Transposition

[8426]

Do any of you know if there is a good book on transposing? Or websites?
Especially transposing on sight.

[richard black]

Never seen any guides to it. It's something I have to do a lot as I play frequently for singers and part of the job is finding the right key for each singer. My suggestions for improving one's skills in this area are these:

Take a really simple piece that you know by ear (I started with the British National Anthem - I was 10, OK?) and play it in every key. Repeat with slightly harder pieces, still by ear.

Take some simple tonic-dominant pieces and practice them just enough in the printed key so that you basically know them, then transpose them to nearby key - a semitone or whole tone up or down. I find the 'Arie Antiche' collection of songs is really useful for this.

Once you start getting better at it, simply expand your repertoire with harder pieces and more remote transpositions. I don't claim to be able to play a 20th-century song I've never seen in my life before at an augmented 4th transposition, but with a little practice one can get to the level of transposing a simple Handel aria at sight by a tone.

Be aware that transposing by ear and by eye are two completely different methods. It's well worth being able to do both, but one does sometimes get confused about which one is doing and that's when accidents happen!

[hot_box_recordz]

Hola...

Another method that will save you time goes as follows:

1 - by a recording sequencer such as Cubase - You can Transpose as you please when recordings are done in MIDI format.
2 - Buy the AUTOTUNE Plugin if you don't want to have to re-record audio. It does a very good job of pitch-shifting. This is the same device used by the best producers from around the world to get artists who can't sing to sound good on digital format but sound terrible when performing live.

You can obviously google these two software programmes and learn a bit more about them to see if they fit your needs.

Hope this helps...

[quantum]

One method for transposing at sight does involve quite a bit of intervalic reading.  It's the method that was taught to me when I did sight transposition at my accompanying lessons on a weekly basis. 

Instead of thinking:
Note #1 - 2nd line - G
Note #2 - 3rd line - B
Note  #3 - 4th line - D
Note # 4 - 3rd space - C
Note # 5 - 2nd space - A
Note # 6 - 4th line - D
Note # 7 - 2nd line - G

we think this:
Note #1 - 2nd line - G
Note #2 - M 3rd up
Note  #3 - m 3rd up
Note # 4 - M 2nd down
Note # 5 - m 3rd down
Note # 6 - P 4th up
Note # 7 - P 5th down

The above can easily be applied to a transposition by reading the lines and spaces on the staff instead of fixing them to notes:

Transpose into F major, Major 2nd down:
Note #1 - 1st space - F
Note #2 - M 3rd up
Note  #3 - m 3rd up
Note # 4 - M 2nd down
Note # 5 - m 3rd down
Note # 6 - P 4th up
Note # 7 - P 5th down