- Hi, and welcome to this little quick tip
on how to transpose a melody,
which is something that causes
some people a lot of grief.
So, here's a melody on the board.
Don't worry too much
about what it sounds like.
I've purposely included
some funny accidentals
so we can learn how to deal with them.
And if you were wanting to
transpose that up a tone,
the first thing you do is
transpose the key signature.
And when you're transposing,
you might as well just
think in major keys.
It won't really matter whether your piece
is in a major key or a minor key.
Two sharps means we're in D major.
We're going up to E major.
So here we go.
We need a key signature for E major.
So the first job, to
transpose the key signature.
Copy in the time signature.
Because we're going up,
we're just going to put
all the notes up one.
Don't worry at all, for a moment,
about the flats or the
sharps or the naturals.
Just make sure that all of
these notes are going up.
You might just have to
change some stem direction
like you do there.
And we're just going to take
every single note up one
without having any worries at the moment,
about the accidentals.
So there we are.
That's all the notes transposed up one.
Then you go back and
look at the accidentals,
and just work out how to deal with them.
Now what we're doing here
is we're going up a tone,
or we're going up a major second.
So you could look at all of these notes,
and you could say,
"Well, what's a major
second above B-flat?"
But you could also do it this way.
You could look at the key signature here
and say, "What was B
in this key signature?"
The answer was, it was B-natural.
So what have we done to
it to make it B-flat?
We've taken it down a semitone.
So whatever we've done there,
let's do the same thing here.
So we look at this note,
and we say, "What's this
note in the key signature?"
Well, it's C-sharp.
So if I take C-sharp down a semitone,
which is what happened there,
it's going to be C-natural.
And it's often these accidentals
that cause people a bit of
trouble when they're transposing.
So you see what I did.
I said, "What was B in
the key signature here?"
It was B-natural.
What happened to it?
It went down a semitone.
What was C in the key signature here?
It was C-sharp.
So let's take it down a semitone.
And to double check, if you think
what's a major second above B-flat,
you'll find it is C-natural.
Okay, let's move on.
So, here's the next accidental.
What was E in this key signature?
It was E-natural.
What happened to it?
It went down a semitone.
So let's have a look.
We've got F now.
What's F in this key signature?
It's F-sharp.
Take it down a semitone,
it becomes F-natural.
Here's our next accidental.
And this time we're looking at C,
and we're thinking in the key signature
that was C-sharp, wasn't it?
So, it's come down from
C-sharp to C-natural,
it's gone down a semitone.
So, let's have a look at D.
What was that in the key signature?
Well, it was D-sharp, wasn't it?
So we do the same thing, and
we bring it down a semitone
to D-natural.
Which also makes the point that sometimes
accidentals will stay the
same when you transpose them.
But sometimes they'll change.
So, quick recap.
There's the original.
Think about what we're trying to do.
In this case, we're just
trying to transpose up
a major second and up tone.
So, the first job is
transpose the key signature.
Think in major keys only.
We were in D major so we're transposing up
a second into E major.
That's got four sharps.
We then copy in the time signature,
we write out every single
note of our melody,
up a second, up a note.
Then we go back and deal
with the accidentals
by saying what was that
note in the key signature?
What happened to it?
Then we do the same thing here.
What was this note in
the new key signature?
We need to do the same thing to it
that we did that time.
And there we are.
That's today's quick tip
in transposing a melody.
