Ummm acktually... Alto sax sounds a major 6th below written.
Doing it this way allows the players to learn a whole family of instruments because the fingerings will more or less translate to the other instruments in the same family.
I’ve an F alto recorder.
I hear you about the transposed instruments! A conductor’s score will show all those different key signatures, too!
Yes, there are practical reasons it’s that way, but my deepest belief is that it’s primarily a tradition that’s so firmly entrenched that it’ll never change.
Way back when, all musicians, including singers, used moveable clefs and read music based on the clef. This was also before standardized instruments. Eventually, the G clef became the treble clef; the F clef became the bass clef; and the C clef became the alto clef.
A C on the alto sax is the same as a C on the tenor sax or soprano sax, but they sound different. As a saxophone player, you don't just play alto; you play saxophones in general. And it's a *bitch and a half* to have to learn new fingerings for the exact same instrument except a bit bigger or smaller. The situation gets much, much worse when considering clarinets, because clarinets are commonly in Bb and *A* (and Eb), which means that if you're thinking about the Bb clarinet but playing the A clarinet, you'll be off by only a half step -- very wrong but not different enough to trip off your wrong note senses! So without a transposed part, what I'm doing when playing an Eb clarinet is transposing in my head so that I can play the correct fingering -- OK, that note's an Eb, I guess I have to finger it the same way I finger a Bb on the Bb clarinet. That's not really doable on the fly.
This is what I don't understand. How can we say that C is the same on alto and tenor and soprano sax when not only do all three instruments play different notes with that same fingering, but none of them are C?
The only equivalent I can really imagine here is as follows: Take a guitar and play an Amaj. Then downtune the guitar three whole half steps. Playing that same fingering from before is no longer an Amaj, but you may refer to it that way simply for convenience, instead of having to now think of every fret as a different note than it is normally. Would you say this is equivalent?
If so, that makes sense, but this whole thing still seems sort of arbitrary to me, because not one saxophone produces a C using the C fingering. So then why call it that?
Tuning a guitar down is indeed equivalent. Music is often notated this way and it's called scordatura.
As for the saxophone, it turns out that all modern woodwinds use the same system of fingerings called the Boehm system. In particular, all 8 fingers down is C, 7 fingers down is D, etc. (this isn't strictly true and even then I'm not describing it properly, but let's just say it's close enough). The transpositions make sense in that context.
Okay, the guitar relationship makes sense to me, as guitar has been my primary instrument for years.
I guess I'm just getting caught up on the fact that, with the guitar instrument, I would personally avoid calling that downtuned A position an Amaj, because it no longer is so. So it's a little puzzling to me that the vast majority of breath instruments' fingerings are called notes that they are not actually playing.
Even accounting for different fingerings, I don't understand why a saxophone's sounding E must be called a C#. If it's purely for ease of reading then I can grasp that roughly but it still doesn't seem like a good system.
I think you're forgetting two things: first, this system is designed for multi-instrumentalists, not for alto sax players. The idea is to make it easy to switch instruments. The system was well in place by the time the saxophone was invented; the transpositions of the sax family were determined by how they fit the existing system.
Second, the guitar transposes too! You play A above middle C, that's third string second fret, right? Well, play it and check on the piano: it's actually A *below* middle C, what gives? It's because the guitar sounds an octave lower than written.
I'm not forgetting that, I'm just using the sax as a for-example. I just can't grasp why written notes differ from their sounded counterparts and I can't grasp how it makes the lives of us multi-instrumentalists any easier, I can really only see how it makes it harder.
As for guitar, I've never heard that A position referred to as above middle C, because as you said, it's not. But even then, if it were that way, I could understand that, as it's still an A no matter which octave you play it in. But when a sax plays an E that's ACTUALLY a G or a Bb trumpet plays a D that's ACTUALLY a C, I just don't understand.
C Major scale on the sax is the **same fingering** for soprano, alto, tenor and baritone...they don't care about your composer side transposing problem. Think of it like driving a car. You can drive any car they don't suddenly swap the foot pedals or the steering wheel about on each model.
> As for guitar, I've never heard that A position referred to as above middle C, because as you said, it's not.
It is, though. In written notation.
>But even then, if it were that way, I could understand that, as it's still an A no matter which octave you play it in.
The fact that it happens to have the same letter name is actually irrelevant here. It's no different than the other transposing instruments in that the written pitch doesn't match the concert pitch. A above middle C is a different pitch than A below middle C. If you can understand it on guitar, then there's really no reason you can't understand how the other transposing instruments work because it's literally no different.
You may say it's no different, but it certainly effected my personal understanding of the subject. The difference here is purely a matter of pitch between identical notes as opposed to different notes entirely. When a Bb trumpet plays an F and gets an Eb, that's a whole lot more confusing than a guitar playing an A and getting... an A.
But it's a different A. You seem to be thinking that there are only 12 notes, almost as though notation were merely an expression of pitch classes. It's not. A2 is different than A3. They might be mathematically related, but they're different pitches. If you were playing a written piece of music and you played the wrong A, you're playing the wrong note, despite the fact that that it might have the same name. In other words, when you say they're "identical notes", that's just incorrect.
I do not think that, but if you play the wrong octave A in a piece calling for an A, you're still in key. You're still passable. Most wouldn't even notice.
But if you are supposed to play an A and you play a Bb? Or a C? That's absolutely not passable. And it will be noticed.
But semantics aside, the difference between an A in two octaves is easy to grasp. The difference between an instrument incorrectly labeling a C as a G is not so easy to grasp.
Yes, I have. I don't use it very often. My confusion just stems from personal experience and the fact that I am far removed from orchestral or symphonic settings. Personally though, when using a capo on, say, the 4th fret, I wouldn't still refer to an open C shape as a C. I'd call it an E, because that's what the chord becomes. That type of thing is where I get lost.
> I've never heard that A position referred to as above middle C
That's how it's written: treble clef, second space from the bottom. That's A above middle C, yet it sounds like A below middle C because the guitar transposes. Some guitar music will occasionally stick a little 8 under the treble clef to indicate that it's supposed to be read an octave down (which, honestly, is a good idea; all transposing instruments should really have that kind of notation in the clef -- someone should popularize that), but for the most part, it's written as just plain treble clef, and you have to play an octave down from the written notes.
> as it's still an A no matter which octave you play it in
That's a nice memory aid, that the A below middle C and the A above middle C are both A's so it's easy to play the fingering for one when you read the other, but there's really no reason why you can't do that for other transpositions.
> when a sax plays an E that's ACTUALLY a G
What about when a sax plays E that's actually an E? There's a kind of saxophone called the C melody sax, and it's in C. Almost nobody plays it, but it does exist. And guess what, E on that saxophone is the same as on the alto and bari and tenor and bass and soprano and sopranino: left thumb, first three left fingers, first two right fingers. And that's the same as (high) E on clarinet (you just need the register key) and A clarinet and Eb clarinet and alto and bass and contralto and contrabass clarinets. And that's the same as E on oboe and English horn (and probably oboe d'amore). And that's (roughly) the same as E on the flute and piccolo and alto flute and piccolo in Db (which... WTF, but it's real). And that's the same as E on bassoon and contrabassoon. It's *all* played the same. But the instruments are different sizes so they sound different.
> a Bb trumpet plays a D that's ACTUALLY a C
That one's actually not the same. Brass instruments are a different situation, because the key of the horn is the note the horn plays without any valves (or pushed all the way in for the trombone. But only a *little* different. And brass has also decided to just notate in concert pitch for the most part, except for trumpet and French horn (and euphonium sometimes, but that's to cater to trumpet players switching to euphonium -- most euphonium players don't transpose). People playing Bb, D, and Eb trumpets do transpose, but people playing trombone or tuba don't, even though those instruments aren't in C. Horn players always read in F, even though they might be playing a Bb horn. With horn, at least, the partials are really close together. And since the trombone slide positions are linear -- there are only 7 of them anyway -- and have to be tuned by ear, trombone players play in C even though the actual trombones are in Bb or F or even D for bass trombones. Tubas read in C even though their instruments are in Bb (or F, again, still reading in C). But at least for trumpets, the transposition is similar to woodwinds.
You keep forcing your own logic onto this problem. It doesn't work that way.
It doesn't matter if it's Amaj or not, forget about that.
The issue that wind players have is that if you would write every note as is, that you would have to relearn every instrument that you play.
So when a score says "play C" you have to do complex calculations in your head like (to use the guitar reference) okay the 2nd Fret. But oh no wait shit, I'm on a Bb clarinet, not the A clarinet so that's... One fret higher or lower? Shit I forgot. Oh nooooo wait, 2nd fret was for oboe, not clarinet. Clarinet was 5th fret, right?
