[lyricaljoke]

Many of the responses to this comment imply that this is something fundamentally different than perfect pitch and give it some different name ("pseudo absolute pitch", "perfect relative pitch", etc.). While I concede that most people think of perfect pitch as something that is instilled in some way in early childhood rather than achievable through practice, I guess I would ask those commenters... why do you think the latter is fundamentally different, or is using some separate mechanism?

There are many skills which are much easier to instill in early childhood and are simply harder to master if approached in adulthood -- language learning, certain athletic skills, and more -- but we would never consider any of these impossible to achieve through study. Sure, maybe the maximum achievable skill level is less than what could have been possible if study began in early childhood, but we would not say that it is impossible for adults to achieve a level of mastery, or that those who gained a skill through serious practice must be using some separate mechanism than those who learned it in early life.

I contend that it is the same with absolute pitch. After all, there is not even a perfect level of absolute pitch mastery! In layman's terms, "perfect pitch" is usually understood to mean that a person can immediately name a pitch when played -- on a 12-tone western music scale. But some people people with perfect pitch have better precision than that and can estimate quarter tones, etc. If a note is played that's 20 cents sharper than Ab, and person #1 says "that's an Ab" while person #2 says "that's a note a touch sharper than Ab", most people consider neither statement to disqualify them from having absolute pitch. But there is a difference. Moreover, no person on Earth can name a pitch down to, say, a couple decimals of absolute frequency value. Doesn't this imply that the skill exists as achievable points on a spectrum, not as a flat binary?

[vunderba]

In fact, there is an interesting historical anecdote about polish-american pianistic prodigy Josef Hofmann related to absolute pitch:

"Josef startled musicians by the accuracy of his ear. Once, at the Metropolitan Opera, he heard a tuning fork supposed to be at 440-A. Josef said it was a shade sharp, and it was."

This is incredibly impressive for two reasons:

- It shows absolute pitch is not necessarily limited solely to semitone identification

- A pure tone from a tuning fork doesn't have any of the characteristic overtones, timbre, etc. that you'd get from an instrument to help identify the sound

[dhruvrajvanshi]

- It shows absolute pitch is not necessarily limited solely to semitone identification

Why would it be? There's nothing fundamental about a semitone. It's an arbitrary division that varies across different musical systems.

[vunderba]

I'm not saying that it is but MOST people when they think of perfect pitch - they think in terms of note identification (e.g. semitones), A, A#, etc.

My point was more about how everyone's ability falls along a "Hz Range Level".

[bennettnate5]

I imagine the gold standard of perfect pitch would be identifying exactly how many cents sharp or flat a given sound is--you could tune a piano by ear if you had that.

[ithkuil]

You can tune a piano by ear by listening to the beating. You need one note to be tuned according to a given reference but that reference doesn't have to be 440 hz

[losvedir]

I personally do believe that there is something fundamentally different about perfect pitch perception, and think of it more like discussions around aphantasia or maybe synesthesia. I followed along with this guy's research years ago on his quest to understand and obtain perfect pitch [0] and was pretty obsessed myself. I had a number of friends with perfect pitch and would do random experiments and quiz them ("ooh, you're drunk, can you tell what note this is?" etc).

From that link:

> For the same reason, absolute listeners do not perceive pitch "height". They do not perceive pitches as "higher" or "lower" or physically "next to" each other. As musicians, of course, absolute listeners learn that, metaphorically, pitches are "higher" and "lower" than each other, because they can see these relationships on a page of sheet music. They also learn that, theoretically, "distance" between notes exists, because you can count the semitones that separate them, and you can see the "distance" between keys on an instrument. But, to an absolute listener, neither "height" nor "distance" has any direct perceptual reality.

> For example, when a non-absolute listener hears a guitar slide, we literally hear something moving down. But an absolute listener's experience is nearer to the color-changing rectangle above. They hear a series of discrete pitches, changing—not moving—from one to another. Although they know the sound has "descended" from their knowledge of the musical scale, the sound does not give them a literal experience of downward movement as it does to non-absolute listeners.

The link has a gif of a box moving through the color spectrum which helps understand the point.

[0] http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/

[almostnormal]

> While I concede that most people think of perfect pitch as something that is instilled in some way in early childhood rather than achievable through practice, I guess I would ask those commenters... why do you think the latter is fundamentally different, or is using some separate mechanism?

As soon as having learned some relative pitch, it becomes very difficult to train absolute pitch. One single note a day. For the second note the brain will switch to relative mode, and there's no progress on absolute. Forcing the ear/brain to run in absolute mode seems possible, but is difficult consistently enough to practice absolute.

Source: Experimenting with my own ability (or lack thereof).