People with perfect pitch hate it when I sing. People, like me, with relative pitch that gets better and worse based on practice usually say "Hey, your pitch is getting better. Keep practicing." Thank god not everyone has perfect pitch.

newberry wrote:OK, if A is at 440, G will be 392, and B will be 494. So if someone with perfect pitch can't necessarily detect whether A is precisely 440 or not, they would at least have to detect when the pitch is off by 50Hz, right? Or is there something about an A note on a piano that's distinctive, even if the string is tuned down 392 say? Or would a piano sound really weird tuned that far off? What about guitar?

To put it another way: someone with perfect pitch is asked to sing an "A" note. When is an A note not an A note? As long as it's closer to A than to A# or G# (at A 440 tuning)?

The Wikipedia entry on relative pitch is crappy, but it says this: "...think of the different concert pitch used by orchestras playing music from different styles (a baroque orchestra with original instruments might decide to use a much lower pitch). A soloist singer trying to sing in the perfect pitch would sound constantly 'out of tune'."

This is to say that if the ensemble is tuned to, say, A438, a singer with perfect pitch would have difficulty transposing down those measly 2Hz and want to sing his/her A at 440Hz regardless.

Not sure if that's the answer to your question, but I find it interesting.

Perfect pitch?

Sorry,wrong olympian. Here is your perfect pitcher for the day.