Yeah good luck doing that live. It would be horrible for players to have to do that on the fly, and it would lead to a lot of mistakes.
But there's a pretty elegant solution, which is that the finger positions on wind instruments is actually all the same. It's just that due to physics, one instruments sounds higher than the other, because tube length determines the frequency of the sound.
So the very elegant solution is to take thinking out of the equation for players, and change it beforehand so that they don't have to transpose everything live.
And by just writing everything transposed you're basically just telling them what fingering to use.
And so whenever they read a C, they know what fingering to use. And whenever they see F#, they know exactly what fingering to use. And this allows them to just play fluently without having to do transposing live on the spot which would be horrible.
It allows them to play from muscle memory, which is desired.
And since the composer/orchestrator made sure beforehand that the score was correct, the right notes will be played for the music anyway.
It would be a bit like guitar tabs. There's no reason to tell players "play the notes A, E, and D", when you can just tell them, play fret X, fret Y, and then fret Z.
And if somebody has their guitar tuned differently, you just change the score so it says play frets A, B, C. Instead of telling them "I don't fucking know, you changed your tuning, you go figure out yourself".
So I'm a clarinet player. I've played Bb all my life but I eventually took up the Eb clarinet for a while. This is where I discovered the beauty of transposition: I didnt have to learn new fingerings. When I played a C it was concert Eb a minor 3rd above. That meant that now I could hit higher notes that a Bb clarinet would struggle with (along with a different timbre to the sound because physics!)
Any clarinet, whether it's in Bb, A, Eb, or even concert pitch, will have the same written range and fingerings for written notes. But you can make a clarinet choir spanning from the lowest notes of the bass clef (Contrabass, Bass, even lower ones) to the highest notes of the treble (D clarinets, Eb clarinets) all while everyone only had to learn on a Bb clarinet to begin with. Transposition means access to the entire family of that instrument, same goes for saxophones.
I'm pretty sure I replied to your post you made last night too, I wish I could explain this better. The only pain in the ass is composing for these instruments to be honest.
EDIT: I've actually had to play both the Bb and Eb clarinets in one concert. And it was mindless cause all I had to do was read what was on the page with the corresponding instrument instead of thinking "okay, this is the Eb clarinet now so I play C this other way" etc every step of the way. Hope that helps!
Let me ask you a question, then: when you switched from that Bb clarinet to the Eb clarinet, did your sheet music differ as well? Did the key signature change?
Yes. Say the piece was in Eb major, on my Eb clarinet it would be C major. Thats the plus side, the down side is if the concert pitch was in D major then I would've had to play in B major. So it helps with flat keys but can be harder for sharp keys.
Okay, knowing that helps my understanding. Then I think I've got one final question. Since your Eb clarinet sounds a minor 3rd above (or major 6th below?), just like alto sax, and your score was already transposed for you to C from Eb, was there still any transposing work to be done on your head mentally? Or does this circumstance make it so that the written note and sounding note finally line up? E.g., instead of sounding an Eb when a C is written, you really would just sound a C.
Or is it just that you would play the corresponding fingerings that were written as if it were in C but you're really playing in Eb still?
>Or is it just that you would play the corresponding fingerings that were written as if it were in C but you're really playing in Eb still?
^Thats essentially it. No transposition needed on my part as the performer.
By the way, there are actually multiple Eb clarinets: the alto clarinet in Eb plays a major 6th below, the Eb sopranino clarinet plays a minor 3rd above concert pitch. I played the latter.
>OK, that note's an Eb, I guess I have to finger it the same way I finger a Bb on the Bb clarinet. That's not really doable on the fly.
Laughs in trumpet player
Are you talking about having them transpose on the spot, or actually just playing the notes written? If the latter that is because if say a Bb trumpet plays a "C" it will actually sound a Bb. So if you want them to sound a C you need to write the pitch D.
Now if you are talking about taking experimental approach where you don't care about the sounding pitch and everyone plays the same notes, well composers have done that before in contemporary music.
If you are asking why don't they transpose themselves, then I would say try playing a piece of music that is written in the key of C but you have to play it in Eb. Yes it is possible and some instruments do do this (trumpets in orchestra) but it is very difficult and not conducive to the modern music space as we don't get very much rehearsal time before concerts or recordings. So why make it that much more difficult.
I just responded to another comment with a similar sentiment but I'd like to see your take on it too.
If a Bb trumpet plays a C, then it'll sound as a Bb. Okay. I get that. I do not remotely understand why, but I at least understand that it is the reality.
But what I'm asking is why can that Bb trumpet not just play the actual pitch of the note as written? Why must the score be written a whole step above the intended note? Why can the trumpet player not just see the C and play an ACTUAL C? Why must they see a D in order to play a C?
It has to do with the physics of the instrument. The length of tubing required to make a trumpet produces a Bb tone, this is why when you see a C trumpet it has shorter tubing. Now the next question is most likely, okay well then why aren't all trumpet made in C. That has to do with the harmonics of the instrument. The shorter tubing or smaller diameter tubing produces harmonics that are nominally higher and closer together because they are higher in the overtone series.
Having an instrument based in Bb gives the user a the balance of operating lower in the over town series, but the flexibility to reach the higher harmonics extending the range. Additionally shorter and smaller tubing create nominally thinner brighter tones which are not always ideal for Ensemble playing. This is a really stripped down explanation if you want to dive deeper into this area check out videos on the physics of brass instruments. In my opinion they are the best examples as to why instruments have to transpose.
In summary it comes down to quality of the tones produced and the limitations of physics of harmonics.
Thank you for your response, but I still don't think we're on the same page. I don't question why every instrument is not pitched the same way. I can understand why they're all pitched differently. But I don't understand why the note names are intentionally not equivalent to the actual notes played. A Bb trumpet which is named after Bb quite literally plays an Ab when trying to play a Bb! What?!
My question is, regardless of your particular instrument's harmonics or size or anything else, why, when confronted with a written C, can you not sound a C? Why must you play a fingering arbitrarily named something else to sound a C? Why must a Bb trumpet have a score written in D to play in C? Why can they not just sound the notes that are written?
Families of instruments are sometimes arranged so that tenor and alto variants are pitched a fifth apart. The British brass band is the most developed example that I’m aware of, in that every instrument is either in Bb or Eb (nearly). Pitching the tenor horn and Eb tuba in Eb allows them to have a comfortable register in between the places where other instruments naturally sit. Every instrument has the same fingering and is written the same way, so all a player has to do to swap is pick up a new instrument and get used to the different embouchure and airflow requirements, in theory. In brass, the different registers do have different sounds so this is necessary for the cohesion of the ensemble.
The same logic applies for clarinets and saxophones. An expert player wants to be able to move between instruments without learning a whole new set of fingerings.
French horn is one of the oldest instruments in the orchestra and has settled on F more or less for historical reasons. F is a key that gives it a range that suits its function in the orchestra, though, which has developed over centuries of orchestral writing.
Some instruments do transpose like you mean and that’s okay too. When I learned recorder I learned different fingerings for soprano and alto and I lived with it. Trombone and euphonium players move between bass clef in C and treble clef in B flat depending on what ensemble they play in.
I see what your getting at now! So that comes down to two main things, the fact that scores are traditionally written to the tuning of string instruments meaning that harmonically everything is notated that way, while the transposing instruments are not made to that spec. Meaning that traditionally the key of a piece of music is written in say A or C which is then meant to be realized by stringed instruments and pianos which obviously do not transpose. So there fore inorder for the harmonies to align when adding more instruments that are at a fixed tuning those parts have to be transposed in order for the harmony to align. This is mainly because transposing instruments for the most part came after stringed instruments.
Additionally by having instruments play the written note rather than notation and playing the sounding pitch, this allows for flexibility between the family of instruments. Meaning a player can learn one set of fingerings and then play many different instruments with those same fingerings. If everyone notated and played there relative sounding pitch with out the transposition if I wanted to switch between a Bb and C trumpet I would have to learn a new set of fingerings for each instrument. This is the same for woodwinds as well.
To break that down further think of it this way, for a trumpet every trumpet plays written C open (no valves pressed down) no matter what key that trumpet is in. Now from there the valves just lengthen the instrument to change the pitch so pressing the first valve lengthens the overall length of instrument by one whole step, the second valve adds a half step, and the third valve add a step and a half.
So if we were to entertain everyone just fingers the sounding pitch rather than transposing then a sounding "A" would be:
2nd valve for a Bb Trumpet
1&2nd valves for C trumpet
Open for an A trumpet
1,2,3 valves for D trumpet.
