Complex music suggestions to help develop a baby's ear?
September 17, 2018 9:30 PM Subscribe
Inspired by this post about developing perfect pitch and musicality in a child by playing complex music during their window of language acquisition- can you suggest complex music that might help?
I'm going to make a YouTube playlist as a gift for a baby.
Seeking YouTube links to specific tracks that are:
- Complex, with unpredictable note combinations, rhythms, and harmonies.
- Kid-appropriate (so no rough language, and prefer to avoid startling/unpleasant modulations in volume).
- Any genre is good- jazz- especially improvised, classical, music from non-Western traditions, pop, bring it on.
I'd also welcome any other thoughts on this theory that you may have. Thanks!
I'm going to make a YouTube playlist as a gift for a baby.
Seeking YouTube links to specific tracks that are:
- Complex, with unpredictable note combinations, rhythms, and harmonies.
- Kid-appropriate (so no rough language, and prefer to avoid startling/unpleasant modulations in volume).
- Any genre is good- jazz- especially improvised, classical, music from non-Western traditions, pop, bring it on.
I'd also welcome any other thoughts on this theory that you may have. Thanks!
Oh, and also on perfect pitch being a curse: it destroys my ability to enjoy a lot of music that other people seem to enjoy just fine. First-year string players are really terrible (I learned to play in-tune very quickly in middle school orchestra, but...). I have a policy of refusing to listen to a cappella groups unless they are Carnegie Hall good, because it's just...I just can't. :] Just so you know!
posted by yhlee at 11:04 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by yhlee at 11:04 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
Don't be concerned about developing "perfect" pitch but go for relative pitch as noted above. It's better to recognize the intervals between notes (minor third, perfect fifth, etc) rather than instantly recognizing a note as B-flat or F-sharp, etc. The western musical system is not something absolute but has grown over a very long period of time. It is a standard now to tune to A 440 (as in 440 hz) but hundreds of years ago, that A would have been tuned to a slightly slower frequency, like 432hz, thus sounding flat to someone with perfect pitch now. Does that mean Mozart was out of tune? Absolutely not, because the intervals between notes still would have been the same.
But all of that is regarding the western tuning standards. There are many musical systems developed all over the world which divide an octave (the distance between like notes which is literally double the frequency, like A 440 and A 880). There are an infinite number of possible notes within an octave and so those systems have a very different sound to someone who is only familiar with western tuning. It's simply a different flavor and is not wrong.
If you want your child to learn to sing and play in tune, it's really about being able to match the sounds they hear and how it feels when they lock into the same frequency. Then later, being able to harmonize.
I'm grateful NOT to have perfect pitch. Still didn't stop me from earning a bachelor's and master's in music!
All this is to say: play music for your child but I would not put any weight on which is the best for making your child musical. My best advice is to play a variety of genres. In my opinion, the best musicians and composers love to listen to a huge variety of music, from all time periods, and from all over the world. They will write for classical ensembles and present papers about Norwegian Death Metal at conferences. They will experiment with building instruments out of plastic pipes and go to jazz shows. They listen to ancient Greek chant and Bollywood musicals.
Just enjoy! And discover with your child, too!
posted by acidnova at 12:53 AM on September 18, 2018
But all of that is regarding the western tuning standards. There are many musical systems developed all over the world which divide an octave (the distance between like notes which is literally double the frequency, like A 440 and A 880). There are an infinite number of possible notes within an octave and so those systems have a very different sound to someone who is only familiar with western tuning. It's simply a different flavor and is not wrong.
If you want your child to learn to sing and play in tune, it's really about being able to match the sounds they hear and how it feels when they lock into the same frequency. Then later, being able to harmonize.
I'm grateful NOT to have perfect pitch. Still didn't stop me from earning a bachelor's and master's in music!
All this is to say: play music for your child but I would not put any weight on which is the best for making your child musical. My best advice is to play a variety of genres. In my opinion, the best musicians and composers love to listen to a huge variety of music, from all time periods, and from all over the world. They will write for classical ensembles and present papers about Norwegian Death Metal at conferences. They will experiment with building instruments out of plastic pipes and go to jazz shows. They listen to ancient Greek chant and Bollywood musicals.
