[elliottkember]

> I guess you need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of course.

Yeah, there's a big difference between fingered instruments and singing. When you're playing on a fingered instrument, it's quite easy to apply incidentals – you get a feeling for the shape of the scale (and you practice scales to help with that). But unless you have perfect pitch, you're only _ever_ singing intervals. And good luck when the key changes from F# Major to Eb Minor halfway through the piece!

Another factor is that these singers likely do not play any other instruments, so they don't have any visual or tactile reference for sharps or flats – all keys are sung exactly the same way. When you're singing "by ear", you place the note in the scale you're singing.

[edjw]

There aren't any accompanying instruments but singers do play other instruments in the rest of their life.

In Sacred Harp, before a song is sung, somebody sings out the notes of the opening chord of the song using a combination of ear/feel/memory/practice/experience. The same song can be keyed a bit higher or lower depending on things like: energy of the singers, time of day, whether the last song was quite high or low, how easy the highest or lowest written notes are for the singers in the room. It is a skill! But most keyers will usually pitch songs written in F major at roughly the same pitch and will pitch songs written in D major differently to F major.

You can hear it on any recording but around 0:15 here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8bKu52cv6o

[recursive]

Not sure if you did this on purpose but the notes in F# major are the same as those in Eb minor, just not the spellings.

[elliottkember]

Case in point exactly. The notes you play are the same, but they’re in a different spot on the staff.