 1: it way easier than somebody who's an adult trying to
Speaker 1: learn it. And so perfect pitch shows up way more frequently,
Speaker 1: and kids who had musical training and exposure specifically to
Speaker 1: the Western music scale uh at an early age than
Speaker 1: it does to two people who were not explosed to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also if you speak a tone language uh fluently
Speaker 1: and definitely natively, you're more likely to have absolute pitch.
Speaker 1: Tone languages are we have a little I mean every
Speaker 1: language has a little bit of that. When we people
Speaker 1: inflect in English, different things, different tones that can be
Speaker 1: different meanings. Oh really, oh really, but we have nothing
Speaker 1: on like Mandarin, Chinese or Cantonese. These are real tone
Speaker 1: languages where your tones can indicate like the same word
Speaker 1: can have five, six, seven different meanings depending on your tone.
Speaker 1: Really interesting. Yeah, so people who speak tone languages tend
Speaker 1: to have are more likely to have absolute pitch than
Speaker 1: people who don't speak tone languages, right, yes, Okay, so
Speaker 1: that raises a really good question. Then, Um, there's one
Speaker 1: other big clue here, And just because we have the
Speaker 1: clues asn't mean we figured out I don't think we
Speaker 1: said there. Um is still no full understanding of why
Speaker 1: some people have absolute or perfect pitch. Um, but it
Speaker 1: also appears more frequently in the population of people with autism.
Speaker 1: They tend to have more more frequency of perfect pitch
Speaker 1: than people who do not have autism. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: same with I know it correlates to like, uh, supposedly
Speaker 1: photographic memory thing synesthesia, which we've talked about and Billy
Speaker 1: Joel's a synaesthetz. Yeah, so that might have something to
Speaker 1: do with his abilities. So one one UM, actually two
Speaker 1: explanations I saw for people with autism is that, UM,
Speaker 1: it's believed that they process information piecemeal rather than wholesale,
Speaker 1: which would explain rather than hearing like the whole musical
Speaker 1: composition that year the individual notes, so it would be
Speaker 1: easier for them to be acquainted with the individual will note.
Speaker 1: Or Um, they just are more developed. Their sensory input
Speaker 1: is way more developed than than people without autism. Those
Speaker 1: are the two competing theories for why people with autism
Speaker 1: have perfect pitch. More interesting. All right, Well, the whole
Speaker 1: question that we talked about is in nature or nurture. Um.
Speaker 1: That's sort of a debate that's still going on, UM.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to study this stuff, uh universally. First
Speaker 1: of all, this seems to apply almost exclusively to the
Speaker 1: Western music scale. I think so, right, UM, because that's
Speaker 1: what you're doing. You're saying, that's an A, that's an F,
Speaker 1: here's n F, here's an A. UM that and what
Speaker 1: you're talking about the notes on the Western music scale.
Speaker 1: They think that people who have perfect pitch can detect
Speaker 1: notes that are more nuanced than the full step or
Speaker 1: the half step of the Western music scale. But I
Speaker 1: didn't see anywhere where it's like, yes, this translates everywhere
Speaker 1: into any music scale. So it does seemed to be
Speaker 1: universal from that outset to begin with. Yeah, okay, yeah sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I thought was interesting, you
Speaker 1: talked about this at the beginning, UM, about labeling the
Speaker 1: sensory input. It's like, you know, they throw the letter
Speaker 1: C on that wavelength. Basically, it's no different than than saying, well,
Speaker 1: that color is red. It's just a it's just a
Speaker 1: label we've created. It was right or it is. I
Speaker 1: saw an analogy for this where if somebody with perfect pitch,
Speaker 1: if you and I analogize it to somebody who could
Speaker 1: pick out color, they could see a blue wall in
Speaker 1: somebody's house and then drive to the to the paint
Speaker 1: store and pick out that same blue from the wall
Speaker 1: of samples. Interesting, it's basically the same thing. But there's
Speaker 1: a big clue there with the fact that most people
Speaker 1: like that's pretty pretty refined, but most people can look
Speaker 1: at something and say that's blue, that's green, that's red.
