Nearly all of the musicians surveyed who had perfect pitch said they had started their music training by the age of 6. The older the musicians were when they started training, the less likely they were to have perfect pitch.
Among those who started music lessons before the age of 4, some 40 percent had perfect pitch. But that number dropped to 3 percent for musicians who started their training after turning 12.
That being said, there seem to be some studies too that say acquiring perfect pitch is possible as an adult.
This study follows up from the group’s previously published study, which shows that people with absolute pitch can be “retuned” in about 45 minutes of listening, demonstrating that absolute pitch is not so absolute. The new study shows that people without absolute pitch have the ability to learn notes quickly as well. A 2013 study from Harvard University researchers reported that a drug commonly used to treat epilepsy could effectively reopen a critical period of learning ability, allowing a person to learn skills like absolute pitch. The current UChicago study does not use medications to train the brain to learn absolute pitch skills to a comparable degree.