In my experience, cues in bass parts are generally written as though the bass were not an octave transposing instrument. That is, if the cello plays a first-space A, it is cued in the bass part on the first space – not on the top line, which is where the bass would play it to produce the same pitch.
Dorico is very literal. It will notate the cue on the first space, but by default it will label it “Vc. 8va”. That is, “The cello is playing the pitch which for you would be notated on the top line.”
I know that I can select all of the cues in the bass part and turn off “Show octave transposition”, but this isn’t really what I want in all cases. Let’s say the flute is playing a G6. (Ignore for now whether one should cue the flute in a bass part.) I would like to show this in the bass part as G5 (in the treble clef), labeled “Fl. 8va” – that is, the same way I would cue it for the cello or bassoon. If I’m showing the octave transposition, Dorico labels it in the bass part “Fl. 15ma”; without the transposition, it’s just “Fl.” Now I have to find all cues like this and manually change the text.
Does anyone know of a neater way of handling this? And if not, I’d like to make a feature-request for a layout option to ignore the octave-transposing nature of an instrument when displaying cues.
