Developing perfect pitch: Art or Scientific Method?

Burge says various times in his course that developing absolute pitch is an art, and I never understood that until very recently. He says it's "not some recipe" where you add some of this ingredient, and then that one, etc. On the other hand, he does say that it should be approached from different angles, as I see it because sometimes it seems like you have to sort of trick your ear into developing further. That's probably where the art comes in. I had trouble with this because I tend to approach things systematically, like I'm sure many people do, and according to Burge this is really not the mentality to have. I think one way to step away from the systematic approach is to not be overly rigid in the training regimen - that is, do the training when it feels right - night, morning, whatever - and take breaks when it feels right to take a day or so off. With any art though, it would seem to me that in order to really improve, one would have to spend more than a half an hour a day - so I think I will try to put in a few training sessions daily from now on - unless I really feel like I should take a day off. I would say to start out as Burge says, doing just a bit each day (20 minutes or so), but as you get fairly far along in your training, step it up as you feel you need to. And take a day off when you feel like you need to. I guess it really should be approached like an art rather than a science...

As an update on my progress, the pitch colors are becoming clearer, and I've noticed that I'm just listening to the pitches themselves in my training, for the most part. That is, not hearing them as relating to some other tone. Burge calls the latter experience "absolute relative pitch". Absolute relative pitch is when you can hear a pitch and know what it is, even if you've heard no other pitches that day, but for some reason you hear it as relating to some other pitch. For example whenever I heard a C# (I usually think of it as Db), I heard it as a major third above A. This is something that probably everyone who does this training will experience at some point. It is a good sign, and actually you can use it to start learning pitches better. For example, I was having a lot of trouble with Eb, so I tried to associate it as being a major third up from B (although then I guess it would be considered D#). I heard F# as a major third above D, etc. This will happen when you know certain tones better than others. I am at the point where this is fading and I'm just listening to the notes themselves more. Not something you can force, absolute relative pitch will simply fade into absolute pitch on its own.