Jusy wondering what technique you were all taught for transposing down for example a minor third. Doing this sends my head in circles.

First sort out the new key signature if you are required to put it in.

Work out which degree of the scale the original begins on.
You need to begin on the same degree of the new scale.
Then a note at a time work out the intervals... one note to the next.
Keep them exactly the same.
If there are accidentals work out what they actually do to the note concerned (raise or lower a semitone?)
Make the accidental perform the same function.

I would shortcut most of that if I did it myself but as you get used to it you will get faster.

Takes practice.
Try it on a melody you know well, then you can play it back to check whether you made any mistakes.

Thanks thats a good technique mine was a lot lot slower:)

hi
the way i do it is:
1. find out the interval it has to be transposed. e.g. minor 3rd
2. work out how many semitones that interval is. eg a minor 3rd would be 3 semitones
3. for every note imagine a piano keyboard and count down 3 semitones from the original note eg so say the original note is F-think of the keyboard and down 1 semitone is to E the next to Eb(D#) then the third to D

hope this helps!
Pete

Well, I would sing it in solfa in the original key, work out what the new key would be and then write it in the new key, singing it in my head in solfa all the time....it's very difficult to explain properly on paper! But it's a MUCH more musical and less mathematical way to do it.

Once you can sing a melody in solfa it's easy to transpose it into another key. My seven/eight year-olds at Guildhall have started to do this already (obviously with very simple stuff but the principle remains the same, whatever the level of difficulty).

Not (yet) being familiar with solfah I would do this:

Read through the piece while hearing it in my head as if I was playing it on my instrument. Then phrase by phrase hear it in my head in the different key, and then write it down in the new key.

If you can teach yourself to read music while hearing it in your head, it makes something like this very simple.

Violinia

If there is no accidental on the original note, there will be no accidental in the transposed piece, the change in key signature will take care of that.

If there is an accidental in the original, then there will also be one in in the tranposed piece, although it will almost certainly be different depending waht has happened to key signature.

I sometimes sketch a little piano keyboard to help me work out what will happen.