Psychologists investigated the phenomenon known as ‘earworms,’ which are songs that get stuck in your mind and play on repeat. Their research revealed that having an exceptional memory for pitch is more widespread than previously thought.
A recent study from UC Santa Cruz encourages you to belt out your favorite tunes in the shower without hesitation. You might just sound fantastic!
The researchers focused on “earworms,” those catchy tunes that loop in our heads. They asked participants to sing out their current earworms and record these moments on their phones whenever they received a random prompt throughout the day. After analyzing the recordings, they found that a significant number of these renditions matched the original songs’ pitches incredibly well.
In detail, 44.7% of the recordings had no pitch error at all, while 68.9% were within 1 semitone of the original song. These results were published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
“This indicates that a surprisingly large segment of the population possesses a sort of automatic, hidden ‘perfect pitch’ capability,” said Matt Evans, a Cognitive Psychology Ph.D. candidate who led this study in collaboration with Psychology Professor Nicolas Davidenko and undergraduate assistant Pablo Gaeta.
“Interestingly, if you asked individuals how they thought they performed in this task, they’d likely feel confident about hitting the right melody, but they’d be less sure about singing in the correct key,” Evans explained. “Many individuals with strong pitch memory may lack a clear sense of their own accuracy, possibly due to not having the ability to label their pitch, which comes with true perfect pitch.”
Evans elaborated that true perfect pitch allows a person to accurately sing or identify a note immediately and without any reference tone. This ability is extremely rare, found in less than 1 in 10,000 individuals. Famous musicians like Ludwig van Beethoven, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mariah Carey are examples of those who possess it. However, research is showing that accurate pitch memory is much more common among the general population.
Previous studies indicated that participants in controlled settings could remember and sing a well-known song in the correct key at least 15% of the time, a rate significantly higher than random chance. Still, many questions linger about how this memory function operates—specifically, whether recalling songs in the correct key requires deliberate effort or if it occurs subconsciously.
This is where earworms came into play. Since they represent a type of musical memory that occurs automatically, the UC Santa Cruz team used them to determine if pitch memory remained accurate even when people weren’t trying to recall music deliberately. Their findings showed that earworms consistently matched the key of the original song, suggesting that musical memories might be stored and maintained in a unique way within our brains.
“Researchers studying memory often view long-term memories as capturing the essence of experiences, opting for shortcuts to condense information. One way the brain might simplify music representation is by overlooking the original key. After all, music sounds similar across different keys, so it seems efficient for the brain to omit this detail,” said Professor Davidenko. “However, our results demonstrate that this information is indeed retained. These musical memories are accurate representations that counter the usual simplifications seen in other types of long-term memory processing.”
As the research team continues to explore the intricacies of musical memory, Evans expresses hope that these findings will encourage more people to engage in music-making. He pointed out that participants’ pitch precision was unrelated to formal singing training, and none were professional musicians or reported having perfect pitch. In essence, you don’t need any special talent to exhibit this fundamental musical ability.
“Making music and singing are inherently human activities that many individuals shy away from because they doubt their skills or have been told they lack the capability,” Evans remarked. “But the truth is, you don’t have to be Beyonce to create music. Your brain is already engaged in this process automatically and accurately, despite that inner voice that tells you otherwise.”
