Transposing at sight - scale degrees or intervals?

[boxjuice]

Ive been practicing transposing at sight and i was wondering, do you guys who are good at tranposing at sight figure out the interval between the two keys and then move every note up/down by that interval (eg if tansposing from C maj to E maj move every note up by a major third) or do you figure out the scale degree of the note written on the sheet and then play that degree in the new key (eg if tranposing from C maj to E maj and a D note is written down, you observe that D is the second degree in C major and then play the second degree of E maj (f#) instead)


Also, how do you deal with modulations when they pop up? It seems like modulations would make things tricky

[brogers70]

My piano teacher is also my vocal coach. She transcribes the piano accompaniment of whatever I'm singing to whatever key she thinks will push my voice the way she wants to push it. From talking to her it sounds like she thinks in terms of theoretical harmonies. If it's a I-VI-II-V-I progression in the original key, she just adjusts to make it the same progression in the transposed key, thinking in terms of the harmony as a whole rather than in terms of individual notes. It amazes me that she can do it. And she sometimes tricks me into singing farther into my upper register than I think I can because the notes she playing are a whole step or a minor third higher than what I'm looking at on my score and she hasn't warned me. It's a remarkable skill.

[timothy42b]

I don't have this skill at piano so I don't know if the mental process is the same.

On a monotonic instrument (I play brass, mostly trombone) I move the clef.  I'm not sure what the mental process really is but the note starts to look like the "concert" pitch.  For example, if a melody is in E, and I need to move it to D (actually happened to me in performance, the guitar player leaned over and said "we go to D on this verse") I need to look at first line treble clef and see a D.  I don't always do it perfectly especially with accidentals. 

I think this is related to playing by ear.  When I play by ear I think degrees of the scale. 

My mother could do this on piano at sight, I never heard her stumble.  Alas, she has long passed, and it never occurred to me to ask her how she did it.  I do know that she had seven clefs and that's how she did it on other instruments. 

[anamnesis]

I don't have this skill at piano so I don't know if the mental process is the same.

On a monotonic instrument (I play brass, mostly trombone) I move the clef.  I'm not sure what the mental process really is but the note starts to look like the "concert" pitch.  For example, if a melody is in E, and I need to move it to D (actually happened to me in performance, the guitar player leaned over and said "we go to D on this verse") I need to look at first line treble clef and see a D.  I don't always do it perfectly especially with accidentals. 

I think this is related to playing by ear.  When I play by ear I think degrees of the scale. 

My mother could do this on piano at sight, I never heard her stumble.  Alas, she has long passed, and it never occurred to me to ask her how she did it.  I do know that she had seven clefs and that's how she did it on other instruments. 

It sounds like she uses a systematic clef transposition method. 

https://derekremes.com/wp-content/uploads/Transposition%20by%20Changing%20Clef_by%20Derek%20Remes.pdf

It takes awhile to learn, and it is much easier to do if you learned clefs using fixed-do solmization as the reading method then letters. This is because they are easier to vocalize in a flow and sequence, and thus mentally manipulate and shift in staff space. 

[stevensk]

-Neither a scale or an interval. For me, I see and "hear" the whole phrase in the sheet as I see and hear a written mening in a paper. Then its an easy job to play it in whatever key (ok, not always easy )

[timothy42b]

It takes awhile to learn, and it is much easier to do if you learned clefs using fixed-do solmization as the reading method then letters.  

Horrors!

There are benefits to fixed do but this is NOT one of them - fixed do will interfere with your ability to move clefs. 

[dcstudio]

Horrors!

There are benefits to fixed do but this is NOT one of them - fixed do will interfere with your ability to move clefs. 

I was taught  moveable do first and I really do believe that made it possible for me to get to a point where at sight transposition became possible. 

After years of doing this for a living you start seeing the sameness that exists in all music. Chord progressions become so standard you can play them in your sleep.  It is not hard to do at all once you have the brainpower for it.  It is impressive though...lol.  it's one of my strong suits actually.

[anamnesis]

Horrors!

There are benefits to fixed do but this is NOT one of them - fixed do will interfere with your ability to move clefs. 

That's only if you do not use the correct approach to learning it.  It's about relative positions of the syllables and their intervals, NOT their "absolute" positions on the staff.  Most people don't understand the actual training that goes into using fixed-do solfege as a note reading method.

Have a look at one of Bernhard's posts on teaching sight-reading:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=2713.msg23282#msg23282

He has students learn to the say the letters in thirds as a loop in any sequence.  This is also done in fixed-solfege training except you don't stop at thirds.  You do it for every single intervallic combination backwards and forwards until you are absolutely fluent.  You don't even stop there.  You go on to do this with melodic and harmonic sequences.  

Look at page 93 of this preview pdf to get an idea:
https://www.narcisbonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/leem.pdf

[dcstudio]

He has students learn to the say the letters in thirds as a loop in any sequence.  This is also done in fixed-solfege training except you don't stop at thirds.  

It works!  I was taught to do this as well and it really makes a difference.

[timothy42b]

He has students learn to the say the letters in thirds as a loop in any sequence.  

