I took a music theory class in college that had a very heavy ear-training component.

The TA in the course would often talk about the concept of "pitch memory", both absolute and relative. In other words, perfect pitch isn't a binary concept of you either have it or you don't, but it's your ability to remember and reproduce absolute pitches from memory. What we think of as "perfect pitch" is the extreme version of this, where your pitch memory is basically long-term and you can sing a middle-C on command. But many people have decent short-term pitch memory. One girl in my ear training session (a pretty accomplished cellist) could remember absolute pitches for the whole 1.5 hour session; if we came back to a note, she could get it, but she was usually lost in the beginning of the session when we came in cold. I (9 years of violin training, starting at age 7) had a pitch memory of about 5-10 minutes - while we were working on a specific interval, I could remember and reproduce the base note without being prompted by the piano, but once we moved on to another interval I'd lose it. My wife (no specific music training) goes off-key after about 20 seconds.

It wouldn't surprise me that training this ability when you're young leads to much longer-term memory than training it as an adult, the same way that training gymnastics when young leads to the ability to do a back handspring from muscle memory, or training a foreign language gives you a much better ability to speak it without an accent.

Cellist for the last 35 years here. No perfect pitch. My "perfect" note identification is based on timbre: I know what each note sounds like on the instruments I know intimately.

For synthetic tones, I will be off +/- 3 semitones because I will be using an aural memory of the cello a string as a reference, rather than recognizing the frequency like the perfect pitch folks do.

Never occurred to me to practice perfect pitch because, as you said, it is not that useful.

How does one "practice" perfect pitch? (genuinely asking so I can try it, not trying to make some dumb rhetorical point about it not being possible)

How far does it go on your own case? Are there degrees of it?

Can you do the level harmony recognition like in the video below, or it's more the individual notes when played on it's own?

https://youtu.be/hli-9maxDjY

What you describe sounds like pitch memory, which doesn't have the same qualities (and problems) as actual absolute ("perfect") pitch. I also remember pitch. I can grab my guitar after a week away from it, touch a string and know if it's out of tune. I can tune it without a tuner.

But what I'm actually doing is remembering the pitch with the help of the timbre of the guitar string (or harp string, for my wife's harp - I hear if a string is "off" even if it's the first single note I hear in the morning). I believe I would quickly be bewildered if I heard pure sine tones. And that's it. There's nothing more which is even close to what people with absolute pitch can do. I haven't run into that many of them, but it's like they see all the music in color, it's a different world (and they are often constantly bothered by out-of-tune sounds from life). Hit some random notes in parallel and they can tell you the notes instantly. And so on and so forth.

The other thing is what happens if they lose the perfect pitch.. which does happen, with age, for many, or at least it de-tunes a bit (drops a semitone, for example). Then, when it's gone, they don't even have relative pitch to rely on. Rick Beato interviewed a couple of people this happened to. I don't want to be there. My little ability to tune without a tuner is enough for me, and what it is is trained pitch memory - not absolute pitch. And it's relatively common, unlike absolute pitch.

Could you elaborate on your method? That's quite impressive considering it's widely believed to be untrainable past a certain age (at least that's layman my understanding).

Did you start with a complete inability to identify notes, and now are able to identity them immediately (i.e like acquiring a new language?).

May you please explain ELI5 what "perfect pitch" means?

(I was told I was a musical savant, and once I was told that, I was scared away from music... my Violin teacher was known to be owb of the best, SO i dont know what "perfect pitch" is, as I attribute it to 'bad actors'

Interesting, I didn’t know perfect pitch was something you could practice. My son was a pretty high level french horn player and from a very early age he had perfect pitch. His teachers always told us it was something you’re born with.

I would imagine relative pitch is more useful/practiced? I was a musician in a rock band for many years (you never heard of) and I have relative pitch. I started in orchestra on the cello at age 7. Banged on drums during middle school. Picked up guitar in high school and formed a band. I can identify chords and I can tell you what note if I have another note as a reference (like you do with your voice).

I’m curious how much initial effort it took you to get decent at it

Do you recommend any routine to help a young child learn absolute pitch? I’m talking under 3 years of age.