Re: Subject: RE: [Harp-L] resonance and higher key harps

[fjm <mktspot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The link to Asians and a tendency to absolute pitch is linguistic not 
ethnic.  Everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate that 
several of the Chinese languages and less so Vietnamese employ pitch as 
a device for communication.  When you realise that infants are born able 
to make and hear all of the sounds used in all of the languages and 
discard the ones they don't need to use as they acquire the language of 
their surroundings it seems likely that the higher incidence of absolute 
pitch in some Asian ethnic groups is a product of environment, not 
genetics.  The New York Times has had several interesting articles on 
this subject in their Science Times section, unfortuneately this was 
some time ago and the information will now only be available from them 
if you pay for it.  I have oftentimes been able to get at Times articles 
sideways because they can persist on other people's sites or even have 
direct frre links to the Times articles.  Certainly an interesting area 
of discussion.  fjm