How do I have a Bass Clarinet in Bass Clef when transposed? How do I have a Bass Clarinet in A?
I believe when you add the instrument, you should select the one called “bass clarinet, bass clef Full Score”. Just add it to your project, and toggle btwn transposing and concert score to see if it works. I’m pretty sure it’s that one, not the “sounds 8va bassa”. If you imported a project (say a MusicXML file from another program), you may have the “wrong” bass clarinet. Go to setup, find the bclr, click the > to expand, click the > over the LOWER bass clarinet entry, and select “change instrument”.
As far as custom transpositions, I’m not totally sure. This thread may help Custom Instruments/Transposition - Dorico - Steinberg Forums. Someone else will have to chime in to give a definitive answer.
Good luck!
The most common notation is using treble clef and transposing by a 9th (for the Bb bass clarinet). However at least three other notations systems have been used - see Bass clarinet - Wikipedia. The best bet is probably to try to figure out which bass clef notation the score you are working from is using, and transpose it as necessary.
Using the Properties panel, you can have different clef changes for transposed and non-transposed layouts.
“Having a Bass Clarinet in A” is difficult. The total number of them known to exist in the world is about 20, and of those 9 are in museums so not available for playing! However modern Bb bass clarinets have a low E extension so the range is the same as the A instrument, which seems to have been “invented” by composers, not by instrument makers - the historical record of “real” bass clarinets in A is very sketchy.
Sorry, I may have misunderstood your question. You want the bass clarinet to be bass clef in the score, and bass clef in the part (transposing up a 2nd in the part)? You may be able to just put a bass clef at the beginning of the part, but there’s still the transposition issue to sort out.
I’ve been complaining about the lack of Bass Clarinet in A for literally years. I wouldn’t hold your breath.
At present only two ways. Hand edit an XML file as in the attached. Or, hack the Instrument Database.
The XML file has to be opened directly, you can’t use it to import into an existing Project.
Bass Clarinet.zip (800 Bytes)
We’ll try to include bass clarinet in A in the next version of the software. Sorry that it’s taken us a while to get around to doing this.
Hah, so for the record Bass Clarinet in A did make it into 3.5…and there was much rejoicing.
With D3.5, the alternate transposition feature will also let you use any Clef you wish. So, this very doable now.
I have a similar problem that I can’t seem to find an answer for. I have 2 score layouts where one is transposing and one is concert pitch. I would very much like to have the bass clarinet part to have a treble clef in the transposed layout (condensed conductor’s score) and a bass clef in the full score. I have been trying a bunch of things but so far nothing I have done has worked. Is this possible and how would I do this?
Great, thanks, that worked.
Not among bass clarinetists…
I can’t get my bass clarinet part to show treble clef. I was taught the part should show in treble clef, and sound an octave and a tone lower than written.
When I view my BCl part, it shows with bass clef. If I try to ‘Change Instrument’ from Setup>Players, I get this:
None of the Bb Bass Clarinet options seems to show a treble clef in the BCl part. Is there a cure?
(I did find a poor workaround: to set the BCl part to treble clef & transpose up an octave, print; then set the conductor’s score to bass clef and print again.)
Is the score an XML import? If so it may have a manual clef change at the beginning. Try selecting the initial bass clef and deleting.
Yes, XML import.
I tried deleting the clef (in full score and part), but Dorico needs a clef to make sense of the notes on the stave.
Dorico automatically shows clefs according to the instrument. If you can select the clef at the very beginning of the flow (ie it turns orange) then that’s an explicit clef that will override what Dorico would normally display by default. Select it, delete it, and watch Dorico’s defaults swing into action.
Additional hint: Always make changes in the score, unless you need something to look different in the part than in the score.