It seems to be the general consensus that both practice and
talent are necessary for true success in the music world. In his book, Guitar Zero, Gary Marcus recognizes that
he will never be able to achieve the skillfulness of many world renowned
musicians, but simultaneously believes that with enough practice he can
achieve a comfortable level of musicianship. However, are practice and talent
the only two parts of the equation? Does culture have a role in innate
musicianship or a musician’s strengths?
An article in PLOS journal, Effects of Culture on Musical Pitch Perception, argues that one characterization
of culture, language, does indeed have an effect on musical pitch perception. The
study examined tone languages vs. non-tone languages. Tone languages are those in
which word meaning varies depending on differences in voice pitch. Examples of
this type of language include Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. Non-tone
languages use pitch to signal intonation rather than meaning and comprise most
Western languages, such as English and French.
Given that individuals who speak tone languages are already accustomed
to a subconscious recognition of pitch to derive meaning; it would seem that
they would be more adept in musical pitch recognition than non-tone language
speakers. However, non-tone
languages do not completely disregard pitch. In these languages, pitch gives
clues to the speaker’s emotion, which is also vital to a thorough
understanding. Are these roles, meaning and emotion, equally valued in a dialogue? It
could be that pitch is more heavily weighted in tone languages because meaning
has greater importance than emotion in speech. For example, a person can
interpret a conversation very differently based on the emotion they believe is
communicated, but a person will interpret a conversation drastically
differently if he or she hears the wrong words. Therefore, if we assume the meaning
of a word is more important than the emotion with which it is said, then we
would also conclude that individuals who speak tone languages would recognize
pitch differences better than those who speak on-tone languages.
Although pitch processing may not be part of the same auditory
pathway, the results of this study yielded evidence to support a mutual influence
based on the type of language spoken. Cantonese speakers were better able to
process musical pitch, when notes were tuned correctly, but violated tonal
relationships given the key of the melody, relative to the Canadian English and
Canadian French speakers. Marcus would liken this finding to the brain evolving
for purposes such as language and gradually co-opting into doing something new –
skill in musical pitch processing.
In Guitar Hero, Marcus provides a great metaphor for his thoughts on the relationship between language and music. He says the brain is like a tool kit. There are many different tools that can be utilized for different projects, but the key is that they are used in particular ways for particular projects.
The study also analyzed the data taking into account years
of musical training and found that group differences remained even when this variable
was controlled for. As expected, the more years of musical training an
individual possessed, the better accuracy of musical pitch. This finding is
consistent with Marcus’ claims that skill improves with more practice. It is worth
noting that he further breaks down the concept of ‘years of training’ into
quality of training and how consistent that training is.
Due to the novelty of such studies, more research is necessary
to further develop these findings. Further research in this area can help
isolate neural networks, and deviations from those networks, that are responsible
for such an integral part of musicianship, pitch recognition. More generally, it could help discern exactly which precise networks overlap in language and music.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033424
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