Working with Singers and Transposing Songs to their range
I was working Holly Brown today who is a great vocalist in Seattle. We were playing through some jazz standards and kept having the same problem with finding the right key for Holly’s voice. Most fakebooks or lead sheets are not written in the perfect key for the vocalist’s voice. The solution to this is to transpose the song so that the extreme high or low notes are in the singer’s range.
I tried transposing on the spot as I read the music, but that was extremely hard to do. When I’m reading a new song, I can only transpose down about a whole step before I start to get very confused. Luckily, a whole step was close enough to bring the song down into her range.
Using Keyboards to Transpose:
If you play with singers a lot, learning to transpose on the spot is almost essential! However, if you have a digital keyboard you can use the keyboard’s transpose function. The keyboard does all the work for you while you read the music in the original key!
Using the Internet to Transpose:
For those of you that are still learning to transpose, I’ve been introduced to a great free webpage online that does the transposing of chords for you: Online Transpose Tool.
Be sure to bookmark it!
(Unfortunately, you can’t input a pdf or image file of sheet music, only text).
It transposed Sentimental Journey for me from the key of C:
C
Gonna take a sentimental journey
C D7 G7
gonna set my heart at ease.
C F9
gonna make a sentimental journey
C G7 C
to renew old memories.
To the key of A:
A
Gonna take a sentimental journey
A B7 E7
gonna set my heart at ease.
A D9
gonna make a sentimental journey
A E7 A
to renew old memories.
The transposing tool is easy to use. Just copy and paste your song (with chords) into the form and choose the keys you want to have it converted to. It does most of the work for you and saves you a lot of time. Its also a great tool to check your work with if you’re still learning how to transpose!
Hi Chris- you’re awesome, by the way. I’ve learned a lot of stuff from your lessons on YouTube. Thanks.
Anyway, what I’m working on right now is the blues- mainly in C, and I have two requests: could you post some cool endings to the blues? I found one video of yours that shows one, but I’m sure there are many other cool ways to end it. Any suggestions?
Also, what about the blues in other keys? I have a digital piano, so I can just transpose everything down a key to play in G or A or whatever, but it kinda feels like cheating. Any suggestions?
No worries if you don’t have time for these things. Thanks.
Hey Joel,
You really should start to try to take some of your patterns to other keys. Take something not too complicated and play it in F and G. Like a blues scale for example.
The trick to transposing isnt to learn the note names like: C, D, E, but the distances between them. Learn that the intervals between C, D, E is whole step, whole step, then you can take it to other keys easily by counting up whole steps.
I’ve simplified it but that is the basic concept, and you’ll need to practice it before taking whole ending examples to another key!
Be sure an use the transpose tool I talk about in this post to help you transpose chords or notes when your first starting out!
Thanks,
Chris Marx
OH! Forgot about the turnaround/endings…
Thanks again for your feedback! I’ll keep in mind to add more ending licks although a lot of them are just walkups to the 5 chord or the G chord if we’re playing in C.
In general most ending patterns are the same:
LH: walk up to 5 chord: D, E, F, [F#] G… C
RH: solo like crazy on the blues scale! or play a chord that would go with each bass note in the walk up: Dm, C/E (c over e), F, F#dim, Gsus or G7
Thanks again!
Chris Marx
Chris,
OMG you spit out the harmonica…. I fell out laughing ……
I went back , saw it 3 more times …. still funny !!
Your serious skills are amazing also !
Your biggest fan
John Mac