Transposing Instruments

https://opencurriculum.org/5567/transposing-instruments/

by camtarn • 8 years ago

75 86 8 years ago

mrleiter• 8 years ago

That‘s also the reason why orchestras usually play two to three pitches (e.g. C - B flat - E flat) before starting the concert, so that the conductor can determine if the relevant instruments are attuned to their respective pitch in harmony.

Listen here: https://youtu.be/KfSH1ezevjM

klez8• 8 years ago

In this case the pitch is given by the piano, but do I remember correctly that if the orchestra doesn't include a piano the base pitch is given by the oboe, as it's the hardest instrument to tune?

ken3• 8 years ago

I've never heard it said that the oboe is hard to tune. From what I've found, it's mostly historical accident that the oboe is used for tuning: https://www.rockfordsymphony.com/faqs/why-does-the-orchestra...

bjoli• 8 years ago

I have never heard any non-school orchestra do that. Professional orchestras ulonly give one note (a for symphonic and sometimes Bb for wind orchestras).

toolslive2• 8 years ago

This is a really nice article. "usually ..... A is 440hz". The 'usually' here is an interesting topic by itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch

Anyway, I do have some questions:

- regarding the universalness of this. Is it (the transposing of instruments) like this everywhere or is it different in some parts of the world? (some things differ wildly, like the whole 'fixed-do' versus 'movable-do' thing.

- If I look at a score written for an alto sax, How can I tell which note is meant ?

- In jazz, people learn a standard in a certain key, and when that tune is called, it's called together with a key, usually to adapt to some constraint (like the singer's vocal range). The musicians mostly can adapt on-the-fly. Is there something similar in classical music ? (an example would be to transpose Beethoven's 9th from Dm to Em)

klez8• 8 years ago

If I look at a score written for an alto sax, How can I tell which note is meant ?

If it's a part for an Alto sax you can usually assume it's in Eb.

tomcam2• 8 years ago

1. Universality of transposition: These conventions apply wherever people use western instruments.

2. Alto sax is always in the key of E flat. That means the note called A flat played by an alto sax would be C on the piano. Likewise tenor is always in the key of B flat. A huge advantage to this arrangement is that the fingering is the same no matter which instrument you are playing; that means it is up to the composer to transpose notes as appropriate. The saxophone family is amazingly cohesive and consistent because Adolphe Sax invented it in one fell swoop.

3. Well-trained classical musicians can transpose at will. I read a story by the composer/pianist Andre Previn whose touring orchestra was late to a concert hall due to the bus driver getting lost. He was playing the piano in a concerto. What he didn’t know was that the entire piano had detuned up half a step. It meant that The moment he sat down to play a concerto in C minor he was therefore playing in C sharp minor. The orchestra caught this immediately and everyone transposed up for the rest of the concert – on the fly.

Edit: I mysteriously screwed up keys of alto and tenor sax, both of which I play. Idiocy caught by klez and duly corrected.

klez8• 8 years ago

Alto sax is always in the key of A flat. That means the note called A flat played by an alto sax would be C on the piano. Likewise tenor is always in the key of E flat.

Uh? Alto sax is in Eb and tenor is in Bb.

toolslive2• 8 years ago

2. same fingering... So the C written conveys more a fingering than a pitch and the actual pitch depends on the instrument at hand.

3. Lovely anecdote, but wasn't it simpler if the pianist transposed ?

yesenadam9• 8 years ago

Alto sax is always in the key of E flat. That means the note called A flat played by an alto sax would be C on the piano.

This corrected version still isn't right...

microtherion3• 8 years ago

[In Jazz] when that tune is called, it's called together with a key, usually to adapt to some constraint (like the singer's vocal range). The musicians mostly can adapt on-the-fly.

As an aside, this is not a safe assumption and not a good habit in my opinion. If you rely on a particular key, bring properly transposed lead sheets for that particular key.

- Some musicians may not be able to transpose on the fly.

- Some musicians may not play as well if they need to transpose.

- Some musicians may resist such requests on principle.

