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I have an ES110 and like to play a bit of Imagine (John Lennon) but I find I struggle a bit unless I move my chair down an octave or so...

Alternatively I can lower the keyboard an octave and play it nearer the middle.

Just wondering what the best approach for this sort of thing is?

Electronic transposition is one of the most useful things in DPs, I think. I use it very often to switch octaves when I practice. No burden of chair moving.

Transposition/octave shifting would be cheating IMO. What if it were an AP/Upright?

I've been hunting around - turns out the song was recorded on an upright Steinway Z not the white grand everyone sees in the video...

According to this guy:



At 3:36 or thereabouts you can see a photo of John Lennon - sitting down the bench from Nicky Hopkins ... JL is playing the normal chords and NH is playing an octave higher... that didn't sound very good so they ditched that and tried the SteinwayZ

So... it may well be that when JL sat at his upright SZ... he slid down the bench a bit just as he did when he played it with NH!

I think I'll stick to the transpose.

Why mess up your sense of pitch, especially as you're a beginner? Start as you mean to go on - on the right track.

Move your chair to where you want it to be.

There are no rules for chairs. Not even how many legs they should have.

There are some questions that nobody has asked so far. I was thinking of asking to see part of the sheet music, if that's possible, so as to know what's going on. What I'm imagining is that both hands are below middle C. If so, if you are trying to sit up straight and stretch your arms over to the left, that's uncomfortable. Have you learned to "lean" (the body)?

On acoustic piano there is an option to sit a little bit to the left or to the right. Or resign yourself to playing in a leaned position. But the former brings tension when you need to play in higher or lower register for a prolonged time.

Besides there is one more very useful application of octave shifting when practicing. It's practicing left hand part with higher sounds. It allows to hear precisely all the smallest defects of left hand part which may go unnoticed with low sounds, especially in a thick texture or when the bass is boomy. I use it often.

I agree, octave shifting isn't that big a deal. Playing transposed up or down a few pitches can be problematic though.

Transposing up or down is a learned skill.

I think ranjit meant using transposition on DP to avoid changing the scale of the music. But somehow I think you meant the same.

Nope, I was not thinking of using a transposition function on a DP but using your brain/ fingers to transpose to a different key. Sorry if I misunderstood the response as not being a programmed Dp function

Yes, I understood exactly that and I think ranjit agrees with it (because of the "problematic" in their post).

Yes, that is what I meant.

Then discuss transposing with your teacher. It is not problematic once you learn how ,

dogperson, I think you misunderstood our posts. I believe the three of us agree on this: transposition should not be done by the digital piano, it should be done by the (digital) piano player.

Transposing up / down an octave is not going to mess up your sense of pitch. The notes sound the same & finger positions are the same. Once I learned the 1st movement of the Bach Italian concerto in F on a 61 keyboard (the lowest note C). There is 1 spot the note goes down to a low B. To include the B I transposed down an octave. After a 3-week workout I played the piece on an acoustic upright no problem.

Transposing up / down an octave doesn't require thinking since your fingers play the same black & white keys. Whether you move your chair down or an octave down, the result would be the same.

I'm sorry, I've made a mistake, I meant the latter brings tension. I meant that if you need to work on a fragment in a higher or lower register for some prolonged time, the need to maintain a leaned posture will build up tension and hinder your practice.

In fact moving chair to the left or to the right may bring tension, too, because of the need to stretch your right leg to the pedal or to operate the right pedal with your left leg, but it's still better than constant leaning. A DP obviously solves this problem completely.