I really need to use more diagrams

Previously, re absolute pitch:

The only real way out for me is to read it as a different clef -- which I didn't consciously figure out until I got to college, but it is effectively what I was doing the whole time with horn parts from 5th grade on.

To wit: Treble clef means the top line of the staff and the first space from the bottom both denote F. And what I needed to do was find a way to read both of those as being (concert) B♭s. Which means reading the next whole step up, whether this be the space immediately above the staff or the second line from the bottom, as (concert) Cs.

at which point what you needed to see was an example, like this:

So F-transposed treble clef horn music, can also be read as concert pitch music written in mezzo-soprano clef with an implicit extra flat (i.e., what you need to make the bottom space or the top line of the staff be a B♭ rather than a B).

meaning what I'm actually seeing when I'm reading the above as an F horn part is this:

the thing to understand about the C clef being that it's this fancy cursor that tells you which line is C.

Likewise, B♭-transposed (trumpet/etc) music is actually concert pitch music in tenor clef with two implicit flats.

So reading it as a trumpet part gets you this instead:

And E♭ (alto-sax/etc) music is likewise bass clef with three implicit flats.

and whump:

Just in case you were unclear on what any of that meant the first time around (and maybe I'll get around to editing this into the original post) and perhaps now you'll have a slightly better idea of what I mean when I say there's no actual transposing happening here.

(go back to the original post…)

(Translation: Yay, I now have this vague template for doing music in unicode and SVG. Although I think I need to find a better font for the clefs, because these helvetica clefs look stupid.)

(Also: Boy am I looking forward to the day when dreamwidth will allow hosting of SVG images [why don't they??!!!]...)