Transposing
When you try to sing a melody for the first time, you will often find that parts of it are too high or too low for your personal voice range. In such cases it is necessary to know how to transpose the melody to another key. Transposing (or transposition) means changing the key of a piece of music. This can apply to a scale, a phrase, a short melody, or an entire song. The ability to transpose is an essential skill for all singers to develop.
The easiest way to transpose is to write the scale degrees under the original melody and then work out which notes correspond to those scale degrees in the key you want to transpose to. You should work towards being able to do this in your head instantly, without the need for notated scale degrees. Written next is a short melody played by a guitar in the key of C and then transposed to the keys of F and G. Listen to the recording and notice that the melody sounds the same, but the overall pitch is higher or lower.
Here is the melody in C again, but with sol-fa syllables instead of scale degrees.
As mentioned previously, sol-fa syllables can be applied to any major scale. Here is the same melody in the key of F, with its accompanying sol-fa syllables.
Here it is again in the key of G.
Now try transposing this short melody in C major with its accompanying sol-fa syllables to other major keys. Try the same technique with other melodies you know. The more you do this, the easier it gets; and the better you are at transposing, the easier it will be to sing and read music in any key.
The transposing process is the same regardless of whether you are transposing a short phrase or a whole song. The following song is in the key of C major. This key may be comfortable for you or it may be too high or too low. On the facing page you will see 16 bars of empty staves. These are for you to transpose the song to whichever key best suits your voice range. Use the method shown in the previous pages and write the appropriate sharps or flats as a key signature.
