There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously.
I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are people who have an innate talent for that too, but it's unrelated to perfect pitch.
There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously.
Classically trained musician without absolute pitch here. I would say yes and no to your comment. My undergrad degree was in flute, and I can assure you that absolute pitch can be quite helpful for wind players especially. My teacher had it, and would be able to tell you if you were out of tune even if you hadn't played with a piano or other reference point.
On the other hand, I once sat between two flutists who both claimed to have absolute pitch but were playing out of tune relative to each other (and each refusing to adjust to the other since... they had absolute pitch). So, it doesn't actually mean you're going to be perfect.
By "inexpensive electronic tools," perhaps you mean these tuners that you can attach to guitars and whatnot? These are certainly helpful for stringed instruments, but are basically irrelevant if you play a wind instrument. Most musicians with relative pitch only need a single reference note and then they're ok. Where relative pitch tends to fail you, however, is over longer periods of time when the pitch tends to drift. You hear this in lots of school orchestras. The pitch will tend to drift upwards (at least in the strings) over a long work. Here, no mechanical/electronic device is going to help you.
You refer to perfect pitch and absolute pitch like they're different things -- do you realize that they're the same thing?
My brother and I are both musicians with perfect pitch, and we've found it useful in a variety of circumstances. To name a couple, it really helps if you're jamming and want to pick up a progression quickly, or if you're DJing and want to key match. I will concede that Traktor recently got key detection, which is nice, but especially when playing live I find that key segues will pop into my head without having to search for the next song in the right key.
Even the best relative pitch cannot help you exactly memorize a melody -- if you are unable to remember what note it actually starts on, you haven't remembered it fully.
I think they are different things. Knowing the sound of a perfect fifth is not perfect pitch, but relative pitch. One could transcribe a piece of music from memory with just very good relative pitch, with the caveat they probably will transcribe it in the incorrect key.
If you're saying that perfect pitch and relative pitch are different things in that it isn't as if perfect pitch is better than relative pitch, then yeah, I absolutely agree. The hacks that I mentioned involve perfect pitch specifically, but transcription ability like you mention is probably tied most to one's sense of relative pitch, even if one has perfect pitch.
I'm interested in it from a purely philosophical / phenomenological point of view. It is as if most people are colorblind, and some people can see colors. You certainly don't say that yellow is "higher" than red but "lower" than blue.
If you listen to how people with absolute pitch describe their experience, you will realize that they are experiencing perceptions that you cannot. That is interesting.
That's the thing, I actually think that's just how people without absolute pitch think it would be like, but everyone with absolute pitch that I've talked to describe different pitches as different "buckets" - categorically, qualitatively distinct.
edit: I suspect this conversation won't lead anywhere because there isn't good language to talk about phenomenology. But I think we both understand the other's hypothesis.
Sure, I just wanted to point out the phenomenon of conflating it with musical talent. I'm not suggesting it's an uninteresting concept or isn't worthy of thought/discussion
There's a strange preoccupation with being able to fly through willpower. It's not very useful today since there are (relatively) inexpensive devices that let you fly anywhere in the world.
Perfect pitch is a real-life superpower for musicians. I'll grant, like another commenter said, that if I had child-like neuroplasticity, attaining perfect pitch would just be icing on the cake.
Do you have perfect pitch? How can you assess the utility if you don't possess it? Perfect pitch would be very useful IMO, can you imagine what it would do to one's compositional abilities for example?
Relative pitch is just recognition of intervals between notes and the qualities of different chords, but you're right in that perfect pitch and relative pitch are quite unrelated.
It would likely have a negligible benefit for composition, even if notating unassisted by any pitch aid.
Since the intervals (not frequencies though) between scales are consistent regardless of the pitch of the tonic, one could compose a piece using relative pitch that they believe to be in the key of C, when actually they are "hearing" it in Bb. Precise relative pitch ability has much more utility in composition, absolute pitch would have more advantage for performance (choral starting note, woodwind tuning, on-the-fly assessment of string fingering).
It would only be useful if for some reason you needed to compose and then perform a piece without a reference pitch.
The point isn't that it's uninteresting to you, the point is that it may very well be interesting to stalkers, bosses, insurance companies, thieves, exes, "lost" relatives, arsonists, mother stabbers, father rapers, litterbugs, jaywalkers, identity thieves, nosy neighbors, and other undesirables.
It's a thought experiment. Along the lines of
YOU DOLTS, YOU REALLY SHOULDN'T BE PUTTING ALL THIS STUFF OUT HERE!
On a purely ideal level I agree with you (the fact that at any time someone has been fired from their job for expressing personal opinions on non-company time does not sit well with me..), but the reality of it is, how many of these people do you think know that their info is on this site and/or accessible to quite literally anyone in the world? Of the people that know that, how many of them do you think understand the implications of that openness?
I've got a fantastic idea: Why don't you make a list of all the pages on the internet that don't interest you, and then tell HN about it. Then I can use that as the starting point for my list.
I believe that people confuse it with relative pitch which usually translates to the skill of transcribing and memorizing melodies. This is very useful as a musician or even in daily life sometimes. There are people who have an innate talent for that too, but it's unrelated to perfect pitch.