Wrong key for some transposing instrument

• Sep 9, 2015 - 15:19

Hello!

I'm having problem adding transposing instrument to be correct key in the score. If the score is written in C major, a Eb tuba should have 3 sharps. However when I add a Eb tuba or a Bb tuba, they both have 0 sharps, when they should have 3 and 2.

I'm seeing the same with trombones.

Horns and trumpets are transposed correctly.

It seems most of these "transposing" instruments are just C instruments with a different name. E.g Eb and Bb tubas are C tubas with different names. The score is wrong.

You could say I could just transpose it after adding the instrument, but then it sound wrong, even though it looks correct. Also, why have different procedures for random instruments?

Please fix!!


Comments

Tubas are not in fact transposing instruments normally. The "Eb" in the name refers to how it is constructed - what its fundamental frequency is - but music for all tubas is normally written at concert pitch. Same with Bb trombone - music for trombone is *not* normally transposed.

It is true than in British brass bands and a few other very specific contexts, music for these instruments may be transposed, and usually placed in treble clef. If you specifically are writing for players accustomed to that tradition (probably less than 10% of the players in the world), then you can use the treble clef version. These are not in the "Common" list, but Just type "Tuba" or "Trombone" into the search box and you'll see those variations listed.

In reply to by vegarda

You are writing for players accustomed to reading transposed parts in bass clef? Wow, I've never heard of that before. The tranposed parts for low brass I know of all treble clef, sounding one or more octaves lower than written. If you want to write transposed parts in bass clef, you will need to go Staff Properties and change the transposition to remove the octave displacement. Then depedning on how you entered the music, you may need to actually move the notes you have already entered up to compensate for the change.

In the future, you'd want to set that up first, before entering notes. Once this score is set up the way you want, you may wish to aave it to your Templates folder so it will be available in the template list next time you crete a new score (restarting MuseScore after saving the template may be required).

In reply to by vegarda

Indeed, that is what these look like. Is music regularly published that way in your country, or it is a quirk of whomever wrote these particular arrangements? If it's standard in your country, we shoudl probably consider adding entries for these to the list of instruments. it is possible to add to that list by providing your own instruments.xml file, but it's kind of complicated, whereas a template is much simplr - as easy as just setitng up the score once and saving it to your templates folder, as I said. So I'd start trying to go that route for the future (after getting this first score set up this way).

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