I have an orchestral work which I’m arranging for a Concert Wind Band. Given the range of instruments in the ensemble I wish to simplify the key signatures for some players i.e. say bring from 6# to 3# or 3b. The work moves through 7 key signatures being A, F, D, E, D, Bb and back to A. How would I say increase the key signature for the whole piece by a semitone or reduce by a tone? Do I use Cntrl A and select the whole work and use Shift K and a Popover or do I go through each section and adjust the key signature for that – if so, how do I select all instruments in that section for that key signature and change the key for all instruments in that section by the requisite semitone or tone. I don’t want to experiment too much lest I create problems I can’t resolve - thanks
These two manual pages may help:
I found these by typing “transpose” into the Dorico Pro help site. For the tricky problem of enharmonic key signatures for some transposing instruments, I know that has come up before on the forum but I can’t find that at the moment. I hope this helps!
Thank you Stephen, yes I did look at Dorico Pro Help but I couldn’t get the answer I “wanted” - if I go to the Transpose dialog I don’t know whether by “Transposing” by selecting the initial key signature it will transpose the whole work into the one key signature or that all 7 key signatures will move in “lock step” together which is what I’m trying to achieve ie I move the whole work down or up by a semitone or two
or
i do each section at a time by selecting the first beat of the first staff to the last beat on the last staff of a section, transposing that and then moving on to the next selection.
Separately and it’s a separate issue I seem to have ended up saving the various latest versions of my arrangement as a subset of Flow 1 because when I open the latest Project name (eg V1.2b) the Window opens as !Flow 1 “original name”)
Otherwise I’m in a good place thanks to Dorico 3.5 Pro!!!
I just tried transposing a short score with several key signature changes; Dorico transposes all the pitches, but only the first key signature.
So I think you’ll have to go through the piece one section at a time. Not sure about other flow saving issue…
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this – can you elaborate a little further? Or perhaps include a screenshot showing where this appears?
Thanks DSP
when I open Dorico 3.5 Pro I get the main Steinberg hub page listing prior projects in the centre column, tips and topics on the right and main menu items on the left. When I use the “open selected project” button at the bottom on the last project I worked on it opens with the title “Flow 1 in” and then name of project although the project is not filed under that name.
Thanks Stephen and thanks for “experimenting” to provide a view - I suspected something like that. I want the method which works first time and doesn’t take me into a “get well” recovery mode. Perhaps those who wrote Dorico can provide a view of the best method to approach a complex work.
What does your Project Info section look like for both the Project “tab” and the various other options (flows) in the pull-down menu?
I just did my own experiment, 3 bars in 3 different keys.
Hit ctrl-A to select all.
Write menu, Transpose, I chose “Number of Divisions” and selected quality “minor” and intervals “Third.” At least that’s what shows now – when I actually did the transposition I simply chose “third” and then was presented with 4 1/2 (4 half-steps) but clicking on that opened a choice of 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 and I selected 3 1/2 to get a minor third.
I made sure the “Transpose Key Signatures” box was checked.
The next two boxes were checked and I saw no reason to change them (keep relative respelled notes and keep relative respelled chord symbols)
When I clicked OK my short experiment transposed, both notes AND key signatures, just as you would like.
Try it on your piece and then save the whole project under a different name – same start but add the word transposed – so that once you’ve had a chance to look over the whole thing, if you don’t like it you can simply go back to working on the original file and delete the transposed file.
But you can always hit ctrl-Z to undo the transposition if you’re not happy. I just think that saving it under a new name because you might not find any little discrepancies that make you unhappy right away. I can’t imagine what those might be, since Dorico Pro 4 seems very capable in this department.
Whether or not Dorico can transpose all of the keys in one shot depends on what the specific key signatures are. If the specified interval would produce an invalid key signature (e.g. with more than seven flats or sharps), then Dorico won’t perform the transposition.
I’ve just read the references you gave which seems to imply that Dorico will transpose all pitches and key signatures particularly since I have 28 different instruments (more players) playing the piece. Let me read the other comments below to make sure I’ve understood all aspects.
Flow 1 are the two first words of the file name which appears at the top “line” above the menu systems - the name reads “Flow 1 in… etc”. It doesn’t appear in the list of names of Recent Projects on steinberg hub
There’s nothing in “Project Info section” which is to all intents and purposes empty since I didn’t input any information
Thanks DHBailey - that looks ideal and I’ll try that
Thank you all - I’ve tried that and failed to get it to activate i.e. I can select all, go into Transpose Dialog, work the Calculate Interval when transposing up but not down, but I can’t get the dialog box to take my input which is transpose A to G, Interval second, number of intervals -2/12, Down i.e. respond to my inputs which appear unacceptable to it.