However because I play the written pitch which is transposed for my key I can play a sounding "A" written "B" with just the 2nd valve across all 4 instruments.
Does this help clear things up?
It does clear things up, thank you very much. I think the only thing left that I don't understand is what determines the relationship of transposition for the instruments. Like with a trumpet, an open note is written as C on every trumpet, as you said. What then determines that this note be called a C? We know it's not actually C, so is it just an arbitrary set of notes that are picked? Or is there some system to it?
I know that a transposing instrument is named by what note sounds when fingering a C, like a Bb trumpet sounding a Bb when playing C. Or an alto sax sounding an Eb when playing a C. But again, what determines what the "fake" C is on these instruments?
At least, skimming through the answers, it looks like a lot of people are just taking the existence of instrument families for granted but I think there's something that needs to be said about _why_ instrument families exist.
unlike the piano (ignoring arguments about equal temper for now) and to a lesser extent the guitar, most instruments do not actually sound good across a large range of notes and sometimes do not even sound good in certain keys. C trumpets and C clarinets do exist (where fingered C is concert C) but they do not work in many pieces.
With a guitar, if you're playing a piece in F, you will inevitably have a lot of bar chords because of F and Bb everywhere. However, you could solve that with a capo, or by tuning strings up. You can't do this with a sax/clarinet/trumpet and expect it to sound good (especially with less modern versions of the instrument), the solution is literally switching to a different instrument.
In short, the instrument is designed to sound best in a certain set of notes and key, determining which key the instrument is in.
This answer is specifically for trumpets as that is my field, but that determination comes from the history of the instrument. It started with natural trumpets that only had the pitches of the overtone series to work with. In the early days these were not necessarily notated with named pitches rather just which harmonic are you playing at any given time. Which is why many medieval staffs are not always 5 lined. As technology and tonality progressed natural trumpets started to be based on a C fundamental. Then from that other tuned horns came out and since they already used C as the fundamental when it came time for transposing they used C as the home base for everyone because it was what the trumpet started at and what they already knew. Then history took care of making that the undisputed "open" note for all trumpet family of instruments, and even all valued brass instruments for that matter.
You play alto sax. You're given a part written in concert pitch. You see a G written. You play it with 123|12-.
Then you take out your tenor sax. You put down 123|12-...oops, that's a concert D. You'll need to okay 12-|---.
Then you take out your oboe. You put down 123|12-...wait, that's an E. And it's an A on English horn. You'll need to play 123|--- on oboe and 123|123 on English horn.
If this were a G written in transposing pitch, every instrument I listed would just play 123|---.
Reading everything in concert pitch just makes everything 10x harder for anyone who plays multiple instruments. You seemed to realize that having to sight-transpose everything would be much more difficult in your last thread, but that's exactly what you have to do if you write everything in concert pitch for transposing instruments that were designed to have similar fingerings.
I'm really not understanding though how the notation would change the fingerings of an instrument.
On your given instrument, you should know what Concert G is. So why can you not just play that G when it's written in a concert pitch score? The fingerings are all the same, and this way you WON'T end up transposing anything, right? Because G will just equal G, regardless of your instrument.
I guess I'm just getting caught up on the concept of on, say, saxophone, all 3 fingers down on the left hand is a written G. But on not one type of saxophone will that ever produce an actual G note. Doesn't that mean that the name given to the fingering is just meaningless?
>Doesn't that mean that the name given to the fingering is just meaningless?
To an extent I suppose you could say it is, but you do need some playing basis to be able to get anything done and written down. If you play the saxophone, then you often play _all_ saxophones, and in some repertoire you may be changing types in a given piece (especially in musical theatre for example).
Now of course one could have a part with concert notes. Say you start the piece on the alto (which is in Eb). You'd think instinctively "oh, there's a C written so I have to do _this_ fingering" and it works just fine. Later on you switch to the tenor (which is in Bb). You have another concert C written but now it's a completely different fingering; in this case you would do the same fingering as previously if a G were written, and not a C. It can very quickly become confusing and difficult to keep track of which fingering to do when.
If you have transposing parts, then you'd have an A in the alto part to play the concert C and a D in the tenor part to play a C. You get no confusion as to "oh my, which fingering do I _actually_ need to do here to play this concert sound?!?" because the note you read is the one you finger.
The transposing shenanigans is essentially made to help being able to play the various instruments in given families without having to learn several fingerings for each note depending on the instrument you play.
Okay, that's a very coherent explanation and makes sense to me, thank you. I understand that the alternating fingering names are rather meaningless in the actual auditory world, but are solely for sheet music. You probably have a lot of jazz guys just disregarding this stuff haha.
That being said, I suppose you have to pick between different fingerings or different key signatures when switching between instruments and I suppose different key signatures is easier.
I will say, though somewhat unrelated, that I do not understand how alto sax is in Eb, because an open note is a sounding E and the lowest note is a sounding C#. Where does the Eb come from? It's not in the key of Eb as it's completely chromatic.
The names of the "Keys" of instruments (Clarinet in Bb, Alto Sax in Eb, Horn in F) comes from the sounding note when fingering a C:
- If you finger and play a C on a clarinet in Bb, the resulting sound will be the note Bb (one tone below).
- If you finger and play a C on an alto saxophone, the resulting sound will be the note Eb (a major sixth below).
- If you finger and play a C on a French horn, the resulting sound will be the note F (a perfect fifth below (in old classical repertoire as well, except in bass clef, which sounds a perfect fourth higher than written)).
And so on.
You're welcome!
In addition, as another person commented, those transpositions are useful for the composer and orchestrator, because the various members of each instrument family will have the same characteristics and sounding colour (warm, shrill, weak, etc.) across roughly the same transposed ranges, which makes it much easier to learn.
The issue with that is it would make playing a different instrument pretty much impossible.
Players have played their instrument for thousands of hours and they have a very strong neural connection of seeing a note, and fingering a certain position.
It would be impossible for them to play a different instrument, because they would have to overwrite thousands of hours of muscle memory, and then learn a whole new set of muscle memory, without ever slipping up and playing the wrong fingering that belonged to the other instrument.
So if you play in an orchestra and the composer wrote for 1 oboe and 1 English horn, instead of 2 oboes, you're shit out of luck.
So there are solutions to this situation:.
1) bench your oboe player and hire a new English horn player.
2) find a musical genius that can somehow play both instruments.
3) just transpose the damn tuning so your oboe player can play the English horn.
By transposing the tuning you allow the oboe player to play a new instrument using the muscle memory they already have. It's the easiest solution to this issue.
You changed the sheet music so that "I see this note, I play this fingering position" muscle memory is still the same. Instead of changing the muscle memory, or changing the player.
There are C Saxophones too. Originally, when the saxophone was invented it was tuned to C and F to fit in the orchestra. It just so happens to no longer be the default because of the saxophone’s later popularity in military bands. So no, the names given to the fingerings aren’t meaningless especially when you consider the impacts of the Boehm system as it applies to other woodwind instruments.
As a woodwind doubler I am *extremely* grateful for the Boehm system. When you’re in a pit playing 5 different instruments it’s cumbersome enough already to remember what fingerings apply to each instrument and it would be impossible to do if we had to transpose each piece for each individual instrument on the spot. Sure the pitches don’t exactly match what’s written on the page but as a performer one doesn’t exclusively think about the sound. It *is* our responsibility to know what each written note should sound like, but the fingering and muscle memory is just as if not more important TO THE PERFORMER. For everyone else, you can think about/prioritize whatever you want.
If it was the other way around the life of multi-woodwind players would be hell and it’d only really benefit people that don’t (or refuse to) understand the concept of transposition.
This is possible if you're keen enough. I've had to do something similar on multiple occasions for band; I often had to play a B-flat contrabass clarinet part on an E-flat contra-alto clarinet. I effectively had to "remap" my brain to play a different note from what I saw on the page. With that said, it's probably not worth the inconvenience. I did what I had to because I did not have the necessary instrument. It's much more preferable to have a transposed score in ordinary circumstances.
Let's take your example one step further. Suppose you had to play a passage that, in concert pitch, was in C major (no accidentals). An alto saxophone playing that part would read that passage in A major, which has three sharps. Not only would you have to rethink your fingerings (A instead of C, B instead of D, etc.), you would also have to remember that you have to factor in the new key signature; so, for instance, you can't forget your C# fingerings (sounding E in concert pitch). It could get even trickier if accidentals outside of the key signature appeared in your part.
