How To Transpose

Here's how to transpose a tune or song into another key. It's really easy when you know how. It comes in very handy when the singer in a band can't sing a song in the original key because it's too high or low for their vocal range.

When this is the case, then the whole band will have to tranpose their instruments to match (no, not the drummer!).

First I'll show you how to tranpose the chords.

Suppose you want to transpose the key of the following 12-bar blues chord pattern from G to C.

To change the key from G to C, we just take the root note of the first chord (G) and see how many frets we need to move up or down by to reach C.

In this case, G to C is a distance of 5 frets so we simply move the roots notes of every chord up by 5 frets to get the names of the rest of the chords.

All chord-types must remain the same, so we end up with this:

Now let's say we want to transpose the following from B to G#.

This is a distance of 3 frets down or 9 frets up, it doesn't matter which, as the results will be exactly the same.

Do the same to all the other chords and make sure that all chord-types remain the same, so that we end up with this:

I've never found a simpler system than this. The only other way is to know your key signatures and intervals really well so that you can do it all in your head!

I say keep it simple!

This system works exactly the same for a melody or lead solo. Just remember: whatever you do to that first note, you must do it to every other note.

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