When I say "perfect pitch" I mean an absolute memory for pitch. Someone who has perfect pitch can remember the pitch of a note and recognise it or reproduce again without reference to any other sound.

No one is suggesting that some people are born with an innate ability to say "Ah, that's B flat!" withoutever having heard one before. I know that what we now call A is relative, not absolute; but this doesn't alter the fact that some people can place or remember a note or a key quite precisely, in a way that most people can't. People who have refined this ability do notice if a piece is played in "early music pitch" rather than the slightly higher "concert pitch". They'd notice if a tune was played in a fractionally lower key in another country than the tuning they were used to. They'd definitely notice if "O come All Ye Faithful" was sung in F instead of in G if they'd normally heard it in G, even if it had been the previous Christmas. If you sang a Beatles song in a different key from the original, they'd spot it straight away.

Being able to compare two notes and know which is higher or lower is another thing altogether, and that's a matter of degree. If you can't do this at all, you're possibly "tone deaf" (although this is pretty rare). If you're good at it, you can hear micro-tones and can easily tune a guitar or fiddle by ear. But it's not the same as having perfect pitch.


Marje