Double bass clef usage

Until this is addressed, you can right-click and select Stave Properties -> Play Transposition +1 Octave down. Then you can change the clef manually to ordinary bass clef and can also use ordinary treble clef.

See my response here .

The point being, it's not exact a *bug* that it is done the way it is - it is done for some very good reasons, with plenty of precedent in terms of how things have been done for the past couple of decades, if not in the preceding centuries. I think you'll find this to be a case where tradition is actively changing. Yes, editions produced before 1990 almost exclusively used ordinary bass clef. But bass-8 isn't just a error propagated by inexperienced composers - it really is becoming a quite common and accepted way of dealing with the problems inherent in working with octave-transposing instruments in notation software.

Most significantly, the current method is much easier for the *composer* (and after all, that's the primary audience for MuseScore) because it allows one to much more easily work in concert pitch scores without needing excessive ledger lines or to manually change clefs every time. So I think that simply changing the default behavior of the bass would be a mistake. It would inconvience the composers using MuseScore pretty significantly, whereas seeing the "8" in a part doesn't inconvenience players reading the parts at all. Except, of course, that this eliminates the easy option of switching to tenor clef for those bass parts that need it.

Anyhow, I definitely agree there should be a way to produce scores using the older standard more easily., You can currently get this behavior with a simple change to staff porerties after score creation, and perhaps save templates set up that way if you tend to write for the same type of ensembles, or customize instruments.xml if you want it to hold for scores created from scratch. But this is more work than it should be, and as I mentioned, it really presents a difficult conundrum to the composer, as it means scores are very difficult to work with in concert pitch (where most composers do most of their work).

So the change we really need is an option to force use of a different clef when in concert pitch mode. With an option to force bass-8 clef while in concert pitch mode, then we could have our cake and eat it too. Parts would show in ordinary bass clef by default and would allow for switching to and from tenor clef, but concert pitch scores would be readable. Finale added such an option a few yearsd back, so scores created with Finale during the 1990's and early 2000's (I think) would likely have used bass-8 for parts, but current versions support the forcing of bass-8 for concert pitch so parts can use ordinary bass clef. Not sure about Sibelius, but it hasnb't been round as long - Finale is really what has driven the standard here.

My sense is that development of 2.0 has made steps in this direction but isn't there yet. So yes, again, I agree it should. I'm just cautioning *against* merely making the change to instruments.xml to treat bassd as a transposing instrument *without* also adding an option to force a different clef for concert pitch mode. This is an issue for all instruments that transpose by an octave or more (piccolo, bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxophone, low brass in the Britiish band tradition, guitar, etc). Actually, I think for guitar, use of treble-8 really has become so standardized as to not be in question.