Transposing
Transposing means changing the key of a piece of music. This can apply to a scale, a riff, a short melody, or an entire song. The ability to transpose is a very important skill for a saxophone player 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. Here is an example of a short melody transposed from the key of C to the keys of F and G.
In the previous examples, the melody consists entirely of notes from the major scale. However, many melodies use notes form outside the major scale, e.g., in rock music there are many melodies derived from the Blues scale.
This means there will be flattened scale degrees as long as the natural notes of the key. The following examples demonstrate a two bar melody created from the C Blues scale once again transposed to the keys of F and G.
Here is a lick (short phrase) derived from the C Blues Scale. The two examples to follow demonstrate this lick transposed to the keys of F and G.