If a vocalist can't be bothered to properly prepare their sheet music, it's often a signal that they haven't properly prepared on other respects. And they're liable to call crazy keys like F# major.

rewgs11• 8 years ago

Jazz musician here. This practice is absolutely standard. You are way off base.

If you can't transpose on the fly, you're not a good jazz musician. Period.

If you can't play equally well in all keys, you're not a good jazz musician. Period.

If you resist on principle (where the hell are you getting this?), then you will be called out and probably asked to leave. But that never happens due to the previous two points.

Jazz has a long tradition on being a pretty hardcore meritocracy, on the grounds of achieving freedom while improvising over a tune. A group can only play as well as its weakest link, and that's no fun. So we take fun very seriously and practice our asses off so that, when the time comes, we can do amazing things together.

PS no one is gonna call out F#. They might call out Gb though. We always err to the side of flat keys, not sharps (horns like flat keys more).

ken3• 8 years ago

Is it (the transposing of instruments) like this everywhere or is it different in some parts of the world?

Japanese flutes are transposing. The scales and keys are all numeric, instead of the alphabetic system that western music uses. For example, my #6 flute (western: "B flat") sounds 2 half-steps lower than a #8 flute ("C"). A piece might be written to start on note #4 (and not say what absolute pitch #4 means), so it would sound different depending on what flute you're playing.

The musicians mostly can adapt on-the-fly. Is there something similar in classical music ?

When I played the cello when I was young, I remember having some sheet music put in front of me once, and being asked to play it in a different key ("up a third" or something) as part of an ensemble. It wasn't especially fast or complex music, but that was a skill that was apparently expected of a high school amateur. It's not as hard as it sounds, but it's also something we never really practiced.

Reasons I can think of would be when working with a soloist who has a particular vocal range, or if you find a piece that's not written for your instrument in particular (e.g., piano score to string quartet). I don't think anyone transposes a piece like Beethoven's 9th. When you want an entire symphony to transpose (usually up to "sound brighter", or down to emulate baroque period instruments), you just tune to a different "A".

cmroanirgo• 8 years ago

regarding the universalness of this. Is it ... like this everywhere or is it different in some parts of the world?

Many parts of the world use a term called 'Modal Music' (greece, turkey, arabic,...) and it's rather unlike the western one. Although I've limited experience of it, you could say that they use the note names (do, re, me, fa, so, la, te) as absolute notes and the 'modes' are named scales that also incorporate music sequences. So you might have a song written in Rast, but the tuning of your instrument (which allows overtones and quarter notes) might be tuned to something else. As a musician you're expected to change instrument or transpose on the fly.

If I look at a score written for an alto sax, How can I tell which note is meant ?

If it's for Alto sax it's already transposed for the instrument in the score (Eb, from memory). Looking at an orchestral score, you'll see various instruments appearing to play different notes, but due to tuning they'll come out sounding the same note.

In jazz, people learn a standard in a certain key... Is there something similar in classical music ?

Typically not. Although the musicians themselves sometimes have the ability to do it, classical isn't transposed to suit vocalists.

benterris• 8 years ago

Typically not. Although the musicians themselves sometimes have the ability to do it, classical isn't transposed to suit vocalists.

Actually it is, classical pianists accompanists are supposed to know how to sight-transpose a piece to fit a singer's range - for melody, songs and lieder, usually not opera. Only pianists though, you can't ask an orchestra to transpose !

tunesmith• 8 years ago

For your last question, not really. To see why, you have to look at the distinction between the composition and the arrangement.

Jazz charts are usually just the composition. The arrangement is left up to the performers, which gives you a lot of flexibility in transposition (and instrumentation, and tempo, and feel, etc etc).

Classical music is usually the composition and the arrangement. So if you transpose, you're more likely to run into problems where certain notes are no longer physically possible to play for certain instruments.

Even with single-instrument classical pieces, for instance piano, compositions are very much written to be "pianistic" and fit into the piano hand in certain ways. There are definitely sections in advanced piano pieces that would far more difficult (if not impossible) to play if they were in a different key.

