Absolute/Perfect Pitch

[Catmatic Leftist]

I have had perfect pitch since I can remember starting music lessons. Can perfect pitch be developed? Or is it something that you have to be lucky to be born with? How rare or how common is perfect pitch?

[MapOfYourHead]

To my knowledge, perfect pitch is only something you can be born with, and can't be learnt. However, relative pitch can be learnt and developed to something that equally as powerful.

As for how common perfect pitch is, it would be very hard to determine it on a global scale as non-musicians wouldn't have the same knowledge to identify and name notes as musicians, making them less likely to actually realise their ability.

[Catmatic Leftist]

If it is genetic, why is it that my brother and my mother does NOT have perfect pitch? Both have a very reasonable understanding of music theory but cannot identify notes with their back turned from a piano.

[MapOfYourHead]

Does everybody have cystic fibrosis as well?

I did not say that everybody is born with it, I mearly said that you have to be born with it.

[kitsune]

It's more common in countries that have a tonal language. East Asians are much more likely to have perfect pitch, but only if they were born and raised in East Asia. East Asians born in the West are no more likely to have it than anyone else. That seems to indicate that it's not genetic, but acquired, possibly only at a critical period of development of the brain's auditory processing system.

It's possible that some people have a genetic predisposition, though. If that's the case, lack of exposure to specific conditions at the critical period would cause it to not develop. Nobody knows for sure.