is it possible to learn instrument based perfect pitch?
Perfect pitch is impossible to learn especially since I'm 19 years old but I have heard of people who developed perfect pitch on their instruments. For example, Aimee Nolte is able to listen to the piano and just know what the notes are, and Robert from the Living Piano states that he could tell what notes are being played on the piano and the french horn. but they cannot just sing an A off the top of their head like a person with perfect pitch can.
To practice this I've decided put time and effort into singing fixed chromatic solfege, scales, modes, chords, and Bach's 2-part inventions, both left and and right hand.
Do you think, being 19 years old, I will be able to develop this innate ability for the piano using this method?
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"Perfect pitch" is one of those buzzwords that people throw about that I suspect doesn't really matter very much. Something non-musicians say in to imply that someone must be a musical genius, to whom everything comes effortlessly. It's not like that.
Sometimes I get an intuition about what key a piece I hear is, and sometimes I'm right. Sometimes I'm not. It doesn't bother me much if not.
However I have pretty good ears, can hear the intervals and harmonies in quite a lot of music and so on. If you tell me what the start note is, I could notate most melodies quite quickly by listening. If you sing me something I can usually play it back to you. I think that that is much more useful. I also work at being really well in tune, whatever instrument I am playing (not always with complete success).
Develop your ears and your ability to listen, don't worry about perfect pitch. It doesn't matter much.
It's a nice party trick, but not that helpful when it comes to playing piano, or music stuff in general. What are you going to do with it if you ever achieve that status? It can be satisfying being able to recognise a key for a piece - but then when you want to play it properly, you'll probably have to refer to the dots anyway.
My method was/is to sing what I think is a particular note, every time I walk towards an instrument - piano, guitar, etc. Then play that note. For me, it's C, but I consider it as the M3 of Ab. After several years , I'm spot on or 'in the crack' about 90% of the time - it gets done several times most days. The rest is either a B or a C#, so it's not too bad. But, what can I do with it even if it's perfect?
Playing certain (pop-type) tunes in several different keys with different bands hasn't helped cement one key with one song, fairly obviously.
Working on relative pitch is far more important, so I'd go, as Kevin H says, with that approach.
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