Transposition as Ear Training

The Other Kind of Transposition

 

After all this talk of transposition using substitution of clefs, imaginary key signatures, and courtesy pseudo-accidentals, I wanted to say what this kind of transposition is meant to do, and how else you can use transposition for your musical health.

 

First of all, this transposition I've been studying recently with all the clef substituting is meant for a special kind of situation: playing music that you have never seen before in a different key than written. It is transposition at first sight. It technically requires no knowledge of the sound to be produced in order to perform it, though an inner sense of how the music will sound can only help. As sterile as this process can be, it guarantees sure knowledge of what note will follow another, and that is what is required from transposing at sight.

 

Contrary to this typographical approach, there is another approach to transposition with a different goal entirely, that of cultivating your inner musical ear and strengthening the association between the inner sound and how it is expressed on the keyboard. The common term for this skill is: playing by ear.

 

You could also just get a pair of these.

 

The method for training is pretty simple, but quite different from our clef transpositions. The method calls for one to play exercises in many different keys. These exercises can be melodies, chord progressions, or phrases from larger musical works. If you allow the memorized sound to guide you instead of the interval relationship from the old key to the new one, you will get a lot of good practice in reproducing the sound at the keyboard.

 

I have a book which is chock full (how full is a chock anyway?) of exercises that can be used in this way: A New Approach to Keyboard Harmony by Leo Kraft and others.

 

Remember that transposition is just one musical subject that can be used in different ways to strengthen both practical skills as well as fundamental musicianship. Always look for how these subjects can help you in more than one way.