Pardon what must be my complete stupidity. I just noticed that the manual says a new project starts with no key signature and is atonal. Why isn’t that C Major? And then how would you specify C Major?
And how do you ‘deactivate’ the key signature as mentioned here?
Perhaps my neurones no longer connect, but I am puzzled by this.
Amusingly all my work is atonal so I just use no key signature, assuming it is C Major and I just put in all the accidentals.
To get C major, type C (uppercase) in the popover. One difference between atonal and C major is that if you are in C major, your transposing instruments will have a key signature (D major, for example, for a B-flat clarinet). If you are in “atonal”, they won’t.
For non transposing intruments, a signpost will display “C major”, as you can’t infer it just by looking at the score.
If you are in C major and want to get “atonal”, type “atonal” or “open” in the popover.
And if you are referring to the “Create New Project” function via the hub, you can tick/untick “Key Signature”.
I remember Daniel saying that most notation apps give you a “default” of 4/4 and C major, –– Dorico doesn’t start with the assumption that this is what you want. It starts with no key signature (atonal) and no time signature (open), until you tell it otherwise.
You have to enter a key signature of C major in the popover, just as for any other.
Are you really assuming C major in an atonal work? 
Glad you pointed this out. It’s truly astonishing how often this very straightforward fact gets overlooked in published music. This can really make a complete mess of transposing parts. As a player of a transposing instrument it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine due to how often we have to deal with that.
I recall one of Phillip’s suggestions for a piece I sent to NY Music Services for printing was that I could use atonal rather than C (and be sure to mark scores/parts as “concert” or “transposed”) to benefit my score.
Of course that may have been a suggestion based on my chaotic style of composition. I had asked Phillip for any advice his experience suggested, and working with NY Music Services was a very pleasant experience.
I don’t think the fine points here about transposing instruments are in the manual, which is only one sentence. [Not everything can be in the manual, but this really had me going.]
And so, for all my atonal scores - that’s all I do - I put nothing, assuming that nothing is just the same as C major key signature and you have to put in all the accidentals. Now, from above, I can put C in with the popover and it shows C, and I can put atonal in with the popover and the signpost says Atonal, but all my scores simply show nothing, no signpost, because I leave the default, nothing. Now I am not using transposing instruments, but am I doing something fundamentally wrong? Is this all blindingly obvious to everyone except me?
Default KS (i.e. = no key signature) behaves like “atonal”, so you don’t do anything wrong!
Just to clarify: Nothing is not the same as C major, but the same as atonal.
If you have no transposing instruments in your compositions then there is no practical difference between atonal or C major in terms of how the parts will look. In those cases the difference will be a ‘behind the scenes’ thing in Dorico. But as soon as you add a transposing instrument the difference becomes obvious when viewing that instrument’s part. They’ll end up with stuff like this:
..which is not only very annoying to read, but also having the D major key sig there simply makes no sense.
A Player’s Play:
Good to know. I was not aware of that. I don’t often compose for winds or brass, where it can matter, and in Finale, somehow it always did add the correct sharps or flats if I viewed the score with the transposition (there is a control in Finale at the menu bar level to enable viewing the score In C or with transpositions). I assumed atonal = C and yes, for everything I’ve done in Dorico to date, it hasn’t mattered. But it could come up at some point so this is very helpful to know. Thanks.
I swear, I’m learning something every time I come to this Forum. Not that I thought I’d completely mastered Dorico, but it’s only been 6-7 months so far. Thanks.
Same for me!
Hihi, I had to look this up… 
Hi. Alto sax player here. It’s pretty much a weekly occurrence that I have to remember 3 sharps that have nothing to do whatsoever with the music I’m reading. As a PSA to anyone who stumbles on this thread, please, please, please use Open key, not C, if you don’t want to see key sigs in the score.
Thanks. So, if I’m going to be writing for a transposing (eg, Bb clarinet, etc) instrument, we shouldn’t use C but atonal? I thought earlier the guidance was to specify C rather than “atonal” to have the standard transposed key signature inserted. I don’t use key signatures at all, except when a notation program does it for specific transposing instruments. Thanks!
I think what Todd means is that if you specifically don’t want a key signature, don’t just use C because it has no accidentals.
Correct me if I’m wrong @FredGUnn!
If a piece has a tonal center of C, then sure, use a key sig that will put a Bb Clarinet in D or Eb Alto Sax in A, but if the music is highly chromatic with frequently shifting or no tonal centers, just use Open key. The problem is when I have 3 sharps in my key sig on Alto Sax because the composer wrote in C, but really meant Open key. Now I have to remember to play those 3 sharps even though they have absolutely nothing to do with the music I’m reading.
(Somewhat related side note - unless you are recreating a historical work or your name is Béla or György, performers tend to hate modal and non-standard key sigs too. If the piece is tonal, just give a key sig, major or minor, and show the mode with accidentals. Modal key sigs almost always eat into rehearsal time when questions come up.)
If the music is not tonally centered (ie., in a key), then having a transposing instrument see a “key signature” is musically misleading.