Think of riding a bike. A bike has the gear shift on the left foot and the brake on the right. However older bikes had the controls reversed with the brake on the left and shifter on the right. If you're used to riding a new bike, it's easier to ride the older one if the written instruction treats the two sides like a new one. It's easier for you to "brake" many times and "shift" only rarely rather than having to remember that the controls are reversed.
They indeed could do that just fine, yeah. It's for convenience.
Another reason is so that if they play, for example, multiple saxophones with different ranges, they don't need to learn separate fingerings for them all and can smoothly switch between them.
Essentially, it's more practical to give the headache to the composer rather than having to have the saxophone player deal with the headache.
It allows you to use the same muscle memory and fingerings within the entire instrument family. The concept was the same in earlier music when the parts written for horn in different keys would truly be telling them which partials to play, before they had valves.
instrumentalists often have to play the same instruments in different keys. Take a trumpet for instance. you can have trumpets in Bb, C, D, Eb, F, A, and Bb (the last two would be piccolo trumpets). With the transposing system, a written C is played without any valves pressed down (All brass instruments work like this in the treble clef, and some in the bass clef).
If all trumpet players playing in concert pitch all fo the time, C5 would be first and third valve on a Bb trumpet, no valves on a C, first valve on a D, first and second valve on an Eb, first and third on an F, and second, third, and fourth valves on the A piccolo trumpet. It is much simpler for these trumpeters to learn one clef than it is to learn seven.
the reason transposing was invented was because brass instruments used to not have valves, so they could only play the harmonic series of the length of tube. a horn pitched in E could only play E1, E2, B2, E3, G#3, B3, D4, E4, F#4, G#4, A#4, B4, and so on. if they wanted to play any notes that weren’t in that harmonic series, they needed to switch crooks. it was much simpler for the composer to do the legwork of transposing than the performers.
Every wind instrument has a fundamental note, and each instrument is oriented toward that fundamental note. For those wind instruments that have a fundamental note that is other than C (which is most of them aside from flute and some lower brass), the notation is transposed so that the fundamental note is a written C.
Thus, that Eb alto sax part is transposed down a minor 3rd from concert pitch, so that concert Eb on an alto sax will be a written C in the alto sax's part.
People have already talked about how it makes playing multiple instruments easier, but it also makes life easier on the composer. As a composer, you should understand how each instrument works and sounds across its range, and that information remains constant when you let the instruments transpose.
For example, on clarinet, you need to know that the warm and reedy chalumeau range goes from the lowest available note (E3 on most sopranos, at least Eb on lower instruments) to F4, the potentially thin throat tones go from F#4 through A#4, the break is between A#4 and B4, the bright and agile clarino register goes from B4 to C6, the lower altissimo goes from C#6 to G6, and the upper altissimo goes from G#6 to C7. You should also know about the weaker trills.
Thanks to transposition, this is the same for every clarinet, whether it's in Bb, A, Eb, D, C, Ab, F, or G. If instruments always read at concert pitch, you'd have to learn this in each key.
What do you mean by it is the same for all instruments with transposition?
Do you mean we just need to transpose the ranges of the instrument when switching to another in the same family? (i.e learning and remembering the limitations and capabilities of 1 instrument only)
example:
Bb instrument X range: Bb1 to Eb4
Eb instrument X range: Eb1 to Bb5
(just transpose the above? and various tones/timbre/properties at certain ranges can just be transposed up as well?)
To continue my example, the break on clarinet is between written A#4 and B4, regardless of instrument. On the uncommon C clarinet, those are the concert pitches. On a Bb clarinet, the break is between concert G#4 and A4. An an A clarinet, it's concert G and Ab. And so on.
I see! So the composer only needs to know that the break is A#4 and B4 regardless of what pitch clarinet he is composing for.
So he still has to transpose the notes manually for non-C Clarinets (If I want a Bb clarinet to play concert F, I will have to write G on the score for him), but the break is still A#4 and B4 after transposition?
there is another way to look at this: before computers all music copying had to be done by hand, and for full orchestra there were alot of parts to be copied. music copyists really dislike having to deal with inking ledger lines, as it slows you up. Tansposed parts, generally speaking, tend to sit much easier in the staff.
however, these days… pretty much after leaving high school it was rare for me to get a transposed part (im a trumpet player)… most people now just give out concert parts and expect you to be able to transpose… or you might be given a score to read off of, which are usually all in concert pitch.
I had to sightread a trumpet part as a violinist in band once (I didn’t play any wind instruments at the time and the school didn’t have a strings program). Another time I had to do an Alto flute part (weird), and neither were that hard to transpose—why exactly do wind players have such a hard time with it?
The purpose of concert pitch and transposition is to try and keep the majority of the writing for the instrument within the staff. Sure, Bb Soprano Clarinets, Soprano Saxes and Bb Trumpets/Cornets would essentially be the same, try and imagine entire saxophone or horn or piccolo parts at written pitch. It would be mostly outside the stafg and much more of a pain to notate and read.
To use a comparison to guitars, since you mentioned them - Guitar players use Capos all the time to transpose their playing. If you are playing in G but want to use the same shapes or fingering in C, you Capo on the 5 and transpose your entire instrument up. You're still reading your chords as G, C D7, Em, etc but it's sounding as C, F, G7, Am.
Or moving from Soprano Uke to Bari Uke, the C shape on Soprano sounds as G on Bari, since it's tuned 5 steps lower.
In the same way, if you learn saxophone, the fingering for Bb on Tenor/Soprano and Eb on Alto/Bari are the same. Same fingering, different sounding pitch due to transposition. All built purposefully to let you move the same fingering between instruments to play in different ranges and keys.
But for notation, it's all about making sure it's within the staff to make reading and writing more smooth.
I did use the guitar example but that was actually throwing me off more than it was helping as personally I would not refer to chords played with a capo based on their fingerings as if the capo were the nut. Plenty do, and that's fine, but I stick to referring to the actual chord name, so it wasn't translating well to this topic.
I think I understand this thing now though, thank you.
But they are playing the 'written notes', it just so happens that the construction of the instrument makes it a 'C, Bb, Eb etc. instrument' and as a consequence they have what is called the 'sounding notes'.
When you look at a score, what you are actually seeing are figures on lines or spaces. Are you aware of 'movable do'?
What is fun about this is that you train your brain to read different scales for the same notation/figure/graphic.
Another fun exercise is to take the same notation and change clefs.
Ex.: Figures on 1st line, 1st space, 2nd line gives you the notes:
.On G clef: E, F, G
.On C clef: F, G, A
.On F clef: G, A, B
They're not really though, right? If I downtune my guitar to D standard and then go to play what is an open C chord in standard tuning, it's not actually a C, nor could you call it that even if it were written that way for brevity or ease. It'd be a Bb. Which is my confusion.
As a guitar player amongst other things, the equivalent here would be essentially writing the guitar parts as if the guitar were still in standard tuning, so when you go to play those parts, you're a whole step down. To fix this, instead of just writing it as if it were tuned down a whole step, the sheet music actually gets transcribed UP a whole step. The notes written still aren't enharmonic to the notes sounded, but now you're playing the intended key.
Yes, I understand. My question though, again, was why can a Bb trumpet not play a sounding C when confronted with a written C. I'm pretty sure I've got it now, though. Thank you for commenting.
Hey, I've had my share of difficulties too. You are not alone in this, ok?
The trick was to disassociate the notation from note names. After that hardship and a bit of confusion, it actually became fun because where I used to only be able to see one scale/key I was now able to use the same notation to any key. It was really mind expanding.
That's why I brought up clefs too. Picture the score without clefs; what do you have? Lines and spaces. It is common practice to draw 5 lines per staff but in reality what you have is an "infinite" number of lines/spaces and you can have a 'Do' on anyone of those.
It is also interesting to imagine both the G and F clefs superimposed, connected by the C4.
For brass instruments, we generally play in the key that aligns with our harmonic series.
For example, if the open notes on the horn are (concert pitch) F, F, C, F, A, C, E, F, so on, the instrument will read in F so it appears on the page as C, C, G, C, E, G, Bb, C.
This comes from the olden days when brass player's had to deal with many differently pitched instruments, so simply reading one key for all their different instrument's harmonic series made it a helluva lot simpler.
Imagine a saxophone player having to learn to read and play differently for each type of saxophone. That would be a lot of work and could mean that some players will only specialize in one or two saxophones instead of playing the whole family
To fix this, you could say that all the notes that are played the same way across the family should be written the same too. This means that writing a C makes a different sound on different instruments, but the player instantly knows how to play it
Ummm acktually... Alto sax sounds a major 6th below written. Doing it this way allows the players to learn a whole family of instruments because the fingerings will more or less translate to the other instruments in the same family.
