Little Musicians

By Amy Dickinson

Some families value looks, smarts or athletic skill, but people in my family--otherwise cursed with averageness--have only one shot at perfection. Flowing through our gene pool is a high incidence of perfect pitch. That's the rare ability, found in 1 person in 10,000, to sing a given note at exactly the right pitch every time. In a musical family like mine, the person with the best pitch is the quarterback, the beauty queen and the genius rolled into one. We sing a lot in my family, and those members with perfect pitch always get to carry the tune.

In a recent study, researchers from the University of Southern California at San Diego recorded native speakers of tonal languages--Vietnamese and Chinese--in which meaning is conveyed not only by the sound of a word but also by pitch. With remarkable precision such people use the same pitch each time they say a certain word. They all have perfect pitch. Researchers think it's possible that all babies are born with perfect pitch and that those who learn a tonal language hang on to it, while most of the rest of us lose it along the way.

But what if we study music at a very young age? If we are born with perfect pitch, could that help us keep it? Should we be offering lessons in infant cello or pint-size French horn? Dr. Kyle Pruett, who is a professor at the Child Study Center at Yale, a musician and the father of a nine-month-old, told me that even if we are born with perfect pitch, there is still no research showing that we can do anything to retain it. Formal musical training that comes too early can frustrate parents and "won't make much of a difference, musically," to a baby. Perfect pitch is a cool party trick, but it doesn't necessarily correlate with musical talent. Many professional musicians don't have it; most have a highly developed sense of "relative" pitch.

Most important, Pruett says, are the baby's genes and home environment. If you want your baby to be musical, keep music in the air. There is evidence that the order and predictability of music by Mozart, Bach and Haydn are easy for very young children to enjoy. Sing frequently to your toddler--The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, lullabies, Rodgers and Hart--remembering that young children's voices are pitched higher than adults'. When your child is around age three, let her explore a keyboard, listening with her as the notes rise and fall in pitch. Sing a note as it is played, and plunk out simple tunes. Dancing, skipping and banging on a wastebasket are also advisable. Suzuki training on strings and keyboard can begin as early as three. Most children can learn to play a recorder and pick out tunes on a piano at around six.

If your child has extraordinary musical talent, it will be evident; genius has a way of announcing itself. But even if your child isn't the next Mozart, he will develop a fine sense of pitch and learn to carry a tune and love music. In my family the perfect pitch skipped from my mother to my daughter, missing me. But that didn't stop me from making a living as a lounge singer for a while or from belting out some pretty good show tunes in the shower. My daughter, with her scary dog hearing and perfect pitch, can tell me when I've drifted even slightly out of tune, but I remind her that we can't all be perfect. Sometimes--in music as in horseshoes--getting close is good enough.

See our website at time.com/personal for more on music instruction for kids. You can send Amy an e-mail at [email protected]