I imported an XML file (from Finale) which contained Clef changes. Dorico added the clefs, but kept the notes at their position for the old clef.
Here’s a screenshot. The clef change is from Tenor G clef to Treble G clef. The notes stay at Tenor staff positions, (E F), but they should be “down the octave” in the new clef. Note that the notes also have upward stems, as if they were at the lower position.
At least the stem direction should be fixable by selecting the notes (maybe all) and do Reset Appearance (edit menu) …
No, neither Reset Appearance nor Reset Position do anything.
Yes, I get the same. Seems to be some idiosyncracy with the tenor instrument. I changed it to Baritone, the tenor g clef remained, but the treble g clef snapped the notes into place…
Dorico doesn’t do any octave transposition for clefs at present, i.e. they simply indicate whether or not the instrument sounds down the octave, rather than acting in the way that octave lines do. We haven’t ruled out adding options for octave clefs to transpose the music by the indicated number of octaves, but it’s not a clear-cut thing: for example, you wouldn’t expect a tenor part written without the 8 below the treble clef to immediately be written up the octave. And piccolo instruments typically don’t show the 8 above the treble clef, and nor do guitars or double basses…
Daniel, Look at the attached image. The notes are the same pitch, played on the keyboard.
Treble G clef: yep, that’s the right pitch.
Change to Bass F clef: yep, the same pitch appears at the correct position.
Change to Tenor G clef: Hmm. It sounds at the same pitch as the other two, but it’s clearly in the wrong place. If I want the correct position, I have to play the note an octave higher!
I can understand that some octave transpositions are implied and not stated, but when they are stated, Dorico should factor them into the layout. Currently, I either have wrong playback or wrong appearance.
Octave transposition seems to be an attribute of the instrument, as the Tenor Voice maintains tenor G positions after clef change to Treble G, and the Soprano Voice maintains Soprano positions after a clef change to Tenor G.
Octave transposition is indeed an attribute of the instrument, so there’s no mystery there.
For the next update, we will be reviewing the handling of transposition for input from a MIDI keyboard as part of the work to improve the perceived latency of inputting into transposing instruments. It’s possible that we will make a change to how inputting into instruments that transpose by one or more octaves when we do so.
Is there another way to “silently**” tell Dorico that the notes should be played at a different octave, so that we can have notes at the correct position and correct playback pitch?
** i.e. without any additional printed indication.
Nope, I’m afraid not. You’d need to be able to change the octave transposition property of the instrument, I think, and you can’t do that.
I’m not sure if this is what you want, but you can transpose the playback by octaves up or down in the HALion display. You might will have to edit the Expression Map to compensate - the “octave” and “coarse” pitch changes are most likely done by re-mapping the MIDI notes, not re-tuning the sound samples.
Rob,
Am I correct that you also use Garritan sounds? If so, how does the Dorico implementation of clefs work for you in situations where the HALion sounds are transposed an octave but their Garritan implementations are not? (One expample might be a hymn staff on which Tenors and Basses are combined.)
Rob, can that be done for a region of bars, or only for the player as a whole?
I have GPO5, but I haven’t tried getting it to work with Dorico yet. I’m waiting for more features in the playback engine (e.g. MIDI controller editing, etc) before I put a significant amount of time into optimizing playback.
But if Garritan plays in the wrong octave and there isn’t a way to fix that in Dorico, I would edit the Garritan .SFZ files to fix it. (Unlike the Halion library, the Garritan instrument definitions are just text files).
UPDATE: It looks like you can fix it in Dorico - there is a “transpose” field in the Expression Maps, and it’s set to 12 for the contrabass solo map. Since the Expression Map defines how to convert playing techniques into MIDI data, it must be interpreted by Dorico itself not by the sample player.
IMO the Halion library is OK for audio proofreading - but probably not for much beyond, that.
You can do it for each MIDI channel (i.e. instrument) independently.
I can’t see why you would want to do it just for a few bars of an instrument - unless you are trying to create a “hidden 8va line” or something like that.
I want to change the octave for the duration of the clef change.
I guess the alternative is to have separate staves, without the clef change.