Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:42 am
Hello All,
The original question in the title line was, "Any trick?"
I have read a lot of philosophy and opinions in this thread, but saw few actual tricks being disseminated.
This is the way I put my transpositional skills into practice with movable clefs (assuming one knows where "middle C" has been located via the arrowhead pointing to the desired line or space):
When one moves from a line to a line, or a space to a space in musical notation, you "skip" a letter in notation, either up or down.
When one moves from a line to a space, or a space to a line in musical notation, you go to the adjacent letter note, either up or down.
Of course, this is just the beginning of transposition, because you need to be aware of the key signature. In the case of movable clefs as they pertain to organ literature, one usually sees only a single note at a time in the staff with the movable clef.
Example: Imagine, if you will, that the movable clef has the arrowhead pointing to the middle line (third up from the bottom). This is defined as Middle C for purposes of this example. Now, keeping Middle C in mind as a reference, what is the note of the fourth line? the second line? Answers: The fourth line is two letters up from C --> E, and the second line is two letters down from C --> A. In the same example, what is the first space (the bottom space)? Well, it is a G because it is one letter value down from the second line, which you already found was an A.
This method does take a little practice getting to work for you, but I hope this helps. By the way, this is the way I teach my newer students how to read standard G clef and F clef musical notation in the first place.
Cheers,
Joe