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Comment by frafart | Hacker News Reader

It can be dormant in adults. I discovered it when I was 16 after meeting a pianist who had it and “taught me” how to do it. I kept getting faster and more accurate as I practiced solfeggio in music school in my 20s.

Crazy thing is it changes with age. At around 30 I started regressing. These days I identify the tones but shifted by one semitone.

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I feel like the pianist trained you rather than you achieving it like a little kid does. That happens sometimes if you put in the effort (learning/memorizing/training). While I am not old enough to know how it changes, could it be perhaps that what you had learned when you were 16 was in your mind a certain pitch and as ears change (a 16 year old can hear higher pitch than 30 year old), you don’t relearn it, therefore it’s shifted? Please correct me (pretty sure I’m wrong)

I have it from early age, and it also shifts now that I'm almost 40. I think the more constantly I use it though, the more it seems to settle back into accuracy.

Thank you! That's really interesting. So it's like a muscle I guess. More you use it = better.

That's not true for everyone. Some extraordinary musicians with perfect pitch also reported that it starts drifting for them as they age (I remember Oscar Peterson and Jacob Collier telling this)

Out of curiosity, did it shift up or down for you? I've had perfect putch from a young age, but now at 30 I hear everything a semiton higher (so e.g. a B sounds like a C to me, and I have to manually subtract the semitone to infer the real pitch and hope that I am not overcorrecting)

Pitch perception shifts with age?

It's well known people with perfect pitch always lose it in middle age, the reason is unknown, but it's always extremely upsetting when it happens, and since perfect pitch isn't very useful to begin with, it's actually a curse.

Does that imply that people with age actually interpret pitches differently? The pitch reading would be correct "locally", within your brain.

The loss with age is super commin, and all in the same direction (people hear more flat but guess more sharp).

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