Transposing is the converting of one or more notes or chords from one key into another - lower or higher in pitch - using a constant interval of note spacing.

For instance, a key of the original song may be in Ab, but - for any of the possible reasons given below -  you may want to change it to say, the key of F. This would therefore mean transposing all of the melody notes and chords to F.

The reasons for transposing keys include:

- when accompanying a singer on the piano, he or she may feel more comfortable with singing in a different key from the one you had learned the song in, so you may need to transpose the notes of the song for this purpose;

- when learning a song by hearing, the piece may be in one of the more difficult keys (like Db, F#, B or even Ab), where you will encounter and likely stumble on a lot of black notes. This tends to make playing uncomfortable and more error-prone… especially if you are not well-seasoned in playing in all keys. In this case, it’s better to transpose the song to an easier key;

- a song that you’re playing could be made more interesting if say, midway through it, you are able to change its key one semitone higher, or even to another key. This is done usually by a quick variation in chord and melody, to ‘lead in’ to the new key (In another blog, I’ll talk about charging keys while playing).

Automatic Method

The simplest way to transpose a key while is if your electronic (E.g., a Casio CTK series) or digital piano has a transposer. You adjust its switch or button to automatically transpose/convert the tones to a higher or lower key, or by the number of what they call in music theory, semi-tones (see picture).

It would save a lot of time, instead of having to ‘manually’ (using a chord chart) transpose each and every note after you learn a song on a difficult key and want to transpose it to an easier key.

While you’re playing a song - you use this built-in transposer to - almost always - only move one key higher ; otherwise, it gets too cumbersome to try to adjust to another further-away key while you’re also trying to focus on your playing.

While you’re learning a song - Use the built-in transposer to change  your keyboard tons to an easier or preferred play-back key first and then match that to the key of original song… so there’s no need to do any further transposing.  This happens even before you even start learning the full song. Refer to my blog titled “How I learn a song”.

Manual Method

The other way to transpose a song is more time-consuming, but nonetheless important to know. It is when you already have the notes for a song that’s in one key, and you need to manually convert them to another key.

A good example of needing to manually transpose is when for instance, you don’t have a keyboard with a transposer .

This means you therefore have to write the notes in the original key of the song, as you hear them.  Later, if you need to transpose these notes, you will need to use manual transposition.  Here’s how to do it…

The Napkin Way

I like to refer to this method of transposing ‘the napkin way’, because if you’re in a hurry or in a fit of desperation, you just need to grab any piece of available paper - even a napkin - to make your transposition!

Now, we know there are 12 possible notes in an octave, viz. C Db D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B…. Therefore correspondingly, there are only 12 possible keys.

The simplest and quickest way transpose music notes is to sketch out a 2-row table as follows - one row starting with the root key (say, B) you’re transposing FROM, and the second row starting with the root key (say, F) that you wish to transpose the notes TO:

From:

B

C

Db

D

Eb

E

F

F#

G

Ab

A

Bb

To:

F

F#

G

Ab

A

Bb

B

C

Db

D

Eb

E

(No particular reason why I labeled F sharp as F# and not Gb – I’ve just always done so! )

For each key, you then write in the next notes (including the black ones) sequentially, until the last note (i.e., the one before it becomes the root again).

Now you’re ready to re-write or transpose your song that’s in B key to one that’s in F key…. For example, if your song in B key starts with the following notes ….

F# Ab B E Eb ….

Then, looking at the chart, your transposed notes would be the corresponding notes in the lower ‘F Key’ row, viz. -

C D F Bb A .…

The same applies when you’re converting bass, chords and chord notes, whether you wrote them alphabetically, or in conventional music notes.  You can of course, sketch this out in 2 columns instead of rows.

The Full Chart

If you prefer, it’s also easy enough to draw up an entire transposition chart, starting with the most common C root.

As shown below, notice how the same alphabet note lines up diagonally, left-downwards, as exemplified with the shaded Ab’s? So, if it’s  easier, you can also sketch out the chart  just writing in the corresponding notes this diagonal way.

You can transpose horizontally or vertically with the two affected rows or columns, respectively.

Root Key

C	Db	D	Eb	E	F	F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B
Db	D	Eb	E	F	F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C
D	Eb	E	F	F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db
Eb	E	F	F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db	D
E	F	F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb
F	F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb	E
F#	G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb	E	F
G	Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb	E	F	Gb
Ab	A	Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb	E	F	Gb	G
A	Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb	E	F	Gb	G	Ab
Bb	B	C	Db	D	Eb	E	F	Gb	G	Ab	A
B	C	Db	D	Eb	E	F	Gb	G	Ab	A	Bb

The above methods apply to piano just as it does other instruments like the guitar. If you read about transposition in Wikipedia, there are two types: chromatic and scalar. The above refers to chromatic – I don’t think I need to know what scalar is.

You may see fancy transposition charts for sale in the music stores or online, but really, all you really need is…. a napkin.
As a last word on Transposition, occasionally in feedback to my videos on YouTube, a listener would comment that I’m playing the wrong key.  Some musicians get such a hang up  when that happens! I just tell  them there’s absolutely nothing wrong with transposing the key of an original song, as singers do that all the time! One listener was even so upset that I had transposed Steve Wonder’s ‘Lately’ from B to C (one lousy semi-tone!) and insisted that such a masterpiece should not have been tampered with.  Geez, ease up man!

The main thing is  - unless you’re  playing at the ‘Professional Musicians Convention’ or something similar, I would swear that 99.7% of a typical hearing audience (E.g. at a gig event) wouldn’t have a clue what key you’re playing a song on.  As long as what they hear is a nicely-arranged and performed piece, and more importantly YOU were comfortable learning and playing it, those are all that  really matter.   So transpose freely.

Let me be so bold as to make a recommendation about transposition.   The first row are the tougher keys to play on.  Assuming that you find a key on the first row to be difficult.  You would then transpose it to the key adjacent to it, ie. indicated as the key on the next row.

I consider D and Eb   (as well A and Bb) to be about the same difficulty/ease to play,  which is two pairs are shown in the table:

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Found a few useful tips in this blog or site? …. Like to leave some tips for the piano teacher ?

Greatly appreciated!

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