Beyond Perfect Pitch

[Zaia]

Can you taste the different musical intervals? Elizabeth Sulston can.

Synaesthete makes sweet music
Ruth Francis

Professional musician distinguishes intervals with her tongue

A recorder player has fascinated neuroscientists with her ability to taste differences in the intervals between notes.

The condition in which the brain links two or more of the senses is known as synaesthesia, and some sense combinations are relatively common. But this is the first time that the ability has been found to help in performing a mental task, such as identifying a major third.

Elizabeth Sulston was at school when she first noticed that she saw colours while hearing music. She realized that the same was not true of her peers, although linkage of tone and colour is a known synaesthetic combination.

As she began to learn music more formally, she found that when hearing particular tone intervals she experienced a characteristic taste on her tongue. For example, a minor third tasted salty to her, whereas a minor sixth tasted like cream. She started to use the tastes to help her recognize different chords.

Talking to news@nature.com, she says: "I always had the synaesthesia, but really became conscious of it at 16. Then I started to use it for the tone-interval identification. I could first check it by counting the space between the notes, and second by 'feeling' my tongue."

The taste of music

Lutz Jäncke, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, works with musicians who report unusual qualities or skills. Thanks to a student investigating synaesthesia he was introduced to the recorder-playing Sulston.

To test her unique ability, he and his colleagues played tone intervals while delivering different tastes to her tongue. They used either the same taste that Sulston associates with an interval, or a clashing one (see box).

They found that she was able to identify the intervals much more quickly when the taste matched the one that she says she normally associates with it. That kind of pattern would be difficult to fake, Jäncke says. He reports the results in Nature1.

"With incongruent taste she was sometimes slower than other musicians; she is extraordinarily quick usually," he says. "The synaesthesia is kind of boosting her performance. Her hit rate was perfect, but the difference was in the reaction times."

Learning analogue

When asked whether Sulston's ability has any wider implications for neuroscience, Jäncke laughs. "This is the million-dollar question!" he says.

"One might speculate that this could be a good analogue for learning: our skills are improved if we associate the item we learn with many other items. It may also demonstrate that synaesthesia may be modified for learning and used for other things."

For Sulston herself, the benefit comes simply from the way that she experiences music. "I can imagine that someone who has no synaesthetic perception does not have such an intense sensation as I do when listening to music," she says.

"Music is richer. It is difficult to say whether I would have become a musician if I was not synaesthetic.

[Hyperion]

Cool. Synaethesia is a pretty fascinating subject.

It may or may not be related, but I feel sound more than I hear it, while it makes understanding voice a little harder than it is for others, it makes me very sensitive to music, namely frequency and tone. I also somewhat sense it as a mind's eye visualization of the components of the song, but that is probably normal for a lot of musically minded people.

[SPOOFE]

Huh. Synaethesia? I thought it was called "tripping balls on LSD".

[Ace Pace]

Cool. Synaethesia is a pretty fascinating subject.

It may or may not be related, but I feel sound more than I hear it, while it makes understanding voice a little harder than it is for others, it makes me very sensitive to music, namely frequency and tone. I also somewhat sense it as a mind's eye visualization of the components of the song, but that is probably normal for a lot of musically minded people.

Same, I feel musical notes as if the instrument was somewhere in my body, or its just me being weird.

Anyways, very intresting article.

[Medic]

Methinks most veteran flamewarriors have suffered from Synaesthesia at one point or another, ie the bitter taste of defeat. [ducks]

[Ghost Rider]

Certainly a fascinating point.

It gives the idea that sound can affect the person the other sense or at least on other.

And Brungardt...DON'T SPAM

[Zaia]

What I find particularly interesting is that her condition developed from the way perfect pitch normally works, with associating certain pitches with matching colours. I know quite a few people who have perfect pitch who have tried to explain the exact shade of green that Bb has, for example, so that's not all that strange to me. But that continue on to include taste as well?! That's crazy! And awesome! I want to be able to do that too! ...Ah well, I'll just have to be content with working on my relative pitch skills and rock out on them.

[Melchior]

Same, I feel musical notes as if the instrument was somewhere in my body, or its just me being weird.

Anyways, very intresting article.

Maybe you feel the vibrations with some soft tissue, after all notes are still sounds, that it's normal.
Where do you feel them, exactly?

