Detune pedal?

[StrummersOfThunder]

Helium

[Delayman]

Some chord progressions and riffs do not retain their character when transposed to another key. Likewise many fingerpicked passages do not change key and remain playable; not for folks with skills less than Danny Gatton.

I definitely get that. I had to transpose about 60% of the Moe Show songs for the voice actors to be able to sing- their character voices made their ranges unpredictable. Transposing down I’d often lose open string chord voicings, not to mention hammer-ons that would be part of the character of the original idea.

If a detune pedal doesn’t work out or you just can’t find one, another thing you could try is transposing up with a capo and then dropping the melody an octave. That worked reasonably well for me for some songs. You have to transpose up quite far (5-7 semi tones) for that to work so it’s a bit hit and miss though.

That’s one of the weaknesses of songs written on guitar I reckon. Often we end up with the music featuring notes because they sound good in that particular fingering or are easy/familiar and it’s hard to change key unless a capo is involved. But then again so many great songs have been written on guitar.

One example I’ve always thought is how some guitarists make an open D chord a Dsus no matter what the key, because that little finger just falls there so nicely . That g note doesn’t work over every chord progression.

[Cdog]

I use a drop to transpose guitar to Eb and C# for covers. I guess I'm used to it now, but as Kris mentioned, it doesnt sound amazing. Our keyboardist has this https://www.tc-helicon.com/tchelicon/pr ... Code=P0DEH

It's great as he mainly sings BV's and it sounds massive with the extra digital harmonies in BV. Dont know what it's pure transposition is like, but TC Helicon specialise in vocal effects, so check out their range. Personally I cant imagine singing through a transposer fulltime would be great, but I suppose he could try... They all add latency or have some degree of tracking disortion (that is to say I havent heard of a live transposer that doesn't), so it wont be a perfect solution. Easiest option to try, also already mentioned, might be retune the guitar?

[Conway]

Learn some Nick Cave songs. Works for me.

[Mr Bungle]

I had a Digi Drop. Sounded too artificial and processed to my ears. Got it as I enjoy playing some stuff a couple of steps down like Kyuss and it’s a ballache tuning down and up. Sold it for a couple of hundred a couple of years back. Buyer may have got a deal now they’re discontinued. But I didn’t see the value of them.