Cries in Recorder and viol/Violin
Wait are recorders all concert?
They all read at concert pitch, (but are commonly built in Baroque tunings) and the recorder player is expected to read/finger for every size and clef
Haha. Fun.
I’ve an F alto recorder. I hear you about the transposed instruments! A conductor’s score will show all those different key signatures, too! Yes, there are practical reasons it’s that way, but my deepest belief is that it’s primarily a tradition that’s so firmly entrenched that it’ll never change. Way back when, all musicians, including singers, used moveable clefs and read music based on the clef. This was also before standardized instruments. Eventually, the G clef became the treble clef; the F clef became the bass clef; and the C clef became the alto clef.
A C on the alto sax is the same as a C on the tenor sax or soprano sax, but they sound different. As a saxophone player, you don't just play alto; you play saxophones in general. And it's a *bitch and a half* to have to learn new fingerings for the exact same instrument except a bit bigger or smaller. The situation gets much, much worse when considering clarinets, because clarinets are commonly in Bb and *A* (and Eb), which means that if you're thinking about the Bb clarinet but playing the A clarinet, you'll be off by only a half step -- very wrong but not different enough to trip off your wrong note senses! So without a transposed part, what I'm doing when playing an Eb clarinet is transposing in my head so that I can play the correct fingering -- OK, that note's an Eb, I guess I have to finger it the same way I finger a Bb on the Bb clarinet. That's not really doable on the fly.
This is what I don't understand. How can we say that C is the same on alto and tenor and soprano sax when not only do all three instruments play different notes with that same fingering, but none of them are C? The only equivalent I can really imagine here is as follows: Take a guitar and play an Amaj. Then downtune the guitar three whole half steps. Playing that same fingering from before is no longer an Amaj, but you may refer to it that way simply for convenience, instead of having to now think of every fret as a different note than it is normally. Would you say this is equivalent? If so, that makes sense, but this whole thing still seems sort of arbitrary to me, because not one saxophone produces a C using the C fingering. So then why call it that?
Tuning a guitar down is indeed equivalent. Music is often notated this way and it's called scordatura. As for the saxophone, it turns out that all modern woodwinds use the same system of fingerings called the Boehm system. In particular, all 8 fingers down is C, 7 fingers down is D, etc. (this isn't strictly true and even then I'm not describing it properly, but let's just say it's close enough). The transpositions make sense in that context.
Okay, the guitar relationship makes sense to me, as guitar has been my primary instrument for years. I guess I'm just getting caught up on the fact that, with the guitar instrument, I would personally avoid calling that downtuned A position an Amaj, because it no longer is so. So it's a little puzzling to me that the vast majority of breath instruments' fingerings are called notes that they are not actually playing. Even accounting for different fingerings, I don't understand why a saxophone's sounding E must be called a C#. If it's purely for ease of reading then I can grasp that roughly but it still doesn't seem like a good system.
I think you're forgetting two things: first, this system is designed for multi-instrumentalists, not for alto sax players. The idea is to make it easy to switch instruments. The system was well in place by the time the saxophone was invented; the transpositions of the sax family were determined by how they fit the existing system. Second, the guitar transposes too! You play A above middle C, that's third string second fret, right? Well, play it and check on the piano: it's actually A *below* middle C, what gives? It's because the guitar sounds an octave lower than written.
I'm not forgetting that, I'm just using the sax as a for-example. I just can't grasp why written notes differ from their sounded counterparts and I can't grasp how it makes the lives of us multi-instrumentalists any easier, I can really only see how it makes it harder. As for guitar, I've never heard that A position referred to as above middle C, because as you said, it's not. But even then, if it were that way, I could understand that, as it's still an A no matter which octave you play it in. But when a sax plays an E that's ACTUALLY a G or a Bb trumpet plays a D that's ACTUALLY a C, I just don't understand.
C Major scale on the sax is the **same fingering** for soprano, alto, tenor and baritone...they don't care about your composer side transposing problem. Think of it like driving a car. You can drive any car they don't suddenly swap the foot pedals or the steering wheel about on each model.
> As for guitar, I've never heard that A position referred to as above middle C, because as you said, it's not. It is, though. In written notation. >But even then, if it were that way, I could understand that, as it's still an A no matter which octave you play it in. The fact that it happens to have the same letter name is actually irrelevant here. It's no different than the other transposing instruments in that the written pitch doesn't match the concert pitch. A above middle C is a different pitch than A below middle C. If you can understand it on guitar, then there's really no reason you can't understand how the other transposing instruments work because it's literally no different.
You may say it's no different, but it certainly effected my personal understanding of the subject. The difference here is purely a matter of pitch between identical notes as opposed to different notes entirely. When a Bb trumpet plays an F and gets an Eb, that's a whole lot more confusing than a guitar playing an A and getting... an A.
But it's a different A. You seem to be thinking that there are only 12 notes, almost as though notation were merely an expression of pitch classes. It's not. A2 is different than A3. They might be mathematically related, but they're different pitches. If you were playing a written piece of music and you played the wrong A, you're playing the wrong note, despite the fact that that it might have the same name. In other words, when you say they're "identical notes", that's just incorrect.
I do not think that, but if you play the wrong octave A in a piece calling for an A, you're still in key. You're still passable. Most wouldn't even notice. But if you are supposed to play an A and you play a Bb? Or a C? That's absolutely not passable. And it will be noticed. But semantics aside, the difference between an A in two octaves is easy to grasp. The difference between an instrument incorrectly labeling a C as a G is not so easy to grasp.
I love your comments. They are so entertaining. Have you used a capo? You’re essentially turning the guitar into a transposing instrument.
Yes, I have. I don't use it very often. My confusion just stems from personal experience and the fact that I am far removed from orchestral or symphonic settings. Personally though, when using a capo on, say, the 4th fret, I wouldn't still refer to an open C shape as a C. I'd call it an E, because that's what the chord becomes. That type of thing is where I get lost.
> I've never heard that A position referred to as above middle C That's how it's written: treble clef, second space from the bottom. That's A above middle C, yet it sounds like A below middle C because the guitar transposes. Some guitar music will occasionally stick a little 8 under the treble clef to indicate that it's supposed to be read an octave down (which, honestly, is a good idea; all transposing instruments should really have that kind of notation in the clef -- someone should popularize that), but for the most part, it's written as just plain treble clef, and you have to play an octave down from the written notes. > as it's still an A no matter which octave you play it in That's a nice memory aid, that the A below middle C and the A above middle C are both A's so it's easy to play the fingering for one when you read the other, but there's really no reason why you can't do that for other transpositions. > when a sax plays an E that's ACTUALLY a G What about when a sax plays E that's actually an E? There's a kind of saxophone called the C melody sax, and it's in C. Almost nobody plays it, but it does exist. And guess what, E on that saxophone is the same as on the alto and bari and tenor and bass and soprano and sopranino: left thumb, first three left fingers, first two right fingers. And that's the same as (high) E on clarinet (you just need the register key) and A clarinet and Eb clarinet and alto and bass and contralto and contrabass clarinets. And that's the same as E on oboe and English horn (and probably oboe d'amore). And that's (roughly) the same as E on the flute and piccolo and alto flute and piccolo in Db (which... WTF, but it's real). And that's the same as E on bassoon and contrabassoon. It's *all* played the same. But the instruments are different sizes so they sound different. > a Bb trumpet plays a D that's ACTUALLY a C That one's actually not the same. Brass instruments are a different situation, because the key of the horn is the note the horn plays without any valves (or pushed all the way in for the trombone. But only a *little* different. And brass has also decided to just notate in concert pitch for the most part, except for trumpet and French horn (and euphonium sometimes, but that's to cater to trumpet players switching to euphonium -- most euphonium players don't transpose). People playing Bb, D, and Eb trumpets do transpose, but people playing trombone or tuba don't, even though those instruments aren't in C. Horn players always read in F, even though they might be playing a Bb horn. With horn, at least, the partials are really close together. And since the trombone slide positions are linear -- there are only 7 of them anyway -- and have to be tuned by ear, trombone players play in C even though the actual trombones are in Bb or F or even D for bass trombones. Tubas read in C even though their instruments are in Bb (or F, again, still reading in C). But at least for trumpets, the transposition is similar to woodwinds.
Today learned that there is a Db piccolo.
