My son is part of a group of kids that play fiddle songs. He plays the viloin but we get some viola(and cello) players to come but we dont have any music for them. How do I transpose violin music to violas? I have scorewriter and it can transpose, I just dont know how much to move the notes.
Thanks

I can't help you with transposing but my son plays viola and I bought him a book called "Fiddling for Viola". It has a lot of traditional Irish and American fiddle tunes in it, and also has violin notation on parallel staff. I got it at www.sheetmusicplus.com for about $10.00.

We have a similar problem: my viola-playing son wants music from the band Fall Out Boy, scored for Viola!

I got this reply from a different website.

"Both instruments are written at concert pitch. This means that there is no need to transpose or change key. However, they have different ranges and are written with different clefs. Depending on the range of the music written for violin, the cello will play the same pitch, an octave, or even 2 octaves or more below."

So if a fiddle song has notes to high for a viola you can shift it down an octave for the viola and put it in the alto clef(easily in sofware).

Yes, they are correct and I have done that in software (I used Noteworthy Composer, which lets you download a free demo and then costs $40 for the full version). But I decided to buy the book because my son does't read treble clef easily and it would take a LOT of time to rewrite all the songs that come in the book from treble to alto clef. That's why I was looking for music already written...I don't have a lot of time or $400 to spend on a software package that would do it quickly!
Good luck with your son's fiddle group. I wish we had such a group near us (Rochester NY).

If you ever have a chance to go to Johnson City, this is my son's former teacher who started the kids jam here in Colorado then moved to NY
http://www.happyhollowmusic.com/

Thanks for the info! Funnily enough, I moved to Rochester from Endicott, NY which is right next to Johnson City, so we do go down there occasionally.
Happy Fiddling!