As far as I can tell, there is no easy way to transpose the attached file down a half step so the song starts in Eb minor and all keys are transposed proportionally.?.? If that statement is true, why hasn’t this functionality been added already?
I’m very aware that a feature request or cry for help is hard to word so that it doesn’t come across as a complaint or rant and I love so many things about Dorico! But changing keys in Dorico feels like bad UX. I understand all the reasons why transposing keys and notes are separate (awesome! keep this) and the existing transpose window and its functionality is very full featured. But if I just want to move a flow that contains multiple keys down a half step, it seems to require going key by key throughout the song and either 1) changing the key and also transposing notes in these two separate steps for each key of the song or 2) using the calculator function in the transpose window to find the appropriate interval AND doing this separately for each key in the song.
Am I missing something? Thanks in advance for your patience and help!
I have just opened your file, and I cannot do what I want to do!
What I want to do is select all, go to the transpose window, and with “transpose key signatures” checked, transpose down an augmented unison, but it refuses to give me this option.
The reason this happens in this particular piece (which you might already be aware) is that you have to transpose the key down by an augmented unison to get the Eb minor. This works for the first section - E minor becomes Eb minor, which is a valid key signature. The next key signature is F minor - down an augmented unison would be F-flat minor. There is no key signature for F-flat minor so it is unable to transpose that section by that interval.
Of course folks familiar enough with keys and transpositions should be able to predict which changes will cause complications and can group some sections together to minimize the drawbacks.
Swell-worn topic, as @arco reminds us, but in case this addition is helpful:
An augmented unison (+1) is up/down a semitone with the letter name of the note(s) unchanged, while a minor second (m2) is also up/down a semitone but moving to the neighboring letter name. Since Dorico doesn’t move by a generic semitone and try to make a decision as to which of the two intervals is available and/or most “likely/appropriate” as a tonal center/key, the user must work in sections.
Good to know I’m not the only one with the problem.
Dorico people - I know there’s a long list somewhere of priorities for new features and there’s never enough resources to get them all done. While I know there are some users that don’t need to transpose keys often, transposition of keys is something many, many people use and it seems obvious that the current method isn’t user friendly - not for beginners and definitely not for someone like me who can have long pieces with many key changes (this one is a short example). This current method sucks up time for what is a basic functionality. And Dorico has so many other features that streamline our process so we can focus on being creative, not computer jockeys.
Could this please be prioritized for future upgrades?
Just to help you (as a fellow user) clarify “your ask,” if I understand you correctly, you would like Dorico to have a feature where it transposes by number of semitones and makes choices for enharmonic relationships. Can you say more about how you would want it to handle cases such as G major becoming Gb major vs. F# major? The more specificity you can provide, the more it might help the dev team consider the request.
Yes, this is why it isn’t necessarily a “basic functionality”. Dorico would somehow have to decide programmatically which of those two options is better in context given the key that comes before and comes after. Or sometimes you might get into a situation where when you choose a particular interval like an augmented unison, there might be one passage that that transposition would technically work with, but where it would be an obviously worse choice than doing a minor second transposition due to other factors like what came before or what happens after. This type of logic takes some time to sort out. Although Finale supposedly did this (I never used this function), it probably took them some time to work out how to do this as well.
Dorico also has support for further things like microtonal accidentals (so that instead of just sharp and flat and the double sharp and double flat you could have hundreds of microtonal accidentals, which the transpose feature already handles currently) and custom key signatures that might further complicate the process.
I’m not sure I’m the best UX designer but for basic and user-friendly key changes, it’s hard to beat Finale’s key signature tool. It was clunky for inputting key signatures initially but if you needed to change all or a large portion of a song that contained different keys, it allowed the user to choose the desired destination key with all appropriate checkboxes for possible variations one might desire. There’s really only one enharmonic key that gets used regularly (F#/Gb) and if when transposing an entire song, Dorico happens to make the undesired choice, it would be easier to fix that one key rather than skip this functionality entirely because of this one possibility.
I would love to see Dorico’s current transposition features kept intact because it’s great for advanced users but have a “Transpose Key” function added that largely mirrors Finale’s. Maybe there’s a better way, but surely there’s a simpler way than the current way!
And yes, Dorico offers much more support for microtonal and custom key signatures. So…keep the current functionality and just add a simpler path for the basic needs of transposing keys. Currently it seems like we’re sacrificing simplicity to allow for the super complex and while those two items always are in tension with each other, Dorico has achieved both simplicity and complexity in other areas - this would be a very nice addition!
Right, but it’s a much better experience for the more complex users if they can’t mess up their score by choosing an option that will break it. Probably with such a feature as this, they would want to design it carefully to take as many situations in mind as possible so that it works for as many users as possible without needing to prohibit the operation for certain users based on what features they have used. This careful design takes extra time, which they have to take away from working on other things people also want. It is a balance of priorities. The Dorico team has shown that they always want to do things the right way even if it takes longer, and not do things a quick-and-dirty temporary way to get it out of the way quickly, because that’s what gets you into technical debt situations like Finale.
Not everybody using Dorico uses key signatures either - I do not, but I completely understand for those that do, why this feature is wanted and I do think it would be valuable for those users. The developers do make note whenever people make these requests and it helps to prioritize the development.
I totally agree. After the Finale announcement last year, people were really vocal about Dorico adopting Speedy entry. I never quite understood the sentiment there because Dorico’s options weren’t that far removed from that to begin with. What I expected would be high on ex-Finale users collective wish list would be a transpose function similar to the Key Signature tool. For those unfamiliar with it, you can get a pretty good idea of how it works here.
As to how Finale handles enharmonic dilemma’s, it takes the first key signature in your selected region as a base (or, if you open the tool with no selection, it uses the key sig at the point you clicked in the score). The new key sig you specify in the tool (which in Dorico would be the interval by which you want to transpose) will be applied to that “base” key sig. For the subsequent key signatures (if you want them changed proportionately), it takes its context from the key sig you specify and it operates from there. E.g. if you change D major to C# major, a subsequent G major will become F#. But if you change D to Db, the G will become Gb. Nonstandard key sigs are not taken into account, there’s a separate dialog for that.
The same logic could apply in Dorico based on the interval you choose (augmented unison vs. minor second, with intervals being greyed out if they lead to a nonstandard key sig for your initial key signature, and Dorico making that decision for subsequent ones). I have absolutely no idea how complicated this would be to implement in Dorico, but this part alone:
Would be nice if there was a “semitone” option in the transpose settings and Dorico could do the heavy lifting behind the scenes deciding if it’s a unison or a 2nd. Seems like the sort of thing that is very “Dorico”-esque!
