Working musicians deal with transposition on a nearly daily basis.
Here is the opening section of a song, "Rosetta" that you would find in any number of "fake" books. A fake book is a book of "lead" sheets in which a musician gets melody and chord symbols (and in this case lyrics). They then perform the song by "faking" an accompaniment based on the style of the music and their understanding of harmony, group dynamics, etc.
This lead sheet is in "concert pitch" which means that these are the sounding notes and chords.
What is you where handed this lead sheet but you play the tenor sax, alto sax, trumpet, or clarinet? You would need to transpose not only the melody, but also the chords so you have an understanding of the underlying harmony if you wanted to improvise.
Additionally, you may be playing this with a singer who thinks this key is too high and needs it lowered. How do you do that? You transpose to a different key. If you are one of the aforementioned instruments that might involve a double transposition. Changing the key to accommodate the singer and then transpose for your instrument. It seems like a lot of work, but many musicians learn to do this on sight.
We will be playing around with this lead sheet in class today.
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