Transposing any song is easy. You just sing it lower, or higher, or whatever. I imagine it's transposing the lute part that poses the problems. If you're particular about playing the exact thing that Dowland wrote, only to pitch it a step lower, then the best thing would be to play it on a lute in F. Failing that, you're going to have to compromise somewhere:
You could tune your lute lower, but that might not sound very good You could play the part on guitar in lute tuning with a capo on the 1st fret. Or in E, without capo. You could sacrifice Dowland's polyphony (aaaaaaargh!! blasphemy!!): look at the lute parts and figure out what the harmonies are, then just play your own accompaniments using chords that would fit the songs in whatever keys your singer needs. You wouldn't be showcasing the Big D that way, but at least you could perform the piece as a song. You could take the bass line of each of the songs, transpose it to the desired key, and work out a continuo part of some kind, based on the harmonies you see in the song. That would at least have some historical integrity. DR On Feb 13, 2009, at 9:57 AM, Caroline Usher wrote: > A singer has asked me to accompany her on "Come heavy sleep" and > "Time > stands still." The problem is, she wants to sing them in F (down a > whole step) because it's a better range for her voice. Has anyone > tried transposing them down? Any thoughts on how well (or not) > this > works? > I could tune down to 415 but I'm not sure she'll go for that. > thanks, > Caroline > -- > ***** > Caroline Usher, Dept. of Biology > Box 90338 > Durham NC 27708 > 919-613-8155, fax 660-7293 > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html [email protected] --
