T is for TRANSPOSE

A few years ago, I bought an electric piano. You'll understand that I'm no Mozart on the ivories, even though I went to music lessons for about eight years and managed to complete several exams. There are just too many notes on the darn thing and often I could play all the correct ones in a song, but not necessarily in the right order. We used to learn pieces like the William Tell Overture, that I knew better as the Lone Ranger theme music and also I had a book of Fireside Songs that included one of my all time favourites called 'The Ballad of Master McGrath'. I used to sit at the piano in our sitting room and sing as I played it and, contrary to its slightly familiar title, it wasn't about dog food, but about a great racing greyhound, though I suspect he could have ended up inside a can after his usefulness on the track had waned. Anyway, apart from that and a couple of other songbooks that contained old classics like Rule Britannia, Danny Boy and TheMinstrel Boy, on the whole, exam music was not particularly inspiring for a young teenager who had just discovered Dylan and 'flower power' and was seeking solace in a piece of wood with six strings st etched down its length. So something had to change and it did. Somewhere, in the middle of this tangled mess of black and white notes, I discovered chords and immediately a whole new world began to open up. The closest I had come to understanding chords and keys in my prior tuition was in the songs I learned to play from the church hymnbook but now I had discovered that you could play the piano just like the guitar, not literally of course, with the whole contraption strapped around your neck, but more as an accompaniment rather than just playing the tune. So I found the chord of C in its several forms and its close relatives of F and G plus a couple of minors and before long I was up and running, crooning to collection of sounds that previously had been hidden beneath an black and white ivory carpet. Within days the secrets of this new world would expand as the Keys of D, F and G revealed themselves unto me so I suddenly found myself in a place that I wanted to be and I think mum knew that my tutor driven learning was drawing to a close.

Over the years I have experimented with other keys but I always seem to be drawn back to my very first experience of C and its friends. I think that's because you can accompany a whole song without going near those strange black keys at all, so when I bought the electric piano, I found a new and very necessary friend in the 'transpose' button. You see this allows me to write a song or accompany myself or wife in any key and still play in a key that I want to. This has revolutionised my life, though I know its a bit of a cheat really and when I watch younger son, who has studied music to a much higher level than I will ever reach, play whole songs almost completely on black keys, and never need to go near the button in question, I realise that there is no substitute for hard work and dedication when it comes to learning an instrument.

Guitarists are equally well catered for in this respect as the old 'Capo' can be fixed across any fret and immediately transposes a tune into another key and I understand that this is less of a cheat because sometimes a song just doesn't sound right unless you play it using a particular set of chords. Over the years I have had a fair selection of capos, all just variations on the same theme and some lasting longer than others but generally, all allowed me to play in keys that I was more comfortable with. However there is generally an unwritten rule that you don't use a capo on an electric guitar unless it's absolutely necessary, a sort of last resort in an emergency. I'm not sure why this is, because it can do a wonderful job at times but I guess it has got something to do with the fact that if you play an electric to any reasonable level you are deemed to be versatile enough to play in any key without the aid of such contraptions. Anyway, you will rarely see a capo stretched across the strings of such an instrument and maybe that's not a bad thing for it encourages guitarists to work more at their instrument and to explore what it actually can do. Other musicians have little alternative but to put in the long hours and practise since most instruments don't have the luxury of a capo or a transpose button and that's why I admire anyone, regardless of their chosen instrument, who has mastered it to the extent to not only play in any key but to mentally transpose as they play. Now I understand that certain instruments are only able to be used in one particular key but even here there is no substitute for hard work in order to achieve mastery.

However I think the word transpose beautifully encapsulates what God does with each of our lives when we allow Him to take control. My dictionary tells me that I could easily substitute transpose with convert, change, transform, transfigure, reverse, turn, relocate, alter, reorder, shift or metamorphose, such is the all encompassing nature of the word and when I look at all those acceptable alternatives, I realise how different my life can be with God in charge of the transpose button. Truly He makes me live life in a different key but essentially I'm still the same person and while He doesn't take away the personality and characteristics that He created in me, He does make me a better person. Jesus says, 'I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.' And it is that abundant life, that richness which we miss when Jesus is absent, that peace and joy which He brings where everything just looks and sounds so much better which makes me happy that I answered His call and allowed Him to transpose my life. Now I don't have to live every day in the same key.