music to my ears

"E♭ major or E-flat major is a major scale based on E-flat, consisting of the pitches E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭, C, and D. Its key signature has three flats: B, E, A."

Now at this point, you probably still have absolutely no clue as to where I am going with this.

Turns out, about a year ago, I learned something about myself that really caught my attention;

the musical key of E-flat Major.

Now, seeing as there are virtually 24 basic keys that music can be performed in (without any accidentals purposely being set in place [this is where middle-eastern music got it right] by the composer), it would be odd for me to single out just one. Allow me to explain.

From March of 2000 to November of 2008, my music-ears had been set to "listen, observe and acquire". One day, that changed, and it was finally time for them to switch to "perceive, assess and examine". And that, is how I made this shocking discovery about myself. That was in fact, the key of E-flat Major, and my addiction to it.

I first noticed something was up when I heard the song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" by Sam Beam/Iron & Wine, and I had become fond of the tune rather quickly. With the song in my head, I moved to a different room in the house where Much More Music was playing it's top ten videos. The one that happened to be playing was Tegan and Sara's "Call It Off". I immediately realized that both that song and the Iron & Wine song were in the same key. hmm...

While continuing to head upstairs, I heard my sister listening to music in her bedroom. The song? "Fix You" by Coldplay. That is when I noticed -

Same key.

I picked up my guitar just to be sure, and sure enough, all of the songs were in the key of E-Flat Major. Weird? Sort of, considering all three of those songs happened to become my new favourite song of the season practically overnight. And as it just so happened to be, my two other favourite Coldplay songs, "Amsterdam" and "Clocks" were also written and played in that same key.

After that I began to notice many more songs that I seemed to fall in love with overnight, such as Glen Hansard's "Say It To Me" from the film Once (as performed on in the film), Lights' "The Listening", Maroon 5's "Won't Go Home Without You", Muse's "Map Of The Problematique", OneRepublic's "Apologize", Our Lady Peace's "4am", Owl City's "Fireflies", Paramore's "When It Rains" and "That's What You Get", U2's "I Will Follow", "City Of Blinding Lights", "Desire", and most recently 30 Seconds To Mars' "Kings and Queens". Among others are include the score to The Lord Of The Rings by Howard Shore and Sigur Ros' "Samskeyti". It also happened to be the first key I taught myself to play in on piano. Just by chance?

Hmm....