Welcome to my Strummers Transposition page. What is transposition?
Transposition is the way music is either performed or written at
pitches different than the way it was originally written, by
lowering or raising all the notes by the exact same interval throughout the piece.
In order to do such transposing, use the table below to indentify the
Key you are in, and the Key you want to be in.
Don't let the large
mass of note spellings scare you, it's really quite easy.
Read the graph over
and think about it.
First, know that a ROW is a single line of information that
runs horizontally across the graph and a COLUMN is a vertical selection
of data falling below each row. That said, let's continue.
The top row, moving from left to right, is the key
you are in.
If you are in column 1, you are in the key of C.
If you
are in column 2, you are in the key of Db (or enharmonically, C#).
If you are in column 3, you are in the key of D.
etc.
In the columns under each row you will see the notes that Diatonically fall into
each Key. (Diatonic means that a note "belongs" in a specific key,
Bb is Diatonic to "F", F# is Diatonic to the key of "G",
and so on.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | B |
| D | Eb | E | F | F# | G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C | C# |
| E | F | F# | G | G# | A | Bb | B | C | C# | D | D# |
| F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | Cb | C | Db | D | Eb | E |
| G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | F# |
| A | Bb | B | C | C# | D | Eb | E | F | F# | G | G# |
| B | C | C# | D | D# | E | F | F# | G | G# | A | A# |
| C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | B |
In order to transpose a song to better fit your voice for singing and~or your fingers for playing, move the Key note of where you are, to where you want to be. Once you move the key note, change all of the notes within the old column of the old key, to the new column of the new key.
Oh yes, the example.
If I have a song that is in the Key of "C" and
it's too high for me to sing, I would transpose it by changing the key note
from "C" (column 1) to "F" (column 6). Now that I
have changed the key note from "C" to "F", I also need to change all
the notes in the "C" column to their 'same row neighbors' in the
"F" column.
Because I changed "C" to "F", I need to change the second note
(D) in the old key of "C" column to the new second note (G) in the
new key of "F" column. Again, I change the third note (E) in the
old key of "C" column to the new third note (A) in the new key of
"F" column. Again, I change the fourth note (F) in the
old key of "C" column to the new third note (Bb) in the new key of
"F" column.
Etc.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | B |
| D | Eb | E | F | F# | G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C | C# |
| E | F | F# | G | G# | A | Bb | B | C | C# | D | D# |
| F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | Cb | C | Db | D | Eb | E |
| G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | F# |
| A | Bb | B | C | C# | D | Eb | E | F | F# | G | G# |
| B | C | C# | D | D# | E | F | F# | G | G# | A | A# |
| C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb | G | Ab | A | Bb | B |