A Musical Epiphany

I discovered something great today. It is possible to listen to notes of a chord selectively. If you play the chord C major {C, E, G} (all three tones at once), it is possible to listen to the chord as if a melody was played. For example you may hear the tone C followed by E followed by G followed by E again even though the keys are actually hit all at once.

Played:

Observed:

How is this possible? Can I do this? you ask. My answer is I don't know, but I suspect it has to do with resonance in the ears. When I do it, it feels as though some muscle deep in my ear is contracting or relaxing depending on the tone (contracting if the tone is higher). Try it and let me know your results!

What does this mean? How can it be investigated further? What applications are there? My hopes are that I will get good at doing it so that I can "tune into" (resonate at) any frequency that I want. I would then for any chord be able to plot a graph with observed intensity on the y-axis as a function of the frequency that I am looking for on the x-axis. Obviously, the ability can also come in handy when analysing music: is that a C6 or a Cmaj7? Last of all, it may be possible to develop a theory which connects the shape of the aforementioned graph to the feeling of the music. Instead of saying That's a C13+11! we might say That's Mount Everest!

Discovering this makes today a big day in my life. I'm going to be sentimental and write down the exact minute it happened. 2014-02-05 17.40 CET.