Jeremy McMillan:

>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.

I have a very weak form of perfect pitch.  I can hear Eb in one ear and Bb
in another; one of my science professors speculated it was blood rushing
through a vein next to my eardrum, causing the vein to vibrate to those
pitches.  Perhaps it's a mild form of tintinitis.  I don't consider it
perfect pitch, since I suspect that true perfect pitch is a matter of
memory, and I'm using some sort of internal tuning fork.  On the other
hand, I have fairly strong relative pitch.

As a choral singer, I often need to find a pitch, and the Eb and Bb can be
handy.  On the other hand, I can sing just as flat as anybody else, without
it bothering me, also an advantage for singing in choirs.

Lately, however, I've noticed that my sense of key is much stronger than it
has ever been.  My choir was making harmonic hash of William Walton's "Set
me as a seal upon thine heart," to the extent that I could no longer hear
the key.  This has never happened to me before, and I'm uncertain how to
deal with it.

Steve Schwartz