how do you change the key of a song?

Question

would i use a cappo and i how would i know what fret to put it on would i have to retune my guitar? and how would i retune it? im so used to just playing i never payed attention to this stuff.

Answer 1

It depends on the key you are changing it to. If you are moving from A to B, then you would put the capo on the second fret. If you were moving from E to G, you would put it on the 3rd fret.

You do not have to retune your guitar completely, just check tuning and make small adjustments.

The better way to handle key changes in some cases is to actually go through and write down the new chords and actually play the new chords without the capo.

Here is a site that will help with that: http://www.xs4all.nl/~hippy/xp/

Answer 2

Transposing a song into another key is simpler than it seems.

Let's take for example, you have something in the key of C:

C - E - G - A - C

The C Major scale goes as:

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Now, we want to transpose it into the key of D Major. The key signature of D Major has 2 sharps, C# and F#. So now, we take it as such:

D - F# - A - B - D

The Key of D Major is:

D - E - F# - G - A - B - C# - D
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

If we reduced these examples to numbers, it would look like this:

1 - 3 - 5 - 6 - 8/1

These numbers are the scale degrees of the note being played. By using this method, you can transpose anything into any key, such as G# Major:

G# - B# - D# - E# - G#

The key of G# Major is:

G# - B# - D# - E# - G#

When dealing with chords, things get a little more difficult. Using pop chord symbols, something like this:

CMaj - Amin - FMaj - GMaj

Would be spelled out in triad form:
CEG - ACE - FAC - GBD

If you were transposing this into D Major, you would have to follow the key's sharps and flats, thus keeping the Mm (Major Minor. C -E is a Major third. E - G is a Minor third. All Major chords do this unless they are in inversion.) of the Major chords and mM of the minor chords.

Transposed into D Major, it would look as such:

DMaj - Bmin - GMaj - AMaj

spelling:

DF#A - BDF# - GBD - AC#E

Considering that you are playing the guitar, I am assuming that you are going to be dealing mostly with Pop Chord Symbols. The easiest way to find out transposing a chord is to take the music and transpose it first as show above. Then, you can take it to a chord chart and learn the chords from there.

You should not have to re-tune your guitar in order to play a transposed song, unless you are using power chords, and even then, the tuning is not going to change from the standard tuning for power chords.

Hopefully this has been of help to you. If you are a little unsure of some of the music terms I used, you can go here:

http://www.musictheory.net/index.html

Answer 3

you can use a cappo, just put it on where you like, it depends how high or low your voice is.... You can retune it but you have to or have a tuner or be experienced or else dont even try it wont sound good... so i think you should probably use a cappo.