Unable to change to enharmonic equivalent of key signature in transposed instruments in middle of a score
Reported version
3.4
Type
Functional
Frequency
Few
Severity
S4 - Minor
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
In Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture, there's a key signature change to F minor in middle of a score.
The clarinet in A changes key signature to B major, but because the clarinet is A, the real key signature is G# major. That doesn't exist in MuseScore, and custom key signature doesn't help.
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Comments
See #288495: Allow user to select flats or sharps for enharmonic key signatures, in 3.5, does that help?
Probably not, I don't think we support non-standard key signatures like G# no matter what. Not sure what is meant about custom key signatures not helping though, that seems like the answer if you really truly want this. I'd suggest you - and more importantly, the poor clarinet forced to read this - would not.
In my Romeo and Juliet score (Hawkes Pocket Scores), the clarinet part has 5 sharps at rehearsal mark 2 when the concert pitch instruments have 4 flats - Ab not G#. Similarly, after rehearsal mark 19 it has 4 sharps while the concert pitch instruments have 5 flats. This is what I would expect.
The example from BetaBleeds is just poor. Below is a better one:
If I have a score for alto saxophone (which is an Eb-transposing instrument) that needs to show the key of Db and the key of B, I don't see how this is possible with the way Musescore is forcing a particular correspondence with the concert key signature.
If I choose concert key of E major, this will get me a C# major key for alto by default. But, I want to see less flats over more sharps, so I choose the global option to bias for the transposed instrument key to flats over sharps. This gives me E major concert = Db major alto. But, for the concert key D major, I want to see the key of B major for alto since 5 sharps is easier to read over 7 flats. However, the flats-over-sharps bias displays this D major concert = Cb major alto relation. This is not desired behavior. Alto players want to read Db major and B major, not C# major and Cb major.
Think about all the pedagogical material for transposing instruments that have exercises/etudes in all keys. The current conceptual implementation in Musescore makes writing these types of documents impossible. One can completely get around this issue by just pretending that the document is written for a nontransposing instrument (which is what I have done), but this is just avoiding the problem.
I'm not convinced you're talkng about the same thing as the original. Best to start a new thread in the Support forum, attach your score, and give precise steps to reproduce the problem. Then someone can understand and advise better.
BTW, it's false to state "Alto players want to read Db major and B major, not C# major and Cb major" - most alto players I know have never seen as many as 3 or 4 in their entire lives and would balk at 5, but see 3, 4, 5, or 6 flats every day of the week and 7 is just one more. in any event, there are controls for this that you can change mid-score, and we're happy to show you how to use them, when you start that new thread in the Support forum.