Just enjoy! And discover with your child, too!
posted by acidnova at 12:53 AM on September 18, 2018
Musician who speaks several languages and does not have perfect pitch (but sings a capella, where it matters to some people) here:
I don't think I miss out at all by only having decent relative pitch, which wasn't that hard to learn (I had some lessons and did a lot of singing at home growing up, but really only started playing and properly studying music as an adult. I'd say my relative pitch was a result of my musical explorations as an adult rather than anything that came from any early exposure to musics).
On the other hand, speaking 2 languages fluently plus having some familiarity with a few more... I wouldn't give that up for anything, and it greatly enhanced my life as a child as well. Very happy that I had the bilingual experience, and if you have enrichment options for your kid's development, I"d recommend going in that direction rather than trying to develop the circus trick that is perfect pitch.
posted by twoplussix at 1:18 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
I don't think I miss out at all by only having decent relative pitch, which wasn't that hard to learn (I had some lessons and did a lot of singing at home growing up, but really only started playing and properly studying music as an adult. I'd say my relative pitch was a result of my musical explorations as an adult rather than anything that came from any early exposure to musics).
On the other hand, speaking 2 languages fluently plus having some familiarity with a few more... I wouldn't give that up for anything, and it greatly enhanced my life as a child as well. Very happy that I had the bilingual experience, and if you have enrichment options for your kid's development, I"d recommend going in that direction rather than trying to develop the circus trick that is perfect pitch.
posted by twoplussix at 1:18 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oh, and also on perfect pitch being a curse: it destroys my ability to enjoy a lot of music that other people seem to enjoy just fine.
I don't have perfect pitch, but a good friend of mine does and it indeed can be taxing for her to have to listen to some music others enjoy without care. After a while, being around her even started to affect my own listening as I attended to pitch more. I don't think that necessarily makes it a bad thing since she also finds greater interest in other music that many don't and makes a living creating music as well, but it is a difficulty at times.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:09 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I don't have perfect pitch, but a good friend of mine does and it indeed can be taxing for her to have to listen to some music others enjoy without care. After a while, being around her even started to affect my own listening as I attended to pitch more. I don't think that necessarily makes it a bad thing since she also finds greater interest in other music that many don't and makes a living creating music as well, but it is a difficulty at times.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:09 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I was a music major who took some classes at a conservatory (I sort of sucked as a performer and was just there for the theory classes). There were students who had pitch and that fact was treated with some weird mystical reverence, like Harry Potter and his scar. I also studied music cognition in grad school so I read a bit about the phenomenon there.
Those experiences inform my opinion that perfect pitch is a party trick. It has the same relation to musicianship that being a calendrical savant has to remembering and preparing for the meetings you have next Tuesday. It is indeed an interesting skill to study (precisely because it’s sort of useless maybe?) but I would not aim for it.
posted by eirias at 4:08 AM on September 18, 2018 [7 favorites]
Those experiences inform my opinion that perfect pitch is a party trick. It has the same relation to musicianship that being a calendrical savant has to remembering and preparing for the meetings you have next Tuesday. It is indeed an interesting skill to study (precisely because it’s sort of useless maybe?) but I would not aim for it.
posted by eirias at 4:08 AM on September 18, 2018 [7 favorites]
Best answer: Bach’s cello suites
The Beatles
Steely Dan
posted by STFUDonnie at 4:34 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
The Beatles
Steely Dan
posted by STFUDonnie at 4:34 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I had a long conversation with a music professor in which he argued vehemently that Scritti Politti's more poppy albums, especially Cupid & Psyche 85, are really interesting musically (unexpected key and tempo changes, etc.), and that might help demonstrate that you can have complexity even in radio-friendly pop tunes.
posted by goatdog at 7:47 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 7:47 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is going to maybe sound like a strange suggestion, but the Knee Play portions of Einstein On The Beach was among my son's favorite music during baby and early toddlerhood. He called it "the counting song" (after he'd learned how to say those words.) I think it was a good mix of repetitive-but-complex, interesting time signature changes, doesn't sound like any other music kids that age tend to get exposed to, and the sung lyrics are just numbers, which gives them something familiar to hang on to while they take in the rest. (The bit where they start skipping the number 1 was a hilarious joke, he'd giggle every single time.)
