Transposing to adapt covers to singer OK?

[georgestrings]

Funny, I've played in bands with guys who refuse to transpose to suit a singer but never seemed to have any issue playing a Hendrix or SRV song in standard E.

No doubt - and they probably didn't see anything wrong with that, I'll bet...


- georgestrings

 

[TomB]

Works great for guitars, vocals, and electronic keys, but doesn't work well at all for, say, saxophones.

...but it can be done, yes? Our sax player finds a way. It may not always be exactly as originally written, for sure.

It gets us into the "cover tunes precisely as written vs. cover tunes not rendered exactly as written" discussion, which the OP didn't really ask for.

Yes, changing keys will sometimes require changes to the chord shapes or the octaves used for figures, and certainly affects the way it sounds to the sensitive ear ...but, is that acceptable or not?

In the end OP, I guess that's up to you .

 

[hsech]

Tell the guitar player to transpose, or tell him he can sing the song, or drop the song from the list.

 

[Troph]

...but it can be done, yes? Our sax player finds a way. It may not always be exactly as originally written, for sure.

With a fretted instrument like guitar/bass, transposing is relatively easy, since patterns remain essentially the same but just move around the fretboard. And if you're talking about *down-tuning* to transpose, then it obviously requires no effort or thought whatsoever.

Keyed instruments, by contrast, require much more effort to transpose. Re-tuning is usually impractical (executing a pitch raise on a piano can take hours). Transposing on-the-fly requires good knowledge of chord and scale fingerings for lots of weird scales.

For instance, lots of guitar songs are in E minor, which *normally* only has one sharp for a piano, which makes it an easy key and one of the first few you really learn how to play with and improvise. But if everyone else is down-tuned a half step to concert Eb minor, then now the pianist has to play with 6 flats. Yuck! Unless, of course, it's an electric piano with a transpose function. Then you can make playing in Eb minor look like playing in A minor (C major).

Similarly, for a standard Bb-tuned tenor saxophone, playing a song in concert E-minor would *normally* transpose to F# minor (A major), which has 3 sharps and while not a beginner key, is at least something most blues saxophone players would have practiced. But with a band down-tuned a half step, the tenor sax now has to play in F minor (Ab major) with 4 flats, which is a much less common key I would argue.

Anyway, the point is, it's non-trivial and you're lucky if you have a sax player that can transpose as easily as a guitar or bass player.

 

[xk49w]

Singer sets the key.

Singer picks the key.

The singer sets the key. The success of the tune is almost totally on the singer. He can certainly ruin it with ease. In my experience a singer that does not have a key preference for a song is viewed as an amateur.

The band should comply. If it can't then don't do the tune.

 

[Jim Carr]

It really depends on the song. A lot of rock songs feature guitar parts that are dependent on certain chord voicings, open string pivot points, or are otherwise impossible to play in certain keys.

Not usually, though sometimes it is not a bad idea to have a guitar capo'd up or tuned down, and the capo can be used to lower keys, too. For bass and keys, transposition is easy.

Qne of my favorite capo users, Keef!

 

[Troph]

For bass and keys, transposition is easy.

On keys, it's only easy if you cheat. Perhaps surprisingly, a lot of keyboard players I know don't cheat and scoff at the transpose button. Perhaps they want to be able to sit down at a piano and keep up too.

For bass, I can certainly think of some slap riffs which absolutely don't work well transposed due to heavy dependence on open-E and open-A while playing up the neck. Also, on a 4-string if a song is shifted down from F or E to Eb or even D, you lose the low root, which can make the bass sound thin. Seems to me that down-tuning is critical under some of those conditions.