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Who can't tell if a sine wave sound is higher or lower than the emergency broadcast tone. That tone is 1000 hz.
So, that is absolute pitch, just low resolution. I'm assuming if you can add in a lot of reference points that you know well, you could get better resolution.
Most kids achieve level, upright pitch at ages 2-3. It's the yaw and roll you have to worry about. Those are literally all over the place.
While I think it's pretty cool, is absolute pitch actually "useful" for music-making? I feel relative notations (I-V-vi-IV) capture the essense of a piece of music better than absolute notations (C-G-Amin-F). It's just my layman opinion though.
I also had a classmate who could identify any pitch to the exact frequency, so A443 versus A440, for example. Of course we tested him.
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My impression from talking to musicians with absolute pitch is that it’s more an annoyance than anything. They’re always hearing how things in the real world are slightly off pitch.
How much "resolution" do their ears have? Like can someone with absolute pitch tell whether an instrument is in 12-ET or just intonation without a reference?
More generally, I think the answer is “pretty high-resolution”. Lots of people can definitely hear the difference between equal and just temperament.
IIRC most people’s hearing is accurate to around 10 cents (a tenth of a semitone). Wikipedia suggests musicians generally tune to within 12 cents, and the “just noticeable difference” is 5-6.
You’d only need absolute accuracy better than 50 cents to be able to correctly name a note on the piano. I’d guess most people with perfect pitch are more accurate than that, likely around the same ~10 cents mark.
Anecdotally, I have a musician friend with perfect pitch who finds it annoying sometime, as they find it unsettling when music is tuned slightly sharp or flat; so I think their sensitivity is much finer than a semitone.
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It's very useful for a session musician. You could pick up a song without hunting for the key.
I have perfect pitch and find it to be quite a burden in certain ways: it's very, very hard to transpose in real time.
I wonder what's the physical basis of perfect pitch? Neurons growing in a certain pattern? When I was in my late teens I went to a concert which was way too loud - for a few years after that incident I could hear something akin to modulation distortion if the sound was loud enough - a sort of low ringing like what you hear if you spin a suitcase wheel using your hand. It was unpleasant, but surprisingly helpful in id…
I can't sing or carry a tune to save my life and have a speech impediment, but I can tune a guitar or a piano by ear, confirmed by tuning fork. From ages roughly 10-25, I could tell the type of (US civilian or military) aircraft or helicopter flying above and the number of engines it had without looking. My hearing now is fairly shot and I have SCDS. I can hear my left eyeball move, eating chips is a noisy affair, an…
For me however it’s a largely positive experience. I am hugely grateful for things like the sounds of frogs, birds, voices I like, movie soundtracks, and for cleanly processed digital music.
On the other hand, musicians playing or singing out of tune, gives me a visceral response, and I have been down to leave clubs when a musician is having a slightly off night.