Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Questions about transposing keys on the score end on the DP

Hi,

I’ve been learning to play Bilitis (Francis Lai) using a transcription from the piano solo interpretation by Clayderman that can be found in Youtube.

Since the transcription is in Eb (bbb) and because I’m far from being a skilled piano player I’m investing a lot of effort for a long period and progress is slow.

One of these days occurred to me to transpose the score to the key of C and I did it very easily using may software application (three halftones down).

Now I’m questioning myself if after all the effort invested in playing it in Eb is worthwhile investing more time to study it in the key of C (presumably C will be much more easy for me…).

My general questions are, mainly:

- Is it a good didactic exercise to learn playing a song in more than one key?
- Is it good practice to transpose any song from a less friendly key to one that is more accessible for me, a non- skilled player?
- Is it a good practice further to transpose the score from the original key to a more familiar key then transpose the key in the digital piano to get the original sound? Or more generally, is it non- recommendable to play a song in a digital piano transposing the sound of the DP to a different key? Does this has or not the danger of the ears losing their sound education on the correct notes being played?

Kind regards

It's an EXCELLENT idea to learn to transpose (and by that, I mean without seeing it written in score) and do it often.

It's a bit of a bad idea to do that to every piece just to make them more accessible.

And really, just because there are more sharps or flats, doesn't make a key harder! In fact, most trained pianists will call C major "Noman's Land" or the hardest key to work in. It's all subjective of course, but don't let a few black keys get you down... it's not them that's stopping the piece.

Thanks, ||

Indeed, at least from a mechanical point of view I feel that black keys can be more accessible than only white keys. A really great challenge will be to transpose by ear! Many years ago I heard a remarkable portuguese pianist (Antonio Vitorino de Almeida) to say that once he was playing a very difficult piece to an audience, when suddently he found himself playing in a differente key, by mistake... but decided to proceed and was able to play the piece up to the end in the new key that he never practiced before! He's agenius. I'll rely on the score and try by ear! Thank you again

In that case, you're not transposing.

You're just learning it in another key.

Of course! In fact, as I mentioned before, was my software application that changed the score from Eb to C, not myself! I´m far from being like Antonio Vitorino de Almeida (http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/almeida) and much less like a computer!

Indeed, I started yesterday to play it - not transposing it! - in the key of C (for several reasons that you know better than I do, it sounds much better in the original key.

Eventually, I might change the pitch in my digital piano to match the original key, but probably I will make up my mind and keep playing in Eb.

Thks