In his book “Musicophilia,” renowned neuroscientist Oliver Sacks described the remarkable ability of Sir Frederick Ouseley, a former music professor at the University of Oxford, to recognize the pitch of everyday sounds. For example, he said it “thundered in G” and the “wind whistled in D.”
Ouseley had perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch — the remarkable, rare ability to identify or produce particular musical notes without having a reference note as a guide.
“People who possess this ability [absolute pitch] can name notes as immediately and effortlessly as most people can name colors,” Diana Deutsch, an adjunct professor at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University and a professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, told Live Science in an email.
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