Online free course to learn to transpose E-flat instruments.

Learn to Transpose - Step by Step

free online course: how to transpose music.

Transposing... what does that mean?

Just imagine: You play the clarinet and you would like to play some
music with the girl next door who is playing the flute. You take her book,
and with the two of you together you start to play the first melody on
page one. How long do you think your performance will last?
I guess: not longer than a second or three...
It sounds weird ! ! !
Why?

If a flute player sees the note C and plays it, you will indeed hear the
note C, for flute is a non-transposing instrument.
But if an alto saxophone player sees the note C and plays it, you
actually don't hear a real C, but an E-flat.
The pitch of the note sounds two notes higher than notated.
As long as the alto saxophone player plays alone, or together with other
E-flat instruments, it doesn't matter, but when a alto saxophone player
wants to play along with a non transposing instrument, like a flute, a
piano, a keyboard, a violin, or other C-instruments, than he should
copy down his music on a separate sheet of paper and transpose it
into another key, for only then it will fit together, only then will it sound
well together with the other instruments.

Transposing is to summarize in three steps:

1 - write the right key signature.
2 - copy down the notes in the right pitch.
3 - fill in the accidentals.

How to do this exactly we will learn below.

T I P !
If you scroll down and glimpse at the pictures and the text, it will seem
to be a very long and complicated story.
So: Don't do that!
Take the time to read each block of this page and copy down the example
of the notes. If you do, you will find out it really is not difficult.

How to find out whether your instrument is a
transposing instrument or not.

Play a C on your instrument and compare the sound of it with a C
played on a piano. (or an organ or keyboard) If the C you played on
your instrument sounds in the same pitch as the C on the piano,
you don't have a transposing instrument.

If you discover that the note which was notated as a C for your
instrument happens to be an E-flat on the piano, then you know your
instrument is an E-flat instrument.
Is the C you played on your instrument an A on the piano?
Then you have an A-instrument. Etc.

You still can't find out? Ask your music teacher, or another
person who plays the same instrument you do.

You now know to which key you have to transpose?
Then you may go on with the next block of this page:

Click the link below to learn to transpose for a:

B-flat instrument (Si bemol)
(like a B-flat Clarinet, a Trumpet or a Tenor Saxophone)

E-flat instrument (Mi bemol)
(like an Alto Saxophone or a Bariton Saxophone)

F instrument (Fa)
(like an F Horn or an Alto Oboe)

A instrument (La)
(like an A Clarinet)

How to transpose for E-flat Instruments
Step 1 - Write the right Key Signature

Just imagine we are going to play the next melody together with a violin,
then we will need to change the pitch of our part, in order to play the
same notes the violin does. We need to transpose the violin melody to
make it possible to play it on our E-flat instrument.
So, take a sheet of staff paper, a pencil and an eraser, then we can start.

(In case you don't have blank staff paper: on the bottom of this page you
will find a link to free printable blank staff paper.)

The melody we're going to transpose:

You sure will notice the flat in between the clef and the time signature.
You can't just copy out the flat, for we're going to write in another key, so
we also need different flats or sharps than we had in our original music.
The first question we'll have to ask ourself is:
Which key signature do we need?
In the example above we see one flat, this will become two sharps for an
E-flat-instrument. So write on your sheet of staff paper a G-clef, the two
sharps (f-sharp and c-sharp) and the time signature.
This brings us to the next result:

But how can we know which flats or sharps we need to write in between
the clef and the time signature?
Therefore you look at the table below.
Search on the left side the flats or sharps like you find them in the
original music you want to transpose, then you will see which key
signature you need when you copy down and transpose the music for
your E-flat instrument.

Table of Key Signatures
for E-flat Instruments

No sharps or flats in the original music?
Write down three sharps: F-sharp C-sharp and G-sharp.

One flat in the original music?
Write down two sharps: F-sharp and C-sharp.

Two flats in the original music?
Write down one sharp: F-sharp.

Three flats in the original music?
In that case your music doesn't need any sharps or flats

Four flats in the original music?
Write down one flat: B-flat.

Five flats in the original music?
Write down two flats: B-flat, E-flat.

Six flats in the original music?
Write down three flats: B-flat, E-flat, A-flat.

Seven flats in the original music?
Write down four flats:
B-flat, E-flat, A-flat, D-flat.

One sharp in the original music?
Write down four sharps
F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp.

Two sharps in the original music?
Write down five sharps:
F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp, A-sharp.

Three sharps in the original music?
Write down six sharps:
F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp, A-sharp, E-sharp.

Four sharps in the original music?
Write down seven sharps:
F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, D-sharp, A-sharp, E-sharp, B-sharp.

