I just realized that I can play any melody starting with any key on a piano, and it sounds weird only for the first key I press, and afterwards I have trouble remembering what the original sounded like.
For example, mary had a little lamb melody can be played with
- c, bb, ab or b# a# g#
- c#, b, a
- d, c, a#
- d#, c#, b
- e, d, c
- f, d#, c#
- f#, e, d
- g, f, d#
- g#, f#, e
- a, g, f
- a#, g#, f#
- b, a, g
This phenomenon really screws with my head when I'm trying to pick correct keys from memory, since any single sound i think of out of context can be satisfied by any key, in some context, and in most cases I can't quite remember the context correctly.
Can somebody explain what is going on here? Why do I remember all of these variants as equivelent, even though they're clearly distinct key sequences with quite varying key gaps in some of them? I am extremely confused, since even the basic do, re, me, fa, so, la, si, do(cdefgab) melody can be played with any key as "do", but they won't all be white consecutive keys anymore, for example, I can do so with b,c#,d#,e,f#,g#,a#,b and no longer be able to recall what the cdefgab even sounded like afterwards, and unlike original it hits every black note in one sequence.
Another consequence of this is that it's possible to, if I mess up a note, to keep playing as if I didn't mess up, pretending that that key was the key I wanted to hit, and it'll only sound weird for the instant I hit the wrong note, but not afterwards(although at the moment of the wrong note, it's tricky to realize how much to alter the original melody for it to work out). For example, I can play mary had a little lamb as follows:
a,g,f,b,c#,c#,d,d,d,e,e,e, g,f,d#,c,d,d,d, a#,g#,g#,a#,g#,f#,f#
and get really confused about what just happened - I know it sounded weird, but I can't remember what I just heard, in my memory all I remember is the original tune as if there was nothing wrong.