Hi
As many af you probably know horn players transpose a lot. Do you have some tips on how to think when you do it. I am thinking primarily E flat horn. I should be reading it as i read the f horn parts.
Timothy

Yes, having to read parts written for Eb horn on an F horn is a standard bugbear of being a horn player - it's partly a hangover from the days when natural horns were in use and horn players had an armful of crooks of different lengths to facilitate playing in different keys.
What's the answer to being able to sight read Eb horn parts? In short it's practice. But it's amazing how quickly the brain adapts to reading written notes down a tone from what's written.
Clearly, because the F horn sounds a perfect fifth below concert pitch and the Eb horn a major 6th below, the horn notes have to be written up a fifth and sixth to compensate, so when reading an Eb horn part and playing F horn you have to lower the written pitch by a major second (or whole tone) to meet the concert pitch equivalent. The nasty bit is adjusting the key signature and keeping it firmly fixed in the mind...if the piece is written in Bb major for Eb horn you will have to play in Ab major (i.e. add two flats) and read each note one step lower on F horn. Conversely, if the piece is written in A major for the Eb horn you will need to adjust the key to B major for the F horn (i.e. add two sharps) - this procedure applies to all flat/sharp keys accordingly.
Incidentally, it's always good for developing mental flexibility to practice any piece up or down a tone (or even wider intervals)...and a really good knowledge (which again comes through practice) of all your scales and arpeggios in major and both forms of minor key will certainly help when it comes to transposing.
I hope this helps.

...of course the sharp eyed horn players will have noticed the deliberate (!) mistake in my previous response to this question. In short, the answer is: when playing Eb horn parts on the F horn if the piece is written in a flat key add 2 flats to the key signature (i.e. if written in F add 2 flats and play in Eb). If written in a sharp key remove 2 sharps from the key signature (i.e. if written in A major remove 2 sharps and play in G major). It follows logically that if originally in G major (a sharp key) you will have to play in F (a flat key)...thereby removing 1 sharp and adding 1 flat. All very simple in practice but perhaps not quite as simple to explain clearly...my apologies.

Like Stephen said, it basically comes down to practice. Scales and arpeggios are an absolute MUST if you're trying to nail transposition.

You should know your scales and arpeggios by heart so that you can piece together a transposition based on only a sparse sampling of the notes. Learning scales is easy, but transposition may be harder to pick up. If you do it like this (for pieces without a lot of accidentals), then you only need to transpose a few notes and the rest will fall into place based on note patterns. After awhile it will become second nature to you, and you won't have to think of it like this.

Case in point: you're playing a piece written in Eb, and there's a run of four notes C-D-E-F. You've practiced enough to know how to play the C correctly, but the rest aren't quite second nature yet. Have you practiced your scales? No problem! Just start at the C and go up.

Thank you VERY much! Very helpful.

I have a 1 1/2 page scale/arpeggio exercise that my first horn instructor gave me. It's been a favorite of mine and my students for years. I've shared it with more horn players & teachers than I can count. Email me and I'll share it with your. Valeriew78 "at" gmail "dot" com.

Valerie Wells
http://beforhorn.blogspot.com/
http://comfyhornstrap.blogspot.com/

Yes I know, another tuner app, but this one seemed like a good idea when I started so I persevered.
As a trombonist in a British Brass band (with occasional forays into Orchestra, Big Band and Concert Bands ) I have encountered many Brass Band euphonium players who can't or won't read bass clef so I've come up with an tuner app which displays the note you are playing on a stave rather than showing the name of the note A Db etc. The theory is you just play notes into the tuner, look at the display and teach yourself a new clef or transposition.
I know it doesn't take very long from my own experience 50 years ago.
Look at the display and subconsciously relate the position of the fingers, lip sensation, pressure, breath control and sound of the note to the note displayed on the stave.
This is aimed at beginners learners and amateurs not virtuosi who've been through college.

By brilliant design or probably good luck I ended up with a mechanism whereby I could implement lots of transpositions quite easily so I've got all the Trombone clefs plus Trumpets in A, Bb, C, D,Eb and piccolo, a few Horn transpositions, Woodwind, Sax family, Strings and Voice. I've checked them all myself but I'm not the worlds greatest completer finisher and I can't get beta testers for everything so I've let it loose on the app store.

http://appstore.com/iTransposer

And with great trepidation I post this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJHboLv7Lug

Sorry but the cornet lives in the cupboard. And you'll be relieved to know it's gone back in there.


It only takes up 500kb on an iPhone and its free so I wondered if it was any use to anyone who teaches.
Might be helpful to learners who have difficulty pitching notes as well as people who want to learn transposition or even singers who don't have perfect pitch.

I've used autocorrelation for pitch detection so it may not be as accurate as some of the more professional looking tuners on the app store especially below F2 but seems OK.
Tuner bar goes green when within 2.5 cents of true so this may be a bit tight especially as intonation is different for anything but root and fifth depending on the key.

Psybersonic,

If I had an iPhone or knew more about the iOS SDK, I would love to take a look at this. It looks like a fun tool to tinker around with since it's a simple tuner app that also shows written notes. Practicing transposition with this app might take awhile, but I can definitely see it's use as a quick reminder if you need to double check your first note on a piece.

A note for UI improvement: extending the blue flatness/sharpness bar from the middle rather than the left-hand side will make the interface more intuitive--sort of like the needle on a hand-held tuner.

What does your pitch detection algorithm look like? Perhaps there's possible improvements that will allow you to effectively gather tuning information for lower pitches.