Several of my customers ask for cue notes written in the transposition of the respective source instrument. Although personally I prefer to write them in the transposition of the target instrument (as Dorico does) I have to find a way to achieve this. Is this possible in Dorico?
You might be able to add an instrument to your player that is the same transposition as the cue’d one, and then insert your cue into that instrument? You may need to do some editing of Instrument Changes etc in the Layout.
Does this work? Or even make sense?
Frankly, your customer is stupid… A cue is
- something you hope to hear occurring, in the context of what you’re playing yourself, so that you can fit your entry correctly, which may include getting the right pitch as you’d play/sing it on your own instrument/voice;
- an optional fragment of music you might be required to fill in in the absence of someone else.
In either case, the transposition should match the player’s, not the original instrument.
1 Like
I probably wouldn’t have these customers yet, telling them that they are stupid 
Actually this is a (strong) tradition in classical music engraving, and you find cue notes with the transposition of the source instruments at Schott, Breitkopf and others. And not to forget, it is only applied to transposing target instruments, assuming that players of transposing instruments can read any transposition (which often is true).
One, maybe the only advantage is to have less ledger lines and no need for octave lines.
I think there’s an option to view cues in concert or transposing pitch, but not in the transposition of another instrument
There’s no option to show cues in the transposition of the source instrument. You would need to employ a workaround of some kind, for example creating one or more extra players where you can place the material that needs to be cued and tranpsose the music in the source staff so that it appears in the desired staff position in the destination instrument. You can override the cue label to be whatever you need it to be, so you don’t need the same number of extra cue players as you need to create cues from.
Out of curiosity, how are the differing key signatures and accidentals handled in the case of non transposing cues in traditional engraving?
Only by the appropriate accidentals, not by additional key signatures.
Just to make clear: I don’t like this kind of cue notes, I was only asking because several publishers (e.g. Carus, Schott, Breitkopf) are using them.
Name one less than a hundred years old.
I asked for this not because I like it but because there is the demand of several major publishers I am working for. You can check out e.g. any of the current Carus orchestral editions; cue notes in transposing instruments use the transposition of the source instruments. Same is true for all Schott and Breitkopf works I did in the past, definitely less than hundred years old
But certainly you don’t have to believe me.
Does that mean that the cues show the exact same notes as the original instrument part? I don’t know why it would be useful to the reader but I easily see why it is convenient for the editor, as it would minimize the risk of mistakes in the spelling… Except all new accidentals (according to the transposition of the instrument the cue is written in) must be added locally 
Yes, exactly, together with a text stating the respective transposition. But again, only in transposing instruments. It has so many disadvantages that usually I try to convince the customers to use always the transposition of the target instrument. Since Dorico only does this it will help me to convince them, in case they want use Dorico in future projects.
1 Like