Question on transposing from a bassist

[CaptainTuna]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum!

I'm a bass player (bass guitar, to be precise), been playing since 4 years or so and recently picked up a cheap keyboard to try it out and hopefully learn something more about it. Being a fan of the doors and early pink floyd this had to happen sooner or later, I guess!

The first big problem (and the reason why I'm posting) is the fact that a keyboard differentiates sharps & natural notes. Coming from a stringed instrument, this held me back a lot, since as you may well know, every "fret" on a bass/guitar fretboard is exactly the same as the next one (unlike black and white keys on a keyboard).

Now, what I wanted to ask you is : is it a good thing if I transpose the keys so that the key signature the song is in makes every "right" or "in key" note play on a white key? And...why don't people normally do this? The way I see it (remember that I'm totally unexperienced, that's why I'm asking) it would just make my playing easier and more comfortable. The big problem would be losing any absolute reference as to where the notes are, but even when playing on my bass I have always been taught to think in relatives (3rd minor, 6th minor, etc...) and not in absolutes.

Can you give me any tips or answers on this? I'm genuinely curious about this topic even because out of all the keyboard players I know nobody does this.

Thank you!

 

[Ted Nicoson]

Captain

I think you may be making more of this than there really is to it. On the fret board, you have frets that play natural tones. In between those "natural" frets, you have the frets that give you sharps and flats. On the untransposed keyboard, the white keys are the natural tones, and the black keys are the sharps and flats. Transposing the keyboard is equivalent to clamping a capo onto the fret board. You may raise or lower the overall set of tones, but the tone to tone temperament remains "standard". Just as you have learned which frets on the fret board give you sharps and flats, you will learn which black keys on the keyboard give you which sharps and which flats. Retuning the keyboard would preclude the use of any standard music instruction or assistance - printed or live, because you would make your keyboard totally non-standard and make communication with other keyboard players or instructors very difficult, if not totally impossible. Many modern day keyboards offer different tonal temperaments, but when that temperament is used within its proper genre or ethnicity, at least it is an accepted "standard" so that other musicians can understand it. You are talking about retuning your keyboard so that only you understand it. Before anyone could assist you with any problems you may run across, you would first have to teach them your personal tuning temperament. Even the alternate fret board tunings such as Drop-D or Open-G are still "standard" in as much as other fret board players know what you are talking about, but if you were to tune your instrument to a temperament that only you understood, you would have a very difficult time communicating with other musicians about it. Also, the keys on the keyboard are sized and spaced in such a manner so as to make even complicated chords possible with the human hands. I am afraid that retuning the keyboard to essentially eliminate the black keys would make even the simplest of chords virtually impossible.

 

[The Y_man]

I do it a lot - mainly because the sheet music I am given is not on "normal" staves but on a numeric notation with no chords.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_musical_notation

So to play a new song at church, I'll transpose and figure out the chords based around a transposed c-major.


But if I was given "normal" sheet music, there is no way I'd transpose it (too much hard work!!) - especially if chords were provided.

The other thing about transposing is that if there is a scale change mid song or something odd, you'd need to be able to "play the black keys" in any case.

Cheers,

The Y-man

 

[Ted Nicoson]

He is not talking about simple or "standard" transposing. He is talking about retuning the keyboard to essentially eliminate the black keys. In other words, playing the white keys only would give him C-C#-D-D#-E-F and so on. He would incorporate the black key tones into the white keys. That is what he meant when he said on a fretted instrument all frets look alike. He wants to retune the keyboard so that all notes (keys) look alike (white).

 

[The Y_man]

oooh.... ok that could be a bit bizarre......

The Y-man

 

[happyrat1]

He should be thankful he's not learning to play a microtonal keyboard.

 

[happyrat1]

BTW, what I think the original poster is talking about is transposing the keyboard normally by a semitone or a few so that he can play any key signature as a C Major Scale.

While not exactly the best practice it's ok for a lot of rock and pop songs that don't use any fancy jazz of blues scales but even so, if he wants to be able to play any song, there will always be a need for at least one or two black notes.

Seriously though, he needs to study his keyboard and work with standard tuning. Transposing an acoustic piano is an impossible task and standard tuning is the basis of all western music theory.

A couple of tips for Captain Tuna.

1) The keyboard is arranged left to right in ascending octaves. The easiest way to learn which key you are hitting is to take note of the fact that the black keys are arranged in groups of two and three consecutively, with the first of the two black keys being C# or D flat.

That is your easiest route to figuring out the black keys. Each black key is either the sharp of the natural note to its immediate left or the flat to the note to the immediate right.

If you "walk" the keyboard from C to C including each semitone, you have all twelve tones in a Western octave.

This is identical to playing a bass string fret by fret from the nut up to the body of the Bass Guitar.

The bottom line is that without semitones, Western music would be INSANELY BORING. That applies to all instruments, stringed, keyboard, woodwinds or brass.

You may as well learn the proper way of reading and playing music from the start, otherwise you'll have a hell of a time unlearning all the wrong things once you progress to more sophisticated styles.

Just my $0.02

Gary

 

[Ted Nicoson]

From the original poster:

"The first big problem (and the reason why I'm posting) is the fact that a keyboard differentiates sharps & natural notes. Coming from a stringed instrument, this held me back a lot, since as you may well know, every "fret" on a bass/guitar fretboard is exactly the same as the next one (unlike black and white keys on a keyboard)."

Even a fretboard has sharps and flats, but they all L O O K the same. Frets are not some white and some black. He wants his keyboard to be the same. He wants all the keys he plays to be all the same color. He still wants the western world temperament, but he just wants it spread across only the white keys. Then his keyboard will be like the frets on his bass - one note will "LOOK" the same as every other note. I think he sees his fretboard as a "linear" device, which in a way it is, for any single string, at least. The accidentals are not physically offset and painted a different color than the naturals, but he sees a keyboard as a dual "manual" device, like the upper and lower manuals on an organ. The naturals are on the white key manual and the accidentals are on the black key manual, and to play them, you have to lift your hand and move it toward the rear of the keyboard. He would like to have everything he plays on a single "linear" manual.

 

[happyrat1]

I agree. His problem is purely perceptual/cosmetic.

Perhaps he could solve his problem with a can of white spray paint?

Gary

 

[Ted Nicoson]

Don't think the paint alone would do it, Gary, because that still leaves the accidentals physically offset toward the rear of the keyboard and he wants everything in line !

Hey, if our paths do not cross again in the next few hours - have a great holiday !

 

[happyrat1]

HULK SMASH!!!!

 

[happyrat1]

You Too Ted. Wishing you and everyone a great Xmas!

 

[dspellman]

It's a different instrument. Learn to play the keyboard as a keyboard.
While it's possible to transpose everything to the white keys, you'll quickly run into spatial issues. On a bass, you can move vertically and horizontally. Within a single position on a five-string bass, you can easily travel an octave within a handwidth, and that's fairly efficient. Not so much on a keyboard. There (using white and black keys), you can stretch to a full octave fairly easily, but not two. And if you put everything on the white keys, you now have to reach 12 keys to hit a single octave, rather than 8. That distance is reserved for those of us with exceptionally large hands/long fingers.

 

[pianolessonsnow]

The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine would help.