I apologize for straying so far off topic. Some of you might find these to be interesting observations, if not, you know where the delete key is. Actually, I believe Berlin played in C#, or if you prefer, D flat. I have a friend who does the same thing. He doesn't read a note of music, but plays beautifully in C#. It actually makes sense and fits the heads quite well. It's probably the easiest scale to play, if you don't let reading music with large key signatures get in your way. You use all the sharp keys with the four longer fingers, and only C(B#) and F(E#) with the thumbs; or, a simplistic way of looking at the keyboard to a musical novice is that the only white keys used are the ones on the right of each white-key pair. If you don't read music you don't have to be overwhelmed with seven sharps in the key signature, every note being sharp. Of course, accidentals and chromatic passages are another matter. If one were to learn to “play by ear” this way, for very practical reasons, I suppose it could be problematic if he/she decides to learn to read music at a later time. Actually that’s not the problem it would seem. The key on the keyboard that we call C#, becomes C to these players. That’s not as strange as it seems, similar things are done routinely with some wind instruments. Music for French horn is written in F, but often played on a horn in B flat. They don't struggle with always transposing a fourth, they simple learn the fingering on the B flat horn (or B flat side of a double horn) that sounds the note as written for horn in F. Likewise for the trombone, with a fundament pitch of B flat, but their music is written in C. Frank Emerson
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