Rick Beato explains his theory that infants are born with perfect pitch, similar to universal phoneme recognition, and that exposing his son Dylan to complex 'high-information' music before and after birth preserved this ability. ✦ AI generated
Rick Beato · Lex Fridman · 2026-03-01 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 31:04
“So you're saying, like, some part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life?”
So, I believe that all kids are born with perfect pitch and then around nine months they begin to lose it. If you don't engage their social brain... I never played pitches for Dylan and said, 'This is a C, this is a B flat, this is a G.' I just played complex, high-information music form. And played with him.
verbatim transcript · starts at 31:04
31:04...high-information music form. And played with him. - And that applies maybe even more generally to high-information language. - Yes. - And it starts before they're born. I think I saw some of these incredible scientists that work on the neuroscience, the neurobiology, psychology of language in early life. I think a big part is you, in the mother's stomach you're listening to the mother speak. - Yes. That's right.
31:35- So, like, that's how on the language side you're picking up the language already. - That's right. And you're picking up the music, musical language. So, native music fluency, you could call it. - So if the mother's sitting back and listening to Bach and some bebop jazz, you have a, you have a pretty good chance. - Much better chance. - Okay. All right. So as we unwind our way back Joe Pass and bebop. You were
32:02You were funny enough talking about what is bebop jazz and, and that would be people like Joe Pass. And in your own life, your dad was somehow listening to that kind of incredibly complex and sophisticated music- - But wasn't a musician. - Wasn't a musician. - Which was very weird. We never... I have six siblings and we could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz.
32:26- We just took it for granted at that time. - Yeah, just took it for granted. And my dad passed away in 2004 and we never really talked about that, but he and I used to listen to music together all the time. We'd put on a record, I'd sit on one side of the room, he'd sit on the other and not say a word. Listen through the whole side A. I'd go flip it over,
32:45listen to side B, never say a word. And then get up and go do stuff. And we did that all the time. - And so the first time you impressed your dad was with the Joe Pass song, right? And by the way, we'll have to go to this song 'cause people must have forgot 'cause right? People just think you're like a good communicator or something. They don't realize how good you are at guitar, how good you are at