why do some instruments transpose instead of just calling the notes what they sound like at concert pitch?
In: 21
Because when the technology of those instruments was still new and basic, they could only play certain notes, so to change keys you needed a whole different instrument of an overall different length. They kept the notes on the page corresponding to fingerings, therefore they’re transposed.
Nowadays all instruments can play all 12 notes within an octave but certain sizes of these old instruments remained and their transposed key stayed with them. Some still exist in two or more sizes to make it easier to play in sharp vs flat keys, notably Bb and C trumpet, and Bb and A clarinet.
The saxophone is special because all 4 are still common in band and the fingerings correspond with the written notes, so you can switch between them all with relative ease even though soprano and tenor are in Bb and alto and bari are in Eb. The English horn also does this, it’s in F, a fifth lower than the oboe which is in C.
On a lot of woodwinds, you can play a low (written) C by placing all your fingers down (expect your LH pinky). Lift up the finger furthest away, you get a D. Lift up the next finger, you get an E, etc. Similar to a piano’s white keys, the natural notes are all laid out in a straightforward manner so you can easily learn to play a C major scale. This makes it really easy to switch between flute, and different saxophones because 3 fingers down is a G on both instruments – rather than that being a G on flute, F on tenor sax and Bb on alto sax.
Why don’t they just make a slightly smaller tenor/soprano sax that just plays a C with the C fingering? Well, they originally did as well, but the Bb and Eb saxophones became more popular.
I suppose it’s the same logic for brass instruments… Unless you learn a bass brass instrument where you just call the notes by the actual pitch.
There are several reasons for transposing instruments:
Back around the Baroque and Classical eras, brass instruments were a glorified pipe that could not change lengths, like we can today with valves. The Sackbut (predecessor to modern day trombones) could by using a slide, but it was pitched too low and didn’t have the brighter sound of a trumpet to be of real value to composers. As a result, there were several lengths of trumpets and French horns, each of which corresponded to a musical key – B-flat, C, A, D, and E-flat were among the most common of that era. The trumpet player sees a note on the second-to-bottom line of the treble clef (a G) and plays their second partial, regardless of what trumpet they’re playing on. The sounding note would sound different depending on the key of the instrument they’re playing on – on a Bb trumpet, the audience would hear an F, on a C, they would hear a G, on an A, they would hear an E, and so on. That specific note on the staff would always sound a perfect fifth interval above the key of the instrument they played on. IIRC, trumpet players would have different instruments for each key, while French horn players had different “crooks,” each of which corresponded to a certain key, that they would simply change out depending on the key the composer called for. (Furthermore, and this goes beyond ELI5, each partial/overtone has a specific tuning tendency and timbre – the 5th partial on brass instruments is typically sharp, the 6th tended to be flat, and the 11th is extremely sharp. Players would already know to compensate for this to play in tune on those notes.)
Second reason: you may be asking “well they’re professional musicians, they should be able to just transpose on the spot!” In modern days, they absolutely do. A big focus of earning a performance degree today is learning to transpose any key to whatever instrument you’re playing on. BUT, the way the overtone series works in C (on C trumpet, you have middle C, the G above that, C above, E, G, Bb, C, D, E, F, G) means most of the notes in the middle register, where most of your playing occurs, falls directly on the staff. Reading 3 or more ledger lines quickly becomes tiresome when you’re doing it for an entire piece, and if the part is handwritten (as practically every part back then was), it can be confusing if you have to squint (is that two or three lines? Is that just a smudge?) Additionally, ink was incredibly expensive back in the 1600-1800s, and marking ledger lines on copies of scores and parts would be a huge expense to the composers, who already made a meager salary. By keeping the music on the staff, which was already written out, composers saved a lot of money for themselves and a headache for their players. (Again a bit beyond ELI5, string instruments avoided this problem of ledger lines by changing clefs, particularly cellos. When the music gets too high or high and stays there for a while, composers did and will change clefs to avoid a passage where every note is 4-5 ledger lines above or below the staff. String basses avoid the low ledger line problems by having all their music transposed up an octave.)
So when did everything change? In the early 1800s, the valve was invented. This allowed trumpets, french horns, and when they were invented, tubas, to play every note in the chromatic scale by pressing the right series of valves down. For this reason, every tuba part you ever see will be in concert pitch – they never had carry around different crooks or instruments to play in the right key, since every note was available to them right off the bat. Since then, most every part for each instrument has been written in a key that avoids ledger lines as much as possible for that instrument – Bb for trumpets, Eb and Bb for saxophones, F for French horns, and Bb for clarinets, again to avoid headaches from the performers.
If you have any questions or want anything more in depth, feel free to message me!
Wow, so basically it’s like they were playing musical Tetris with limited shapes and had to make do. Impressive!
Because transposing instruments are tuned to a certain note, and the most basic way for it to produce any sort of scale is to make it play either a major scale, or its harmonic series.
Because of this, the keying system is optimized for the key. In a sense, the “basic” layout or the easiest thing you can play on them is its equivalent of “all white keys”.
And where in non-transposing instruments “all white keys” means C, in transposing instruments, it is whatever the instrument is tuned to.
So why not concert pitch?
It’s conceptually easier to think of “all white keys” as your basis and go from there.
Just like when starting out in piano and when learning new concepts in piano, you almost always do it in the key of C major. Likewise, literally music notation is based on C major, and everything else is based on how many sharps or flats they are away from C major.
So if you’re playing say an Alto sax (Eb), “all white keys” is Eb major. Having to use concert pitch (C major) as standard is hard to make “natural” to the instrument, because now you have to think in two steps: how far away am I from Eb major to get to C major (3 semitones down), then how many more steps to the key I’m actually supposed to play in?
If you transpose, and just consider the key of the instrument as its “all white keys”, then the musician only has to think once: how many steps away am I from my quote-unquote “C major”? The mental gymnastics then becomes the same as it is for non-transposing instrument players.
Also consider that players of transposing instruments tend to play different tunings of their instrument to cover range. So conceptually, it is more difficult to frame C major as two entirely different fingerings on the same key layout. A player in this framework will tend to thin “oh what’s C major concert on this instrument again?” It is easier to just think “I’m playing A major on the alto, and D major on the tenor”. While it may seem more complex because there’s two keys being talked about, again it is the concept of fingering taking over, not so much the actual pitch being produced. When keys are called out for transposing instruments, it is more of a reference to the shapes and fingering, because that is consistent between tunings of the same instrument.
Let’s actually use a non-transposing instrument to further this example. Say you have a guitar player, and he is playing a piece in C major, and his job is to play rhythm guitar, with the chords C-G-Am-F. Now hand him a baritone guitar. Despite the instrument still being non-transposing, the range and tuning is now different. Conceptually, this guitarist now is thinking, “well what is C-G-Am-F on baritone? Ah C major on a baritone is playing F major, so the chords are going to be F-C-Dm-Bb”. So as you can see, even on a non-transposing instrument, conceptually, a guitar player when switching to a differently tuned instrument thinks in transposition, because it is easier to think in other keys relative to the instruments tuning, than to plainly think in concert pitch.
TL;DR it takes less thinking to transpose than to use concert pitch for all instruments.
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