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Why do more Asians have perfect pitch?

Posted on July 24, 2008

Several recent large-scale studies have confirmed a curious finding: Asians are much more likely to have perfect pitch than non-Asians. Perfect pitch, more properly called Absolute pitch, is an extremely rare phenomenon, but it's several times more likely to occur in Asians than in others.Studies have found that only 1 in 1,500 to 10,000 individuals possess absolute pitch. Part of the ability's rarity is due to the fact that it's really a combination of two abilities: pitch-memory -- the ability to remember what a pitch sounds like, and pitch-labeling -- the ability to name a pitch (A, B-f...

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