Re: Transposed Chord name "F flat"

[Matthias Neeracher]

On Oct 28, 2004, at 12:27 AM, David Bobroff wrote:

> I'm not a developer, but this looks right to me.  In your example you
> have a chord which is a diminished step above the tonic of the key.
> When you transpose this down one whole step it remains the same 
> relative
> to the key.

Thanks for explaining this logic. My music theory is not overly sound, 
so I'm perfectly willing to accept that there is a sound theoretical 
justification for this. Nevertheless, I'd still argue that on a 
practical level, "E" might be preferable here.

> f ges
>
> es fes
>
> If you were to do:
>
> \transpose f' dis'
>
> You would likely get 'e' instead of 'fes' and this would be consistent
> with the above logic.

Sure, but Jazz pianists tend to take a dim view of singers showing up 
with a lead sheet transposed into D sharp major :-)

However, I could (and probably will) transpose the song into D or E 
instead.

> Likewise, if you had written a fis chord, it would have come out as an 
> e
> chord after your transposition.

Yes, but it seems somewhat counterintuitive that in order to avoid 
"weird" chord names in chords with flats, I have to transpose into a 
key with sharps, and vice versa.

Matthias