Speaker 1: Because we were almost on the world to a child
Speaker 1: trained from a very young age to recognize and identify
Speaker 1: and name colors. Not everybody gets that kind of training
Speaker 1: around the world with musical notes, right, But where they do,
Speaker 1: like in Japan, where far more children are trained more
Speaker 1: universally in music, they have found much more prevalences of
Speaker 1: absolute pitch there. Okay, which makes sense, right, You're exposed
Speaker 1: from a very early age what is an A, what
Speaker 1: is an F and you're hitting that critical period. But
Speaker 1: that really reveals something important here too, Chuck not everybody.
Speaker 1: Not every kid in Japan has absolute pitch. Just like
Speaker 1: every kid in Japan can tell you what blue is
Speaker 1: or what red is, they can't necessarily all tell you
Speaker 1: what an A is or where an F is, right,
Speaker 1: They just can't, So that that suggests that there is
Speaker 1: perhaps some genetic basis to it. Not everybody can learn
Speaker 1: absolute or perfect pitch. All right, I think that's a
Speaker 1: good place to break in, and uh, we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about your family jeans in perfect pitch right after this,
Speaker 1: and things like jo stry All right, Chuck, you said
Speaker 1: something about jeans. I'm wearing them, You're always wearing them.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing dad jeans, are they They're a little dad jeanie.
Speaker 1: Now what our dad jeans? Those look like normal jeans
Speaker 1: to me. That's because we both were cool in the
Speaker 1: same era, which is twenty years ago. So what faded
Speaker 1: his dad jeans? I think it's a little little bag here.
Speaker 1: I'm just too old to wear straight up skinny jeans.
Speaker 1: Too old, my thighs are too chunky. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: I feel about skinny jeans. I liked it all. Almost
Speaker 1: all jeans now are a little stretchy, though they are.
Speaker 1: It's like they put elastic in them. Yeah, like every
Speaker 1: fabric is a little stretchy. Now it feels like I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm assize thirty. I never knew that. Um. Alright, so
Speaker 1: jeans um. Absolute pitch does tend to run in families. Okay,
Speaker 1: So clearly it's genetic, right, Well, no, not necessarily. Like
Speaker 1: everything that I gathered here is that we just don't know.
Speaker 1: There's probably some genetics involved and a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: nurture involved that. So that was the old view, and
Speaker 1: I think it's still kind of predominant that that that
Speaker 1: this was this explained absolute pitch. If I may take
Speaker 1: this one, Yeah, that you were born with the genetic
Speaker 1: propensity toward absolute pitch. Yeah, Like, if you're Lucy waynewright,
Speaker 1: our friend and her mom and her dad are both
Speaker 1: professional singers. It's no mistake that Lucy, Martha and Rufus
Speaker 1: are all professional singers. There's a genetic component there, for sure.
Speaker 1: But the other way to look at it, and this
Speaker 1: is the reason why the nature versus nurture debate hasn't
Speaker 1: been settled. It's also quite possible that just because Lucy
Speaker 1: was exposed to music from a very owning age, including
Speaker 1: the critical period. It could have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: genetics and could have everything to do with environment. So
Speaker 1: the thing that everybody's settled on is it's probably both
Speaker 1: that you're you have a genetic propensity toward it, and
Speaker 1: that if you are exposed to the Western musical scale
Speaker 1: at that critical period before age six, and then you
Speaker 1: learn later on like, oh, my parents are will actually
Speaker 1: be kind to me and and talk nice to me.
Speaker 1: If I show off in front of their friends that
Speaker 1: I can do in a off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: then that reinforces that and that develops into absolutely a
Speaker 1: perfect pitch later on in life. Is that the part
Speaker 1: where the child has to see value in it in
Speaker 1: order to kind of and I guess that's true with anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your kid doesn't see value and something, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: work towards that, right exactly. See, my parents neither one
Speaker 1: of my parents can sing. Really, my sister can't sing,
Speaker 1: but my brother and I can both sing. Oh I've
Speaker 1: heard you. It's like Angels Scott sing is better than me.
