I`m trying to get better at reading and writing standard notation. I was wondering how to transpose a piece from one key to another on sheet music , so I wrote a 2 bar phrase and tried to do it myself. The first bar is just natural notes, the 2nd bar contains alterations. I quickly realised that if there are no alterations , it is actually pretty easy , the problem seems to be that of transposing the sharps and flats.
In this first picture you can see the 2 bar phrase that I wrote , followed by the same phrase trasposed thru the circle of fiths (c major/g major/d major/a major/e major).
In this 1st picture the traspozitions were done automatically by the software and as you can see the software acomplished this by adding lots of natural signs. I can see why that is correct , but If I were to do this by myself It would take a long time since I`ll always have to remember which sharps are in the key signatures , recognise them on the score and calcultate the intervals in the piece etc.
So when I tried to do it myself on paper , I came up with what you can see in picture 2.
All I did was to move the phrase up or down the staff till it was in the right key. This worked really good for the keys of G and D , but when I got to the keys of A and E (and I didn`t notice this at first) , I realised that I have to make those notes double sharp in order for the phrase to be correct.
I play guitar, and on most stringed instrument you could just move the passage up and down the fingerboard and it would be automatically transposed.
Isn`t there a simple way to do this on sheet music as well ? It seems that you can move the passage up and down the stave just well , but the sharp/flats and key signature accidentals really make this more complicated than it should. Am I missing something obvious here ?
Thank you !