How do I transpose a song?

And why would I want to transpose a song?

Transposition/transposing/changing the key of a song is handy if a song sits in a key that isn’t very friendly to your voice. So, if you are finding yourself either at the uppermost or the lowermost parts of your voice, like this you might find it useful and more pleasant on the ear to transpose the song. For example, Johnny Cash’s song, Hurt is in A minor (Am) which sounds amazing when it was sung by Johnny Cash and his beautifully strong low register. It’s a bit of a stretch for me to get those low notes, though, so I tried it in a few different keys to enable myself to sing all of the notes in the song. Have a listen to that here:

As you can probably hear, it’s a massive struggle in Am. It’s not much better when it’s been moved up a third to C#m or a 4th to Dm but at least the notes are achieved for the lyrics to ‘the only thing that’s real’.

If you’ve had the same trouble with any song at all, it’s well worth transposing it to suit your voice. If you print, cut out and put a pin fastener through this Key Transposing Wheel, with Instructions you’ll see that you can move a song to any key. Bear in mind that if the chord is a minor chord or a seventh chord in the original, it’ll need to stay as a minor or a seventh chord in the transposed song.

Thank you to Cathy’s Chords for the transposition wheel.