In church today I didn’t want to sing in case I was out of out of tune. I harmonised quietly within. The first song was one I know to be in G major. Not unexpectedly I heard it very clearly in A flat. I could visualise the chords in the key as the guitars played. As sometimes is done to heighten the excitement, the band shifted the music up by a semitone in the final verse,

What key was this? It took a while to identify it. It certainly wasn’t A major, the key I would expect. I eventually identified it as A flat major, but a less mellow version of the key than the one I’d started in. I tried to shift the music into A major but could not change it into a sharp key.

So, two A flat majors a semitone apart! I need a musician audiologist to help me explain these fine gradations of altered key sense.