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-   -   Transpose guitar chords without changing notes (http://www.notation.com/vb-forum/showthread.php?t=3518)

Tim Mariott 01-06-2011 06:24 PM

Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Being a lazy guitarist, I often use a Capo to play chords in an easier key. There are two scenarios where my starting version of a score may contain chords in the key corresponding to the notes, rather than the key I would like to use with a Capo.
1) where I have manually entered the notes and the chords from scratch
2) where I have imported a MIDI file and then used the most useful Transcribe function to generate a set of chords.

In order to transpose the chords into the "Capo-ed" key, my current experience is that I have to Transpose the score, which will then also Transpose the chords. However this has the following impacts -
1) I cannot then play the score to practise the chords, as the notes are now in the wrong key
2) I cannot share my printed score with an instrumentalist as they will be playing in the wrong key.

This is a long-winded way of posing my basic question which is - is there any way to transpose the guitar chords without transposing the underlying notes? Or is my only option to manually transcribe the guitar chords as a punishment for being lazy and using a Capo?

Sherry C 01-06-2011 06:36 PM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Hi Tim,

You can use the Staff/Transpose Instrument Key and transpose yourself a capo-ed guitar part while still keeping the Concert Pitch (the pitches that you hear) for other musicians who might be playing with you, or so you can practice along with the file while it plays.

The only caveat here is that to practice along with the file in the right key, you'll have to use the Part drop list and choose the "Guitar" part (or whatever Part you use as your capo-ed part) and display only that. The chord names for that part will be the capo-ed ones. If you show the whole score, then the chord names will be the concert pitch names.

Have fun :)
Sherry

Tim Mariott 01-07-2011 09:26 AM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Sherry

Thanks for the rapid and helpful clarification. I now understand what I can do and I have to conclude that I cannot completely achieve what I wanted to do which is to reproduce is the format found in many hymn books where the score is shown at concert pitch with Capo-ed chords above the score.

May I explain by a recent example. At a recent church service our brilliant violinist suddenly found she had no music with her. I said "just share with me" which was fine until we arrived at a song which I was playing with a Capo. It was a song in Bflat that I was playing with G chords at Capo 3. So I had transposed the score to G for my purposes, with a big reminder saying "Capo 3". Luckily our violinist was good enough to transpose on sight from G to Bflat.

I conclude from your explanation and my subsequent experimentation that I cannot generate a single printed score sheet that has the Capo-ed chords on one staff with the concert pitch notes on a second staff. It's no great issue if I cannot achieve it. I'll just have to plough through a concert pitch score and manually edit all of the chords - or constantly nag my instrumentalists to make sure they don't forget their scores.

Best wishes for 2011.
Tim

dj 01-07-2011 02:17 PM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Hi, Tim:

You could leave the music as it is and simply edit the chords manually, changing them to what you need for the capo'd guitar.

David

Sherry C 01-07-2011 03:07 PM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Howdy,

Or, you can "reverse transpose" the other parts :)

If you're doing hymnbook format (sop/alto on treble clef and ten/bass on bass clef), then you'd
1. enter your score (or open your .mid - not sure which you do)
2. analyze for chord names
3. Use the Staff/Transpose Actual Pitches (yes, this one) to change the key to what you want to play in while capoed.
4. Now, select the notes in the score (you can easily select all the notes by using Region/Select, hit ok, then Region/Convert region to selection of notes)
5. Press the P (for "pitch") key on your keyboard, and then the Up or Down arrow on your keyboard for the number of half-steps (which corresponds to the number of frets) you need to get the notation back to concert pitch.

This way you still have all your capoed guitar chord names without individually editing them, but the written parts are adjust back to the original concert pitch.

And be sure to put some kind of annotation that the chord names are for the capoed guitar :)

ttfn,
Sherry

Tim Mariott 01-07-2011 04:29 PM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
The "reverse transpose" and Pitch change sounds a very neat solution. I'll give it a try. Many thanks.
Tim

Tim Mariott 01-09-2011 09:44 AM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Sherry

The "reverse transpose" seems to work fine. I would though add a final step to your process, which is to add back a suitable key signature to the written parts (after having changed their pitch) so that the representation of the notes, and in particualr the accidentals, is more familiar to vocalists and other instrumentalists.

Thanks
Tim

Sherry C 01-09-2011 05:55 PM

Re: Transpose guitar chords without changing notes
 
Hi Tim,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Mariott (Post 15311)
I would though add a final step to your process, which is to add back a suitable key signature to the written parts (after having changed their pitch) so that the representation of the notes, and in particualr the accidentals, is more familiar to vocalists and other instrumentalists.

Good point! I'd done that to the score I was experimenting with, but forgot to write it in "the list" :o

ttfn,
Sherry


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