Toggling between concert pitch and transposed pitch for any layout is very simple.
But is there a way, ideally a simple toggle, to switch between concert pitch and actual pitch played (including the octave)?
Sometimes I would like to be able to see at a glance what specific note, in which octave, is being played.
For instance, I’d like to see exactly what note the piccolo is playing (including octave), or the celesta, or even the timpani.
Concert pitch shows the note as it sounds, but is still relying on my (very incomplete*) knowledge of notation conventions when it comes to octave transposition.
* And, indeed, who is to say that the conventions are entirely unambiguous, or identical in all cases!
No, there’s no way to quickly toggle octave transposing instruments to their sounding octave. One way you could achieve it would be to use octave transposing clefs for those instruments and then toggling the option on the Clefs page of Notation Options for whether the octave indicator on the clefs should be considered. However, before you prepare your final printed materials, you should remove those octave transposing clefs, as piccolo and double bass players would probably be confused to see them, and it might raise questions in rehearsal.
No, I’m not managing to follow the procedure.
Let’s take the piccolo as an example. A default piccolo has a regular treble clef, but sounds an octave higher.
I open a score in Dorico that has a conventional piccolo part. (I mean a complete score; the music has already been entered.)
Now, what steps should I take to see that piccolo music notated as it sounds (an octave higher than written)?
If I change the clef to a treble clef with an 8 above, the music in the piccolo part doesn’t change.
If I select “Respect octave indicator” in notation options, the piccolo music (in the full layout) jumps down an octave.
In both cases, I am not seeing what was (notated as) C5 in the piccolo part become a (notated) C6, which is the actual pitch that is played, and is what I was hoping to easily see.
The Piccolo is playing notes an octave above the Flute; and the Contrabass is playing an octave below the Cello. (Because that’s what they’re for and why they exist.) Here, the full score shows them at different staff pitches from their cousins; contrary to normal practice.
Really, I’d just try to accept that Piccolos are “flutes that play an octave higher”; and Basses are just “Cellos that play an octave lower”.
Thank you, this looks useful. I’ll try and go through it carefully.
Those are the easy ones! But which of the 2 conventions does Dorico adhere to when it comes to C-alto horns notated in the bass clef? And does the celesta sound 1, 2 or 3 octaves above written pitch? Is the soprano recorder an octave transposing instrument, or only the sopranino? Do timpani sound at pitch, or are they an octave lower? What about the trombone?
And what if you choose to include some rarely-used ethnic instrument in a score?
In fact, I realize that to get a quick answer to these questions (and, at least with regards the built-in playback, it’s not so much a matter of a general convention, as what Dorico has decided) it may be quickest to select a note and look at the piano roll.
I can’t make head or tail of your octaves project (but thank you again for the trouble of putting it together and posting it to help me).
(1) Now, when displaying the score in concert pitch, I’m seeing transposed pitch. So a (written) C5 (in the fourth space of the treble clef) is actually sounding a C6.
(2) In transposed view, both the written and sounding pitch is C6, which is what I’d expect in concert view.
In the Clef & Transposition Overrides dialog, I don’t understand what “Concert Pitch” and “Transposed Pitch” are referring to. They don’t seem to be referring to the convert pitch view and transposed pitch view; but maybe they are?
Also, in that dialog, if I set “Display middle C as” and choose “C4”, under the Concert Pitch column, if I dismiss the dialog and reopen it, my settings are not the same.
Very confusing!
I would like to repeat Ben’s comment, try to learn about the instruments you want to deal with. Talk to a horn player, read up about Glockenspiel and Marimba-phone etc. If you try to hand over this knowledge to a software, it will stay confusing. And you’ll never be sure, if there are different real world conventions. Our brain is very powerful. And as we are human, we are trained to deal with oddities.
I don’t think an average horn player will be able to tell me which notation convention Dorico is using for the horn part in the bass clef.
But peeking at the piano roll should do it, I guess.
All horn players I know are clever people. They also know their instrument(s) very well and can tell when the copyist or engraver were / are probably wrong.
When you’re choosing the instrument to add in Dorico, pick carefully - for instruments that have multiple possibilities, those possibilities are typically listed separately.
If you’re dealing with pre-built ensembles, or opening someone else’s file, or importing in MusicXML, pop open the Player in the left panel of Setup mode, click the three dots and then go Edit Instrument Definition.
