神经科学与心理学2018biorxiv.org
成年后获得绝对音高困难但可能
Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible
入门 · 约 45 分钟读完前置知识：基础乐理、音程与音高概念
导读
这篇论文探讨成年后能否习得绝对音高（perfect pitch）。作者认为绝对音高在成年期习得虽然困难但并非不可能，文中应包含相关训练方法或实验证据。
HN 关注点：HN 读者多为音乐爱好者或从业者，讨论焦点是绝对音高的实际价值、后天可习得性，以及成年后音高感知会退化这一有趣现象。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 1 补充 2 亲历 1
亲历亲历者讲述绝对音高在中年后退化、判断开始偏高的现象
更有意思的是，很多有绝对音高的人在四五十岁时开始失去这种能力，我也经历了。表现为音高判断开始偏高，比如你以为是 C 其实是 B。对我来说，判断准确度还取决于声音的谐波成分：吉他和口琴很糟，钢琴和长笛则好一些。这是个非常令人沮丧、难以向他人解释的现象。打个比方：想象周围所有人都全色盲而只有你能看见颜色，大家惊叹你能一眼看出某物是蓝色。但某天你看一样东西说是蓝色，别人用测色仪告诉你其实是黄色——而且他们是对的！可它在你眼里仍然是蓝色。有什么东西坏掉了，而你很难解释，因为别人只能看到灰色。
SeanLuke查看英文原文
More interesting to me is the fact that many people with absolute pitch start to lose it in their 40s and 50s. This has happened to me too. What happens is that your pitch assessment often starts going sharp, so what you thought was a C was actually a B, say. For me the pitch assessment accuracy differs depending on the harmonic content of the sound: guitars and harmonicas are awful, but pianos and flutes etc. seem to do better. It's a very frustrating and difficult to explain phenomenon. I hate to use the oft-used but inaccurate color analogy, but it might be valid in this context. Imagine that everyone around you is fully color-blind, but not yourself. People are amazed that you can tell something is blue just by looking at it. You've had this ability your whole life. But then one day you look at something and report that it's blue, and someone uses their color-analyzer and tells you that it's not blue, it's in fact yellow. And they're right! But it still looks BLUE to you. Something has broken, and you can't explain it to others easily because they can only see gray.
质疑音乐系出身者认为绝对音高被高估，训练过的相对音高更实用
绝对音高被高估了。大学音乐系时我凭借出色的相对音高，在古典视唱练耳课上经常胜过有绝对音高的同学。绝对音高更像一种小把戏，偶尔在独自给弦乐器调音时有用，而当合奏整体音准漂移时反而让人分心。受过训练的相对音强于未训练的绝对音高：老师弹四小节四声部巴赫圣咏，若事先告知调性，我听三遍内就能完整记谱；有绝对音高但未受训练的人只能验证调性是否被谎报，却无法记谱。后来我发现在爵士乐中需要的听力远超记巴赫圣咏，但那里绝对音高同样不重要——一切靠和弦关系，都是相对的。
tunesmith查看英文原文
Perfect pitch is overrated. In college as a music student with excellent relative pitch, I routinely outscored peer students with perfect pitch when taking classical ear training courses. Perfect pitch is more of a parlor trick. It's occasionally useful when trying to tune a stringed instrument by yourself, and distracting if your ensemble starts to drift off key while remaining in tune with each other. Also, trained relative pitch is better than untrained perfect pitch. For instance, if my instructor played four bars of a four-part bach chorale on the piano (sixteen quarter notes, perhaps a couple of eighth-note passing tones), I could fully notate it within three repetitions, sometimes on first listen - if I were initially told what key it was in. Someone with untrained perfect pitch would be able to tell if the instructor was lying about what key it was in, but they wouldn't be able to notate it. So in that scenario, the only thing it's useful for is recognizing what key it's in. If I hadn't been told, I could have just notated it in C and then transposed it to the right key later. I would later learn that being able to notate a bach chorale by ear is nothing compared to the kind of ear skills you need as a jazz musician - but again, there, perfect pitch isn't important or super useful. We learn chord relations - it's all relative.
补充职业歌手指出多种历史音高标准并存，绝对音高反而碍事
我是职业古典歌手。我很庆幸自己没有绝对音高（至少不是以 A=440Hz 为准的那种），因为作为早期音乐表演者，我经常要在 A=415（巴赫等巴洛克作品）、A=430（古典时期乐器演奏的莫扎特）、A=440，甚至 A=465（蒙特威尔第）下演唱，偶尔还有其他音高标准和不同律制。这场讨论似乎没有意识到目前仍在使用、甚至因本真乐器运动而日益常见的音高标准有多少种。
Bud查看英文原文
Professional classical singer here. I'm personally glad that I don't have absolute pitch, or at least not any version that is mostly focused on A=440 Hz, because as an early-music performer, I regularly have to sing at A=415 (for Bach and other Baroque composers), A=430 (for Mozart on classical-period instruments), A=440, and even A=465 (for Monteverdi) at times. And occasionally at other pitches. And with varying temperaments. This discussion doesn't seem to be acknowledging how many pitch standards there are that are still in common use, and even in increasingly-common use due to the original-instruments movement.
补充绝对音高并非二元能力，存在中间状态；相对音高仍更实用
把人简单分为有绝对音高和没有的两类过于简化。就我个人而言，我有"某种程度"的绝对音高：能凭记忆唱出或识别某些音，但不是任意音、不是任何情况下、也不是瞬间完成；不准时通常也差不到一两个半音，可靠到让我确信不是碰巧，但远谈不上"完美"。识别过程也慢到无法实时使用，通常要靠心里默想某首已知歌曲中的音作参照。也许投入更多时间能更准更快，甚至发展出真正的绝对音高。不过即便如此，我认为相对音高才是远更有用的技能，对许多音乐类型几乎是必需的。
thinkpad20查看英文原文
I think it's overly simplistic to group people into those who have perfect pitch and those who don't. Of course, I don't know if the article makes this claim, but I think a lot of people tend to view perfect pitch as a binary ability -- either you have it or you don't. But speaking personally, I have "sort of" perfect pitch (imperfect pitch? semi-perfect pitch?), by which I mean that I can sing and/or recognize the pitch of certain notes from memory, but not any arbitrary note, not under all circumstances, and not instantaneously. If I'm not right on the money, I'm usually at least within a semitone or two. I can do it reliably enough that I'm convinced it's not just a fluke when I get it right, but on the other hand it's not at all "perfect." Moreover, the recognition happens too slowly to be practical in real time; usually it involves audiating part of a song that I know has certain notes, and using them as reference pitches. Perhaps if I dedicated more time to it I could get it more accurate or faster, and maybe even develop proper perfect pitch. All that being said, while having true perfect pitch would probably open up new ways to appreciate and understand the music I'm listening to, I think that relative pitch is a far more useful skill -- nigh essential for many genres.
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