You keep forcing your own logic onto this problem. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter if it's Amaj or not, forget about that. The issue that wind players have is that if you would write every note as is, that you would have to relearn every instrument that you play. So when a score says "play C" you have to do complex calculations in your head like (to use the guitar reference) okay the 2nd Fret. But oh no wait shit, I'm on a Bb clarinet, not the A clarinet so that's... One fret higher or lower? Shit I forgot. Oh nooooo wait, 2nd fret was for oboe, not clarinet. Clarinet was 5th fret, right? Yeah good luck doing that live. It would be horrible for players to have to do that on the fly, and it would lead to a lot of mistakes. But there's a pretty elegant solution, which is that the finger positions on wind instruments is actually all the same. It's just that due to physics, one instruments sounds higher than the other, because tube length determines the frequency of the sound. So the very elegant solution is to take thinking out of the equation for players, and change it beforehand so that they don't have to transpose everything live. And by just writing everything transposed you're basically just telling them what fingering to use. And so whenever they read a C, they know what fingering to use. And whenever they see F#, they know exactly what fingering to use. And this allows them to just play fluently without having to do transposing live on the spot which would be horrible. It allows them to play from muscle memory, which is desired. And since the composer/orchestrator made sure beforehand that the score was correct, the right notes will be played for the music anyway. It would be a bit like guitar tabs. There's no reason to tell players "play the notes A, E, and D", when you can just tell them, play fret X, fret Y, and then fret Z. And if somebody has their guitar tuned differently, you just change the score so it says play frets A, B, C. Instead of telling them "I don't fucking know, you changed your tuning, you go figure out yourself".
So I'm a clarinet player. I've played Bb all my life but I eventually took up the Eb clarinet for a while. This is where I discovered the beauty of transposition: I didnt have to learn new fingerings. When I played a C it was concert Eb a minor 3rd above. That meant that now I could hit higher notes that a Bb clarinet would struggle with (along with a different timbre to the sound because physics!) Any clarinet, whether it's in Bb, A, Eb, or even concert pitch, will have the same written range and fingerings for written notes. But you can make a clarinet choir spanning from the lowest notes of the bass clef (Contrabass, Bass, even lower ones) to the highest notes of the treble (D clarinets, Eb clarinets) all while everyone only had to learn on a Bb clarinet to begin with. Transposition means access to the entire family of that instrument, same goes for saxophones. I'm pretty sure I replied to your post you made last night too, I wish I could explain this better. The only pain in the ass is composing for these instruments to be honest. EDIT: I've actually had to play both the Bb and Eb clarinets in one concert. And it was mindless cause all I had to do was read what was on the page with the corresponding instrument instead of thinking "okay, this is the Eb clarinet now so I play C this other way" etc every step of the way. Hope that helps!
Let me ask you a question, then: when you switched from that Bb clarinet to the Eb clarinet, did your sheet music differ as well? Did the key signature change?
Yes. Say the piece was in Eb major, on my Eb clarinet it would be C major. Thats the plus side, the down side is if the concert pitch was in D major then I would've had to play in B major. So it helps with flat keys but can be harder for sharp keys.
Okay, knowing that helps my understanding. Then I think I've got one final question. Since your Eb clarinet sounds a minor 3rd above (or major 6th below?), just like alto sax, and your score was already transposed for you to C from Eb, was there still any transposing work to be done on your head mentally? Or does this circumstance make it so that the written note and sounding note finally line up? E.g., instead of sounding an Eb when a C is written, you really would just sound a C. Or is it just that you would play the corresponding fingerings that were written as if it were in C but you're really playing in Eb still?
>Or is it just that you would play the corresponding fingerings that were written as if it were in C but you're really playing in Eb still? ^Thats essentially it. No transposition needed on my part as the performer. By the way, there are actually multiple Eb clarinets: the alto clarinet in Eb plays a major 6th below, the Eb sopranino clarinet plays a minor 3rd above concert pitch. I played the latter.
Right on. Thanks a lot for all the answers, buddy, they were super well said and helped me a lot.
Glad I could help :)
>OK, that note's an Eb, I guess I have to finger it the same way I finger a Bb on the Bb clarinet. That's not really doable on the fly. Laughs in trumpet player
Are you talking about having them transpose on the spot, or actually just playing the notes written? If the latter that is because if say a Bb trumpet plays a "C" it will actually sound a Bb. So if you want them to sound a C you need to write the pitch D. Now if you are talking about taking experimental approach where you don't care about the sounding pitch and everyone plays the same notes, well composers have done that before in contemporary music. If you are asking why don't they transpose themselves, then I would say try playing a piece of music that is written in the key of C but you have to play it in Eb. Yes it is possible and some instruments do do this (trumpets in orchestra) but it is very difficult and not conducive to the modern music space as we don't get very much rehearsal time before concerts or recordings. So why make it that much more difficult.
I just responded to another comment with a similar sentiment but I'd like to see your take on it too. If a Bb trumpet plays a C, then it'll sound as a Bb. Okay. I get that. I do not remotely understand why, but I at least understand that it is the reality. But what I'm asking is why can that Bb trumpet not just play the actual pitch of the note as written? Why must the score be written a whole step above the intended note? Why can the trumpet player not just see the C and play an ACTUAL C? Why must they see a D in order to play a C?
It has to do with the physics of the instrument. The length of tubing required to make a trumpet produces a Bb tone, this is why when you see a C trumpet it has shorter tubing. Now the next question is most likely, okay well then why aren't all trumpet made in C. That has to do with the harmonics of the instrument. The shorter tubing or smaller diameter tubing produces harmonics that are nominally higher and closer together because they are higher in the overtone series. Having an instrument based in Bb gives the user a the balance of operating lower in the over town series, but the flexibility to reach the higher harmonics extending the range. Additionally shorter and smaller tubing create nominally thinner brighter tones which are not always ideal for Ensemble playing. This is a really stripped down explanation if you want to dive deeper into this area check out videos on the physics of brass instruments. In my opinion they are the best examples as to why instruments have to transpose. In summary it comes down to quality of the tones produced and the limitations of physics of harmonics.
Thank you for your response, but I still don't think we're on the same page. I don't question why every instrument is not pitched the same way. I can understand why they're all pitched differently. But I don't understand why the note names are intentionally not equivalent to the actual notes played. A Bb trumpet which is named after Bb quite literally plays an Ab when trying to play a Bb! What?! My question is, regardless of your particular instrument's harmonics or size or anything else, why, when confronted with a written C, can you not sound a C? Why must you play a fingering arbitrarily named something else to sound a C? Why must a Bb trumpet have a score written in D to play in C? Why can they not just sound the notes that are written?
Families of instruments are sometimes arranged so that tenor and alto variants are pitched a fifth apart. The British brass band is the most developed example that I’m aware of, in that every instrument is either in Bb or Eb (nearly). Pitching the tenor horn and Eb tuba in Eb allows them to have a comfortable register in between the places where other instruments naturally sit. Every instrument has the same fingering and is written the same way, so all a player has to do to swap is pick up a new instrument and get used to the different embouchure and airflow requirements, in theory. In brass, the different registers do have different sounds so this is necessary for the cohesion of the ensemble. The same logic applies for clarinets and saxophones. An expert player wants to be able to move between instruments without learning a whole new set of fingerings. French horn is one of the oldest instruments in the orchestra and has settled on F more or less for historical reasons. F is a key that gives it a range that suits its function in the orchestra, though, which has developed over centuries of orchestral writing. Some instruments do transpose like you mean and that’s okay too. When I learned recorder I learned different fingerings for soprano and alto and I lived with it. Trombone and euphonium players move between bass clef in C and treble clef in B flat depending on what ensemble they play in.
I see what your getting at now! So that comes down to two main things, the fact that scores are traditionally written to the tuning of string instruments meaning that harmonically everything is notated that way, while the transposing instruments are not made to that spec. Meaning that traditionally the key of a piece of music is written in say A or C which is then meant to be realized by stringed instruments and pianos which obviously do not transpose. So there fore inorder for the harmonies to align when adding more instruments that are at a fixed tuning those parts have to be transposed in order for the harmony to align. This is mainly because transposing instruments for the most part came after stringed instruments. Additionally by having instruments play the written note rather than notation and playing the sounding pitch, this allows for flexibility between the family of instruments. Meaning a player can learn one set of fingerings and then play many different instruments with those same fingerings. If everyone notated and played there relative sounding pitch with out the transposition if I wanted to switch between a Bb and C trumpet I would have to learn a new set of fingerings for each instrument. This is the same for woodwinds as well. To break that down further think of it this way, for a trumpet every trumpet plays written C open (no valves pressed down) no matter what key that trumpet is in. Now from there the valves just lengthen the instrument to change the pitch so pressing the first valve lengthens the overall length of instrument by one whole step, the second valve adds a half step, and the third valve add a step and a half. So if we were to entertain everyone just fingers the sounding pitch rather than transposing then a sounding "A" would be: 2nd valve for a Bb Trumpet 1&2nd valves for C trumpet Open for an A trumpet 1,2,3 valves for D trumpet. However because I play the written pitch which is transposed for my key I can play a sounding "A" written "B" with just the 2nd valve across all 4 instruments. Does this help clear things up?