How to transpose for E-flat Instruments
Step 2 - Copy down the notes in the right pitch.
Take a look at your paper, what do we have?
Just the clef, the key signature and the time signature.
So now it's time for the second step: we're going to fill in the notes.

If an E-flat instrument plays a C, we don't REALLY hear a C, but an E-flat,
as you could read above, for that was why we call it an E-flat instrument,
remember?

When we go on thinking that way and we realise that we hear an E-flat by
playing a C, we know that our E-flat instrument appearantly seems to
sound a two notes higher than what was written down.
What would happen if we would write two notes below the C; an A, could
that perhaps sound like a C?
Yes!
So that's what we are going to do.
Write out all the notes of our example melody, but in another pitch: exactly
two notes below the printed music.
A very important thing to remember is:

Mind you to only copy out the notes!
Never and never the accidentals in between the notes ! ! !

Perhaps you think: But this way it doesn't correspond with the original
music!
No, that's right, but we will straighten that out later on this page.
First things first: what we do now is writing down the music, one note
above the music on your sheet. The D becomes a B, the E becomes a
C-sharp (you don't need to write that sharp, the key-signature-sharps
take care for that), the F becomes a D, and so we go on, move all
music notes two notes down:

And here you can see how it looks like now.

How to transpose for E-flat Instruments
Step 3 - Fill in the Accidentals

Look at the music above. You will see it immediately: the third measure
isn't ready yet. In the original music we see a natural and a sharp, how are
we going to transpose that in our written music?
Just copy it out? Writing a natural and a sharp too?
No way!
Besides, it wouldn't make sense. just take a look: we can't write a natural
in front of a G can we? The G in our music didn't have a sharp or a flat, so
what would a natural be able to do? The G we wrote down is natural already!

When we transpose we should forget the words: 'Sharp', 'Flat' and
'Natural'. Let's take a look, to see what they exactly DO with the notes...

A sharp RAISES the pitch of the note by a semitone, so from now on we
will not talk about 'sharp' anymore, we will call it a 'raise-up-sign'.
A flat LOWERS the pitch of the note by a semitone, so from now on we
will not call this 'flat' anymore, but a 'lower-down-sign'.
A natural in front of an F-sharp, LOWERS DOWN the F-sharp to an F,
so in this case the natural is a 'lower-down-sign', just like the flat.
But a natural in front of a B-flat RAISES UP the B-flat to a B, in this
case the natural is what we call a 'raise-up-sign'.

Let's take a look again at our example:

In the third measure you will notice the natural in front of the B-flat.
What does that natural do?
It tells us the B-flat should go back to its natural pitch, the B.
It RAISES UP the pitch, from B-flat to B, so this is a 'raise-up-sign'.
This means we should add a raise-up-sign in our written music too,
in front of the G.
What is a raise-up-sign in front of a G?
Right! A sharp!

In front of the C in our printed music, we see a sharp, this again is
a raise-up-sign, so the A in the written music should get a raise-up-sign
too.
A raise-up-sign for a A is a sharp.
This brings us to the next result:

With this we are on the end of our course, the transposed part is ready
you can play it.
Like this you can transpose all music.

EXCEPT...,
we still have one little problem to solve:
We transposed flute or violin music for an E-flat instrument like an
E-flat clarinet. But imagine we don't play the clarinet, but the alto
saxophone. This also is an E-flat instrument isn't it?, so what happens
when we transpose flute-music the way we learned above?
You will understand the alto saxophone is a bigger instrument, which
sounds much lower than a flute or a violin does.
So, when you want to play the same music on your alto saxophone,
you should AFTER having transposed the music like we did above, copy
out the music once again: one octave higher, to make the music sound
exactly in the same pitch the flute or the violin did.
However, this often will be way to high for a alto saxophone.
What to do?
Try to play it one octave lower, for a alto saxophone just isn't meant to
play in exactly the same pitch a flute does.
If this doesn't sound well with the other instruments, you better look for
different music, which fits better for your instrument.

Much success by transposing your music!

Margriet Verbeek

Wouldn't it be great if everything on the internet were free?
But composers, poets and authors need a living too.
A voluntary donation takes care of that...

If everyone who can pay, makes a donation,
people with less money can download the PDF's for free.

Sceptical people will ask: 'But will that ever work?'
Yes, it does! People are nicer than you think!

Clarinet - Keyboard - Piano - Church Organ - Harmonium - Flute - Guitar - Mandolin

Saxophone - Marimba - Violin - Mandola - Recorder - Mezzo-soprano - Carillon

Free Online: Easy Instrumental music for two flutes and guitar

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