Other Instruments

A transposing instrument is a musical instrument whose music is written at a pitch different from 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 harmoniums or electronic keyboards with a transpose function can also play a different set of pitches from what is notated, but these are not usually called transposing instruments. These instruments allow the player to change the instrument's transposition electronically or mechanically. The instruments discussed in this article, on the other hand, 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 use of the transposing instrument entails more work for the composer or arranger, for example. 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 (E♭) will be a fourth higher than the tenor's (B♭).

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 bass or treble clef, 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. Some instruments with extremely high or low ranges use a two-octave transposition.

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 — the C melody saxophone, C soprano saxophone, and C soprano clarinet, for example — have declined in popularity in favor of the standard versions (B♭ soprano and tenor saxophone; B♭ and A clarinets).

Read more at Wikipedia.org