What is Absolute Pitch?
Let me define what absolute pitch is. Normally it's something like "The ability to name pitches on the piano without a fixed reference point." that is only have the story AND it's not even that accurate.My best definition of absolute pitch is the internal sense of the color produced by musical tones and scales.
It's not necessarily being able to identify any note without a second though, we do second guess ourselves, we can get confused. You still have to work at it, no one and I firmly will declare that it is a FACT that NO ONE was born with absolute pitch that allowed them to instantly name every pitch. It's all about developing a relationship with the notes and while I agree you can be gifted, it has far more to do with a mindset and experience than your freakin stupid genetics.
There is Psychological phenomenon called Anomic Aphasia which is the inability to always name colors or other things. You know what it is but you can't play the name with it. This phenomenon can occur with AP I think, I may have it and others don't, I really don't know. It's like seeing a cup and saying bowel, no plate, oh a cup.
"bbut mozart had absolute pitch... " BLAH BLAH BLAH I'm tired of hearing about genetics being involved with it. It might play a small role but generally, it comes down to what you're paying attention to. I imagine talent might matter in your development of it but everyone, I mean everyone with musical training can name pitches without a reference tone, if you think hard enough. That's not to say that I believe everyone can differentiate keys or tones but that's not important.
Tonal Color
With me, my experience with AP is that each musical tone and scale has a color to it, not a visual color, it's not freakin synethesia, I don't see colors when I hear sound. It's more like, if our ears heard colors, well that's what AP is like. It's like when you see blue and you feel that blue color right? Not a physical sensation, but it's BLUE, you don't doubt it. So when I hear G, I will just know it's G. That's not to say I can't get it wrong time to time. But it's that feeling of G, sometimes I'll hear it and can't immediately think of what note or key but I just feel the texture of it. I guess it's kind of like how someone with good AP can tell a major from a minor chord but it's a little more tricky than that.I cannot fathom what it's like to hear sound in black and white, to hear a piece of music then the same one again in a different key and then not being able to tell that they have entirely different colors! For me, hearing someone say G and F# sound the same is like saying Red and Blue look the same - it's nonsense and just ridiculous.
Literally every single major/minor key has a unique flavor. Trying to tell you what they sound like is like trying to describe to a blind man what colors look like. I can tell you that F# sounds a bit tinnier than say a robust D but alot of that is timbre specific such as F# is very metallic sounding on a piano and D is not. On other instruments it's not quite as noticeable but there still is that lingering flavor that is F# major. I just can't imagine what it's like to not hear like this.
Generally keys that are a perfect fifth away are more like discolorations. C G and F share a few qualities but they also are quite different. The stranger part is that some keys are easier to name than others. I imagine this all comes from associating childhood experience of favorite songs or something. Like I could near always name a song in D major or F# major but B major or E major can throw me. It's not like I don't hear these keys extremely differently but they share similarities.
This is all really subjective though. All people with AP probably hear things differently. One thing is how complex it really it. Root note, timbre, and visual context all have an impact. It's like a super complex network of associations. This is why we can get confused, it's not set in stone. G major sounds different in different context but there is still that lingering familiarity with it.
Ah... Relative Pitch.....
There's that thing I'm tired of hearing. Everytime someone tries to learn absolute pitch and makes mistakes, they're told they have relative pitch. This makes no sense. Relative pitch IS all about being able to feel musical space of intervals, chords, scales etc... this is a no brainer, you must have good relative pitch to survive in the music world.
Relative pitch is about Space, Absolute pitch is about color. Relative pitch must be paired with absolute pitch to get any practical use out of absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is extremely useful but at the same time, optional in the music world. Absolute pitch without relative pitch is like Tamarind without the rest of the Pad Thai. It doesn't work well, it's not very functional, and it's really slow. I can feel notes all day long but I can't just name note after note in a piece of music in real time, that's stupid. Typically I will figure the root of the scale key first and use relative pitch for the rest.
What I don't like it people dismissing absolute pitch as useless when they don't possess it themselves. Absolute pitch to me is like having an enriched musical experience. I don't get what it's like to not have it, to not hear tonal color. I'm not trying to brag, I just can't wrap my head around people having Relative pitch but not able to hear tonal qualities of pitches. It's weird to me.
Point is, you determine if you have AP not some teacher. If you have AP you will have no doubt that C and G# sound totally different, if you cannot hear an audible difference in color, you don't have it.
The Joys and Annoyances of Absolute Pitch
TRANSPOSING
One of the most annoying aspects of having AP is that you care about transposition while the majority of the population doesn't give a crap. If a song I know is in D major, for the love of cats, play the song in D! I know singers have to transpose but it's very annoying when your the only one who seems to care. Sometimes changing the key can have an interesting effect but most of the time, it's just cheesy, because the song's color changes. Cheesy is how I would describe it, it seems fake, like not genuine when it's in the wrong key.
TUNING
A common belief is that people with AP are seriously annoyed by retuning music. As if retuning a guitar 1/4 step down will annoy us. If anything, it sounds cool to people like me. I do have an interest in alternate tunings so that may be why but quite literally, I don't see how someone with AP would see playing in a different reference pitch such as A 432 as anything but a good thing. If all the regular keys sound unique, the 1/4 step down keys sound EXTREMELY different. They are quite literally hard to identify, they sound fresh yet foreign to me. They also don't retain qualities much of the key that is 1/4 step higher or lower. C major tunes 1/4 step higher sounds nothing like C major at 440 hz to me.
IDENTIFYING PITCH
A thing that happens with AP is we hear things as musical, period. More than the average musician person I imagine. Like I'll hear a lawn mower and my brain has a habit of wanting to know what the key sounds like. Heck, if someone farts, I'll normally be able to identify the pitch, I don't try, it just happens.
LISTENING TO MUSIC
One annoying aspect of AP is that I need variety. I cannot stand to hear too many songs in the same key! I will not listen to 4 songs in a row in G# major, it's boring to me. This causes issues because my brain tends to pay attention to the tonal color rather than other elements making two songs sound more similar than other people hear them as.
Another thing is key preference, I like songs in B major, F#, and D major best. I think E major is my least favorite major key, like it's pretty definite, I don't like E major, sounds cheesy to me, I don't know why.
Can you learn it as an adult?
While I cannot prove this considering I've had an ability to hear musical color since I was 13, I imagine you can. If you want to develop AP, you have to make your brain think it needs to know the difference. I developed it mainly from arranging pieces, I quickly noticed there were very different tonal qualities to the different songs I was arranging. It became useful to me to know what key it was in, I tried to guess it not to hunt and peck till i found it. Well, honestly at first I did hunt and peck but I started needing to do it less.
To be honest, the ability to name pitches out of thin air is extremely learnable, it's no different from learning to identify symbols. But being able to feel the musical color that people with AP experience, that may not be learnable but I honestly have no idea.
Thing is, if I stop practicing it, I lose it. I cannot name pitches as fast, I can figure it out without any reference pitch but it takes a bit of time and confusion. What never goes away is how I hear music, and I'm not sure if that's something you can teach yourself or not.
