As expected, another one of the many that conflates well trained relative pitch with absolute.
Perfect pitch, for me, was an incredibly smooth and long learning curve. For each new instrument or texture I learned, I went from only hearing relative intervals, to being able to say, “this piece is probably in D major”, to being able to trace along the exact notes of the melody and bass lines, to being able to instantly lock onto notes when I wanted to. These weren’t discrete transitions either; I would have good days and bad days for recognizing pitches, and over time I would have more and more good days.
All this is indistinguishable from a person who has had received substantial ear training as is indeed the case with the author, and that is ofc commendable.
However AP is a completely different ability which largely boils down to at the very least being able to immediately [1] recognize the Hz aka note-name of any pitch-producing entity (keyboard/string/woodwind/brass instruments, toothbrush, drinking glass, car horn, airplane engines, door rattles etc.) with 100% success rate. There are even more strict definitions like being able to identify every single note of a specific cluster and there's variability of maximum number of notes each AP possessor is able to distinguish.
Also, short of old age and intoxication/sickness, the distinguishing ability is not affected i.e. no good or bad days.
All studies that attempted training any person past the infancy for this type of ability have failed and this probably includes even the notorious Valproate study [2].
I'm not saying this particular ability has no neuroscientific interest and I get the appeal of it being 'magical' however one can't help but sigh at how dreadfully disappointed so many musicians, some of them even very talented, feel for not possessing this. Maybe one could argue about it being a bit more important, not crucial though, in orchestral composition however the target audience feeling desperate to acquire it, which is perfomers of music, is definitely misdirected.
But even then, the article unintentionally presents a 'happy-ending' type of story; the author most likely definitely did not obtain AP ability but what they're describing is exactly what everyone who wants to have impeccable aural skills should strive for, and I'd wager there are many studying musicians that haven't developed their skills to the extent the author managed (and would greatly benefit from). Let's just don't perpetuate elitist obsolete conservatoire culture, which is largely where the AP possessor superiority comes from.
So, I've got perfect pitch, and its not quite that black and white. For context, I can do all the regular perfect pitch superpowers (except for door rattles, which don't really rattle with a single tone), and have had it from a young age. When I first remember having it, I could only reliably recognise an A (and would have to count upwards to other notes), but unambiguously meet any definition as an adult
Many things that are considered perfect pitch skills take practice, and the OP is absolutely correct in that certain timbres are easier to classify than others. As a kid I would have had a harder time telling you the pitches if two woodwind instruments were playing a chord, vs two stringed instruments, due to familiarity. Its something you tend to work on accidentally as a background process as a musician
Much of perfect pitch discrimination is an active process though, eg being able to split up a song into its constituent parts and pick out the notes of each line is something you have to learn. All perfect pitch does is give you the ability to perform that discrimination, but anything more than that is a skill. For things that people consider to be perfect pitch skills (tone classification in a cluster), there absolutely are good days and bad days
Lots of pitches in nature aren't especially clean - nor are musical instruments, which is what makes them of varying ease to classify when you're unfamiliar. There are harmonics that can be make it hard to classify, or the central tone can be washed out in noise or similar tones. Its like trying to identify the dominant frequency in white noise, it takes practice
Its likely that OP had perfect pitch as a kid (demonstrating pitch classification), and simply never really capitalised on it mentally to develop it. Because you're right in that no adult has ever experimentally been demonstrated to have learnt this, even with extensive training and musical experience
I agree with all of the above, including the hypothesis that the OP likely had absolute pitch to some degree as a child and not thought about it. Everyone I personally know with perfect pitch (including myself) started engaging with music seriously very early on in life. (I don't know quickly I acquired it because it's always been as easy as identifying colors and I didn't know it was unusual until my piano teacher noticed.)
For me piano is definitely the easiest instrument to identify, I'm sure largely because it's what I've played all my life. Pipe organs are the worst. I assume that in general the purity of the tone correlates negatively with ease of identification.
Huge +1 to this post. Lots of other posts are off-base about the basic definition.
I've always had strong relative pitch ability and many people mistake my ability for perfect pitch. But in most practical applications, it's not just the _answer_ you arrive at that makes the definition so (because this can be faked), it's _how_ you know it.
People with absolute pitch just _know_ it without thinking -- no tricks, no mental reference note, no memorizing songs, no relying on a certain instrument's timbre, etc., they just know it.
Perfect pitch, for me, was an incredibly smooth and long learning curve. For each new instrument or texture I learned, I went from only hearing relative intervals, to being able to say, “this piece is probably in D major”, to being able to trace along the exact notes of the melody and bass lines, to being able to instantly lock onto notes when I wanted to. These weren’t discrete transitions either; I would have good days and bad days for recognizing pitches, and over time I would have more and more good days.
All this is indistinguishable from a person who has had received substantial ear training as is indeed the case with the author, and that is ofc commendable.
However AP is a completely different ability which largely boils down to at the very least being able to immediately [1] recognize the Hz aka note-name of any pitch-producing entity (keyboard/string/woodwind/brass instruments, toothbrush, drinking glass, car horn, airplane engines, door rattles etc.) with 100% success rate. There are even more strict definitions like being able to identify every single note of a specific cluster and there's variability of maximum number of notes each AP possessor is able to distinguish.
Also, short of old age and intoxication/sickness, the distinguishing ability is not affected i.e. no good or bad days.
All studies that attempted training any person past the infancy for this type of ability have failed and this probably includes even the notorious Valproate study [2].
I'm not saying this particular ability has no neuroscientific interest and I get the appeal of it being 'magical' however one can't help but sigh at how dreadfully disappointed so many musicians, some of them even very talented, feel for not possessing this. Maybe one could argue about it being a bit more important, not crucial though, in orchestral composition however the target audience feeling desperate to acquire it, which is perfomers of music, is definitely misdirected.
But even then, the article unintentionally presents a 'happy-ending' type of story; the author most likely definitely did not obtain AP ability but what they're describing is exactly what everyone who wants to have impeccable aural skills should strive for, and I'd wager there are many studying musicians that haven't developed their skills to the extent the author managed (and would greatly benefit from). Let's just don't perpetuate elitist obsolete conservatoire culture, which is largely where the AP possessor superiority comes from.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/7OefC0i.png
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3848041/