Can anyone with perfect pitch tell us whether they experience notes as being fundamentally different in the way colors usually are?
When I was a child I had perfect pitch, but as I didn’t follow a musical career, I’ve never used it, and I haven’t checked whether I can still hear a note and hit exactly the same key on the piano first time. But to me, pitch perceptions form a continuous one-dimensional space. It’s more like being able to recognise the length of things. There’s no special quality to something being a foot long rather than 11 or 13 inches; it’s just recognisably 12 inches long.
Harmonies, on the other hand, are more like colours. There are distinct qualities to major and minor triads etc., and to chord sequences.
When I was a child I had perfect pitch, but as I didn’t follow a musical career, I’ve never used it, and I haven’t checked whether I can still hear a note and hit exactly the same key on the piano first time. But to me, pitch perceptions form a continuous one-dimensional space. It’s more like being able to recognise the length of things. There’s no special quality to something being a foot long rather than 11 or 13 inches; it’s just recognisably 12 inches long.
Harmonies, on the other hand, are more like colours. There are distinct qualities to major and minor triads etc., and to chord sequences.