> Young children can acquire absolute (perfect) pitch — but adults cannot. The window closes around age 6.
I found some papers suggesting it is possible for adults, but more difficult.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31550277/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31686378/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388931575_Learning_...
You will probably claim it's not "real" perfect pitch, but many people use their tinnitus to help them. They identified their ring as having, for example, F#, and suddenly their relative pitch became absolute.
I've seen nothing to convince me that "absolute pitch" is anything other than relative pitch with excellent recall or persistent observation of pitch.
I don't have perfect pitch (never trained in it) but I've played violin a lot (started in college) and I can hear the G-ness, D-ness, A-ness, or E-ness of a note. I do have to be actually trying to listen though, except for if they are G3, D4, A4, or E5.
So I have the latter, but not the former (i.e., no perfect pitch). The difference is, I can choose not to observe it. It reminds me of how I've studied Japanese for 15 years, but I can still sometimes choose not to read certain kanji if I glance at a legible word — the same is not true for English, if I see something even for a split second I've already read it.
I agree. I can tune a guitar to within a half a semitone of accuracy without reference just from knowing how the open strings are supposed to sound after 20 years of playing.
> knowing how the open strings are supposed to sound
well that's the whole question isn't it? If you know how an open string is supposed to have, that's what people call absolute pitch?
Most people without absolute pitch have some level of "pitch memory", but it's not comprehensive or reliable. For instance, if you ask people to sing a pop song, they're significantly more likely than chance to sing it in the original key.
I know the Super Mario Bros. theme starts on an E, so I can identify an unknown pitch by recalling that theme and comparing using relative pitch. But that's quite a slow and unintuitive process, and it's easy to make a mistake. People with absolute pitch just hear the pitch without having to "recall" a reference note to compare to like that.
Also your teeth don't change too much in adulthood save for cavities and the like, so if you hum, they'll resonate in a rather stable frequency.
Now there's a hack in the most delightful sense of the word
There was an interesting study that I attempted to enroll in (but unfortunately was screened out by both age and childhood instrument learning) that was looking at psilocybin potentially giving adults the ability to acquire perfect pitch:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/psilocybin-research-pitch-stu...
It’s not “real” perfect pitch. It’s more like training and memorizing. It doesn’t come as naturally as it does for kids.
isn't perfect pitch for kids also training and memorizing? the learning method from the original post surely suggests so
It's just like how foreigners will never truly learn a language; racist BS. Plenty of tonedef adults get into Julliard and can play circles around people with perfect pitch no matter how much they practice music.
Yeah, the stuff on the repo is bullshit because it's ai slop.
I learned perfect pitch well after six. I know others who have too.