2 ms·

Ah, this answers my question above about “switching modes” to relative. Sounds like that’s not a thing. But can you hear chord qualities independently of pitch?

• SeanLuke 4y ago
  I can tell chord qualities fine. But I'd never be as good as someone with good relative pitch. For example, music majors have classes in sight singing: this is where the professor plays a note, say, a C, and tells everyone it's a C, then proceeds to play a sequence of chords and people learn to write down the chords based on relative position. But I and another student with perfect pitch would ace the class by just writing down the chords based on what they actually were. This went on until he started playing, say, a C and then telling everyone it's an F#. Then he'd play a sequence of chords relative to C and everybody would write them down relative to F#. Everyone except for us two, who were totally hosed. When I went to my parent's church, the organist would spot me and then immediately transpose the organ down a half step. Nobody noticed in the entire room except for me -- I couldn't sing any hymns because the notes didn't match what was on the sheet. It was his private prank just between us two, and he knew that I was the only other person in the room who knew what he had done to me.