Even with jazz piano, while a jazz pianist might be comfortable playing a standard in every key, they've got figures and riffs that they're only going to play in certain keys, because of how they're physically shaped. For a dumb example, you can't transpose a glissando from C to Db. (Dumb since a gliss is rarely appropriate.)

hammock• 8 years ago

Depends how fast you can play a scale :)

klez8• 8 years ago

The fundamental pitch of a brass instrument, on the other hand, is considered to be the fundamental of the harmonic series it plays when no valves are being used.

For those who don't know how brass instruments work (and wonder how you can produce so many pitches with so little valves) this may sound a little confusing (a lot of people asked me, so I'll assume some people don't know).

I'll take a trumpet as an example, as it is the instrument I'm most familiar with.

First of all, you don't just blow air inside the instrument: you buzz your lips, as if you were making a sort of fart sound without using your tongue. Depending on the speed your lips vibrate at, you are able to make a series of pitches, which ones basically depend on the length of the instruments. The pitches you can make are part of an harmonic series, so basically (transposed from Bb) C, G, C, E, G and so on.

Pressing the valves changes the length of the tubing so you can lower the note you're playing by a half step (middle, or second, valve), one step (rear or first valve) or one and a half step (forward or third valve). So by combining them you can obtain all the other pitches you may need.

For example, suppose your lips are buzzing at a (written) G. You press the middle valve and get a F#, you press the first valve and you get an F, first and second (or just third) gives an E, second and third Eb, first and third D, all the valves Db, then you can vibrate your lips at a lower rate and release all the valves to get a C.

amelius• 8 years ago

What happens when your lips buzz at G, while the tube length is set to C?

matthewmacleod2• 8 years ago

Because the instruments have three valves, they are essentially a variable-length tube with a three-bit interface for choosing the length - so there are eight possible configurations, and two of them happen to result in the same tube length so there are seven selectable lengths.

So if the length is set to “C” (that is, no valves pressed) and your lips buzz at “G” then you will be playing a “G”.

klez8• 8 years ago

G and C are from the same tube length (no valves pressed).

laurieg• 8 years ago

While G and C have the same tube length, I think you wanted to ask "What happens when you buzz your lips for a note that doesn't match the length of tube?"

So, for example, a C and a D on a trumpet are different lengths. Basically: you don't get a note, or you get a funny sound. The trumpet doesn't resonate and it's very difficult to get your lips to buzz at the "wrong" note.

Some very good players who have great lip control can bend a note up and down like this for effect.

Poor amateurs like myself will often buzz not perfectly at the right tension and play slightly out of tune.

delinka• 8 years ago

Can you also explain the army bugler’s instrument with no valves (and thus a single tube length)? Seems they have a wide variety of melodies to play on such a limited instrument.

wbl• 8 years ago

All the tunes use a single harmonic series. The bugle is a 1/4 stub transforming the impedance of the open air to the impedance of the lips. This will work at 3/8, etc, so multiple frequencies are available.

tabtab• 8 years ago

Re: First of all, you don't just blow air inside the instrument: you buzz your lips, as if you were making a sort of fart sound without using your tongue.

The dirty secret of brass instruments. I wonder if they could make a direct air-powered vibrator so that one doesn't have to torture their lips. It may also make life easier for amateurs. I imagine it may result in loss of control for subtle effects, but some amateurs will accept that.

kop316• 8 years ago

Assuming you play a brass instrument, I suggest to try this experiment: Blow air through your lips and purse then together, but do NOT buzz. Basically the "buzzing" without the buzz. When you do that, continue to and press your lips against the mouthpiece. You will make a note!

This was something my instructor showed me because use way too much of my lips when I play (a very common mistake with amateurs), and a lot of the power you use should be through your diaphragm (large versus small muscles).

camtarn• 8 years ago

You'd end up with more or less a reed instrument. It's actually possible to get some notes out of a brass instrument using a woodwind reed, albeit that it's not easy and doesn't seem to be able to produce more than a very limited range:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFDNY9_W0ws

A simpler example would be the type of vuvuzela which has a double reed embedded in the tube, so that just blowing into it causes a loud honk.

primitur• 8 years ago

I wonder if they could make a direct air-powered vibrator so that one doesn't have to torture their lips.