The 3 boxes underneath being Transpose Key Signatures, Keep relative respelled notes and, Keep relative Respelled chords are checked
is anything locked?
Thank you
I’ve made some “progress” and in this post also doing what Dorico recommends which is to place my individual responses to various recent inputs in the one post.
In order to learn how to use Transpose I was trying to Transpose a “second” down on an arrangement of an orchestral piece for a Concert Wind Band where I’d arranged the strings on to wind instruments and for this project version kept both strings and wind instruments in the ensemble (to get a “feel” for it). I couldn’t get that to work. I’ve now eliminated the strings in a new project version and grouped players of similar wind instruments together and transposed a “third” down because “second” is not available. That at least creates a result and appears to transpose the whole work but clearly into the wrong key. What am I doing wrong? Why would I only be able to transpose a “third” down rather than a “second” down?
I’ve just read the references you gave which seems to imply that Dorico will transpose all pitches and key signatures particularly since I have 28 different instruments (more players) playing the piece. Let me read the other comments below to make sure I’ve understood all aspects.
Flow 1 are the two first words of the file name which appears at the top “line” above the menu systems - the name reads “Flow 1 in… etc”. It doesn’t appear in the list of names of Recent Projects on steinberg hub
Thanks Stephen and thanks for “experimenting” to provide a view - I suspected something like that. I want the method which works first time and doesn’t take me into a “get well” recovery mode. Perhaps those who wrote Dorico can provide a view of the best method to approach a complex work.
There’s nothing in “Project Info section” which is to all intents and purposes empty since I didn’t input any information
Thanks DHBailey - that looks ideal and I’ll try that
Thank you all - I’ve tried that and failed to get it to activate i.e. I can select all, go into Transpose Dialog, work the Calculate Interval when transposing up but not down, but I can’t get the dialog box to take my input which is transpose A to G, Interval second, number of intervals -2/12, Down i.e. respond to my inputs which appear unacceptable to it.
The 3 boxes underneath being Transpose Key Signatures, Keep relative respelled notes and, Keep relative Respelled chords are checked
is anything locked?
Thank you
@bill1, there’s no need to bump your thread by reposting all of your previous replies as a single post – what Discourse means when it advises you to do that is to quote the relevant parts of multiple posts to which you’re replying so that the context all appears in a single reply. Unfortunately, without quoting the previous replies, your most recent reply now makes the thread much more difficult to read. This is all fine – just something to bear in mind for future threads to make it easier for others to participate in the discussion.
Regarding the window title, then, Dorico says “Flow n in project filename” in the title bar of the project window so that you know not only what project you are working on but also which flow is currently active. Dorico updates the notion of the “current flow” based on the selection you have made, and certain operations that are flow-specific will operate on the current flow if you have no selection. So this is purely informational and not something you need to change.
I would guess that the reason you cannot transpose your entire flow in a single operation is that at least one of the key signatures in the flow cannot be transposed by the interval you have chosen. For example, if you have a section in G flat major, you cannot transpose that section down by a major second, because that would cause the key signature to be F flat major, which is beyond what Dorico can represent by default (and you would almost certainly not want your players to have to read in any case!).
So instead, work your way through the flow, using the system track to select the music between each key signature change, and transpose each section in turn, considering whether a major second is the correct interval.
Thankyou Dspreabury
I don’t think I’m doing anything unusual with the key signatures I have
My transposiotn map is
| Original key | Transpose to |
|---|---|
| A | G |
| F | Eb |
| D | C |
| E | D |
| D | C |
| Bb | Ab |
| A | G |
ie a 2nd lower
and I cant see any awkward illegal transpositions
So I still don’t understand why the transpose dialogue doesn’t give me a 2nd interval down option but rather the nearest is a 3rd down.
so based upon Dorico’s concept it should be a standard action
whilst someone could consider the above and advise me where I may be going wrong I’ll see where I get to by transposing section by section if I understand what you mean by “using the system track to select the music between each key signature”. I’m not aware of a “Control A” type key stroke to select specific sections and I was going to select using Shift / caret / cursor to make the appropriate selection, and then see if I can get a major second interval down transposition to work.
I did not use the System Track, since it transposed the entire piece even if the System Track only included part of the piece. I did notice that once I chose to transpose via the key on the right and clicked Apply, I still had to click Okay to complete the transposition.
But I had no trouble transposing down a major second.
But that said, I do not usually use the transpose by key section; I just type in the interval and direction I want on the left.
This one works perfectly
transpose.dorico (608.4 KB)
I have checked transposing individual sections, and the complete flow, with and without system track selection. Each one worked without problem.
The only time it failed was when (as Daniel pointed out) I tried to force a key signature beyond Dorico’s limit. It would be helpful if Dorico could flag a warning message when attempting this!