[Tinkerbell]

Wow. That is truely awesome. I with I could do that.

:begins training:

[LadyTevar]

I don't know if you can train for it... I thought it was inborn.

[Tinkerbell]

:bashes Tevar on the head:

SHHHHHHH!!!!!

You CAN train for it damnit!!

[LadyTevar]

:bashes Tevar on the head:

SHHHHHHH!!!!!

You CAN train for it damnit!!

*rubs head... then gives XBF a look as she gets out her hammer*

Weelllll... if you insist, I can help you learn associations....

[frigidmagi]

Has a side note on the whole feeling music thing. My parents has I have mentioned once or twice are deaf. However they can feel viberations of loud noises.

For example my mother loves loud static.

[Elheru Aran]

Is it bad that I read this as "Beyond Perfect Bitch"?

[Saurencaerthai]

...Ah well, I'll just have to be content with working on my relative pitch skills and rock out on them.

That's probably the more useful skill, anyhow, as that deals more with the motion of things than individual points in the music.

[The Yosemite Bear]

eeeeppp

that's perv doken being pulled out....

erm BF we haven't gotten you a coustom shojo mallet yet have we....

[Zaia]

...Ah well, I'll just have to be content with working on my relative pitch skills and rock out on them.

That's probably the more useful skill, anyhow, as that deals more with the motion of things than individual points in the music.

Yeah, but I still envy those perfect-pitch-bitches anyhow. I'd like to be able to do it all, baby.

[Marksist]

I don't know if you can train for it... I thought it was inborn.

I was reading recently that it's quite hard to cultivate perfect pitch past a certain age. That it is easiest to learn from age 4-7, and past that it's quite difficult.

[Saurencaerthai]

...Ah well, I'll just have to be content with working on my relative pitch skills and rock out on them.

That's probably the more useful skill, anyhow, as that deals more with the motion of things than individual points in the music.

Yeah, but I still envy those perfect-pitch-bitches anyhow. I'd like to be able to do it all, baby.

I dunno, I've heard some of the perfect-pitch people go batty at everything that is slightly off. Then again, that's only the people who are 100% dead on.

[Queeb Salaron]

You know, I think I might have a similar condition. When I hear Miles Davis, I smell smoky jazz bars and bourbon. When I hear reggae, I smell that herb. Every time I hear a pop diva sing, all I can smell is shit.

Did the article have a hotline I could call?

[Queeb Salaron]

[Yeah, but I still envy those perfect-pitch-bitches anyhow. I'd like to be able to do it all, baby.

I love playing with people with perfect pitch. Helps me tune easier. "Hey Rita, give me an A."

[tunes accordingly]

Saves me a ton of money on tuners. Besides, she can always tell me when I go out of tune.

[Saurencaerthai]

[Yeah, but I still envy those perfect-pitch-bitches anyhow. I'd like to be able to do it all, baby.

I love playing with people with perfect pitch. Helps me tune easier. "Hey Rita, give me an A."

[tunes accordingly]

Saves me a ton of money on tuners. Besides, she can always tell me when I go out of tune.

Here's an easy way to get A440 burned into your head: put some headphones on and connect it to a digital metronome with the tuning note. Flick it on for a split second. After your ears stop ringing, you will never forget the sound of A440. I've accidentally flipped the switch too far a number of times and can now sing back A most of the time.

[Pick]

Absolutely beautiful... A sense I wish that I had.

Though imagine if brown noise were a taste, woosh!

[IRG CommandoJoe]

Table 1 Tasting the tones

These are the tastes experienced by Sulston in response to hearing different tone intervals. The fourth and tritone intervals elicit visual and emotional responses rather than tastes. The dissonant tone intervals seem to induce unpleasant tastes, whereas the consonant intervals induce pleasant ones.

Minor second: Sour
Major second: Bitter
Minor third : Salty
Major third : Sweet
Fourth: Mown grass
Tritone: Disgust
Fifth: Pure water
Minor sixth: Cream
Major sixth: Low-fat cream
Minor seventh: Bitter
Major seventh: Sour
Octave: No taste

If I were her, I'd not like to hear/play Stravinsky ragtime music.

[Zaia]

Cream and low-fat cream? Er...right.

And tritones rock. What the hell is her tongue's problem?!