This fact is, imho, a motivating principle behind the genesis of various synthesizer designs and concepts. We synthesists wish we could do this stuff with our mouths, but the LFO's and the VCO's and the various and sundry other oscillating things represented in the electronic musical instrument world, can't blow a farts worth in comparison to a good trumpeter...

adrianh• 8 years ago

To relate this to startups: my company Soundslice (https://www.soundslice.com/) makes interactive, web-based sheet music that can be instantly transposed for any transposing instrument. :-)

ken3• 8 years ago

Transposition is easy for a computer. "MusicWriter" could do it back in the 1980's. And now it's available on the web, too!

https://archive.org/details/a2gs_Music_Writer_Pro_1.42_1988_...

burfog3• 8 years ago

I saw a slider for transposing. Don't you need two? One should change the pitch, and the other should change the notation. I tried yours, and it changed both pitch and notation at the same time. (listening to the synthetic sound)

For music with multiple parts, it would be nice to transpose everything together in the most reasonable way. This would maintain relative pitch relationships, adjust the whole thing up or down to fit ranges of the players, transpose according to how the players will read music, and avoid excessive accidentals. A few alternatives could be offered: option 1 makes the trumpet player suffer really high notes, option 2 makes oboe player suffer lots of flats, etc.

monochromatic• 8 years ago

What a mess. Have there ever been any serious efforts toward “modernizing” musical notation?

rewgs11• 8 years ago

It's really not a mess. It's a solution to a problem, and it works well.

To give you an idea of how not-a-problem it is, many composers (myself included) prefer to read orchestral scores (so, a page will have roughly 15-20 staves) that are transposed. So, instead of reading each instrument in the same key, we see what each player is reading. If the concert key is C, I'll see the clarinets and trumpets reading in D, etc. I prefer it because you get a better sense of how the music feels to each individual player, and can better respond to any issues they're having.

It's a mess to look at, I guess, but to any reasonably well trained musician, it's clear as day and conveys far more useful information than the "cleaner" way of seeing everyone in the same key, which really just obfuscates what's really going on.

thosakwe• 8 years ago

Besides, the only reason different instruments are written in different keys is because that’s how they’re pitched. So if there even is a “problem,” that’s it.

matell• 8 years ago

my guess is, the world of music theory seems like an epic mess to a novice due to the fact that it maintains full backward compatility and is instrument agnostic. e.g. there is a concept named "octave", but it actually consists if 12 intervals (on chromatic scale), and "mysteriously" there is no B# between B and C, and so on. it is like leaving types and pointers in every programming language, even if the lang is Ruby which is "typeless" and has garbage collector.

burfog3• 8 years ago

It's a mess. The relevant badness is that the interval from one line to the next is not constant. This makes transposition far more difficult than it needs to be.

If the 12 notes of the octave were on 6 lines and 6 spaces, perhaps with a distinct (dotted, wavey, thick, missing, etc.) line to aid in not getting lost, the situation would be far better. There wouldn't need to be a key signature at all, or any accidentals. Stack as many octaves as needed for the part.

Probably we'll never transition to something sane. We can't even manage to get grand staves with middle C in a unique (shared, central) position, which is what you want when hand distinction isn't required.

zozbot123• 8 years ago

Sheet music notation actually works very well at conveying what it needs to. Transposing instruments are a bit of an annoyance if you need to read, e.g. a full score, but they come with the huge advantage for the player of working a bit like guitar tabs - the note position tells you instantly how to play it, no matter how the instrument is pitched. It is a good compromise.

mrob• 8 years ago

The chromatic staff approach does away with key signatures and accidentals entirely, which makes transposition trivial:

http://musicnotation.org/

This sacrifices vertical density, but density can be recovered by using finer vertical resolution and using notehead color to clarify position so it's still readable.

jdietrich2• 8 years ago

It's a mess in the same sense that Vim and Emacs are a mess. Traditional notation is designed to be maximally efficient for expert users at the expense of being more difficult to learn.

roryokane• 8 years ago

I disagree that the notation is maximally efficient for expert users. Transposed notation does make it easier for expert players of the instrument to learn fingerings for multiple instruments, but as zozbot123 mentioned, the notation makes it harder for expert readers of sheet music to read a score for multiple instruments and imagine the resulting sounds in their head. I think a maximally efficient notation would not have that drawback.

memset• 8 years ago

One technique that is overlooked when transposing music - that maybe is interesting - is using clefs to transpose.

