Articles - Guitar / Music Theory

Transpose

Transposing is simply raising the key of a song higher.

All you need to do is to raise all the chords of the song a tone/whole step, then whatever minor/major or numbers behind the chord, you just follow.

For
example:-

G7 - A7

Emaj9 - F#maj9

Bm - C#m

Asus2 - Bsus2.

Get it? It's not that difficult after all.

Of course you can use the same knowledge to lower the key of a song. In fact to any key you want, just remember that whatever number of semi-tone you change to one chord, it must be done the same to all the rest of the other chord.

By having a good knowledge of scales will help you do this easier. Do take a look at it in the article page.

Note: You can also raise the key by a semi-tone/half-step, but more often we do it a tone/whole step.

Note: Usually we play the V7 of the next key we are going into to start the transpose. Give a better turn around. If you don't know what is V7, look at the "Diatonic Chords" article.

By Wui-Ping