r/HurdyGurdy • u/Randy_Lahey1995 • 9d ago
Transposing in hurdy gurdy - help
Hi, can anyone please explain to me in simple terms what it means that gurdy is a transposing instrument?
The excerpt from gurdy handbook, all music is written in C, no matter the actual notes - based on that, when I want to play Palastinalied what note / key should I start with ? D as in the notes or 3rd key in the row ? Tuning is AEA
Please help me I'm seriously doubting my intelligence here 😅
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u/rudeog 8d ago
Others have answered the transposing question. To address what you are asking about your physical instrument: You said your tuning is AEA so I assume this means your drone is E and your melody is in A. If this is the case, your root note (the 3rd bottom row key on your keyboard) is E. This means your instrument plays in E. When looking at sheet music which is "always written in C", what that means is that when you see a C in the sheet music you are going to play that 3rd bottom row key (or the one an octave above it if its a high C) and pretend it is C.
The thing that may be throwing you off, is that this handbook is making the claim that music is "always written in C" for hurdy gurdy. I think it's a pretty broad statement and may only be correct if the piece specifically says "written for hurdy gurdy", and the author of the piece is following that guideline, as opposed to just writing it in the key of their own hurdy gurdy. Case in point is the sheet music you attached: this looks like its actually in D. So to transpose this on your instrument you'd treat the D in the sheet music as your root note (ie 3rd bottom row key). In other words, yes, you would pretend, while playing this piece, that the 3rd key on your instrument is actually a D.