Sunday, January 14, 2007

Chalk Up Another One For Science!



So, as you may know, I've been frustrated with trying to sing All We Need Is Some Love. Tonight, after tuning my guitar down ANOTHER half step, I sat down to figure out if it would be possible to play it in another key and, thereby, save my pipes (such as they are) and keep the tension on my guitar at a healthy level.

On the recording, I'm playing [C F Am G] on the verse on a guitar tuned down a half step which yields [Bb E G#m F#]... I think. This is still pretty high for me when we get to the chorus, which is [Dm Am G] or [C#m G#m F#m] in reality. After fumbling around with transposing it myself, I had the brilliant idea that there must be a better way!

Well, there is! And it's called Autotransposer.

Simply enter the chord progressions (C F Am G for example) for up to five fields (verse, chorus, bridge for example) and click transpose, and viola! Many new keys to try your creation in. For this one, I tried the progression [G C Em D] for the verses (now played on a standard tuned guitar) and [Am Em D] for the chorus.

What I've effectively done is transpose the song down four steps (assuming the original guitar tuned down a half step and the new one tuned regular). For instance, the chorus was, in reality [C#m G#m F#m] and now becomes [Am Em D]. Amazingly, I can actually sing it in this key.

I'm not sure how I'll record the next version, but I'm leaning toward this new key. Maybe I'll post this new version against the previous one and have you give it a listen.

Of course if I end up hiring Bono to sing it, I can play it back in its original key.

Carry on,
J

1 comment:

sg said...

Now that's a handy little web tool!!
Cool!

Sometimes a key change is all you need. (And love!)

:)