I heard a rumor about perfect pitch?

Question

I heard that people with perfect pitch often find it difficult to play with an orchestra that is not tuned to standard concert pitch A4 = 440 hertz

I also heard that people with absolute pitch fails to develop relative perfect pitch skills

I also heard that they would fail to identify the notes if a piece is transposed to a different pitch

Answer 1

I have perfect pitch and I have listened to an orchestra that tuned to A 442, but never played in one. It was annoying haha.

Some people with perfect pitch may have trouble with relative pitch, but I don't. As a matter of fact, being able to hear all the pitches actually helps with relative pitch.

As for transposing, I can see how someone with perfect pitch might have trouble with that. I've developed it to a point that I can transpose and see the same notes in a different color. Say something is in the key of C, if it is transposed to Bb I just ignore the fact that its a concert Bb and think of it as a really mellow key of C.

A friend of mine has perfect pitch as well, he's a piano player and he cannot transpose at all. Everything is absolute. He once told me that transposing music is painful to him because what's coming out didn't match what he was reading. So to answer your question, it varies from player to player. Some people have more absolute perfect pitch than others.

Answer 2

The first is probably true...assuming that the perfect pitch-possessor was trained with A=440 perfect pitch.  I know plenty of people whose perfect pitch (AP= absolute pitch) is "tuned" differently, usually based on the instruments they had at home growing up (a good friend of mine has AP which is "flat" by these standards, because his parents' piano was always flat...)

All that AP really is a heightened sense of pitch memory, and the ability to instantly label an incoming sound with a note-name.  

The second statement isn't really true.  The AP musician would identify the transposed notes just as easily.  Now, if you're talking about transposing INSTRUMENTS, that's another story...