Transposing instruments

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

May I share a story my wife told me when I told her about this thread?

One day in band practice, they had a substitute teacher and the trombone section took it upon themselves to play a mean trick on both the substitute teacher and the principal French Horn player, who was a real pain in the ass. The band was playing some Disney medley that started with a long pedal ‘C’ in the trombones and then the solo horn would come in with the melody of ‘Whistle while you work’.

Unbeknownst to the substitute teacher, the trombones whispered to each other to take the ‘C’ down to a ‘Bb’, and when the Horn came in, it sounded like sh*t. Much giggling from the trombones, total bafflement on the part of the horn player, and the substitute teacher couldn’t tell that the trombones should have all been playing in sixth position, not first. Over and over with the horn player getting more and more upset. Finally, my wife says “Oh, that’s in Bass clef; it looked like alto!” Poor substitute teacher never knew what had gone on… (I mean, really; if it had been in alto clef, why were they playing in the low octave?) Never mess with the low brass, however.

[Malacandra]

@Musicat

My guess is you are not a keyboard player. Except for an octave transposition, it does not work that way for any transposing interval. There is a lack of symmetry within the octave that prevents a simple hand shift. It’s not like putting a capo on a guitar.

I think friedo knows that, and was asking us to imagine an alternate keyboard made with only white keys in semitones. (It would be unusable for the average hand, though).

Trombone, btw, is sometimes a transposing instrument and sometimes not. We get an assortment of parts in arrangements for our wind band - bass clef, treble clef, sounding as written or down a major ninth. Trombonists seem to accept this calmly, on the whole. The military band also sometimes features a Db flute, because this is just a regular flute with a shorter head, and I guess it’s easier to play flute with a few sharps than with the many flats that come with playing with a preponderance of Bb and Eb instruments. (Hope that sentence made sense!)

[friedo]

@Malacandra

I think friedo knows that, and was asking us to imagine an alternate keyboard made with only white keys in semitones. (It would be unusable for the average hand, though).

Yeah, that’s what I meant.

[MikeS]

@Malacandra

Trombone, btw, is sometimes a transposing instrument and sometimes not. We get an assortment of parts in arrangements for our wind band - bass clef, treble clef, sounding as written or down a major ninth. Trombonists seem to accept this calmly, on the whole.

Interesting — I have never once seen a transposing trombone part in my 18 years of playing in orchestras, wind ensembles, and quintets. Every now and then the baritones or the euphonia will have a part written in C and in treble clef, but that’s about it. Perhaps it’s a UK vs. US thing?

[GorillaMan]

@Musicat

Seriously, families of instruments like saxes have identical fingering for everything from sopranino to bass versions. Their on-paper range is identical. If you play bass sax and know how to finger a G, you can do it on another sax just as well. Obviously, something has to be adjusted, and that is where the composer/arranger/copyist comes in, who transposes what the desired sound is into a note that produces it when played.

The alternative, where a composer only writes concert pitches, would be for a sax player to learn an entirely different fingering and a variety of clefs as well. It would be a nightmare for sax players to cross over.

My observation is that the standardisation of clefs and transpositions among orchestral instruments is not yet complete, having seen examples in contemporary music where, for example, bass clarinets are written in bass clef as a regular Bb part, rather than with a major-ninth transposition from treble clef. Players dealing with this type of music are capable of moving from one notation to the other with little problem.

In this context it’s also worth noting that the present system even for C instruments was settled on surprisingly late. Bach would happily use a ‘French violin clef’, a treble clef on the bottom line, to reduce the number of ledger lines in not only violin music, but that of other treble instruments, too.

@Malacandra

The military band also sometimes features a Db flute, because this is just a regular flute with a shorter head, and I guess it’s easier to play flute with a few sharps than with the many flats that come with playing with a preponderance of Bb and Eb instruments. (Hope that sentence made sense!)

I would hazard a guess that any shortening of a flute also makes marching alongside them a little easier?..

@MikeS

Interesting — I have never once seen a transposing trombone part in my 18 years of playing in orchestras, wind ensembles, and quintets. Every now and then the baritones or the euphonia will have a part written in C and in treble clef, but that’s about it. Perhaps it’s a UK vs. US thing?

That’d make sense - British brass band music is almost entirely put in the treble clef. Now that is bloody awkward.