Fun Facts about Absolute Pitch:
An absolute listener's sense of hearing is typically no keener than that of a non-absolute ("normal") listener. Absolute pitch does not depend upon a refined ability to perceive and discriminate gradations of sound frequencies, but upon detecting and categorizing a subjective perceptual quality typically referred to as "chroma".
Speakers of European languages have been found to make use of an absolute, though subconscious, pitch memory when speaking.
Researchers have been trying to teach absolute pitch ability in laboratory settings for more than a century, and various commercial absolute-pitch training courses have been offered to the public since the early 1900s. However, no adult has ever been documented to have acquired absolute listening ability, as all adults who have undergone AP training have failed, when formally tested, to show "an unqualified level of accuracy... comparable to that of AP possessors".
Many musicians have quite good relative pitch, a skill which can be learned. With practice, it is possible to listen to a single known pitch once (from a pitch pipe or a tuning fork) and then have stable, reliable pitch identification by comparing the notes heard to the stored memory of the tonic pitch. Unlike absolute pitch, this skill is dependent on a recently perceived tonal center.
One out of every ten thousand have an Absolute Pitch, not counting East Asians, autistic individuals and people born with optic nerve hypoplasia.