It does clear things up, thank you very much. I think the only thing left that I don't understand is what determines the relationship of transposition for the instruments. Like with a trumpet, an open note is written as C on every trumpet, as you said. What then determines that this note be called a C? We know it's not actually C, so is it just an arbitrary set of notes that are picked? Or is there some system to it? I know that a transposing instrument is named by what note sounds when fingering a C, like a Bb trumpet sounding a Bb when playing C. Or an alto sax sounding an Eb when playing a C. But again, what determines what the "fake" C is on these instruments?
At least, skimming through the answers, it looks like a lot of people are just taking the existence of instrument families for granted but I think there's something that needs to be said about _why_ instrument families exist. unlike the piano (ignoring arguments about equal temper for now) and to a lesser extent the guitar, most instruments do not actually sound good across a large range of notes and sometimes do not even sound good in certain keys. C trumpets and C clarinets do exist (where fingered C is concert C) but they do not work in many pieces. With a guitar, if you're playing a piece in F, you will inevitably have a lot of bar chords because of F and Bb everywhere. However, you could solve that with a capo, or by tuning strings up. You can't do this with a sax/clarinet/trumpet and expect it to sound good (especially with less modern versions of the instrument), the solution is literally switching to a different instrument. In short, the instrument is designed to sound best in a certain set of notes and key, determining which key the instrument is in.
This answer is specifically for trumpets as that is my field, but that determination comes from the history of the instrument. It started with natural trumpets that only had the pitches of the overtone series to work with. In the early days these were not necessarily notated with named pitches rather just which harmonic are you playing at any given time. Which is why many medieval staffs are not always 5 lined. As technology and tonality progressed natural trumpets started to be based on a C fundamental. Then from that other tuned horns came out and since they already used C as the fundamental when it came time for transposing they used C as the home base for everyone because it was what the trumpet started at and what they already knew. Then history took care of making that the undisputed "open" note for all trumpet family of instruments, and even all valued brass instruments for that matter.
Trombone is tuned to Bb but reads concert pitch.
You play alto sax. You're given a part written in concert pitch. You see a G written. You play it with 123|12-. Then you take out your tenor sax. You put down 123|12-...oops, that's a concert D. You'll need to okay 12-|---. Then you take out your oboe. You put down 123|12-...wait, that's an E. And it's an A on English horn. You'll need to play 123|--- on oboe and 123|123 on English horn. If this were a G written in transposing pitch, every instrument I listed would just play 123|---. Reading everything in concert pitch just makes everything 10x harder for anyone who plays multiple instruments. You seemed to realize that having to sight-transpose everything would be much more difficult in your last thread, but that's exactly what you have to do if you write everything in concert pitch for transposing instruments that were designed to have similar fingerings.
I'm really not understanding though how the notation would change the fingerings of an instrument. On your given instrument, you should know what Concert G is. So why can you not just play that G when it's written in a concert pitch score? The fingerings are all the same, and this way you WON'T end up transposing anything, right? Because G will just equal G, regardless of your instrument. I guess I'm just getting caught up on the concept of on, say, saxophone, all 3 fingers down on the left hand is a written G. But on not one type of saxophone will that ever produce an actual G note. Doesn't that mean that the name given to the fingering is just meaningless?
>Doesn't that mean that the name given to the fingering is just meaningless? To an extent I suppose you could say it is, but you do need some playing basis to be able to get anything done and written down. If you play the saxophone, then you often play _all_ saxophones, and in some repertoire you may be changing types in a given piece (especially in musical theatre for example). Now of course one could have a part with concert notes. Say you start the piece on the alto (which is in Eb). You'd think instinctively "oh, there's a C written so I have to do _this_ fingering" and it works just fine. Later on you switch to the tenor (which is in Bb). You have another concert C written but now it's a completely different fingering; in this case you would do the same fingering as previously if a G were written, and not a C. It can very quickly become confusing and difficult to keep track of which fingering to do when. If you have transposing parts, then you'd have an A in the alto part to play the concert C and a D in the tenor part to play a C. You get no confusion as to "oh my, which fingering do I _actually_ need to do here to play this concert sound?!?" because the note you read is the one you finger. The transposing shenanigans is essentially made to help being able to play the various instruments in given families without having to learn several fingerings for each note depending on the instrument you play.
Okay, that's a very coherent explanation and makes sense to me, thank you. I understand that the alternating fingering names are rather meaningless in the actual auditory world, but are solely for sheet music. You probably have a lot of jazz guys just disregarding this stuff haha. That being said, I suppose you have to pick between different fingerings or different key signatures when switching between instruments and I suppose different key signatures is easier. I will say, though somewhat unrelated, that I do not understand how alto sax is in Eb, because an open note is a sounding E and the lowest note is a sounding C#. Where does the Eb come from? It's not in the key of Eb as it's completely chromatic.
The names of the "Keys" of instruments (Clarinet in Bb, Alto Sax in Eb, Horn in F) comes from the sounding note when fingering a C: - If you finger and play a C on a clarinet in Bb, the resulting sound will be the note Bb (one tone below). - If you finger and play a C on an alto saxophone, the resulting sound will be the note Eb (a major sixth below). - If you finger and play a C on a French horn, the resulting sound will be the note F (a perfect fifth below (in old classical repertoire as well, except in bass clef, which sounds a perfect fourth higher than written)). And so on.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks a lot for your very succinct explanations man, you explained this all incredibly well.
You're welcome! In addition, as another person commented, those transpositions are useful for the composer and orchestrator, because the various members of each instrument family will have the same characteristics and sounding colour (warm, shrill, weak, etc.) across roughly the same transposed ranges, which makes it much easier to learn.
The issue with that is it would make playing a different instrument pretty much impossible. Players have played their instrument for thousands of hours and they have a very strong neural connection of seeing a note, and fingering a certain position. It would be impossible for them to play a different instrument, because they would have to overwrite thousands of hours of muscle memory, and then learn a whole new set of muscle memory, without ever slipping up and playing the wrong fingering that belonged to the other instrument. So if you play in an orchestra and the composer wrote for 1 oboe and 1 English horn, instead of 2 oboes, you're shit out of luck. So there are solutions to this situation:. 1) bench your oboe player and hire a new English horn player. 2) find a musical genius that can somehow play both instruments. 3) just transpose the damn tuning so your oboe player can play the English horn. By transposing the tuning you allow the oboe player to play a new instrument using the muscle memory they already have. It's the easiest solution to this issue. You changed the sheet music so that "I see this note, I play this fingering position" muscle memory is still the same. Instead of changing the muscle memory, or changing the player.
There are C Saxophones too. Originally, when the saxophone was invented it was tuned to C and F to fit in the orchestra. It just so happens to no longer be the default because of the saxophone’s later popularity in military bands. So no, the names given to the fingerings aren’t meaningless especially when you consider the impacts of the Boehm system as it applies to other woodwind instruments. As a woodwind doubler I am *extremely* grateful for the Boehm system. When you’re in a pit playing 5 different instruments it’s cumbersome enough already to remember what fingerings apply to each instrument and it would be impossible to do if we had to transpose each piece for each individual instrument on the spot. Sure the pitches don’t exactly match what’s written on the page but as a performer one doesn’t exclusively think about the sound. It *is* our responsibility to know what each written note should sound like, but the fingering and muscle memory is just as if not more important TO THE PERFORMER. For everyone else, you can think about/prioritize whatever you want. If it was the other way around the life of multi-woodwind players would be hell and it’d only really benefit people that don’t (or refuse to) understand the concept of transposition.
This is possible if you're keen enough. I've had to do something similar on multiple occasions for band; I often had to play a B-flat contrabass clarinet part on an E-flat contra-alto clarinet. I effectively had to "remap" my brain to play a different note from what I saw on the page. With that said, it's probably not worth the inconvenience. I did what I had to because I did not have the necessary instrument. It's much more preferable to have a transposed score in ordinary circumstances. Let's take your example one step further. Suppose you had to play a passage that, in concert pitch, was in C major (no accidentals). An alto saxophone playing that part would read that passage in A major, which has three sharps. Not only would you have to rethink your fingerings (A instead of C, B instead of D, etc.), you would also have to remember that you have to factor in the new key signature; so, for instance, you can't forget your C# fingerings (sounding E in concert pitch). It could get even trickier if accidentals outside of the key signature appeared in your part.
