I could really use an equivalent to Finale’s “reset cautionary accidentals after ___ measures” option - in many cases, cautionary accidentals are needed more than one bar after a key change, and manually doing it for big scores is vey time consuming and prone to mistakes. (my Finale default is 4 bars, which works well, in the rare cases Finale actually manages it…)
This could be a very significant improvement for me, hope you’ll agree
+1. I’ve been asking for more features with these for years. I think the Finale method can actually be improved upon quite a bit by incorporating some multibar rest settings as well. I would imagine most of us would say a cautionary is required in the example below, even though the gap is more than 4 measures.
(Finale’s plug-in was also poorly labeled too as Cautionary Naturals wasn’t really just naturals, it was actually cautionaries for any deviations for the key sig. Oh well, it won’t be changing now.)
Absolutely, and in fact - in the majority of cases, 1 measure of CA’s isn’t enough - there really should be a way to automate this
Here’s another one - most players would play Eb on the last bar - and this is in no way a rare occurrence in a pop song - Oh mighty developers, please rethink this one bar limit!!
+1, exactly in cases like the above two. Being able to set the number of bars would be very useful, counting a multibar rest as a single bar. In addition, it might be handy to be able to have different settings for different groups of bars or, at least, per flow. Cautionaries which reset after one bar might be sufficient for a 12/8 meter but not for a 3 /8 meter.
I have a different opinion on this.
It feels like putting stabilisers onto your bicycle.
A trained musician knows that in modern editions accidentals are defined by the key signature and further accidentals are valid for a bar only. Cautionary accidentals can give you a gentle help, but they should not become standard and indispensable. The less, the better.
That’s correct in theory, not so in a professional session where any mistake costs someone a lot of money - even the most professional players might miss key changes, and there’s no reason not to help the situation - even if it’s less traditionally-correct. (This is the norm in LA studio recording sessions, where the best sight-readers in the world work, which should be a reason enough for Dorico to make the option available)
Strong disagree with this. Almost all newly composed music is under-rehearsed. Orchestras under-rehearse new music because there’s no time and they figure the audience won’t recognize a mistake anyway as it’s a new work. As @roeeli points out above, mistakes in a session can be very expensive! I have a recording session on Saturday at the Power Station, one of the best studios in NYC, and I don’t even know what instruments I’m bringing yet, let alone what music we are playing. Obviously I’ll be sightreading everything on the date. I’ll accept any help I can get with cautionaries as I don’t want to be the one that blows a take.
Perhaps that’s why NYC Music Services suggested I set my theater score to atonal and use accidentals for everything.
But the expectations may be different for familiar concert works.
Open key is certainly very common now. If I’m writing something with a strong tonal center I’ll use a key sig to show the tonal center, major or minor (I hate other modal key sigs though), but for anything highly chromatic or without strong tonal centers, I’ll definitely use open key.
Even with open key, I find cautionaries to be important though. A 60 member orchestra at scale in a decent studio is gonna cost about $100 a minute or so, so an extra take because the copyist didn’t add a natural here might cost several hundred dollars.
I’m glad cautionary accidentals are customary in sheet music personally because I know my short-term memory can play tricks on me!
+1 for this feature request; it would save me a lot of time with my current project.
So sad, so true.
Yes, and it puts the musicians back to a stage where they are just servants.
A viola player visits his doctor.
“Doctor, after each concert I have this rush in my ears”
“This must be a tinnitus - as it can’t be the audience applauding”
I’m afraid that that has always been the case, historically. On that note, the tails that I have to wear for some concerts were originally the outfit of a butler, i.e. a servant.
It is interesting to observe the main stream “historically informed” ensembles making their musicians play standing up. In baroque times there was a very fine tuned etiquette who had to stand, where you had to stand in relation to another person, whether you are allowed to have a seat, chair or even a throne.
I read the self-biography of the composer Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, when he as a young 20 year old Kapellmeister started conducting/leading his first orchestra. One of his first official acts, he ordered wooden benches for his musicians, so to show them some respect. He also writes about one of his first rehearsals, which turned out as a big mess, because his players had not prepared their instruments. He released them to go home and told them, he would expect them to be perfect the next day, otherwise he would start with strict rehearsals.
This way gave his musicians respect - but also
responsibility. Which is quite a turning point in music history.