For what it’s worth, if what you always want is a C score that shows all instruments at sounding pitch, including double basses and glockenspiels, feel free to change it here in the Written middle C (note 60) sounds as: section. Part Layouts in Dorico are, by default, always Transposed (even those of C instruments), so this won’t affect the Part Layouts. Just don’t put such a score in front of a conductor!
They’re also listed alphabetically instead of by pitch, which means that even after years of using the software you’ll still have to carefully read each entry every time to find the one you want.
/OT
Reading the discussions about displaying the sounding pitches of octave-transposing instruments, I sincerely wonder who would actually like to see a piccolo or double bass part with an insane amount of ledger lines? What information does it convey better than the accepted notation standard? The octave transposition on these instruments has a very clear and simple purpose, and is quite easily learnt by anyone who wants to deal with orchestral scores.
Well, I don’t know about piccolo or double bass (just examples).
But for the sake of good voice leading, if you’re composing for a horn quartet (2 horns on the treble clef and 2 on the bass) it can be significantly easier to see the actual sounding pitches than to keep mentally juggling the transpositions and end up writing parallel fifths because you thought they were parallel fourths.
Likewise, if, as a composer, you want to see at a glance that there are no glaring gaps in some large orchestral chord, it can be useful to temporarily switch to actual sounding pitch (real concert pitch, including octaves).
And that’s why my original question was about quickly switching to such a mode.
Does that make sense?
I sympathise, but no, to me it does not make sense. I guess you’ll also be asking for violas to be switched to treble clef, or cellos to eschew the tenor clef…
Well, really it’s a question of how familiar someone is with particular instruments. Personally, I have no problem with viola notation. Tenor clef is less familiar to me, treble and bass clefs are second nature.
I’m certainly not used to writing for 4 horns in F, with a pair in the treble clef and a pair in the bass clef needing to be transposed a fourth up, so it is much easier at a glance to see the actual sounding pitches than to do the mental somersaults (is that low g in the treble actually lower than the middle d in the bass? If it is, are they a fifth apart or a twelfth apart? etc. etc.)
IIRC the practice of transposing the horns in bass clef up a 4th is no longer a current convention (at least in most countries); so one is only likely to find it in existing manuscripts. If one is writing new music (where one might have to worry about writing parallel fifths) one would normally use horns that all transposed down a fifth no matter the clef.
Unless I’m missing something, there are only 2 F horns available in Dorico. The treble clef one, which transposes down, and the bass clef one, which transposes up.
So, with the bass clef one, if you write the d in the middle of the bass staff, in Transposed Pitch view, you’re actually getting G4 (the G above middle C)!
Except for people who are frequently playing, conducting, or composing for horns, I think that uses quite a lot of mental bandwith to process, definitely if you’re trying to write 4-part harmony.
Concert Pitch view is a bit better, because it displays as the G at the top of the bass cleff, but still very easy to confuse that, write a middle C in the treble clef horn part above it, and end up with parallel fifths!
Thankfully, @pianoleo’s suggestion above makes it easy enough to switch to actual pitch (including octave) for any instrument, so, unless the Dorico team want to add at some point a “Composer’s Pitch” view that is similar to Concert Pitch but also respects the octave, that will have to do!
Also: I write and arrange music for both acoustic and electronic instruments. Suppose I have some music that is currently rendered for a mixture of acoustic and electronic instruments, and I have an opportunity to take one of the lines that is electronically rendered at the moment and print it in a way that can be easily read by a human musician playing an acoustic instrument.
The one thing that I want, above all else, is for the part that I give this musician, printed on paper, will enable that musician to play the same pitches that my electronic rendering did, assuming of course that it is physically possible to do so.
I went back and dug up an example that is now ancient history–I wrote this 15 years ago! It is a computer-synthesized rendition of a traditional Irish tune.
Once I had it the way I wanted it, I generated parts for eight musicians: flute, violin, cello, 12-string guitar, harp, synth keyboard, bhodran, and triangle. As it happens, I knew in advance what instruments were available, and therefore what clefs, transpositions, etc. I had to use.
Now, suppose I have the opportunity to perform this music with a different collection of musicians playing different instruments. I want to be able to assign the various parts to those other instruments, with at least a starting point that has those instruments playing the same pitches as my original arrangement. I may then have to change parts of it so that the melodic lines will fit comfortably into those instruments’ ranges; but it is much easier to correct problems if one has an accurate indication of where those problems are!