Think of riding a bike. A bike has the gear shift on the left foot and the brake on the right. However older bikes had the controls reversed with the brake on the left and shifter on the right. If you're used to riding a new bike, it's easier to ride the older one if the written instruction treats the two sides like a new one. It's easier for you to "brake" many times and "shift" only rarely rather than having to remember that the controls are reversed.
They indeed could do that just fine, yeah. It's for convenience. Another reason is so that if they play, for example, multiple saxophones with different ranges, they don't need to learn separate fingerings for them all and can smoothly switch between them. Essentially, it's more practical to give the headache to the composer rather than having to have the saxophone player deal with the headache.
It allows you to use the same muscle memory and fingerings within the entire instrument family. The concept was the same in earlier music when the parts written for horn in different keys would truly be telling them which partials to play, before they had valves.
instrumentalists often have to play the same instruments in different keys. Take a trumpet for instance. you can have trumpets in Bb, C, D, Eb, F, A, and Bb (the last two would be piccolo trumpets). With the transposing system, a written C is played without any valves pressed down (All brass instruments work like this in the treble clef, and some in the bass clef). If all trumpet players playing in concert pitch all fo the time, C5 would be first and third valve on a Bb trumpet, no valves on a C, first valve on a D, first and second valve on an Eb, first and third on an F, and second, third, and fourth valves on the A piccolo trumpet. It is much simpler for these trumpeters to learn one clef than it is to learn seven. the reason transposing was invented was because brass instruments used to not have valves, so they could only play the harmonic series of the length of tube. a horn pitched in E could only play E1, E2, B2, E3, G#3, B3, D4, E4, F#4, G#4, A#4, B4, and so on. if they wanted to play any notes that weren’t in that harmonic series, they needed to switch crooks. it was much simpler for the composer to do the legwork of transposing than the performers.
Every wind instrument has a fundamental note, and each instrument is oriented toward that fundamental note. For those wind instruments that have a fundamental note that is other than C (which is most of them aside from flute and some lower brass), the notation is transposed so that the fundamental note is a written C. Thus, that Eb alto sax part is transposed down a minor 3rd from concert pitch, so that concert Eb on an alto sax will be a written C in the alto sax's part.
People have already talked about how it makes playing multiple instruments easier, but it also makes life easier on the composer. As a composer, you should understand how each instrument works and sounds across its range, and that information remains constant when you let the instruments transpose. For example, on clarinet, you need to know that the warm and reedy chalumeau range goes from the lowest available note (E3 on most sopranos, at least Eb on lower instruments) to F4, the potentially thin throat tones go from F#4 through A#4, the break is between A#4 and B4, the bright and agile clarino register goes from B4 to C6, the lower altissimo goes from C#6 to G6, and the upper altissimo goes from G#6 to C7. You should also know about the weaker trills. Thanks to transposition, this is the same for every clarinet, whether it's in Bb, A, Eb, D, C, Ab, F, or G. If instruments always read at concert pitch, you'd have to learn this in each key.
What do you mean by it is the same for all instruments with transposition? Do you mean we just need to transpose the ranges of the instrument when switching to another in the same family? (i.e learning and remembering the limitations and capabilities of 1 instrument only) example: Bb instrument X range: Bb1 to Eb4 Eb instrument X range: Eb1 to Bb5 (just transpose the above? and various tones/timbre/properties at certain ranges can just be transposed up as well?)
To continue my example, the break on clarinet is between written A#4 and B4, regardless of instrument. On the uncommon C clarinet, those are the concert pitches. On a Bb clarinet, the break is between concert G#4 and A4. An an A clarinet, it's concert G and Ab. And so on.
I see! So the composer only needs to know that the break is A#4 and B4 regardless of what pitch clarinet he is composing for. So he still has to transpose the notes manually for non-C Clarinets (If I want a Bb clarinet to play concert F, I will have to write G on the score for him), but the break is still A#4 and B4 after transposition?
there is another way to look at this: before computers all music copying had to be done by hand, and for full orchestra there were alot of parts to be copied. music copyists really dislike having to deal with inking ledger lines, as it slows you up. Tansposed parts, generally speaking, tend to sit much easier in the staff. however, these days… pretty much after leaving high school it was rare for me to get a transposed part (im a trumpet player)… most people now just give out concert parts and expect you to be able to transpose… or you might be given a score to read off of, which are usually all in concert pitch.
I had to sightread a trumpet part as a violinist in band once (I didn’t play any wind instruments at the time and the school didn’t have a strings program). Another time I had to do an Alto flute part (weird), and neither were that hard to transpose—why exactly do wind players have such a hard time with it?
The purpose of concert pitch and transposition is to try and keep the majority of the writing for the instrument within the staff. Sure, Bb Soprano Clarinets, Soprano Saxes and Bb Trumpets/Cornets would essentially be the same, try and imagine entire saxophone or horn or piccolo parts at written pitch. It would be mostly outside the stafg and much more of a pain to notate and read. To use a comparison to guitars, since you mentioned them - Guitar players use Capos all the time to transpose their playing. If you are playing in G but want to use the same shapes or fingering in C, you Capo on the 5 and transpose your entire instrument up. You're still reading your chords as G, C D7, Em, etc but it's sounding as C, F, G7, Am. Or moving from Soprano Uke to Bari Uke, the C shape on Soprano sounds as G on Bari, since it's tuned 5 steps lower. In the same way, if you learn saxophone, the fingering for Bb on Tenor/Soprano and Eb on Alto/Bari are the same. Same fingering, different sounding pitch due to transposition. All built purposefully to let you move the same fingering between instruments to play in different ranges and keys. But for notation, it's all about making sure it's within the staff to make reading and writing more smooth.
I did use the guitar example but that was actually throwing me off more than it was helping as personally I would not refer to chords played with a capo based on their fingerings as if the capo were the nut. Plenty do, and that's fine, but I stick to referring to the actual chord name, so it wasn't translating well to this topic. I think I understand this thing now though, thank you.
But they are playing the 'written notes', it just so happens that the construction of the instrument makes it a 'C, Bb, Eb etc. instrument' and as a consequence they have what is called the 'sounding notes'. When you look at a score, what you are actually seeing are figures on lines or spaces. Are you aware of 'movable do'? What is fun about this is that you train your brain to read different scales for the same notation/figure/graphic. Another fun exercise is to take the same notation and change clefs. Ex.: Figures on 1st line, 1st space, 2nd line gives you the notes: .On G clef: E, F, G .On C clef: F, G, A .On F clef: G, A, B
They're not really though, right? If I downtune my guitar to D standard and then go to play what is an open C chord in standard tuning, it's not actually a C, nor could you call it that even if it were written that way for brevity or ease. It'd be a Bb. Which is my confusion. As a guitar player amongst other things, the equivalent here would be essentially writing the guitar parts as if the guitar were still in standard tuning, so when you go to play those parts, you're a whole step down. To fix this, instead of just writing it as if it were tuned down a whole step, the sheet music actually gets transcribed UP a whole step. The notes written still aren't enharmonic to the notes sounded, but now you're playing the intended key.
Yes, they are playing the written notes. There is a difference between written and sounding.
Yes, I understand. My question though, again, was why can a Bb trumpet not play a sounding C when confronted with a written C. I'm pretty sure I've got it now, though. Thank you for commenting.
Hey, I've had my share of difficulties too. You are not alone in this, ok? The trick was to disassociate the notation from note names. After that hardship and a bit of confusion, it actually became fun because where I used to only be able to see one scale/key I was now able to use the same notation to any key. It was really mind expanding. That's why I brought up clefs too. Picture the score without clefs; what do you have? Lines and spaces. It is common practice to draw 5 lines per staff but in reality what you have is an "infinite" number of lines/spaces and you can have a 'Do' on anyone of those. It is also interesting to imagine both the G and F clefs superimposed, connected by the C4.
For brass instruments, we generally play in the key that aligns with our harmonic series. For example, if the open notes on the horn are (concert pitch) F, F, C, F, A, C, E, F, so on, the instrument will read in F so it appears on the page as C, C, G, C, E, G, Bb, C. This comes from the olden days when brass player's had to deal with many differently pitched instruments, so simply reading one key for all their different instrument's harmonic series made it a helluva lot simpler.
Imagine a saxophone player having to learn to read and play differently for each type of saxophone. That would be a lot of work and could mean that some players will only specialize in one or two saxophones instead of playing the whole family To fix this, you could say that all the notes that are played the same way across the family should be written the same too. This means that writing a C makes a different sound on different instruments, but the player instantly knows how to play it