this might be an odd question, but i was scrolling through your blog a bit and you mentioned that you had perfect pitch. considering that you play clarinet which is Bb instrument it got me thinking a bit. is your perfect pitch like in the key of Bb if you get what i mean? so if you hear a Bb you recognise it as a C instead of a Bb or is it you hear a C you recognise it as a C? if its the latter is it annoying to play your music as you’re playing something that is a tone lower than its written?
My perfect pitch is in C! I still mostly think about pitches and intervals in terms of violin. But because I discovered I had it around the time I started playing clarinet, and because I play transposing instruments all the time, it doesn’t bother me at all. I just recognize that concert C, Bb clarinet D, A clarinet Eb, Eb clarinet A are all the same note.
(So when I see a C on a Bb clarinet part, I don’t think the pitch C, I think the fingering C which is the pitch Bb.)
The names we give notes are arbitrary. The color green is still green regardless if you call it green or vert or verde or grün or vihreä. Going from instrument to instrument is like switching languages, all the transpositions “translate” to the same concrete pitch.
I also listen to quite a bit of baroque music so A=415 doesn’t bother me too much either, although it takes some adjustment and I have to think harder about what pitch is being played.
Hope some of that makes sense haha!
