Posted by Tabor on December 16, 2003 at 16:22:48:
In Reply to: Name That Chord Gig posted by Marty Neilan on December 15, 2003 at 16:26:50:
I don't play many "gigs" but I have often needed to "guess the chord" or often, "create a bass line in the key of ______ ". I remember at a Tubachristmas when in the middle of, "Santa wants a Tuba" I realized that I was missing at least one page, but was familiar enough with the tune to successfully interpolate my part. The most frequently was at a Christmas "sing/play-a-long" where the music we had was one piano score between all of us. It wasn't bad to create the bass line, since we had the key. It would be more difficult, however, without a familiar melody.
One of the things I've been doing lately (just for fun) is reading melody of the treble clef line of a piano score and playing it an octave or two down. If I haven't had enough fun, I play it as if I were playing an instrument in a different key. I hadn't really thought about doing this until getting together and jamming with a horn player, and discussing the different clef signs, transpositions and notation they commonly need to play. It is fun to mix things up and create little challenges. It is probably less fun when you HAVE to transpose in odd ways or just "wing it" by ear at a concert or gig.