Perfect pitch may be more common than commonly believed

[evwhore]

sciencedaily:

Their research shows that perfect pitch -- the ability to recognize and remember a tone without a reference -- is apparently much more common in non-musicians than scientists had expected. Previous tests have overlooked these people because without extensive musical training it's very difficult for someone to identify a pitch by name

Comments

[songmonk]

I had this whole comment written out w/o clicking through the link. Then I decided that was stupid and read the article in case it addressed what I was asking.

Then I erased my previous comment because I now have this to say: I don't think that's a valid test for perfect pitch. It seems more like a test for lack of relative pitch recognition.

Which goes back to what I was going to say before clicking through the link. The new results would seem to indicate that perfect pitch is more common in non-musicians than in musicians. (Since musicians had been more tested before and the new results indicated that perfect pitch is more common than they previously thought.) That would be surprising to me. After reading the article, I'm less surprised. I think what they "discovered" is that relative pitch recognition is more poor among non-musicians than in musicians. Congratulations.

The findings with perfect pitch recognition in non-humans I find more informative.

[evwhore]

I don't think that's a valid test for perfect pitch. It seems more like a test for lack of relative pitch recognition.

Maybe. It seemed to vaguely make sense to me on the surface.

Based on what feels like is happening internally, I have trouble transposing things on the fly because perfect pitch gets in the way and my mind tries to "recalculate" everything in the new key instead of just using relative pitch from the starting note.

EDIT: after re-reading the above, I should add that my point wasn't (merely) to brag about having perfect pitch, but that there may be something to the technique of seeing how you react to/recognize transpositions.