The Absolute Pitch

Young people with absolute pitch are a rather small, highly specific target group. Conceived as the “first official radio-based application procedure”, this radio commercial aims at this very target group, inviting young musicians to apply for courses in classical music at the Academy of Music, Theatre and Media in Hanover. In order to make sure that applicants are talented and possess the rare gift of absolute pitch, the radio commercial features a tone sequence that needs to be identified. When decoded, the sequence of note names forms the individual letters of the e-mail address to which applicants have to send their documents. Since people with the gift of absolute pitch can identify every tone on the musical scale without any device, they can easily decode the sequence by just listening to the melody and using the German scale system (C, D, F or A). Played on a piano, the musical sequence serves as a first challenge for applicants and thus turns the radio commercial into the first round of a qualifying examination. Statement by the jury »The trick of this radio commercial is that it links a call for applications to study music with a qualification test. The e-mail address applications have to be sent to is exclusively encoded as a musical sequence. This ensures that applicants belong to the target group and, in itself, represents a sophisticated design solution and implementation.«