I want to play some of the songs from my clarinet books on my alto sax and I know I have to transpose them but I have only done up to grade 4 theory so far and therefore dealing with transposing octaves. Can anyone explain how many intervals I need to transpose by in order to do this?? Thanks

If you play a C on sax it sounds Eb, on clari Bb

so

Concert Sax Clari

Eb C F
E C# F#
F D G
G E A
A F# B
B G C#
C G# D
D A# E


with all the sharps and flats in between (hope I've not made any silly errors here..... )

Maybe that'll help.

SO down a 4th from clari will give you sax - at the right pitch I think.

However, if you are not playing with anyone else you don't really need to transpose at all.

If you are playing unaccompanied you might not need to transpose at all. Only if the range of the notes is too low for the sax. in that case an octave up might do.

I think sbhoa and I crossed posts there

yes.

Thanks so much - i'm playing solo so i'll give it a go untransposed and see if it needs altering. Your grid of notes is really helpful thank you

Up a fifth (or down a fourth)

There is also the option of transposing to a 'saxophone friendly key', if you want to, to avoid the more awkward notes.

What do you mean by saxophone friendly key please?

Let's say, for instance, you've got a piece that's in Bb major, with loads of awkward low Bbs in it. Transposing it up a tone, to C major, would remove them.

I end up transposing from Bb to Eb and vice versa quite a lot. If you know your cycle of fifths (4ths) it's quite easy, going from Bb to Eb it's one notch along in the 5ths (sharp keys) direction, from Eb to Bb the other way round.

Reading clarinet music at pitch can be a problem on sax because the ranges are quite different, and as Barry says, if you're playing unaccompanied the trick is to put it into a key that works best for you. I usually regard that as having as much as possible within the 2 octaves D written 1 tone above middle C, to the D 2 octaves above (sax pitch).

Thanks a lot guys and watch this space!