Bill, you talk about how in order to have absolute pitch, you need some reference point(s) that were instilled from a very young age. But what I do is I compare the note to a pre-selected list of songs, and I can tell the note's pitch by what song it matches. It's not always snap-instant, but I can usually get at least a half-step around the true note.
exactly, that's mostly how i do it. but, .... can you do it while another song is playing