xD Well I didn't expect it to go there. I don't know that song but I'll have to listen to it when I get home.
I don't have perfect pitch but it's not too hard to imagine what I could do with it. For me, it'd simply make a lot of tasks faster. I've spent a lot of time throughout my life transcribing music. I can do it relatively quickly but there's lots of moments where I have to confirm things, or poke around notes finding the matching notes, struggling to clarify shades of a chord based on the presence of notes.
Reading music will be easier for people with AP, especially in singing situations. Even if you're a pianist it will still be helpful. There are a few Marc-Andre Hamelin interviews out there where he describes some of the advantages. It's easier to read music if you know immediately what it's going to sound like. Again, this is possible with relative pitch, but it's just more work and slower.
Arranging and composing away from the keyboard will be much easier with perfect pitch.
As time goes on, it'll be less important, most likely. And yes, there are some downsides obviously. In my final aural training class in music school, we had a competition at the very end of the year for fun. It came down to a team of 3 I was on vs. a team of 3 that had a guy with AP. The final task was to sight-sing a musical 'round' (a composition where the melody repeats in the various voices at different points in different voices overlapping each other). The guy with AP actually ruined it for his team. They mistakenly chose him to finish the round instead of start it. Mid-way through their performance, the pitch on their team had drifted so heavily they were in-between notes on the piano when he took over. He tried to sing 'relative' to everyone else but it was so hard for him. It was so unnatural for him to sing out of key, he couldn't do it; it sounded really bad. Great guy though and a ridiculously good violinist.
I don't have perfect pitch but it's not too hard to imagine what I could do with it. For me, it'd simply make a lot of tasks faster. I've spent a lot of time throughout my life transcribing music. I can do it relatively quickly but there's lots of moments where I have to confirm things, or poke around notes finding the matching notes, struggling to clarify shades of a chord based on the presence of notes.
Reading music will be easier for people with AP, especially in singing situations. Even if you're a pianist it will still be helpful. There are a few Marc-Andre Hamelin interviews out there where he describes some of the advantages. It's easier to read music if you know immediately what it's going to sound like. Again, this is possible with relative pitch, but it's just more work and slower.
Arranging and composing away from the keyboard will be much easier with perfect pitch.
As time goes on, it'll be less important, most likely. And yes, there are some downsides obviously. In my final aural training class in music school, we had a competition at the very end of the year for fun. It came down to a team of 3 I was on vs. a team of 3 that had a guy with AP. The final task was to sight-sing a musical 'round' (a composition where the melody repeats in the various voices at different points in different voices overlapping each other). The guy with AP actually ruined it for his team. They mistakenly chose him to finish the round instead of start it. Mid-way through their performance, the pitch on their team had drifted so heavily they were in-between notes on the piano when he took over. He tried to sing 'relative' to everyone else but it was so hard for him. It was so unnatural for him to sing out of key, he couldn't do it; it sounded really bad. Great guy though and a ridiculously good violinist.