Jeremey McMillan wrote:

>Does anyone on this list have perfect pitch? I want to know if it serves
>as a good advantage.  I heard a lot of good and bad things about who use
>perfect pitch only but don't use relative pitch.

There has been quite a bit written about this.  W. Dixon Ward and E. M.
Burns, "Absolute Pitch," in The Psychology of Music, ed. Diana Deutsch
(1982) is one source; there are others listed in the New Harvard Dict.
of Music under Absolute Pitch.  For recent internet sources see:

   http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/~levitin/research_pubs.html

which contains links to the texts of research articles by D. J. Levitin.
Also some interesting links at:

   http://www.provide.net/~bfield/abs_pitch.html

I have a few personal recollections and observations.  I knew a fellow
student, a soprano, who had absolute pitch very strongly (there are degrees
of acuity).  She wasn't able to read music when the pitch of the choral
piece was moved up or down.  Obviously this was a disadvantage for her.
It's also my observation that people with strong absolute pitch tend to
rely on knowing the pitch names in order to figure intervals, rather than
on the relative distance.  So they would hear D up to F# and use that
knowledge to tell them they were hearing a major third.  I doubt whether
that can be true in all cases.  I am sure many people can turn off their
absolute pitch to some extent so that they can appreciate the "meaning" of
the various intervals.  Otherwise, they would hear no similarity between
C-E and F-A or D-F#, etc.  All would just be pitch i.d.  Tonal meaning and
significance would be impossible.  Such a person would be truly unmusical.

The issue is also complicated because musical tone almost never exists
in a pure state.  It's a complex of a fundamental pitch and its overtones
in various amplitudes.  This fact may explain why some people's sense of
absolute pitch is stronger when listening to an instrument they play (in my
case the violin).  Artificially produced sine tones are very difficult for
some people to associate with a pitch, particularly very low tones.

There are two separate components in pitch identification--the pitch name
and the octave.  People can correctly identify the pitch and miss the
octave, or vice versa.  Again this depends on the relative strengths of
the partials.

Finally the problem of being able to tell how sharp or flat a given pitch
is.  Factors here are:  what is your pitch standard? A=440? 441? 444? 435?
It's different in the Vienna Philharmonic than in the Chicago symphony.
I have personally measured the pitch standard of solo violin and cello
recordings by Perlman, Kremer, Maisky and others and they are almost always
around 20 cents sharp.  And these are digital recordings.  I don't really
understand this.

In my opinion, to play or sing in tune one must rely more on relative
pitch than absolute pitch.  But I'm not prepared to say that one relies
EXCLUSIVELY on relative pitch.  But to rely exclusively on absolute pitch
means that the performer must maintain a unique pitch reference for EVERY
audible pitch.  I question whether this is possible.

Here is a test you might try on someone who claims to have absolute pitch.
Play, say, the lowest F on the piano, followed by the highest F-sharp and
ask the person to name the notes.  Then report back!

Chris Bonds