How can I insert a clef change in measure 1, bar 1?
I want a change (e.g. after the key and time signature), not to change the initial clef at the far left of the system.
Basically the case is where an instrument starts in a non-tradional clef (Think the Rite’s opening tenor clef Bassoon, or a piano work with both staves in bass clef) where you want to make the non-standard clef extra super obvious.
Custom text object, and remove collision avoidance?
You could also add a 16th note to that first measure (Shift-B, 1/16), start with a 16th rest, change the clef, and hide the rest. Might need to do some manual adjustment of spacing.
Hi fellow doricians! Has this matter been solved in recent versions of Dorico? I made a transcription of song with this kind of problem. I’ve searched everywhere and didn’t find a solution. If someone knows, please explain to me.
(this is the way that I would like to write)
And this is the way that Dorico let me do it:
I really prefer to have the G clef before the F clef .
Not possible natively. It’s also not a recommended practice anymore which is likely why the developers haven’t spent time trying to implement it.
I read that in Gould, and I don’t quite agree that it’s obsolete. It is helpful, because the eye tends to ignore initial clefs. Her Viola illustration omits any key and time signatures, so it looks silly and useless. João’s example is realistic – note the distance between the clefs.
Thanks Mark. I’ve read that in Gould, but I think it is not obsolete too.
That initial G clef tells me that this instrument principal clef is G and not a F clef - that is a psychological / mental thing that helps in my opinion.
Try this:
Input the notes into the RH staff - at the correct sounding pitch, but in treble clef (ie the first F will be 3 ledger lines below the staff). Select that low F and press shift-C (for clef) and press F (for bass clef), then Enter. This will place a bass clef between the rest and the low F. Go into Engrave mode, Note Spacing sub-section. Click the blue square above the rest and press Tab - this will select the blue circle beneath the square. Use opt/alt-right arrow to move the rest to the right (to approximately where the bass clef is). Do the same for the note in the LH staff. While still in Engrave mode, go to the Graphic Editing sub-section. Click on the bass clef. Open the Properties panel. Under Common (should be the leftmost category), click on Offset and change the X value.
Thank you Steven! I will try that.
(but is a time consuming procedure - I think a option to put a new clef after the meter would be more practical).
Agreed, but this only took me just over a minute and it achieves the look you want, even if it is not a “native” solution.
You are right Steven! Thanks again.
Glad I could help, João.
A Whole New World??
Yes, Muzza.
Thanks @StevenJones01 for the idea. Playback will work fine in your case because the first element is a rest. Unless I’m mistaken getting playback (and MusicXML output, etc.) to work with this type of engraving is much harder if the first element is a note/chord instead of a rest. The first chord below (from Amanda Maier’s 3rd (of 6) pieces for violin) I had to enter as E-G-C in bass clef.
It is important to my projects to only add analytical symbols and intervene as little as possible in the rest of the score, so 19th c. peculiarities in the original are important to preserve, precisely to not call attention to them.
As wonderful as Gould is 98–99.9% of time, I still sometimes disagree mainly because the music I write/composers I word with aren’t those the English are interested in publishing with Faber. I often assign percussion instruments to non-percussion players. When a clarinet begins a movement in 4-line percussion clef I much prefer to begin with a treble clef, key-if-any, 4/4 all on 5-line-staff and then before the first note make the clef and staff change to emphasize it.
I’ve been teaching Kate Soper’s “Cipher” for over a decade now and ZERO out of 200+ students have ever noticed the clef/staff of the violin in the first read, but I think that if the clef + staff change were done just before beat 1 it might be different. Maybe we’re still decades away from violin students sight reading things like this, but we’re already at the point where conducting/analysis students are expected to sight read and give impressions on music like this.
In Finale my preferred way of doing all this was to make a 128th (or 256th if need-be) rest that I hid. Then put all the changes (clef, staff, anything else that needed to come after the signatures). Then whatever the first note was, make it a tuplet. So if it was supposed to be a quarter note and I hid a 128th-rest, make it an 32:31 tuplet with no bracket or ratio shown. Hoping that eventually these tricks are worthless. Will try this in Dorico soon also.
Didn’t try this myself yet, but you could start with a special pick-up bar. In the Amanda Maier case: Shift-M3/8,3.25Enter. This will create a pick-up bar that is 1/32 longer than a regular bar. Place the cue-sized clef after the first 1/32, and hide (remove) the 1/32 rest before it.
If you do this in the existing music, it may be useful to use insert mode, in order to not mess up everything too much.
Update: I was finally able to test this myself, and it actually works. You’ll need to fiddle a bit with forced duration and manual beaming in the first bar, because the extra 32nd is added at the end of the bar, which messes up the note grouping. And removing the first 32nd rest didn’t automatically compact the music towards the start of the system, so you’ll need to shift the start of the music to the left in Engrave Mode.
