8vb Treble clef on TAB staff — and — TAB clef on standard staff

• Aug 14, 2021 - 09:29

I often work with a standard staff linked to a tablature staff. In the course of performing transformations and transpositions I regularly encounter situations where a standard treble clef or 8vb treble clef displays on the TAB staff.

This result is most simply recreated with the following steps:

  • New score>Guitar + Tablature
  • To change the 8bv clef to a standard treble clef:
         a) click in Measure 1 of the standard staff
         b) click the Treble Clef in the Clef palette

Odd result: In addition to changing the clef on the standard staff Musescore shows a Treble clef on the TAB staff.

Logical workaround:

    a) click in Measure 1 of the tablature staff
    b) Click the TAB clef in the Clef palette

Odd result: In addition to changing the clef on the TAB staff, Musescore shows a TAB clef on the standard staff. Thus the oddity is simply reversed.

Non obvious and successful workaround: Select either errant clef; press delete. The expected clef then displays.

NOTE: On saving the score with an errant clef the .mscx file contains the following structure:

<Clef>
    <concertClefType>G8vb</concertClefType>
    <transposingClefType>G8vb</transposingClefType>
</Clef>

   
scorster


Comments

No closing tags?
Anyway: change the instrument to "Accustic Guitar (Treble Clef)" instead (and then delete the treble clef ottava bassa in the normal staff). That then does make a difference between concert pitch and sounding pitch, changes the clef.

Your logical workaround does nothing useful, esp. it does not change the transpositioning. And Guitar with treble clef is octave transposing.

Nonetheless this seems a bug, the treble clef should never show in a tablature staff. Happens with any clef as far as I can tell. And only in the first measure.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Jojo wrote >> No closing tags?

Sorry. Regarding the XML tags, not surprisingly, the forum software rendered them out. So I added spaces to try to get all the XML tags to show, but I misplaced spaces in the closing tags, causing them to not show at all.

Please forgive the spaces. I forgot how to make a code block in MarkDown.

scorster

In reply to by Doug Kerr

Preface: Percussion staves are excluded from this discussion.

Now that I am paying attention, it seems that the concise description of this behavior is that when we apply a new initial clef on a staff that is one of a clutch of staves that are linked, all staves in the clutch get that clef.

That might be a good idea in general, but of course a tab staff should not be able to be given, say, a bass clef.

In any case, when the "applied" staff is deleted (for any type of staff), the "default" clef for the kind of staff appears (not really a surprise). I had earlier thought that the applied clef overlaid the clef that was there before, but I now think that is not so.

As was earlier reported, if we place a changed clef in the "interior" of the score, on one of a clutch of linked staves, it will also be applied to all the other staves in the clutch except those of the tab type.

Doug

In reply to by Doug Kerr

Doug Kerr wrote >> ... when we apply a new initial clef on a staff that is one of a clutch of staves that are linked, all staves in the clutch get that clef.
...when the "applied" staff is deleted (for any type of staff), the "default" clef for the kind of staff appears

Hi Doug,

That describes the behavior quite succinctly.

Doug Kerr wrote >> ... if we place a changed clef in the "interior" of the score, on one of a clutch of linked staves, it will also be applied to all the other staves in the clutch ...except those of the TAB type

Thanks. I hadn't notice that. And it models the behavior we'd expect when setting the initial clef in a such a score.

scorster

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