[Jazz Is All]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but I'm fairly new to transposing and I have done a search but the thread I found about this didn't resolve my doubts and is no longer live.

As part of learning to play alto and understand theory better I have been transposing old standards from the C concert charts in the real/fake books. For many songs this is no problem as it is fairly mechanical, but for some others that are written in the key of C and go down to middle C or lower on the piano, transposing them to the key of A for alto makes it impossible to play the melody in the low range of the horn which sometimes, to my ear, places the melody in too high a range for the song.

One example is Fats Waller's Ain't Misbehaving which is written in C but only goes down to middle C on the piano a few times. This makes it impossible to play it on the alto in the low range (unless there is a low A key that I don't know about) which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't that a good deal of the piano melody is played between A above middle C and D above that. Transposed to alto, if I am doing it correctly, that places the tune almost entirely in the second octave between F# and B. To me that sounds a bit too shrill for this song, even if Fats did sing some of it in that falsetto of his.

Probably the song would sound better on tenor, but since I play alto my questions are: can I just drop the song down a 3rd or a 5th (to F or D) to make it sound better tonally and easier to play? And if so is it possible to do that and still be able to play the song along with a rhythm section track that was playing from the original chart in the key of C (for concert instruments) without being out of tune? I guess that's impossible, but what is the solution to dealing with a situation like this where the song really sounds better in a different key?

Thanks for any help and I hope all this doesn't make me sound too dumb.:shock:

 

[harmonizerNJ]

Not a dumb question at all. Being able to transpose a melody into multiple different keys, and play it in all those keys, is a great way to improve your technique and your ear - so there is a benefit for you in going through this. And, from an artistic point of view, there is nothing wrong with playing a song in a key different than its original key.

The only glitch in your case is that you would not be able to play along with the prerecorded backing tracks that came with your book.

If you have a Windows-based PC with a sound card, you can download the software program "Audacity" which can record a song, and bump its pitch up or down a selected number of half steps (while keeping the tempo the same). This would enable you to create transposed versions of the recorded backing tracks. (you could save the transposed audio track to your hard drive, or even to a CD via various methods). I have used Audacity to transpose a rock and roll song down by 2 whole steps - the transpose function worked very well, but the result was pretty freaky to listen to.

I don't know what is available for a MAC-based computer, but based on my gut instinct alone, I would guess that for a MAC, there is probably a tool available which is similar to Audacity, and probably is easier to install and use.

 

[kavala]

Another option is to use midi files as backing tracks.

There are thousands of free ones out there.

You can search here.
http://www.vanbasco.com/midisearch.html

I did a search and came up with several pages of Ain't Misbehavin'
http://www.vanbasco.com/search.html?q=aint+misbehavin&resultsperpage=10

You will need a PC and a midi player to use these.
There is a very good Karaoke player that is free and plays midi files here
http://www.vanbasco.com/download.html

You can then playback the midi file in any key and any tempo using
the soundcard in the PC.
You can drop in or out any instrument or combination of instruments.

If you have a USB to midi adaptor (Yamaha do one), you can plug
your PC into any midi instrument and playback that way.

 

[Jazz Is All]

THANK YOU BOTH so much for the feedback and great info because I didn't know how I was going to get the canned rhythm section to follow my lead and change keys. No matter what key I called out, they just ignored me and kept playing in C, the clods. Now I can fire them because these software guys you've turned me on to obviously have better chops. Seriously though, it is people like you on SOTW who have helped me learn so much in such a short time, and I am very greatful to you.