TRANSPOSING

I love this Transposing wheel invented by the Guitar Guy and got his kind permission to cut and paste it straight from his site. Do pay him a visit.

Even if you're a complete amateur at the process, transposing any of these charts to a key better suited to your voice is simpler than you might think. All you need do is raise or lower the chord cited by a specific number of pitches, or steps. Rather than even mess your mind with, "Did he mean half steps or whole steps or baby steps or what?" you can do what I did on just about all of these charts, once I had done the initial transcription -- that is, employ The Guitarguy's very own, homemade, handy-dandy Transposition Wheel:

The Transposition Wheel

Every chord, no matter how much it's been altered, begins with a letter designation for the primary name -- whether its obvious like C or A or D, or a little more abstracted like F# or Bb. If you need to go from the key of C to the key of F, for example, consult the wheel: move five steps clock-wise and you're there. Now, do the same thing for every chord your encounter, but leave the modifier the same as it already is -- for example, a Bm7-5 moves the initial "B" the same number of steps, in the same direction, to become Em7-5.

How do you know how many steps to use? Depends. How many are comfortable? If the key of C is 'way too low, skip up (or down) several steps. It's purely a matter of choice and personal comfort. I use the key of D a lot in these charts, for a couple of reasons. First, it's comfortable for me to sing in that key most of the time. Second, because I use that key a lot, I am very familiar with the chord variations that add "colour" in that key, without having to think too much about how to form them.

And that, my friend, is all there is to it.