(His other, much less defensible, favorites at the time were Aqualung, aka "the long song", and Weapon of Choice, aka "the dancing guy song" by "Batboy Jim". I perhaps could have been more careful about my vehicular listening habits during his formative years but it seems to have worked out ok)
posted by ook at 8:17 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
(His other, much less defensible, favorites at the time were Aqualung, aka "the long song", and Weapon of Choice, aka "the dancing guy song" by "Batboy Jim". I perhaps could have been more careful about my vehicular listening habits during his formative years but it seems to have worked out ok)
posted by ook at 8:17 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
As somebody who, at the age of six, told the piano tuner that came to fix our piano, "well, I'm playing an F *plays F*, but see how it sounds like an E? When it should sound like *sings F*?"
People who have perfect absolute pitch usually avoid music because it's actively painful when a group slips flat or speeds sharp when singing. When there's need to transpose a piece to conform to peoples' vocal range limits, if I don't already have my line down cold, it's really difficult to compensate and transpose on the fly, especially if there are a lot of accidentals. During a cappella performances, almost all groups below the professional level will slide around the pitch, usually going flat but going sharp is common if you don't feel confident in a song, so you speed up to get through it quicker. I sang in an a cappella group in college, I've sung in choirs for 25+ years, and even getting to the semi-professional level this still happens and trying to judge what quartertone I should be singing for any given note during a live concert as the group slips flat is EXHAUSTING because my relative pitch, while good, is not as strong as my absolute pitch. Because of this, I'm picky AF about which musicians I'll go see and which choirs I'll join (for me, most community choirs are experienced as well-meaning hellscapes, sorry; I'm a firm believer in the power of music for all as part of a fulfilling experience, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be able to enjoy the performance), and their ability to actually carry a tune is core to that.
I rock the hell out of typical vocal auditions in the group tradition, especially the part where they'll play a really odd series of notes and then you need to parrot them back. I served as the pitch pipe in my a cappella group and told our conductor when she needed to replace our pitch pipe because it was starting to be way off (I didn't even know pitch pipes could go off but ours did!). I still look at musical groups who tune to an "alternate" non-440 A as ... eccentric, even knowing that it's "right" in context, but it also makes it hard to sight-read music when performing with brass bands, for example, because the note being played does NOT match the note on the page, even though I have very strong sight-reading skills otherwise.
Musical experiences as a kid: my mom always had her car radio on the local pop station; my dad had his set to the news, and then would switch over to classical when he'd heard the traffic report. We had a decent record collection that turned into a decent CD collection, but more heavily weighted to classical. I started taking violin when I was three, but after a summer of producing squawks, my parents decided something with pre-determined notes might be better, and switched me to piano. (Sidebar: my mother-in-law has a master's in music education, and she says it can take up to a YEAR for kids to be able to produce actual notes on string instruments; apparently my parents gave up way too early! Heh.) I carried on with piano until late elementary, when the challenge of playing more advanced pieces grew beyond the physical limitations of my petite hands that could barely reach a white note octave and could never reach a black note octave. There's a reason I play ukelele now! ;) I've sung in choirs since kindergarten.
I mean, on the other hand, I can tell you based on the pitch of the car engine when you need to shift gears, but I also grew up with two parents who even in this day and age will only buy manual shift cars, spending at least an hour a day in the car, and since I live in a city where I don't need to drive with my husband who owns an aging automatic sedan ... yeah, perfect absolute pitch is a party trick. On the other hand, it does make me curious if I could have a sideline as a piano tuner ...
posted by Pandora Kouti at 10:54 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
People who have perfect absolute pitch usually avoid music because it's actively painful when a group slips flat or speeds sharp when singing. When there's need to transpose a piece to conform to peoples' vocal range limits, if I don't already have my line down cold, it's really difficult to compensate and transpose on the fly, especially if there are a lot of accidentals. During a cappella performances, almost all groups below the professional level will slide around the pitch, usually going flat but going sharp is common if you don't feel confident in a song, so you speed up to get through it quicker. I sang in an a cappella group in college, I've sung in choirs for 25+ years, and even getting to the semi-professional level this still happens and trying to judge what quartertone I should be singing for any given note during a live concert as the group slips flat is EXHAUSTING because my relative pitch, while good, is not as strong as my absolute pitch. Because of this, I'm picky AF about which musicians I'll go see and which choirs I'll join (for me, most community choirs are experienced as well-meaning hellscapes, sorry; I'm a firm believer in the power of music for all as part of a fulfilling experience, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be able to enjoy the performance), and their ability to actually carry a tune is core to that.