Speaker 1: Of course, I mean does that go without saying at
Speaker 1: this point? Uh, it's interesting though how that works because
Speaker 1: we weren't super exposed to music either a little bit,
Speaker 1: but not like my parents weren't big music people that
Speaker 1: were like, oh man, let me gotta listen to this record, yeah,
Speaker 1: check this track. Yeah. Just that just didn't happen. So
Speaker 1: we were discovering music on our own. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if my brother gave me the nurture side, because he
Speaker 1: was singing and we were inquired and he was giving
Speaker 1: me records and stuff. I could totally yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's nurture right there. It's just not coming from
Speaker 1: your parents, but that's still nurturing. I'm just fascinated. I'm
Speaker 1: just fast neated by talents period. And like Michelle and
Speaker 1: Scott can both draw. I can't draw at all, And
Speaker 1: like how that stuff? You know? My mom is an artist?
Speaker 1: Oh is she? Yeah? I didn't Oh yeah that's right.
Speaker 1: The mural, yeah she. I mean she's a was a
Speaker 1: professional artist. And it's just like I can't draw a
Speaker 1: stick figure, right, They didn't get passed out. And it's
Speaker 1: funny when I say that around my mom, she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can draw. I remember all the build a cat
Speaker 1: stuff he used to do, and Opus the penguin from
Speaker 1: bloom County. It's like, Mom, I was tracing. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: that takes talent. I'm like, she's like, oh no, it
Speaker 1: really does. I never knew she said tracing takes talent.
Speaker 1: But I'm just fascinated about talents, especially having a daughter
Speaker 1: now and like, is she good at this? Is she
Speaker 1: not gonna be good at this? Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Some some of the stuff you can nurture, but some
Speaker 1: stuff you just gotta wait and see. It's the it's
Speaker 1: an age old question. I I think that anybody who
Speaker 1: is like it's a hundred percent nature a hundred percent
Speaker 1: nurtures off. Either way, it's got to be a combination
Speaker 1: of the two. I mean, we did that episode on
Speaker 1: epigenetics that basically proved it's both. You know, it shows
Speaker 1: how it's both. So yeah, it's got to be both.
Speaker 1: I would I would say absolute pitchfalls under that well,
Speaker 1: and with absolute pitch too. It's interesting because the way
Speaker 1: I read this is that people can learn it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with practice, I guess even later in life. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: thing that really caught my attention is there's a drug
Speaker 1: called valpro eight. The aids in neural plasticity, which means
Speaker 1: you learn better, you can restructure your brain to learn
Speaker 1: new stuff at a later age. Yeah, I had never
Speaker 1: heard of that. I had neither. Apparently that treats epilepsy,
Speaker 1: bipolar disorder in migraines and can help you saying better
Speaker 1: may literally make you smarter as what I'm getting U.
Speaker 1: The other thing I took issue with is that this
Speaker 1: said much like an American learning German a H. Forty
Speaker 1: will never be as fluent as someone born and raised
Speaker 1: in Germany. Is that true? Uh? Yeah, I think native
Speaker 1: born speakers always have an edge up on I think.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I figure if you really immerse yourself,
Speaker 1: you moved to Germany, like you could learn it just
Speaker 1: as good. Right, maybe. And I've also heard that you're
Speaker 1: never truly and this may be one of those dumb
Speaker 1: things you hear in elementary school, but you can never
Speaker 1: truly be fluent if you don't dream in that language.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's true, if that's an
Speaker 1: old wives tale. I've never heard that you haven't. No,
Speaker 1: I've always heard that like after a certain age, you
Speaker 1: can't dream in a foreign tongue and thus you're not
Speaker 1: quote unquote fluent. That sounds made up. It sounds like
Speaker 1: playground stuff like the bar code being the number of
Speaker 1: the UM. There's one last part that I thought was
Speaker 1: really fascinating. There's a larger part of this debate that
Speaker 1: the fact that there are people walking around with absolute
Speaker 1: pitch um and not everybody has it suggests something that
Speaker 1: we may have a part of our brain that is
Speaker 1: left over to sense and detect music in differences in music,
Speaker 1: and that to some people that suggests that music singing
Speaker 1: specifically actually predated language in our development or evolution. I
Speaker 1: could see that totally. Yeah. And the example uses that
Speaker 1: a series of sounds was early communication. Sure means he
Speaker 1: got me yeah, or you know ah, like you know
Speaker 1: big tuktok is saying big mammoth is coming this way.