Suppose I play alto sax (which I do!) and have sheet music written for a violin, in the concert key, in treble clef. If I want to transpose the music and play it on the sax, which is an Eb instrument, here's the trick: read the music as though it's written in soprano clef!

A C in treble clef will be an A in soprano clef, which is indeed the correct transposition. Of course you still have to change your key signature.

So if you can learn to be comfortable with a new clef, as was the standard when Bach was writing choral music, then this would be a great tool in the toolbox for transposing on the fly!

delsarto• 8 years ago

This works for trombones who might play in a brass band (where everything is Bb to ease moving between instruments). Read the treble clef in tenor clef (somewhat commonly used in orchestral settings for trombones) and 2 flats to the key signature (and use intuituion on accidentals :). Similarly can read Eb treble clef (e.g. baritone sax) parts in bass clef + 3 flats

sizzzzlerz• 8 years ago

I picked up the clarinet in 5th grade and played in school bands through college. I knew that it was a Bb instrument but was never taught what exactly that meant. I assume it was because my instructors never felt that it was important for their players to know. Since we always played off sheet music that was written for the specific instruments, that's probably true. It's nice to finally know.

gyuserbti• 8 years ago

Not understanding this. Why, for example, doesn't a clarinetist just play a C? I'm on mobile so I can't explain my question well, but: why isn't the transposed version just the default interpretation of the score? If clarinetists are playing bflat when the score says c, why not just play c? Is the implied point that the same 440 hz is interpreted differently because of quality, secondary frequencies etc?

klez8• 8 years ago

Try doing that with a Eb instrument like an Alto sax and tell me how you like the fingering :)

Also, as the article says, this allows players of an instrument that has different versions with different tunings (e.g. saxophones which can be in Eb or Bb depending on the type of saxophone) to learn one set of fingerings and being able to reproduce it on all tunings.

So, for example, a written C is done by pressing all but the last button (iirc). By doing this you'll play a Bb on a tenor sax and an Eb on an alto, but with the score being transposed you'll know that when you see a note one line below the staff you'll have to put your fingers in that position regardless of the sax you're playing.

systoll• 8 years ago

It’s not about the sound, it’s about the mechanics of performance.

On an alto sax, ‘A’ is 370Hz

On a tenor sax, ‘A’ 237Hz

But in both cases it’s the note you get when you close only the 2nd hole.

Because of the transposing convention, if you take someone who can sight read, but is familiar only with the alto sax, and hand them a baritone sax and baritone sax sheet music... they’ll basically be fine.

If all saxophone sheet music encoded A=440hz, they’d have to relearn which note on paper corresponds to which set of buttons.

That said, the relationship between the instruments in a family is important, but the specific keys are a historical accident.

In woodwinds specifically, the instruments that ‘won’ and remain common are mostly b-flat, with e-flat in second place. If we could take all existing woodwind sheet music and shift the notes up 3 semitones, we’d instead have ‘c’ and ‘g’ woodwinds, where ‘c’ meant it matches non-transposing instruments.

We could start doing that now, but no-one’s really interested in making a breaking change.

nightcracker2• 8 years ago

I can understand transposing whole octaves to limit the use of extra bars.

Transposing anything other than that seems silly to me.

klez8• 8 years ago

Transposing anything other than that seems silly to me.

You make it sound like it's done out of spite, or because musicians like unnecessarily complicated things.

Reasons for this are given both in the article and in this thread.

So having read those, why do you still think it's silly?

nightcracker2• 8 years ago

Because I'm not convinced that the benefits outweigh the downsides.

Again, any excessively too high/low (part of a) piece you can transpose in octaves to get it within a reasonable level. Then everyone can read eachother's sheet music without having to adjust.

Transposing Instruments

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