I rock the hell out of typical vocal auditions in the group tradition, especially the part where they'll play a really odd series of notes and then you need to parrot them back. I served as the pitch pipe in my a cappella group and told our conductor when she needed to replace our pitch pipe because it was starting to be way off (I didn't even know pitch pipes could go off but ours did!). I still look at musical groups who tune to an "alternate" non-440 A as ... eccentric, even knowing that it's "right" in context, but it also makes it hard to sight-read music when performing with brass bands, for example, because the note being played does NOT match the note on the page, even though I have very strong sight-reading skills otherwise.
Musical experiences as a kid: my mom always had her car radio on the local pop station; my dad had his set to the news, and then would switch over to classical when he'd heard the traffic report. We had a decent record collection that turned into a decent CD collection, but more heavily weighted to classical. I started taking violin when I was three, but after a summer of producing squawks, my parents decided something with pre-determined notes might be better, and switched me to piano. (Sidebar: my mother-in-law has a master's in music education, and she says it can take up to a YEAR for kids to be able to produce actual notes on string instruments; apparently my parents gave up way too early! Heh.) I carried on with piano until late elementary, when the challenge of playing more advanced pieces grew beyond the physical limitations of my petite hands that could barely reach a white note octave and could never reach a black note octave. There's a reason I play ukelele now! ;) I've sung in choirs since kindergarten.
I mean, on the other hand, I can tell you based on the pitch of the car engine when you need to shift gears, but I also grew up with two parents who even in this day and age will only buy manual shift cars, spending at least an hour a day in the car, and since I live in a city where I don't need to drive with my husband who owns an aging automatic sedan ... yeah, perfect absolute pitch is a party trick. On the other hand, it does make me curious if I could have a sideline as a piano tuner ...
posted by Pandora Kouti at 10:54 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Complex, with unpredictable note combinations, rhythms, and harmonies. ... Any genre is good- jazz- especially improvised
From hardest to smoothest:
Charlie Parker
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Bill Evans
classical
You can never go wrong with Bach - how about Glenn Gould's take on the Goldberg variations? - but for classical/romantic music that has unconventional harmonies without drastic volume changes, I'd say... hmm...
Chopin
Satie
Debussy
posted by clawsoon at 12:14 PM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
From hardest to smoothest:
Charlie Parker
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Bill Evans
classical
You can never go wrong with Bach - how about Glenn Gould's take on the Goldberg variations? - but for classical/romantic music that has unconventional harmonies without drastic volume changes, I'd say... hmm...
Chopin
Satie
Debussy
posted by clawsoon at 12:14 PM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
BTW, don't necessarily expect that stuff on Youtube, or even on original recordings, will be perfectly tuned to A=440Hz. But, as folks have mentioned above, having perfect pitch isn't as fun as having decent relative pitch anyway.
posted by clawsoon at 12:17 PM on September 18, 2018
posted by clawsoon at 12:17 PM on September 18, 2018
When I was a wee one the stuff that appealed to me most was really rhythmic. For reasons I'm still not entirely clear on my family had a collection of polka records and I really responded to them. I also liked boogie woogie (including a song by Will Bradley titled, literally, "Boogie Woogie" that was on an album my parents had), stride, and ragtime a lot. Anything with really strong and perhaps syncopated rhythmic accents.
On the subject of A=440 and absolute pitch, we had an old piano that had been given to us as a gift by my dad's business partner (or his business partner's wife, to be more accurate). It wouldn't stay in tune at A=440, so the tuner intentionally tuned it just flat enough so that it wouldn't slip out of tune with itself before he was even finished. I don't have absolute pitch, and honestly I kind of credit that piano for it. I've got really great relative pitch, and I always aced whatever interval training exams I was asked to do. Auditioning for the choir in college was amusing, because the conductor's background was in pedagogy, so he prefaced a couple with "this one's going to be weird" and followed with "huh. Most people don't get that one."
