Piano Forum

So up until this point I've been lead to believe that perfect pitch is something gained only by children who are questioned on different pitches just like we all were in terms of colours. This meant that after a certain age gaining this ability would be impossible and the closest thing would be training relative pitch. However after playing chopin nocturne op 9 no 1 in b flat minor for about 2 years im starting to question this because now lately out of nowhere when i think of the first note (b flat) and hum it its more or less the correct pitch. What can i conclude from this? Just curious.

Here is the definition of perfect pith (first thing that came up on my google search):

Perfect pitch: the ability to recognize the pitch of a note or to produce any given note; a sense of absolute pitch.

I am 60 years old.  I never trained or practiced developing perfect pitch.  I noticed that when I play a CD from the beginning every night when I listen to classical music to fall asleep, after a few days I can correctly reproduce the first note every time in tune having not heard it for 24 hours.  When I listened to the opening of Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung about 2 years ago every night for a month, I think I have this permanently in my ear.  All I need to do is look at the score and see what the note is and I can then CALCULATE to recognize the pitch of a note or to produce any given note.  

I have relative pitch from my training many years ago in college.  If I practiced this for a while, I believe I may be able to demonstrate the requirements for perfect pitch as defined above after maybe a one second calculation for each note.  For me, this makes no sense to practice.  My having perfect pitch will not benefit me in any way.

I’m sure there are many here that can immediately demonstrate perfect pitch with no calculations.  I would be interested to know if they trained to do this.  Maybe perfect_pitch can give his thoughts.