Dyne Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Hey everyone. I have a question about transposing. My guitar is tuned to E Standard (E A D G B E), and a song I want to play is calling for the guitar to be tuned down a half step. Yes, silly as it may sound, I don't wish to tune down to Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb. Instead, I was wondering about how to transpose the song so that I can play it in E Standard. The song itself is in Bb Major (the key signature has two flats in it on B and E). It looks like it should be transposed to Gm, at least, according to the chart I have. But I'm really not sure. I'd really appreciate the help, I'm planning on learning this song for an event about 8 months from now, and I really want to know how to do this. I know what the simple answer is, but I don't want to have to do that if I don't have to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like the song should be moved up a half step to B Major or Ab relative minor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelCityOutlaw Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (edited) Play one fret lower if you're playing with the song or just play the song with the normal fret-positions in standard tuning and boom - you've automatically "transposed" it up a half step. Or just tune the guitar down - it's not that hard. Unless you have a Floyd Rose. Edited February 13, 2015 by AngelCityOutlaw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frederic Petitpas Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like the song should be moved up a half step to B Major or Ab relative minor. Close! B major or G# minor. Ab minor is the relative minor of Cb major. Enharmonics, I know, but still. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan! Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (edited) An issue you might run into if you are keeping your guitar in standard tuning is having to play a low Eb. I am assuming that the reason you don't want to retune it is because of the time it would take at your event. There are a couple of quick solutions: a) Tune your guitar to drop D. This takes about 5 seconds and will give you your extra note should you need it. To quickly tune to drop D, pluck your low E and D at the same time and drop the tuning peg on your E string until it sounds "right"). You can then play all of your notes 1 step down except on your low string which is now 1 step up. Tuning back to E is equally quick. With a headstock tuner you can even do this silently. Tune your guitar to Eb but stick a capo on the first fret. This means that your guitar will be in E standard with the capo on and Eb with the capo off - super quick!. You may run into problems with tuning stability and the different feel of the strings if you do this, however. The biggest advantage of this method is that you can play it exactly as written (no transposing required) and you can also use your open strings as written in the music - this will make it much easier. c) Consider if you need to have your guitar in E standard at all. If you can just do everything in Eb then it will make your life 100x easier The reaper solution is good but the problem is that you can't use it live. It requires a certain number of samples (not sure how many) to work out the transposed sound. This means that if you are live monitoring it then it will come out as a garbled mess. (if anyone knows a solution to this, please let me know - it would make my life so much easier) Edit - Forgot to add: some software such as Guitar Pro will do all of the transposing for you (both in tab and music notation). The tab result won't be perfect but will do most of the heavy lifting for you. Edited February 13, 2015 by Jonathan! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dyne Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 True, I could do that, I could drop the tuning to D, and play it on there. Or I could have a second guitar tuned to what I need, which I do have a second guitar, and just use it instead of my main. This advice has been very helpful. Thank you everyone. And thank you Neblix for spending time talking to me last night about it as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 (edited) Close! B major or G# minor. Ab minor is the relative minor of Cb major. Enharmonics, I know, but still. The sad part is that G# doesn't get a parallel major. It's there just to be sad and alone. The song itself is in Bb Major (the key signature has two flats in it on B and E). It looks like it should be transposed to Gm, at least, according to the chart I have. But I'm really not sure. I know I already cleared this up with you last night, but I'm posting it here anyway because everyone deserves a proper music theory explanation. The song is in Bb major, or G minor. If it is minor, it is G minor. If it is major, it is Bb major. No transposing involved here. The notes are the same for both of these scales, it just matters what is being emphasized (if G is the tonic, or ending chord, it's probably in G minor. If Bb, then Bb major.) Transposing means you take a sequence and shift it up or down by a number of half steps. In other words, if the song was in G minor, and you tranposed it up a half step, it would then be in G# minor, like timaeSword said. If it was in Bb major, it would go to B major. All you want to do is to make the song playable. If it's playable a half step lower in tuning, you are raising it a half step higher by playing the tabs in your standard tuning. If you want to RE-WRITE THE SHEET MUSIC (not the tabs) to reflect what it plays as in standard tuning, yes, you'd transpose to B major. (Which fortunately is changing the key sig from two flats to five sharps, but you don't have to change anything else because it's still B either way). If you're playing on tabs, there's no transposing needed. You're transposing it simply by playing the same tab in a different tuning. Now if the song was in Bb, but for some reason you wanted to play it in A, then put your guitar in D, and play the same tab, and you've transposed the Bb song to be an A song. You didn't change any fingerings, but you changed the notes you were playing. That's transposing. That's the essence of transposing instruments like Trumpet and Saxophone. The fingering is the same for a Bb Trumpet and a C Trumpet, but the actual note that comes out will be different. But transposing a song from Bb major to G minor is an entirely different task. If you were to transpose it to G minor from Bb major, what you'd actually be doing is moving all notes on the staff to start on G instead of Bb, and then lowering the third, sixth and seventh scale degrees (and in this case, since G minor is the relative minor of Bb, the resulting key signature is exactly the same. That's what a relative scale is; same scale, starting on a different note). It would make the happy song sound sad (and starting on a different note), and you're basically completely changing it at this point. Not what you wanna do at all. You want to SHIFT it up or down, not modify it. Edited February 14, 2015 by Neblix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 The sad part is that G# doesn't get a parallel major. It's there just to be sad and alone. Oh yeah! I was tested on this once. It goes G# A# B# C# D# E# F G#. The oddball. xD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 Oh yeah! I was tested on this once. It goes G# A# B# C# D# E# F G#. The oddball. xD Some composers have actually written this bullshit because they like mindfucking performers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivan Hakštok Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 My guess is you just want to play along to a song. Use your daw and transpose the song a semitone up. It's simpler than tuning your guitar just for one song. It's simpler than playing a song written for a half-step down tuning in the standard tuning. Keep things simple. I do this all the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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