B/C or E/F

[geopianoincanada]

I'm still taking things easy since having to halt piano practice back in August. I'm resuming things gradually not trying to strain the right arm.

I've been spending time with my music professor on learning written notation, rests, intervals, key signatures, transposition, all of that stuff. But one thing still keeps tripping me up and it's a really silly, even embarassing thing.

The interval between B and C, or between E and F, for some reason I keep holding onto an incorrect notion - even when I know better - that these are whole tone intervals and not half tone intervals on paper. It is so frustrating when I'm trying to transpose an exercise and I stumble on such a silly thing during a written exercise.

Has anyone else struggled with this and if so how did you resolve it?

Thanks,
geo

[themeandvariation]

If you are transposing from C  to another key signature, the key signature will already accommodate for the half steps.  The third and fourth degree of any major scale is always a half step, which is implicit in the key signature, etc.
Im surprised your teacher hasn't explained this clearly enough.

If there are accidentals (notes outside the key signature) in the original statement, these must be adjusted accordingly in the new key signature.

[geopianoincanada]

If you are transposing from C  to another key signature, the key signature will already accommodate for the half steps.  The third and fourth degree of any major scale is always a half step, which is implicit in the key signature, etc.
Im surprised your teacher hasn't explained this clearly enough.

If there are accidentals (notes outside the key signature) in the original statement, these must be adjusted accordingly in the new key signature.

This isn't the issue. My music teacher has explained it.

My issue is that I can't seem to rid myself of the notion that during a transposition wherever I come to a place only on paper where there is a B and C, or an E and F, I can't seem to remember that these are a semitone apart. It's not an issue when I'm playing on the piano, just when I'm facing the workbook by itself. After 7 years of piano lessons why do I still struggle with this, it makes me feel so pathetic.

[jonslaughter]

Practice makes perfect. Technically you can call them whatever you want. If you were to call a B-C interval a whole tone then that would make the interval from B to C# a double whole tone.

Sure, it is a 'whole tone" away since it a tone is one note but that is not how we think about it. Think about the notes in between. A half tone has no notes in between while a whole tone has one.

Better yet, just think of it as a minor 2nd or minor 9th and a major 2nd and major 9th(of course these generally are used in some sense with keys, scales, or chords).

Remember, practice is what helps one get rid of their mental hangups so the more you practice the more you are able to "erase" those errors. Also realize that we are defining terms, those terms could be defined other ways but we all should agree on what they mean so we can understand each other.

Even after 30+ years of mathematics I have issues with such things. "why did they define that term like that, it makes no sense to me". But the "sense" comes from familiarity. It's like learning a language, you just have to learn to memorize the vocab, there is no right and wrong. Words mean nothing but what we externally define them to me. E.g., some languages have the same word that shows up but have completely different meaning(false cognates). These can be hard or easy to memorize depending on how you think about them.

What you need to be doing is creating a mental checklist. You have to say "I know this is an issue, let me add it to my mental checklist which I check every time". In fact, you can make a real list that you check. Just like pilots make lists so they don't miss anything.

Realize it is not a general issue with you(the specific issue maybe but not the general issue behind it). When learning a piece of music or anything really there may be "Strange" things which one lapses because they don't have it down(this is why it's called learning). For example, some pieces of music will have strange "non-canonical" repetitions where they do something completely unexpected and likely odd to the person trying to learn it and it is so against everything else that one can easily forget while playing. E.g., Chopin loves these kinds of things(it's likely what partly makes his music so unique). It's sorta analogous to the false cognates. So one has to have a checklist where they say things in their mind "Oh, remember this chord coming up has this odd change or note or whatever" and doing that helps grease your brain to pull out what it is.

But at the end of the day YOU have to figure out how to overcome your issues. No one else can. Either you do it and get better or you forever get stuck on such issues and causing you problems.  You ultimately have to figure out the way around the wall. No one can get into your brain and fiddle with the neurons to change them and make things work, only you can. The good news is that the better you get at this the easier things become. The solution is generally easy: Just keep practicing. Don't let these problems get you down, because it is precisely how you get better - by learning to overcome them. That is, in some sense, what life is all about.