Whenever we did stuff in college that used period instruments we'd have to tune to them and not A=440, and the same goes for some pipe organs. I've worked with an accompanist who has to bow out of those gigs and recommend somebody else because she'll get headaches that interfere with her ability to play. Being flexible about your tuning makes that sort of thing a lot easier to do. There were a couple early music things where we performed with harpsichord tuned using a historic temperament (I've forgotten which one) and that meant having to match not just its pitch but its harmonics. There also used to be some variance in analog playback (tape or vinyl) when something wasn't calibrated just right or if the batteries in your Walkman were running out. Some old recordings definitely weren't A=440, either to begin with or as a result of a technical problem (cf. Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue"). So I guess if you want to raise a flexible musician, expose them early to more than just A=440, equal temperament, as beard-and-elbow-patchy as it may be to pull out the Bach Consort or Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields or whatever.
BTW my college choir conductor occasionally had the choir do gesture-based solfège exercises with movable do, which isn't exactly incompatible with absolute pitch, but it is a bit mind twisting if your brain associates each gesture with an absolute pitch and then everything gets reassigned in the middle. Having good relative pitch is probably more useful in that scenario than knowing you were in C but now you're in E-flat.
posted by fedward at 2:37 PM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
On the subject of A=440 and absolute pitch, we had an old piano that had been given to us as a gift by my dad's business partner (or his business partner's wife, to be more accurate). It wouldn't stay in tune at A=440, so the tuner intentionally tuned it just flat enough so that it wouldn't slip out of tune with itself before he was even finished. I don't have absolute pitch, and honestly I kind of credit that piano for it. I've got really great relative pitch, and I always aced whatever interval training exams I was asked to do. Auditioning for the choir in college was amusing, because the conductor's background was in pedagogy, so he prefaced a couple with "this one's going to be weird" and followed with "huh. Most people don't get that one."
Whenever we did stuff in college that used period instruments we'd have to tune to them and not A=440, and the same goes for some pipe organs. I've worked with an accompanist who has to bow out of those gigs and recommend somebody else because she'll get headaches that interfere with her ability to play. Being flexible about your tuning makes that sort of thing a lot easier to do. There were a couple early music things where we performed with harpsichord tuned using a historic temperament (I've forgotten which one) and that meant having to match not just its pitch but its harmonics. There also used to be some variance in analog playback (tape or vinyl) when something wasn't calibrated just right or if the batteries in your Walkman were running out. Some old recordings definitely weren't A=440, either to begin with or as a result of a technical problem (cf. Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue"). So I guess if you want to raise a flexible musician, expose them early to more than just A=440, equal temperament, as beard-and-elbow-patchy as it may be to pull out the Bach Consort or Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields or whatever.
BTW my college choir conductor occasionally had the choir do gesture-based solfège exercises with movable do, which isn't exactly incompatible with absolute pitch, but it is a bit mind twisting if your brain associates each gesture with an absolute pitch and then everything gets reassigned in the middle. Having good relative pitch is probably more useful in that scenario than knowing you were in C but now you're in E-flat.
posted by fedward at 2:37 PM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I have perfect pitch. I am really glad I have it, I think it adds a lot to my appreciation of music, and it doesn't prevent me from enjoying music in any way. I recognize that there are people out there who have it (some of whom have chimed in here) who feel that it is a burden, though, and also that there are people out there who don't have it (some of whom have chimed in here) who are glad that they don't.
2) That given, I personally don't think it's worth obsessing about exactly what music you play for babies to make them musical. The best way to make them love music is to play music you love.
posted by dfan at 6:15 AM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
2) That given, I personally don't think it's worth obsessing about exactly what music you play for babies to make them musical. The best way to make them love music is to play music you love.
posted by dfan at 6:15 AM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Wow I didn't expect all these perfect pitch anecdotes! Fascinating.
I actually don't care if this baby has perfect pitch, I shouldn't have mentioned that at all I guess- it was just what led me to the idea of exposing them to a huge assortment of musical "grammar" during their language acquisition window. I don't care about perfect pitch, I know it's just a party trick (didn't know it was so annoying though!), I just want them to develop a facility for music, and as many have pointed out, good relative pitch.
