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What are the note changes to transpose a tune in G to D? Thanks.

Michael w6 wrote:What are the note changes to transpose a tune in G to D? Thanks.

Short of giving you a whole treatise, the best thing would be to spell out what you want to do. What's the tune you want to play? Do you have a version, because I know you usually do?

Then, it would be good to know why you want to transpose it. The reason I'm saying that is because G is the easiest key to play, without transposing, on a D whistle. In my opinion, it's even easier than D, so maybe you won't need to transpose it at all.

And if you are working with abc's, there are several web sites that will do the transposition for you.

Best wishes.

Steve

An easy way if you know the notes is to use a key chord chart like this. I'll give a few music theory pointers on why.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/09/ce ... ba558a.jpg

The notes in your scale are all the root notes of your chords in the key. So take the chords in your key, and remove the minor, major, and dim, and you have your notes in your key. So a D whistle is D E F# G A B C# repeat.

Notice the roman numerals at the top. To easily transpose music its good to think of it as "one two three", and not D E F#. The point in using the roman numerals instead of the note names is you can play the same progression in a different key, and it will work. One two three is one two three, in any key. Think of it like a pitch shifted song, its still the same intervals, just shifted.

So one two three in key of D is D E F#. In G it would be G A B.

So if you know the notes in the key of G, you can look at the chart and swap our notes. If your song in G goes G C D E, thats one four five six, which in D is D G A B. Ect.

Hopefully this makes sense or at least helps a little. I'm no music teacher so my explanation is prob questionable lol

Make yourself a transposition wheel, then you can write out any tune in any key.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... tion+wheel

If the tune has no accidentals use a hand. The one you don't write with. To transpose up place the fingers and thumb down one by one saying to yourself GABCD. Do that for each note of the tune writing down where you get to on the fifth digit, going to A whenever to pass G. To transpose down is only four digits and you have to know the start of the alphabet backwards. The F and C are sharp.

Works for me.

Like fatmac says, you can make a little chart so you don't make mistakes while transposing:

D > G
E > A
F# > B
G > C
A > D
B > E
C# > F#

You transpose often enough and it gets where you can "sight transpose".

Going up 1, 2, 3 lines, or spaces, is easy to sightread.

Going up or down one note, or a line-and-a-note, or two-lines-and-a-note is trickier.

I did loads of transposing when I was doing a lot of Church gigs, because they don't have things written in a whistle-friendly way, and I would transpose half the things we were playing. I would get there early and start writing, to be ready on time.

pancelticpiper wrote:You transpose often enough and it gets where you can "sight transpose".

The most interesting I did like this, in a gig, was to play with a GHP piper, who wanted me to play fiddle with him, and who happened to have all of the sheet music for what he wanted to play with him. It was in the middle of what was otherwise a normal gig. I was with a band, at a wedding, and this guy was a guest, not with the band at all, and wanted me to play with him during the band's break period. I happily obliged.

Anyway, it turns out that the sheet music he had with him was a) in a traditional Scottish bagpiping form of notation that I had never seen before and b) in keys different from where the piper wanted to play the tunes. Given that I didn't know the tunes, I had no option but to read this weird notation, translating it mentally into standard staff notation in my head, and simultaneously transposing. It was fun.

Anyway, that was an aside. Do carry on ...

@Ben - Yes I have version, or rather two. The tune is, "Merry Harriers" The version I first played is from Clare McKenna's tutorial book. I found it on The Session with a slight difference: https://thesession.org/tunes/1230. McKenna's version ahs a triplet of three A's rather than the a quarter note. I found a rather nice D version on Folk Tune finder. The difference here is McKenna's version has two parts which makes it a more interesting tune FFT has just one part.

The d version drops the high b which on some whistles a tad shrill. I had thought if I could transpose the two part tune to D it may be more pleasing. Playing it on a C whistle has also eliminated the shrill b.