"Add Octave Above" should copy courtesy accidentals
Not much more to say than the headline - I wish adding an octave above (the functionality triggered by alt+8) would copy existing courtesy accidentals to the added notes.
Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.
Comments
It works for me. Does moving notes up an octave (Ctrl+up arrow) have the same problem with accidentals?
In reply to It works for me. Does moving… by bobjp
No, courtesy accidentals are preserved when a note is moved.
Just to be clear: accidentals that affect the pitch of the note are copied by "add octave above". It's only courtesy accidentals that aren't copied.
I'm not particularly convinced I'd want this, after all, accidentals affect the current octave only and thus courtesy accidentals are not necessarily required in any other octave. Unless of course it just so happens the accidental was applied in both octaves earlier, which isn't unlikely if the entire passage is in octaves. Either way, I imagine it's what one wants sometimes, not other times, and no matter which was the default, you will need to correct it a good percentage of the time.
In reply to I'm not particularly… by Marc Sabatella
I mean, courtesy accidentals aren't required in any octave. That's why they're courtesies. But the scores I'm copying always provide them regardless of the particular octaves in which the two notes occur. The philosophy is clearly that if you see, say, a sharp D, then you go into a "D is sharped" mindset, not a "D5 is sharped" mindset.
The obvious use case for the functionality I'm proposing is that you enter the lower half of a passage in octaves, highlight it, and add the higher octave. As things currently stand, this will result in an accidental that gets applied in both octaves earlier, but then the courtesy appears only in the low octave later. This is weird. I also think that, if the current passage is in octaves and the earlier passage wasn't, it's still easier to understand the double-courtesy octave than the single-courtesy octave. You can glance at the double courtesy and instantly see that the notes are the same; if the note on top is different, you need to wonder whether you're actually looking at an octave or not.
The scenario I can most easily imagine where you don't want a courtesy accidental one octave up would be a passage that isn't in octaves, but two notes happen to be an octave apart. Say you have a high D playing repetitively ("voice 1") at the same time something lower ("voice 2") goes through a melody. If the melody hits a lower D that deserves a courtesy, you probably don't want the high D to be marked with the same courtesy.
The thing is, the "add one octave" feature is quite helpful for entering the passage in octaves, and not that great for entering the passage in chords-one-of-which-happens-to-be-an-octave. So I think it makes sense to bias it towards that use.
I looked for automatic courtesy settings and didn't find them in Format / Style... / Accidentals. Settings for when notes should receive courtesies without the user needing to specify them manually would solve this problem as long as "add one octave" respected the setting.
In reply to I mean, courtesy accidentals… by collapsinghrung
Yes, I can see that in that particular use case it would seem to make sense, but to me that's not really the only time I use the interval shortcuts, often it's for a single measure or less. So I'm ambivalent, I still see myself needing to override the default half the time either way.
But, the easiest way to add courtesy accidentals is using the plugin. I almost never add them manually, the plugin does the job quickly and easily.