Transposing Music Scores

[shelly0312]

I play EC, where most of the music is written in that 2 octave range above middle C. I'd like to transpose some of my familiar dots music down an octive to utilize more of my bass clef on my TED (tenor-extended-down). I have downloaded bassoon lessons to try to help me familiarize myself with that area of fingering. But its not much fun. Then this transposing idea crossed my mind. I am certainly not clever enough to transpose in my mind and work on the base clef fingerings all at the same time; so how about transposition the music scores I am already familiar with for my eyes while I work on the fingering part of the bass clef? A fast scan of internet yeilded "Finale"--some sort of music manipulation program--for $600, I don't think so. I think I have "Audacity" downloaded; does that have such capabilities? And maybe "wavepad"--I never did look at that very closely either. Or are these programs just for manipulating the sound files? Advice from the group please.

[Hillsider]

It's sometime ago that I used it but I am pretty sure that Noteworthy software would do that job for you. It used to be free

[adrian brown]

Shelly,

 

ABC notation is used by a lot of people on this forum, which is easy to learn, and once you've entered your notes in, you can transpose it to any key, using any clef you desire. You don't mention the sort of music you are playing, but once you get the hang of the syntax, single line melodies are pretty quick to write. It is capable of a lot more though, even quite complex orchestral scores. The program you need will depend on your operating system - for a mac, I find the free program EasyABC the most handy and easy to use, and I found this manual, written by Guido Gonzato very helpful. http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/abcplus_en-2012-03-30.zip (Its a zip file containing the .pdf manual.)

 

Adrian

[Ransom]

I've messed around with MuseScore, which is free, and which knows how to transpose things, and which takes a variety of inputs including ABC. It's a little bit buggy, and it's often hard to find the option you're looking for, but it's another tool you can put in the box.

 

Audacity is just for manipulating sound files, sorry.

[JohnMoncton]

It's pretty easy to transpose up or down a fifth on an English - that's just up or down a row.

Like if you're playing a song in G, but your buddy has a hurdy gurdy in C, just go down a position and play the F natural to play in unison.

Like F goes up to C to G to D to A to E, etc.

 

Here's an example where I start the song in C, then I move my fingers up a row to play it again in G:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iWay4tm7N4

Edited March 13, 2013 by JohnMoncton

[John Wild]

A fast scan of internet yeilded "Finale"--some sort of music manipulation program--for $600, I don't think so.

 

I use PrintMusic which is a scaled down version of finale, costing about £80.

 

http://www.finalemusic.com/products/finale-printmusic

[Pete Dunk]

Shelly, you're missing out once again on O'Regan's ABC editor This will transpose any abc tune to any key, that includes transposing treble tunes down one octave to Baritone or two octaves to bass. It can even transpose up one octave to soprano/descant which will satisfy most bats within a hundred mile radius. *yawns*

Edited March 12, 2013 by tallship

[gcoover]

My vote goes to PrintMusic, since it's very easy to transpose to any key, and mostly since I learned to read the "dots" at an early age and still haven't been able to learn abc notation.

 

Gary

[Geoff Wooff]

I would council you to transpose down ( or up) an octave by ear, as well as finding reasonable software to convert your scores, because this will improve your Octave playing and the intuitive sense of where notes are.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Geoff Wooff

[JohnMoncton]

Here's another example, with Bear Dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHapODDwVbM

Here I'm playing it in G, then C, then F.

Since this song doesn't seem to use the B in the key of F, it's an easy way to explore the lower registers.

 

It's a similar story with the Murder She Wrote theme, this time in G and C:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_LqKr1ZG4I

Edited March 14, 2013 by JohnMoncton

[adrian brown]

However, If you do want to transpose the written music on paper, I don't think there's any shortcut to either writing it out again, or putting into a music writing program of some sort, either graphically (Sibelius, Finale, et al) or by using text (ABC, Lilypond). In other words, I don't think there's any 'music recognition software' out there yet, that would let you scan an original score and then input this into an editing program (unlike for texts). I'm just wondering if 'scanning music into a computer for transposition' wasn't the original focus of your question?

Adrian

[JohnB]

Transposing scores can be a pain, unless you spend quite a bit of cash. There is music recognition software around. Neuratron Photoscore apparently does the job - it takes a scanned or pdf image of the score and converts it into a form which can be processed on a computer. It is intended to work with Sibelius. It is pretty expensive I think and Sibelius was more so when I last checked.

Learning to transpose in your head is a lot cheaper.

[gcoover]

You can also scan and input music into PrintMusic (by Finale). But the original needs to be nice and tidy (nothing from the 1651 Playford!) or you'll spend way too much time cleaning it up.

 

Gary

[BlueJack]

I use a program called Melody Assistant. I think I paid about $30 for it. The trial download is free so it's worth a few minutes to check it out. http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/melody.html

 

It will also load ABC and midi files, among others. Because the transposing is so fast I use it to find the best key with the fingering that suits me for a given tune.

[RAc]

Actually, even the most rudimentary version of Finale (called Songwriter - it sells at about 50$) allows you to transpose music in between keys with a single button click.

Most probably even PD music notation software can do that (if the internal representation is MIDI which it normally is, it's more or less a no brainer to implement it), but I wouldn't know - being a software developer, I prefer commercial software over PD/OS. But that's a different discussion altogether.

Regarding ABC vs. dots - probably a useless discussion (held many times before); it's all a matter of what you are used to. I prefer dots simply because 1) I grew up with them and you can't teach an old dog new tricks, 2) they are well established and when you can read dots, you can read music written for all kinds of instruments from all kinds of musical periods (which is an avenue open for ABC musicians only when all the dots out there are also available as ABCs), and 3) to me they are more accessible because visually, a higher note is higher on the staff, so just by looking at the score, you can decode the music mentally. People who work ABC scores a lot probably can develop a similar association, but to me it appears to be an abstraction layer away from the music. But that again is a discussion leading away from the original topic.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Ruediger R. Asche

[Wolf Molkentin]

People who work ABC scores a lot probably can develop a similar association, but to me it appears to be an abstraction layer away from the music. But that again is a discussion leading away from the original topic.

 

To this day I didn't believe a fair quantity of musicians to read their tunes directly from the ABC text.

 

For my own purpose ABC is just that easy way of sharing music, altering it ad lib. and, well, transposing it as well, if required - but then print it out, at least in the PDF format for on-screen-usage (also discussed again and again...).

[adrian brown]

 

People who work ABC scores a lot probably can develop a similar association, but to me it appears to be an abstraction layer away from the music. But that again is a discussion leading away from the original topic.

 

To this day I didn't believe a fair quantity of musicians to read their tunes directly from the ABC text.

 

For my own purpose ABC is just that easy way of sharing music, altering it ad lib. and, well, transposing it as well, if required - but then print it out, at least in the PDF format for on-screen-usage (also discussed again and again...).

Me too - I hadn't realised it was possible to actually read directly from the code - I've only ever used abc notation as an easy way of putting the dots on the stave and then transposing/arranging/sharing etc.

 

Adrian