TL;DR: Anecdotes of how my perfect pitch does and doesn't work
I discovered I had perfect pitch as a 7-year-old on the way back from church. I was newly a cathedral chorister annd had had a lot of classical music lessons (piano, singing, even recorder) and exposure since I was 4. I just remembered what C was, assuming other people could do that.
However, it's variable, and I had to work on tuning over the next few years to calibrate my sense of pitch, because choirs go out of tune when unaccompanied, as we sometimes were. It was good practice, but I did become somewhat obsessed with knowing "correct" pitch. There are others with much more finely-tuned perfect pitch, including some who claim to hear 1/8 semitone very easily. I was never that precise, and even having not played or sung much music for a few years recently (never really bought into the magic, but loved the music, so not much church really) found my pitch calibration had dropped a semitone, although this could be general memory confusion because of all the Baroque music I did at one point in time.
I discovered I had perfect pitch as a 7-year-old on the way back from church. I was newly a cathedral chorister annd had had a lot of classical music lessons (piano, singing, even recorder) and exposure since I was 4. I just remembered what C was, assuming other people could do that.
However, it's variable, and I had to work on tuning over the next few years to calibrate my sense of pitch, because choirs go out of tune when unaccompanied, as we sometimes were. It was good practice, but I did become somewhat obsessed with knowing "correct" pitch. There are others with much more finely-tuned perfect pitch, including some who claim to hear 1/8 semitone very easily. I was never that precise, and even having not played or sung much music for a few years recently (never really bought into the magic, but loved the music, so not much church really) found my pitch calibration had dropped a semitone, although this could be general memory confusion because of all the Baroque music I did at one point in time.