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Thread: Transposing Notes

  1. #26
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Exactly. Exactly.

    With woodwinds, we have a certain anomaly that mandolins and most strings don't have. Woodwinds are built around a scale. The C scale on a clarinet is the most straightforward scale, just going up and down the holes and not messing with other keys too much. All the accidentals (black keys) are the different keys and non-intuitive fingerings. Its as if the clarinet were built around the C scale and all the rest was added to make it chromatic. Many woodwinds are like this.

    The experience of playing a tune in E, on the clarinet is really crazy till you get used to it. You kind of aim for where you know to put your fingers, and make sure you miss every time. Playing a tune in E on a mandolin, or guitar, is mostly just a matter of shifting up or down a string, or up or down a number of frets. The pattern is largely the same.

    Now in a typical standard clarinet, playing the C scale, as one would read it off a page of sheet music, yields tones that are the Bb scale.

    When you play the simplest scale on an alto sax, it is the notes one would read from sheet music as the C scale, with no sharps or flats, but the tones are that of the Eb scale.

    In ensemble music with woodwinds, the sheet music is not all written in the same key, to accommodate this. Even though in terms of pitch, everyone is playing in the same key.

    If one starts with woodwinds, in say high school band, all this becomes kind of second nature.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

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  3. #27
    Professional Dreamer journeybear's Avatar
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Aha! Thanks, DavidKOS and JeffD. I've learned something today. Yes, even this old curmudgeon is capable of learning. Whodathunkit?

    Of course, it helps when it's explained so clearly.

    I did not have any band experience in school, or I might have known this. My first instrument was a woodwind, though, the recorder (well, technically it was the Tonette, but the less said about that plastic ocarina the better ... maybe ... ), which is in fact a C instrument. So in my defense, I would not have known this about Bb and Eb instruments. I have seen that designation over the years, and vaguely understood how it related to those instruments. But not to other instruments which weren't so designated. So the notion of a C instrument is new to me. Thanks for clarifying. And sorry for any confusion the expression of my confusion may have caused.

    I appreciate your efforts to achieve understanding.
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  5. #28
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    The issue is that I have learned the tune and melody in "A" and in a jam that I attended recently the singer sings it in G. I haven't been playing that long, but have allot of experience of transposing chords. I am just starting to play in jams and the singer dictates the chord and I am not a singer per se. I am very appreciative of all the constructive feedback, it has been extremely helpful. I apologize for my lack of experience. I don't know what I don't know.

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  7. #29
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Zeb Williams View Post
    I apologize for my lack of experience. I don't know what I don't know.
    Thanks for checking in. Left on our own, we tend to wander ...

    As time goes by and you learn more and more, you'll find you won't know even more of what you don't know. Like that old saw, "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know." Heck, I think I've forgotten more than I know!

    So, yeah, I think you'll be able to sort it out from this or that in the responses. It seems to me that if you've got the melody worked out in A, and you have the pattern down cold, find the A note - the starting or ending point - and move the pattern so that's now the G note.
    But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller

    Furthering Mandolin Consciousness

    Finders Keepers, my duo with the astoundingly talented and versatile Patti Rothberg. Our EP is finally done, and available! PM me, while they last!

  8. #30

    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    It never hurts to learn some of the common tunes in a few different keys. And if you learn an A tune in G or vice versa, you now have at least some of the tool kit for transposing between C and D. And there are a lot of singers out there (myself included) who want to call one of the high and lonesomes but can’t quite get there in the key of B. I don’t think there’s a method to doing it but all the suggestions above are good ones. I would probably just find whatever the new first note of the tune would be and just work through it. One benefit to learning like this is it helps you hear what passages really define the tune. If you’ve only heard it in one key and then move it around you’re going to have to re-construct it without the familiar tones. So you might notice where to add emphasis or variation in ways that can inform your playing on the original key.

    These tunes are practically living things that change as they move around from place to place. I learned red haired boy in G before I learned it in A. No idea why. A friend of mine learned Black Mountain Rag on guitar in D, which makes no sense to me at all, but gave me an excuse to branch out.
    Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

  9. #31
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyMandolin View Post
    It never hurts to learn some of the common tunes in a few different keys. And if you learn an A tune in G or vice versa, you now have at least some of the tool kit for transposing between C and D. And there are a lot of singers out there (myself included) who want to call one of the high and lonesomes but can’t quite get there in the key of B. I don’t think there’s a method to doing it but all the suggestions above are good ones. I would probably just find whatever the new first note of the tune would be and just work through it. One benefit to learning like this is it helps you hear what passages really define the tune. If you’ve only heard it in one key and then move it around you’re going to have to re-construct it without the familiar tones. So you might notice where to add emphasis or variation in ways that can inform your playing on the original key.

    These tunes are practically living things that change as they move around from place to place. I learned red haired boy in G before I learned it in A. No idea why. A friend of mine learned Black Mountain Rag on guitar in D, which makes no sense to me at all, but gave me an excuse to branch out.
    D, I believe, is where Doc Watson played it, probably because he liked that range better.

  10. #32
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Clausen View Post
    This is great advice for a jam tune. I'd try it this way: play an A chord and sing the tune in A. Then play a G chord and sing the tune in G. Easy, no? Then find and play the notes you sang. And yeah, knowing your scales will help a lot.
    Maybe I'm an exceptionally poor singer but there are quite a number of tunes that I've learned from records, or worked out from memory, which I can't sing at all
    (e.g., several of the tunes on Howdy Forrester's Fancy Fiddlin' album.) That's he reason I asked what tune, or what kind of tune, the OP is about.

    The reason for the chosen key may be idiomatic, e.g., figures bouncing off an open string, or the use of fretted and open notes in unison, so something may be lost - or gained! - in transposing. One Café member once wanted suggestions for moving the Gold Rush down from A to G, and in that case I wouldn't suggest just moving the fingering back two frets, but rather play it in third position, using the d on the 2nd course as a pivot point. Etc.

    Anyway, ultimately the player should be able to transpose by ear, not by figuring. When I started playing the mando in 1967, after 10 years of guitar, I was greatly helped by never using written or printed sources and never committing anything (except my own compositions) to paper.

  11. #33
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Don Stiernberg View Post
    To be able to find all these things on the symmetrical fretboard of the greatest instrument in the world is a blessing.
    So beautiful and correct. A statement after which nothing need be said. Including this inane comment of mine.
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  12. #34
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    Anyway, ultimately the player should be able to transpose by ear, not by figuring.
    Yes.

    I recall playing some multi-part Playford tunes, with conservatory trained friends on lower brass, double reeds, etc. I started to tell them I could transpose their parts, but they all said don't bother, they could just "read it up or down, as needed".

    Mad skills some folks have. I am working on it. I can fly, but not always clear the picket fence. I am not ready for my cape.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

    The entire staff
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  13. #35
    Registered User Simon DS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Transposing Notes

    OP says, ‘I have a tune’.
    Of course that can mean a lot of things, but if instead of a pdf, you have it in .abc file format then you can transpose it with freely available software to whatever key you want.
    Check abcnotation.com and mandolintab.net

    -now if you have a tune in your head or better still, in your fingers...

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