E9 Question - tabs

[Paul Higgins]

Hi Everyone..I hope im in the right place to put this post
How hard is it to alter the key which a song is written
Say the tab is written in key F and and you wanted in in key G
How hard is it to do....The reason I ask is experienced steel guitar players have backing tracks for sale .. say key F and the tab you got is in key of G
I know there is software out there that can alter the backing track from one key to and other..but what about the tabs? This might be a silly question to ask
Paul

[Tucker Jackson]

If the tab were written in F but the backing track plays in G, you need to adjust the tab to be one step higher (two frets). Just take every fret number on the tab and add 2 to it.

Or if it's the other way around -- written in G, but song plays in F -- you would subtract 2 from every number on the tab to transpose it from G down to F.

[Paul Higgins]

Hi Tucker
you make it sound simple
Paul

[Paul Higgins]

As I have said you make it sounds so simple
How to you know what key it is written in ? if it dosent tell you
Paul

[Frank Freniere]

An imperfect solution but you could load the tracks into free software like Audacity, for example, and change the pitch to match the tab.

[Erv Niehaus]

It is fairly simple unless you want to lower the key sometimes.
Say you're playing in the key of F and you're using the first position on the 1st fret.
If you want to lower the key you'll have to do some rearranging.