Well, yes -- sightsinging appropriately needs a starting pitch, unless the singer has perfect pitch. Which, sadly, cannot be learned. The day I learned that was the saddest day of my life.
I learned perfect pitch in 9th grade. We had an electronic tuner for orchestra class that was on for about 5 minutes every day, and after 9 months that sound was fixed in my brain. I could find anything else by relative pitch from that, but eventually I started "recognizing" other pitches directly too. Through high school I could identify any note to within a quarter tone. In college I noticed that I was less accurate when I was tired. (Now I'm tired most of the time.)
I think I also developed a 2nd means of identifying pitches in orchestral music, which came from hearing the resonances of open strings and mapping from there. (Since not all orchestras tune to A-440 -- modern orchestras sometimes higher, early music often lower -- this can conflict with my fixed reference. But it gives me the key the composer wrote the piece in.)
Quite likely there is some requisite innate ability that must be combined with learning to be able to name abstract pitches.
I have a theory that there are similarities between recognizing pitches and recognizing colors. Tone deafness corresponds to color blindness; recognizing pitches is like recognizing colors. Most people can hear higher/lower, and most can see bluer/redder. There are different forms of color blindness, and there may well be different forms of tone deafness, just waiting to be studied. We teach children the colors, but find that people describing specific objects may differ about exactly what colors they see. Most people don't have enough musical training to name the pitches they hear. But some cultures have languages with tonal components. Do these cultures have more people with perfect pitch, because pitch sensitivity is part of their basic communication? Do their people who are physiologically tone deaf have language-comprehension problems? (Or are they at a sufficient disadvantage to have reduced social options and reproductive success, and hence be a rarity?)
Re: maybe it depends on what you learn first
Re: maybe it depends on what you learn first
Re: maybe it depends on what you learn first
Re: maybe it depends on what you learn first
I think I also developed a 2nd means of identifying pitches in orchestral music, which came from hearing the resonances of open strings and mapping from there. (Since not all orchestras tune to A-440 -- modern orchestras sometimes higher, early music often lower -- this can conflict with my fixed reference. But it gives me the key the composer wrote the piece in.)
Quite likely there is some requisite innate ability that must be combined with learning to be able to name abstract pitches.
I have a theory that there are similarities between recognizing pitches and recognizing colors. Tone deafness corresponds to color blindness; recognizing pitches is like recognizing colors. Most people can hear higher/lower, and most can see bluer/redder. There are different forms of color blindness, and there may well be different forms of tone deafness, just waiting to be studied. We teach children the colors, but find that people describing specific objects may differ about exactly what colors they see. Most people don't have enough musical training to name the pitches they hear. But some cultures have languages with tonal components. Do these cultures have more people with perfect pitch, because pitch sensitivity is part of their basic communication? Do their people who are physiologically tone deaf have language-comprehension problems? (Or are they at a sufficient disadvantage to have reduced social options and reproductive success, and hence be a rarity?)