Transposition
What is it?
Transposing a tablature means translating its notes to a different scale — or, in our case, to a different handpan. It comes in handy whenever the original song wasn't written for the instrument you own.
For example, you can pick a groove in D Kurd from the library and transpose it to your F Pygmy, your E Amara, or any other scale you have. It also works for subtler differences: if your D Kurd has a different note layout, or is tuned in E instead, transposition will adapt the tablature to match your exact instrument.
Limitations: transposing a song to a given handpan isn't always possible. Click to learn more.
A few reasons why a song may not transpose cleanly to your instrument:
- Not enough notes. If a song needs 14 notes but your handpan only has 8, the transposition will be partial. Notes with no equivalent are either dropped or flagged, and it's up to you to fill the gaps with what's available — the melody will differ from the original.
- Incompatible scale types. "Regular" scales (the full major and minor scales) can't be transposed 100% to "irregular" ones (onoleo, harmonic minor, hijaz, chromatic, blues...) and vice versa. There's no way around this — it's simply how scales and music theory work.
- Note positioning. Two notes sitting side by side on one instrument may end up on opposite sides of another, or even on the bottom layout. Because of this, some songs turn out to be physically unplayable after transposition, even when the transposition is theoretically possible.
Step by step
For this example we'll transpose the Pirates of the Caribbean theme that you can find in the library. It's written for a D Kurd 10 and we're going to adapt it to an E Amara 9.
1. Pick the new handpan
Click the handpan menu at the bottom of the window, next to the instrument (1). This menu gathers every option related to the current handpan.
The section we're interested in is Transpose to (2), where you'll find a list of your personal handpans. Select E Amara 9, the one we want to transpose to.
If your personal handpans list is empty, or if you want to transpose to an instrument that isn't listed, click Browse library... to pick a handpan from the catalog or create a new one. More info on this page.
The same menu also offers + 1/2 step and - 1/2 step options. These shift the whole tablature up or down by a semitone while keeping the same scale — handy when your instrument is tuned slightly higher or lower than the one the song was written for.
2. Confirm the transposition
The transposition window opens up.
Most of the time you have nothing to do here: Notepan already worked out the best transposition it could find. Click Transpose, the tablature updates automatically, and you're done — just remember to save your changes afterwards.
If you'd like to understand what's on screen, or fine-tune the result yourself, read on.
Understanding the transposition window
The two columns
- The left column lists the notes of the current handpan (D Kurd 10 in our example). The number in parentheses is how many times that note is used in the tablature.
- The right column is the transposition Notepan found using the notes available on the new handpan (E Amara 9).
Notepan can sometimes propose two or more transpositions when several are relevant, in which case extra columns appear and you have to choose one by checking the box at the top.
If you're unsure, go with the first one, transpose, and listen to the result. Don't like it? Undo (Ctrl+Z on Windows, Cmd+Z on macOS), transpose again and pick the next proposal.
How good is this transposition?
At the top of each proposed column, two figures summarise the result:
- 9/10 notes transposed — 9 of the 10 notes of the D Kurd 10 have an equivalent on the E Amara 9.
- 93% of the tablature — those 9 notes cover 93% of all the notes actually played in the song. The second figure is usually the more meaningful one. A missing note barely matters if it's played twice in the whole piece, but it's a real problem if it carries the melody. Here the only missing note (Bb3) is played 23 times, which is why we lose 7%.
Reading a line
Each line reads from left to right: this note on the current handpan becomes that note on the new one. On the first line, D3 — played 59 times — becomes E3.
Both happen to be dings here, but that's pure coincidence: depending on the two instruments, a ding can perfectly well be transposed to a regular note, or the other way around.
When a note can't be transposed
Bb3 should theoretically become C4, but C4 is written in red: that note simply doesn't exist on the E Amara 9. You have three options:
Leave it as is. Every Bb3 in the tablature becomes a greyed-out C4 placeholder. The placeholder isn't played during playback since the note doesn't exist on your handpan, but it shows you exactly what note was intended, so you can replace it with your own choice later on.
Replace it with another note. Click on the red note to open a dropdown that lists all the notes available on the new instrument. Pick any note from this list and it will be used everywhere Bb3 appeared.
Delete it. The dropdown also offers a Delete option that removes the note altogether, leaving a hole in the tablature.
Adjusting any other line
Notepan's proposal is only a starting point. The same dropdown works on every line, not just the red ones: click the cell and swap the transposed note for any other note available on the new handpan.
Want to undo your changes? The Reset button at the bottom of the window restores Notepan's original proposal.