The use of the Transposer control. I am very much a beginner in music in spite of my advanced years, and I have been puzzling over how to use this control. Would I be correct that all I need do is to count the number of 'flats' or 'sharps' in the cleffs at the start and set the transposer control to that number; then play the notes ignoring all flats and sharps (except of course the 'accidentals')? Further if I was playing a tune with two flats(Bflat-?) that I would change it to three flats(Eflat-?) by moving the transposer contol to position '1' to add the extra flat? The tone of course I would expect to sound lower.

A SIMPLE way of looking at the transposer is that it shifts EVERY key on the keyboard left (+) or right (-) by the number of the transpose. ALL keys, black and white are counted. As far as counting sharps and flats I would NOT depend on that. The transpose would for instance allow you to play a song you knew in "C" and have the sounds moved to a different key. For instance, a transpose of +2 would move EVERY C to "sounding" D, C# to D#, D# to F, E to F#, F to G, F# to G#, G to A, G# to A#, A to B, A# to C, and finally B would sound C# pitch. Given a key like G for a song that has one sharp (F#) to play this by keying it in the key of "C" you would use a transpose of +6 or minus 6. The number of key positions (including black) between the key you want to play in and the key the song is in. For a song in D that is played in C you would use either a +2 transpose or a -10 depending on whether you wanted the higher or lower octave to sound. Looking at it this way I do NOT believe the method you proposed would work... Look at it the way I described and you won't go wrong.