Other Instruments

A transposing instrument is a musical instrument whose music is written at a pitch different from the actual "concert pitch". Concert pitch is the pitch as notated for piano (or any other non-transposing instrument) - e.g., the note "C" on piano is a concert C. more...

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On a transposing instrument, a concert C is written as another note. On the surface, this may be confusing, but there are several reasons for the existence of transposing instruments. The difference between a transposing instrument and a non-transposing instrument is only in whether or not the music is written at its sounding (concert) pitch.

Transposing keyboards such as transposing harmoniums or electronic keyboards with a transpose function can have a similar effect, but are not usually called transposing instruments. These instruments allow the player to change the instrument's transposition electronically or mechanically. This is different from the instruments discussed in this article, which have set pitches but merely do not read their music at concert pitch.

Reasons for transposing

At first sight it might seem awkward to use transposing instruments. The B♭ clarinet and the C clarinet, for example, are identical except for being a few centimetres different in length. The use of the transposing instrument entails more work for the composer or arranger. There are, however, some clear reasons for preferring a transposing instrument:

Families of instruments 

Some instruments belong to a family of instruments of different sizes (and, therefore, sounding at different pitches), such as the clarinet or the saxophone family. Musicians can read the same notes on the page for each instrument in the family without having to learn new fingerings. For example, the note that is written as middle C for the alto saxophone and the tenor saxophone is fingered the same on each instrument, but the alto's sounding pitch will be higher than the tenor's.

Transposing at the octave 

If an instrument has a range that is too high or too low for their music to be easily written on the staff, the music may be written either an octave higher or lower than it sounds, in order to reduce the use of ledger lines. Instruments that “transpose at the octave” are not playing in a different key from concert pitch instruments, but sound an octave higher or lower than written.

Historical reasons 

Historically, some instruments have come to be accepted (and widely manufactured) with a certain transposition as a standard.

Tone and sound quality 

Because of tone quality issues, some C (concert pitch) instruments — saxophones in C (the C melody and C soprano) and the C soprano clarinet, for example — have declined in popularity in favor of the currently more standard versions (B♭ soprano and tenor sax, E♭ alto and baritone; B♭ and A clarinets).

Families of instruments

Transposing instruments are often members of a family of instruments that are identical in every way but for their size. As a result they have differing ranges, with the larger instruments sounding lower than the smaller ones. It is desirable for these instruments all to have the same fingering for each written pitch, so that a player who wishes to switch between different instruments in a family does not have to learn new fingerings for each one.

Read more at Wikipedia.org