What I am doing and ongoing series

Going east by traveling west: the wonders of transposing

I said I was going to mess around with scales and make mistakes and get dirty and learn things as advised by Ms. Frizzle. And I did.

So what did I learn?

Well, there is something about G. It's like a security blanket for me. When I can't find any other note with my voice, I can always get G. I fret the second string from the bottom at the first fret and play that G and I can unfailingly sing the G two octaves below in response.

And I can sing that whole scale going up from there without straining. I can go up to A and sing that scale without strain. And I can do likewise with the Bb scale, the C scale and even the D scale. I can do the Eb scale with some strain but no pain. I can go beyond that too but it gets really wobbly.

I can go lower too. I can sing an F scale, E scale and even an Eb scale and sing all, obviously, without pain. The problem, rather, is volume and projection. I can hear me at those tones but no one else could without getting pretty close.

So I'm a baritone. Which is pretty normal. Most men are baritones.

That means I can sing a lot of songs that are written on the Treble Clef. I won't be singing in the same octave but I'll be singing a melody that exactly parallels the one written (except when I make mistakes). Most of the music on the treble clef, however, tends to be between middle C and the F that is an octave and four notes above it. That is a very good range for ukuleles but not so good for me. Most songs written on the Treble Clef tend to be towards the upper end of my range. With a  few exceptions, even the ones I can sing comfortably don't allow me to make use of my lower range.

I can make much better use of my range if I move or transpose most melodies to suit. If you want to sing, you really want to learn how to transpose. Lots of songs you'll want to sing won't be in your range.

Oddly enough, since I'm singing a parallel octave below the Treble Clef, I can get to where I want to be by moving the notes up rather than down. You can see what I mean if we look at the Treble Clef. There is room for two G scales (If you click on the image you can see it larger).:

The ukulele can only play the second scale (this is also true for ukuleles tuned GCEA by the way). Since I will be singing a parallel melody well below the uke that doesn't make any difference for me. So all the music I will be practicing with will be moved up. I may put a few Fs and F#s in the mix but I'm going to transpose all the melodies I play and sing up into the range of the ukulele.

(This, by the way, is another advantage for D tuning for me. The range that parallels the range I can sing all fit pretty comfortably on this tuning.)