transposition support in mid-staff instrument change
The current handbook entry for "Mid-staff instrument change" says "A current limitation, however, is that transposition is not affected."
Is there any chance this support will be added at some point? I'm transcribing an orchestral score with a change from Bb to A clarinet and without this support I'll either have to create two clarinet staves or do a bunch of transposing as I enter the notes for A clarinet.
Comments
Definitely a chance at some point :-). It's on my short list for things to try to make sure gets into 2.1, and I understand Werner is thinking about it.
Meanwhile, if you do decide to do this on one staff, there is no need transpose manually. Enter the notes at whatever pitch is convenient then select the whole passage and let MuseScore do Notes / Transpose.
In reply to Definitely a chance at some by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the suggestion. As it happens I've already entered the transposed notes. When going between Bb and A clarinet it's just a matter of putting the notes up or down a half step - the trick is knowing which.
In reply to Definitely a chance at some by Marc Sabatella
Any suggestion for those of us who view the score in concert pitch but need the parts to print out transposed?
In reply to Any suggestion for those of by Solomon Douglas
It should work out of the box. When displaying the score, make sure the Concert pitch button is pressed and when displaying the part that it's off. Or do I miss something?
In reply to Any suggestion for those of by Solomon Douglas
I guess you mean, how to solvw the original problem - mid-score transposition change - but in a way that allows a concert pitch score?
I haven't tried the following, but off the top of my head, I think this should work reaosnably well for now:
The key will be to have two different versions of the staff in question: one that has the correct concert pitch notes (and hence plays as expected), and the other that has the correct transposed notes (and hence looks as expected). Generate the part from the latter, but then mute that staff and mark it invisible (Edit / Instruments) in the score. Wait until you're basically done with the arrangement before doing any of this, because of course now if you wish to edit that part, you'lll have to do it in score and part separately.
If you wanted a transposed score, you'd follow the same procedure except that while you'd still mute the "looks correct" staff in the score, you'd actually keep it visible, but instead hide to "sounds correct" staff.
Let me know how this works out!
You may also try this:
1) Write down the music like the instrumentist will read it.
2) Select and copy it (Ctrl+c)
3)Change the transposition to the pitch it must really sound.
4) Move the music to another layer (i.e. ctrl+alt+2)
5) hide the music (V)
6) Paste the music you have copied before (ctrl+V)
7) Select the notes (only layer one) and mute them with inspector.
It is laborious but it works.
In reply to You may also try this: 1) by mtuliosax
a procedure based on Marc's comments:
Let's assume we write a alto sax part doubling flute.
1) Create the alto sax staff
2)Create a new flute staff which will contain the music in the correct pitches and timbre. For adding a new instrument to a score simply press "I" and follow the dialog box.
(obs. In a large score you may put the flute staff next to the alto to make copying and pasting easier, but it really does not matter.)
3) Write down the notes on flute staff.
4)Copy the music to alto staff.
5)Transpose the notes in the alto staff (Notes, transpose, By interval, down, Major Sixth). Uncheck Transpose Key signatures).
6) If necessary change the local key signature dragging the apropriate one to alto staff while pressing (i.e. to create a C major signature (no sharps or flats) drag a Eb flat (3 flats) key signature).
7) Mute the notes on alto staff: Select the measures to be muted. In inspector press the Notes button (at the bottom). Uncheck the option Play.
8) Call again the instrument dialog box by pressing I.
9) Uncheck the "Visible" option for flute.
Remember that any subsequent change must also be made in flute staff (you have to unhide it) for sounding correct.
I have attached an example. The flute staff is hidden. To unhide it press I and check the "visible" option.
Could a plugin change the sounded pitch? "Note" has a property called "pitch", which is the midi pitch. It's not marked as read-only. If I change it, will the note head move accordingly? If it does, how about changing tpc, tpc1 or tpc2? Will they change the pitch value accordingly? If not, this could be a way to have say a mid-staff section in the alto sax part, where the key signature changes to clarinet, the sound changes and the playback works. But it requires that the plugin can change pitch without changing tpc, or maybe vice versa. Just a guess.
In reply to Could a plugin change the by jotti
I haven't tried, so I can't say for sure, but I can try to provide some information that might be helpful if you wish to experiment.
In principle, pitch and the various tpc's are not connected except by convention - which is to say, it is possible internally for them to be set to urelated values. Most user-accessible means of changing one changes them all. Exceptions include the J and Shift+J commands to change enharmonic spelling which leave pitch alone while changing either tpc1 or tpc2 or both. But of course, there have been and may well be bugs where some particular sequence of operations results in these getting out of sync.
I haven't tried messing with any of this via plugin, but might guess that changing pitch leaves tpc alone. Normally that would not be a good idea as the code in many places assumes they are related the usual way. In fact, we sometimes use the term "tpc corruption" to describe the cases where they get out of sync due to a bug. One symptom of any such bug would be notes that randomly appear an octave away from where they belong, because the calculation that decides what line to display a note on is one place where we rely on sensible association between them. We also assume the current transposition value really does relate to the difference between tpc1 and tpc2 and probably bad things would happen when this isn't true.
So right now, we are probably creating tpc corruption in some of these cases where you have a change of transposition mid-score. If the plugin allows you to independently change these values, you could maybe *fix* these sort of issues, but I'm not sure you'd really make things work correctly.