[jtheory]

Reply to sibling comment -- perfect pitch can probably be developed with a lot of training (though I imagine it's harder if you're not a kid anymore... for kids, sure -- there are tonal languages, after all!).

But it's honestly not that valuable a skill, even for professional musicians. Having really keen relative pitch (and avoiding slipping pitch if you're singing, for example) would be a much better focus to take.

[hibbelig]

What is the relationship between perfect pitch and tonal languages? I've dabbled in Mandarin and there relative pitch seems to be good enough. But I realize that there are tonal languages other than Mandarin, and I know nothing about them...

[Synaesthesia]

I once saw a study that said perfect pitch is far more prevalent in mandarin speakers due to it being an penal language.

[aninhumer]

>there are tonal languages, after all!

I believe most (if not all) natural tonal languages use relative pitch, not absolute, so you wouldn't need perfect pitch to understand them.

[jtheory]

Huh; quite right. I've had it in my head for several years that Thai, at least, was tonal based on absolute pitch; but it looks like that's wrong.

I did turn up that a much larger percentage of people have perfect pitch in populations that speak tonal languages.