No, actually not.  He has the student say the lines or the spaces.  Not the same thing.  And he uses letter names, not solfege (although he does say solfege should work). 

This is also done in fixed-solfege training except you don't stop at thirds.

You've proved my point - you didn't understand why his method works. 

[anamnesis]

No, actually not.  He has the student say the lines or the spaces.  Not the same thing.  And he uses letter names, not solfege (although he does say solfege should work). 
 

You've proved my point - you didn't understand why his method works. 

 (First, I already acknowledged he uses letters. I'm merely showing a parallel between that and how some of fixed-solfege, as a note-reading method, is trained.) 

Read the first two steps in his post.

Even before we get to any training with the staff, mental fluency between the letters is achieved by being able to loop stacks of thirds.  Memorized, like a phone number, and starting on any letter.  He has the student memorize EGBDFACE, and then be able to do that starting on any letter.

The entire method is based on being able to stack thirds, and then later connecting that with the staff by recognizing line-to-line and space-to-space are thirds.

The part you might be confusing is that he teaches a beginning student to recognize the grand staff as a whole, but that's a completely separate issue to what we are talking about. 

The part I'm abstracting from his post is the mental fluency involving the diatonic nomenclature with intervals.  It's the ability to quickly spell intervals and mentally manipulate them.  He only does thirds, because that is sufficient at that level.  However you can expand that later on and connect that with the visual presentation on the staff. 

Mentally being able to switch clefs requires you do understand relative and intervallic positions on the staff and NOT absolute. It doesn't matter whether you use letters or solfege for this.

I only mentioned fixed-solfege because it's ability to be more easily verbalized like a "memorized phone number" is what makes it easier to use then letters when you do more intensive training.   

[timothy42b]

 (First, I already acknowledged he uses letters. I'm merely showing a parallel between that and how some of fixed-solfege, as a note-reading method, is trained.) 

Read the first two steps in his post.

Even before we get to any training with the staff, mental fluency between the letters is achieved by being able to loop stacks of thirds.  Memorized, like a phone number, and starting on any letter.  He has the student memorize EGBDFACE, and then be able to do that starting on any letter.

The entire method is based on being able to stack thirds, and then later connecting that with the staff by recognizing line-to-line and space-to-space are thirds.

No, I don't think you're right on this one.  Further on in that post he says all fluent readers do it by lines OR spaces, not by intervals. 

And, need I point out that EG is not a third?  Or are going to ignore differences between major, minor, and other thirds? 

[anamnesis]

No, I don't think you're right on this one.  Further on in that post he says all fluent readers do it by lines OR spaces, not by intervals. 

And, need I point out that EG is not a third?  Or are going to ignore differences between major, minor, and other thirds? 

He never said anything about being against by interval.  He was against doing it "alphabetically" (meaning using the order of diatonic seconds) when referencing line-space-line-space. 

5.      Avoid using alphabetical order. It is a very inefficient way to read music. All competent sight readers read lines or spaces, not line-space-line-space-etc, even if they are not aware of it.

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=2713.msg23584#msg23584

In other words you don't go from C to G by going C->D->E->F->G, but C->E->G.

Training in fixed solfege as a reading method, depending on how well trained you are, you can immediately recognized the fifth from C to G, or go stacks of thirds like Bernhard suggests, or if you are completely untrained go one at a time by seconds.   

---

I never said anything about ignoring interval quality. 

E (sharp, flat, natural, double sharp, or double flat) to G (sharp, flat, natural, double sharp, or double flat) in staff space where it goes from one line adjacent to another line or space to space is always going to be a generic third.

The actual quality is determined by the diatonic collection implied by the key signature + accidentals.  This is a separate issue from just mastering the recognition of generic intervals and requires mastery of diatonic collections/key signatures. 

In terms of how that applies to a fixed solfege reading system, one can either use a chromatic alteration (which I prefer) or simply mentally acknowledge the accidental. 



 









 

[falala]

For me it's scale degrees all the way, though not generally as individual notes, rather as bigger patterns rooted in the scale. So I'll look at a tune and see "a kind of chord I arpeggio starting on the third, then coming back down the scale, leaping to the 4th, using the #4 to move towards the dominant and then descending to the tonic", just as much as I see the literal letter-names of notes. It's then easy to reproduce the same patterns in a different key.

Harmonically I'm a bit like brogers. I see/hear/feel the overall harmonic pattern as one in a set of standard formulae, and can then see/hear/feel any exceptions in it to that - where it goes to an unexpected chord etc. And then I just reproduce that same formula in the new key.

[richard black]

I do quite a lot of transposing and I use a combination of techniques. If I know a piece well by ear I do the transposition mostly by ear too. Otherwise I sometimes calculate where individual notes are and sometimes recognise chord shapes (which is mostly how I sight-read chords anyway). I'm not _very_ good at any one technique but with a combination I get by OK. But it does help to know a piece really well. The German accompanist Michael Raucheisen apparently once transposed an entire Hugo Wolf recital down for a singer (with a cold) by a minor 3rd, which is not a trivial feat - but he knew Wolf's songs very well indeed which I'm sure helped no end.