Transposing (again!)

2002-04-11 04:00 am

I feel terrible having to ask this question. I have been trolling through the archives and posts but I am still confused.

I am a church choir member. Most of us have not had much (or any) musical training. I bought NWC so I could type in our music in parts and send the files to everyone so we could start to sing in harmony. So far, so good. Everyone loves them and we're doing hunky-dory.

We also have some high school instrumentalist who play with us. Now someone has asked me if I can transpose the alto singing line (on the treble clef) to the alto clef for our viola player. I can see from the postings that it is possible, but it's all Greek to someone who can only read the treble clef.

I see I am supposed to copy the staff I want to transpose. Paste the copy.
Highlight the clef and make it the alto.
Here's where I get confused.

First of all is highlighting all the notes and doing CTRL-SHIFT-UP(OR DOWN)ARROW the same as the transpose function but just manual?

I think someone told me that the viola is the same key as the voice line so I don't have to do a key change, just transpose. Is that true?

Third question. All the documentation just says more or less to adjust the notes till they're in the proper place on the new staff. How do I know when they're in the proper place?

Fourth and LAST question. I found a table in one of the threads that said transposing from treble to alto clef required an adjustment of 6 semitones up. When I did this, my I got an alto staff with six flats! Can that be right? I saw that I should make sure that there was a key signature before I transposed. I did make sure that I had selected C Major. When I went back to look again, though, the option for User Defined was selected.

Sorry for so many questions. I really did look all over the place to try to figure this out on my own. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Re: Transposing (again!)

Reply #1 – 2002-04-12 04:00 am

First off, changing between clefs is *not* transposition, since you're not changing keys. To use your example, changing from treble clef to alto clef for the violist simply involves *moving* the notes six spaces upwards. So just change the clef, select the entire staff, and SHIFT-CNTL-Up Arrow six times. Viola! ;-)

Point of reference: the alto clef's middle C is on the middle line of the staff. (The actual clef symbol used in alto and tenor clefs are called "C" clefs, because they "point" to the location of middle C.) In treble clef, of course, middle C is on the first leger line below the staff, and in bass clef it's on the first leger line above the staff. If you keep these reference points in mind, it's easy to figure out how many steps to move the notes in changing between clefs.

Notice that we're not moving by semitones or whole tones, we're moving by *note positions*. Some of them will be semitone intervals, some will be whole-tone intervals. You don't need to worry about that at all, as mentioned at the start, changing clefs is not transposition.

Clear as mud?

Fred

Re: Transposing (again!)

Reply #2 – 2002-04-12 04:00 am

Oh, yay! This is the first thing that WASN'T clear as mud!

Thank you so much. This will be a piece of cake.

Ann

Re: Transposing (again!)

Reply #3 – 2005-07-26 01:12 pm

Basically, so far as notation goes, a different clef just means that the notes appear on different lines - that's all - there's nothing more to it (other than the pitch, obviously.. but my point is that the Treble Clef has G as the second line up, and the Bass Clef has it as the first line, so you just move all the notes down a line and you have it!)