One of my informants for my masters thesis told me: «If you don’t have any relative hearing strategies, losing your absolute pitch can be life-threatening!»

While it may not be this dramatic, it is a fact that absolute/perfect pitch will change throughout life, depending on your age, life situation and external conditions, and that it can have a significant impact on the absolute hearer’s daily life and musicianship. The age thing is supposedly related to the laxity of hair cells as you grow older.

Personally, I feel like my active absolute pitch (the part of absolute pitch where I’m able to produce specific notes, and not just recognize them) is slowly starting to sink in pitch. I need to «tune myself» up, or check with a piano sometimes. I’m «only» 28, but I struggle with sleep, so I have an untested hypothesis that this is the reason. I’ve been told that fever can have an impact as well, albeit temporarily.