Speaker 1: That was clearly a lookout. Even before you said it,
Speaker 1: I was going to say look out. But if you
Speaker 1: really hear what I did there, that's singing in a way, right,
Speaker 1: it can write it's a tone and eventually over time, um,
Speaker 1: that could be um kind of uh systematized, categorize where standardized.
Speaker 1: That's what I was looking for. One of those eyes
Speaker 1: um where that's just what your group says, and your
Speaker 1: group gets grim bigger, and that spreads and eventually turns
Speaker 1: into words something more nuanced. So it makes total sense.
Speaker 1: The other reason I saw that made sense to me
Speaker 1: was that if we were running around nature we heard
Speaker 1: birds calling, we heard um cats growling or something like that,
Speaker 1: we may start to imitate those things were through clicks
Speaker 1: and whistles and all this stuff. If they sound natural,
Speaker 1: um much more than like language does. So it makes
Speaker 1: total sense that that song would have come before language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think there's a uh an eight tonality
Speaker 1: and and in words and pre words, yeah, pre words
Speaker 1: like it doesn't I don't know, because otherwise it just
Speaker 1: would have been a series of grunts and clicks and
Speaker 1: things like very staccato and short. Yeah. It's almost like
Speaker 1: with some of the first person born who was like,
Speaker 1: well how do you do? And that was like the
Speaker 1: first person to ever talk, and that was the first
Speaker 1: sentence ever spoken, you know, like it's a it's a
Speaker 1: great question. Uh. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: great questions like absolute pitch, Well, they're friends. We want
Speaker 1: to direct you to our beloved website that we put
Speaker 1: a lot of blood, sweat and tears into how stuff works.
Speaker 1: They got a lot of good stuff for you there Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: And since I said okay, it's time for listener mail. Actually,
Speaker 1: can I jump back, jump back? Jack we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about people who supposedly had perfect pitch. We'll throw some
Speaker 1: names out real quick. Oh man, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all right. Michael Jackson supposedly had perfect pitch. And there's
Speaker 1: this story. This is from Mental Floss. By the way,
Speaker 1: there's a story from will I Am who backed Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson up in a song and said that he warmed
Speaker 1: up for three hours to sing a five minute song
Speaker 1: three hours of me Me Me, Me, Me Me Me.
Speaker 1: Mariah Carey supposedly discovered she had perfect pitch at the
Speaker 1: age of four. Um Ella Fitzgerald, I love this story.
Speaker 1: Apparently she was so dead on that her band would
Speaker 1: warm up to her voice, so the other way. That's
Speaker 1: really it's pretty cool. I love that. Lady bing Crosby,
Speaker 1: m his um travel partner, said that sharing a train ride,
Speaker 1: he would snore and pitch to the train whistle. That's cute.
Speaker 1: That's like the three stooges who like me Me Me, Me,
Speaker 1: Me Me Me. Florence Henderson of the Brady Bunch, he's
Speaker 1: a singer as well. Mozart. Sure they assumed Beethoven, although
Speaker 1: that was never on record. Paul Shaffer, The World's Most
Speaker 1: Dangerous Band, Jimmy Hendrix. As the story goes, Hendrix, when
Speaker 1: he was first learning guitar could not afford a guitar tuner,
Speaker 1: so he would go to a music store strum the
Speaker 1: open strings and then go back and like tune it
Speaker 1: to what he remembered hearing. And he learned guitar like
Speaker 1: age nine or something, maybe even younger. Uh. And then Yanni.