So- if anyone else has suggestions for songs and artists with complex, unpredictable pitch combinations and rhythms that would teach a baby about musical possibilities- but that also sound nice enough that they can be played as background music without causing undue distraction to the adults in the room- I'm still interested. Thanks!
posted by pseudostrabismus at 8:51 PM on September 19, 2018
I actually don't care if this baby has perfect pitch, I shouldn't have mentioned that at all I guess- it was just what led me to the idea of exposing them to a huge assortment of musical "grammar" during their language acquisition window. I don't care about perfect pitch, I know it's just a party trick (didn't know it was so annoying though!), I just want them to develop a facility for music, and as many have pointed out, good relative pitch.
So- if anyone else has suggestions for songs and artists with complex, unpredictable pitch combinations and rhythms that would teach a baby about musical possibilities- but that also sound nice enough that they can be played as background music without causing undue distraction to the adults in the room- I'm still interested. Thanks!
posted by pseudostrabismus at 8:51 PM on September 19, 2018
Funkadelic/Eddie Hazel (maybe minus the spoken introduction?)
Cymande
Rubba
John Cameron
posted by clawsoon at 6:32 AM on September 20, 2018
Cymande
Rubba
John Cameron
posted by clawsoon at 6:32 AM on September 20, 2018
Kevin Puts- Air for violin & piano
György Ligeti: Lux Aeterna
Gurrumul- Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow)
Gurrumul- Wulminda (Dark Clouds)
Hildegard von Bingen - O virga ac diadema
B C Manjunath- Fibonacci Konnakol
Yamma Ensemble- Psalms 104 sung in ancient Hebrew
Altai-Kai - Ойно, ойно, Алтай (Играй, играй, Алтай)
Lewis Burns doing Traditional Didgeridoo Rhythms
Paul Hindemith - Der Schwanendreher
Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde is fantastic but gets a bit noisy at around 13:41
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 7:45 PM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
György Ligeti: Lux Aeterna
Gurrumul- Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow)
Gurrumul- Wulminda (Dark Clouds)
Hildegard von Bingen - O virga ac diadema
B C Manjunath- Fibonacci Konnakol
Yamma Ensemble- Psalms 104 sung in ancient Hebrew
Altai-Kai - Ойно, ойно, Алтай (Играй, играй, Алтай)
Lewis Burns doing Traditional Didgeridoo Rhythms
Paul Hindemith - Der Schwanendreher
Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde is fantastic but gets a bit noisy at around 13:41
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 7:45 PM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
Great list, womb of things!
posted by clawsoon at 7:19 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 7:19 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
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I will note that perfect pitch is, in my lived experience, really much more of a curse. For example, I'm "tuned" to concert A = 440 Hz and equal temperament (I had seven years of piano lessons starting in 1st grade). Music played to other tuning will mess me up if I have to follow along with the score because I'm trying to reconcile the pitch that I'm hearing with the pitch that the sheet music is telling me in my personal tuning, and if there's a discrepancy, I get hung up trying to transpose in real time. In all my years of music lessons (piano, classical guitar, viola, composition), *relative pitch* was 100% more useful. It's very, very rare that perfect pitch is of particular use in a way that couldn't be replicated by relative pitch and a strong ability to identify intervals.
I didn't have the same musical environment for my own daughter, but I played music for my daughter all the time. My husband is terrible at pitches (he cannot sing in tune to save his life). I was curious to see what would happen. (I don't care one way or another how musical my daughter is, so long as she's happy.) She's fourteen now. She's a little better than my husband, but not especially musical. I exposed her to my musical endeavors (mostly composition and occasionally playing instruments) and gave her the opportunity to play around on a keyboard if it interested her. It did not particularly interest her. She can sing sort of in tune, but she's not pursuing music, and she's perfectly happy bopping along to Linkin' Park or Hamilton and that's fine with her and fine with me. On the other hand, she draws several hours a day, including really fabulous dragons. :)
I guess the short version is you can do all this, but I wouldn't count on it guaranteeing perfect pitch or musicality if the interest or inclination just isn't there. My kid sister is younger by two and a half years, and grew up in essentially the same musical environment. She does not have perfect pitch. Her relative pitch is decent but not as good as mine. She's more musical than my husband and my daughter (she can hold a tune, played clarinet and piano for a few years), but she abandoned pursuit of music after high school and never got into composition. There's no harm in musical exposure--as long as kiddo is having fun and not feeling pressured, that's what really matters--but if there were some guaranteed way to inculcate this stuff we would know it by now.
posted by yhlee at 10:56 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]