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Old 12-12-2008, 12:41 PM   #9 (permalink)
GuitarBizarre
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The notes themselves never change. The 'A' above middle C for example, is always, 100% of the time, 440Hz

But if you ask a clarinetist playing a Bb clarinet, to play a note written on the stave AS a C, the actual pitch you heard would be a Bb.

This is because the clarinetist is playing a transposing instrument, which means if you want the clarinetist to play what is known as a 'concert' C, you have to write the music itself a tone higher on the score. This way, when the clarinetist plays what is actually a written D, the resulting sound is a concert C (I.E. The absolute pitch known as a note of C)


As I noted above, the reason for this is so that if you ask a person who plays an instrument, to play another instrument of the same type or family, they don't have to learn new fingerings. The transposition makes it so that a written C is always fingered the same way on each instrument in the family, but will produce different pitches.

The composer writes the piece taking this into account, so he'll write a written C when he actually wants a Bb to be played. This means the instrumentalist can read a written C, play a C fingering, and always be playing the right note, because the composer has done the transposing beforehand.

Without this, the instrumentalist would have to either learn different fingerings for every instrument in the family, in order to know how to produce each pitch, or he would have to transpose in his head, on the fly while playing or learning the piece. Obviously both of these methods are far more impractical and difficult than the transposing system we have today.
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