Is it true that people with Aspergers have perfect pitch...?

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I don't think so, but I'm not even sure how to test myself in that regard. Wouldn't it require some specialized knowledge of music theory? E.g., being able to identify notes by ear? Because I'm terrible at that.

Seems like not many in the thread actually know what perfect pitch means... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_pitch
I had it when I was a little kid, but I haven't ever been tested again. It's memory of a tone or pitch. Can you recreate it, or say what the note is? There are some studies that say that up to 30% of autistic people have it, but there is no citation for that.

The Wikipedia article notes that people who grow up in societies where the tone of what is spoken is important have more folks with perfect pitch.

I know that I am a mouth watcher, and some voices just melt me, and some deep sounds can bring me to tears.

Was gonna chide the OP for believing claptrap.

But - if that above statistic is true - that 30 percent of autistics have perfect pitch-then there is a grain of truth to that urban myth.

Further there is an intriguing aside.

The author of a recent book on human evolution and the origin of speech entitled "the Singing Neanderthals" suggested that "neanderthals had perfect pitch" which they used it to communicate in a kind of a musical protolanguage which the anatomical moderns superceded with true spoken language.

Have always been a skeptic about the "Neanderthal theory" of the origin of autism spectrum disorders- but- it is something to chew on.

According to Mottron et al. enhanced pure-tone pitch discrmination is a feature of HFA but not Asperger's.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 3210001661

If I have aspergers and have perfect pitch and people think I sound nice by myself, then why is it the choir director at my church hates me so much that she gives me a nasty phone call to tell me not be be in the choir? I guess we can be That Bad.

Having perfect pitch can really ruin the appreciation of amateur singers/players.

I do my best to smile politely as the dear children assault my eardrums.

The number I had heard was that close to 1 in 20 people on the spectrum had it. That doesn't sound high, but that's much higher than the general population. Here's my belief as to why that is.

There's pretty good evidence that people with perfect pitch acquire the skills for it early in life. They used to say learning it before before age 7 was critical, but now they believe it's even earlier (age 3 or 4). At that age, if your neurology means that you find learning sounds more interesting than learning language and communication skills, you're going to spend more time analyzing sound. (For me, it was a tiny little electric toy organ that I played in my room for hours on end, I'm told I was 2.)

There many different degrees of pitch recognition. It's fairly common, for instance, to be able to sing, say, the theme song to the movie Superman and know that you are singing it in C major. However, someone with really keen perfect pitch will be able to identify each note in a sequence of completely random notes (fast... like, 3 or 4 a second).

i do not think that "perfect pitch" is a hallmark of AS. i am not sure that i know the exact definition of "perfect pitch" even after i have read the descriptions of it, but i think i may have "perfect pitch".
i think there are 3 manifestations of pitch sensation that are are accurate in an ascending order of "correctness".

1. a person who hums a song (before they play it on an instrument which is correctly tuned) may choose any frequency to embark upon their rendition of a song. the frequency of the first note they hum may not be on the chromatic scale, however the relationships of all ensuing notes to the initial frequency of the first "note" are correctly proportional. and everyone can understand what song they are humming even though none of the notes in their rendition are on the chromatic scale.

2. a person who hums a song starts with a note that is on the chromatic scale, but it is not the correct note that the song they are humming starts with. one can play a similar song in any key. i used to experiment with playing songs in different keys where all the notes are identically proportional to every other note as the original song, but not in the same key as the original song.

3. a person who hums a song starts with the exact key in which the song they are humming starts, and they render their performance of the song in the same key as the original song without hearing the original song for reference.

i think absolute pitch is another way of saying "not tone deaf".

most people are not tone deaf i would think.

whenever i desire to listen to a song that i am about to play, i often mentally recount the song before it starts, and when the song starts, it is in the exact same key as i recounted it.

there is some kind of vibration in my skull that i strongly remember associated with frequencies which i can easily and correctly reproduce.


for example, i played a background piano track for "50 ways to leave your lover" by paul simon (just because it was a song that i was thinking about), and when i played it, i was only mentally recounting how the song transpired in my mind, and i had no external auditory input to assist me. after i played it (and recorded it) i decided to obtain an mp3 file of the original song and i overlaid my attempt to play it on the original song, and i found that they melded quite well.

here is an example (not well mixed)

my raw version
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11172429
and here is part 1 of the melded version of what i played (with no reference) overlaid with the original song (sans my drum track).
http://www.soundclick.com/player/single ... 85272&q=hi

i cut it short because i only was experimenting, but here is the rest

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single ... 91023&q=hi

there are some wrong notes, but they are all relative to the correct key.

i am not a musician but i do have very good pitch perception.