Speaker 1: And Yanni was even tested on dateline someone playing random keys,
Speaker 1: and he nailed it. Apparently, of course it's ny Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always confused. Yanni was zomb fear. Oh, one was
Speaker 1: a pan flutter and one was a pam flute. Greek God,
Speaker 1: wasn't one wasn't? I thought they both played the pam flute. No,
Speaker 1: Yanni was a composer of the big flowery arrangements. He
Speaker 1: may he may pain fluted up every now and then,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that he wasn't shy with the
Speaker 1: pam flut. But that, yeah, I got you all right. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I already said the listener mail things, So
Speaker 1: let's jump right into it. Yes, all right, so this
Speaker 1: is actually woe Chuck. Before we get into it, let
Speaker 1: me add something here. So you remember our friend Lowell
Speaker 1: Hutchinson who um who sponsored our our Yes, well, low
Speaker 1: didn't include the name of her shop that she donates
Speaker 1: of the to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and she
Speaker 1: she emailed in with it, so we gotta share it.
Speaker 1: You go to etsy dot com, slash shop slash Lowell
Speaker 1: hutch Designs l O W E. L. Hutch Designs and
Speaker 1: by her would her turned would and some of that
Speaker 1: money is going to save elephants. That's awesome and much
Speaker 1: easier than the San Diego state you are l you work,
Speaker 1: but everybody, all right, here we go everyone. I love
Speaker 1: it when we get a uh, a little bit of
Speaker 1: Kisman happening. Hey, guys heard the episode and what happens
Speaker 1: when the government mistakenly think someone is dead. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that you're having trouble finding info on why the postal
Speaker 1: service would be reporting a death to the government, And
Speaker 1: an amazing coincidence, I actually just had to do that
Speaker 1: the very same day that that episode dropped. I work
Speaker 1: as a mail carrier in New Rochelle, New York, and
Speaker 1: I can confirmed. I confirmed that we are responsible for
Speaker 1: reporting deaths, and in some cases it's a bit more
Speaker 1: common than you think. Procedure is actually quite simple. When
Speaker 1: a government agency, usually the I R. S L or
Speaker 1: Social Security, is having trouble reaching an individual, they send
Speaker 1: a special form to the post office responsible for to
Speaker 1: ring that person's mail. Reform asks the mail carrier knows
Speaker 1: the whereabouts of that person. I imagine the first thing
Speaker 1: I would say, it's like, I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: deliver mail here. Yeah, whether they moved, or whether they're
Speaker 1: just ignoring the government's calls and letters, or in some
Speaker 1: cases they have unfortunately passed away. The carrier will try
Speaker 1: to find out where that person is what they like
Speaker 1: to use them as investigators almost that's crazy, um. And
Speaker 1: if they don't already know, and they will fill out
Speaker 1: the form to be sent back to the agency. If
Speaker 1: I are one of my co workers informs the agency
Speaker 1: that the individual is deceased, then we get a coupon
Speaker 1: for now I'm just kidding. Then they have officially been
Speaker 1: reported as such, and it is the responsibility of the
Speaker 1: government to confirm this information with next of ken. That
Speaker 1: is from tom Uhlongie, the government's like you know, your
Speaker 1: mom's postal workers spreading. So thanks Tom, and thanks for
Speaker 1: delivering mail to new Rochelle Rochelle in New York show
Speaker 1: Rochelle the Musical. That's right. Uh yeah, thanks a lot, Tom.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool you heard that at the same time
Speaker 1: you were doing that. We love that kind of thing, amazing.
Speaker 1: Would you call it kismet? Yeah, If you've got a
Speaker 1: little bit of kismet going on, let us know. You
Speaker 1: can go onto stuff you should Know dot com and
Speaker 1: find our social links there, or you can send us
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of i Heeart
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