[MUSIC] playing in other keys...
Posted by: phil.kan <phil.kan@...>
Hey Guys and Gals,
I'm wondering when you play from lead-sheets etc., do you normally play in the key the sheet is in, or do you (can you?) transpose at sight? Yesterday for the second time in a long time, I played in church (yay!), and I can tell you, it was an experience, and rather a stressful one at that. It wasn't over personalities, and or music styles, but simply musicianship – namely my own.
The problem was that I didn't have the charts available to look over during the week – which is my own fault, I know. When we got to rehearse before the service, I found that about 75% of the tunes were in keys different to what we were playing, or weren't complete in terms of the chords and so on. The pianists we have lead the music, and they throw in all sorts of different things on top of what's written, including "oh, its written in A, but we do it in F", or "Its really boring like this, we just throw in a bunch of ii-V's, ok?" (The ii-V or even vi-ii-V I understand well enough, but doing it without being written is something else!)
I got really stressed. I wasn't able to follow most of the rehearsal, and for about 10 minutes before the service the pianist and I were writing new charts for me to work of. It was really the grace of God that I got through at all, I think. Praise God that the both the pianist & the drummer (it was only the 3 of us) are good friends, and understood the problem and gave me a lot of encouragement. However, they seemed unwilling to change anything in the long term, just deal with it in the short term.
Is this something I should be practicing – transposing at sight? How many of you have to deal with this? I can tell you, I really felt inadequate that I couldn't do what was being asked of me!
tc&gb, pk