I am a musician and have perfect pitch, which is very useful for a violinist/violist, although my principle instrument is the piano. I read music before I play it and hear it at pitch in my head in the same way I read words (l am a very aural learner). None of this is affected by my accompanying deafness (I wear two hearing aids). This has always been part of me, in the same way as having brown hair, and I thought all trained musicians did this. I was sixteen when I found out that this was not the case and relatively unusual, even among musicians. I have music on a continuous loop in my head all the time - different melodies so not earworms.
I also have synesthesia. I sense, rather than see, the musical notes and keys as different colours. C minor is black, D minor is indigo, F major is orange and G major is green, for example. I also get a sense of different scents for words when reading prose. Romance is a lovely word that conjures up the smell of roses and favourite gives me the smell of Ritz crackers!
I am also fairly ambidextrous. I write with my right hand but do most things with my left, including typing on the tablet. I am left footed and left eye dominant. Again, it’s useful for music as l don’t feel any difference in strength between the hands. It comes at a price, though. As an adult I have realised l have mild dyspraxia. As a child, I could read and spell anything and found maths quite easy from a very young age but found writing incredibly difficult - I was around two years behind with writing compared with reading and spelling - and finally taught myself to write legibly and neatly when I was sixteen. Not long ago, I asked my mother if I was very undecided about which hand to use when I was small. She said that she thought I probably was “but, of course, we encouraged the right hand.” I think if I had been left to my own devices I would probably have chosen the left hand. It was the thinking of the time and my mother is extremely conventional. Reading the above back, no wonder she has described me as eccentric since the day I was born. She is proud of my musical achievements, though.
