Once you’ve identified the correct interval, you can transpose the music without really knowing any further music theory. All you have to do is count the steps.
Use pencil rather than a pen, especially if this is your first time transposing music. Assume you’ll make mistakes.
For example, a sax can only play as high as an F6. If you have any notes higher than that, you would need to move the notes down rather than up. You don’t necessarily need an extensive knowledge of written music to see this. If the transposed notes are falling far above the staff lines, they’re likely too high. Test this before you do all the work of transposing several sheets of music, only to find a note that’s too high. Scan the music for the highest notes, then move them up a major sixth. If they are too high for the instrument to play, you’ll need to move the notes down a minor third.
If you’re moving the notes up a major sixth, count 5 lines or spaces from the location of the original note. That’s where your transposed note will be. If you’re moving the notes down a minor third, count 2 lines or spaces down from the location of the original note. That’s the new location for your transposed note.
The key signature is the group of sharps or flats noted on the sheet music next to the treble clef. Each key signature has a different grouping of sharps or flats.
If you moved the notes up a major sixth, start at the original key and move 9 half-steps counterclockwise. That is your new key. If you moved the notes down a minor third, start at the original key and move clockwise 3 half-steps. That is your new key.
The circle of fifths will tell you which sharps and flats you need. For example, suppose your concert pitch music was in G. You transposed the music to E flat by moving the notes down a minor third. From the circle of fifths you can see that your new key signature is E major. E major has 4 sharps: F, C, G, and D. To work out which notes should be sharp or flat, you can use a mnemonic device. For sharps (the keys you find moving clockwise), remember the phrase Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle. The first letter of each word corresponds to a note. So if E major has 4 sharps, the notes that are sharp are the notes that correspond to the first 4 words in your mnemonic device. For flats (the keys you find moving counterclockwise), you can read the same mnemonic backwards: Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles Father.
You likely moved the note to the position it would have been in if it weren’t an accidental. Now your job is to adjust it so that it matches the accidental in the original music.
For example, suppose your original music is in E flat major, and you have an accidental B natural. The note in the key is B flat, which means the accidental was raised a half a step.
To continue the previous example, suppose you transposed that music down to the key of D major. The B was transposed to an A natural. To transpose the accidental, you would need to raise the A natural a half-step up to an A sharp.
If the accidental doesn’t sound correct, go back to the original music and figure out where you went wrong. With a little practice, transposing accidentals will become second nature.
