Guitar transposition

certainly unconventional, but not that uncommon… :slight_smile:

Hello Daniel,

Thank you very much for your reply. My original question was a sincere question. I don’t know what is going on in the forum but I am becoming afraid of asking any “how to do” question because of the harsh, non sense, answers I get from some members of this forum. It is beyond my comprehension that such a simple question can become such a problem for some people.

I was asking because I did not want to miss something I didn’t know. But for me is not a problem if Dorico is not designed to do that. I can just transpose the guitar one octave down and place the notes in a trombone instrument with the bass clef. Many times, for a class explanation, I do write the sounding pitches of the guitar in a grand staff. This helps my beginner arranging students a lot to learn how to write for guitar in an ensemble situation. Because of the convention on how the guitar is written, I find many classical guitar students not really knowing where the guitar pitches are in relation with the other instruments. Some times it is convenient to be able to have a “guitar for teaching jazz arrangement” kind of instrument that can behave like that. So actually it has to be able to change to a bass clef when display in concert pitch because notes can become very low and unreadable if notated in treble clef.

Thank you for your reply, it is very kind of you. Best luck with the whole development of Dorico.


Best regards,
Carlos

Might using a harp instead of a trombone make the switch even more realistic (although not perfectly so)?

You should not be hesitant to ask questions; most folks here are helpful, and even those who are straightforward in their thoughts are seldom if ever mean. Sometimes it is a case of misunderstanding.

(I still recall, when I was a treble soloist, a choirmaster tried to give me an initial pitch on a handbell. I was flummoxed trying to match the pitch exactly, not knowing it was sounding an octave higher than the note I was reading on the page.)

Thank you Derrek,

Your message is really helpful and meaningful. I will try your suggestion using the harp instead of the trombone.

Again, thank you for your kind words.

Best regards,
Carlos

I see this is an old post. However I want to comment on the “need” for displaying the correct Octave.
Fact is, that Guitar sound an octave lower, than written. As in a perfect world every arranger would know about all the transposition of all instruments, reality is different.
I think it’s quite a benefit to have a software doing it for you.
But when I write a score in concert pitch and rely on the Software to handle the transpositions, I would end up with the guitar player playing the wrong octave and that DOES matter.
In fact I already had the problem in a theater production, where the MD was unaware of the guitar transposition. Well he was writing by hand, but if he’d used Dorico, we still would have had the problem.

So I don’t really understand why people here say transposing a wholetone, minor third or whatever is different from transposing an octave!
I think this should be considered to be changed.

If the MD was a pro, he should have known, and is to blame.

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Buy/rent the music director a MIDI keyboard: when he or she types in a (concert) pitch, Dorico will take care of the transposition for him or her.

I’m afraid I stand by my initial assertion from over two years ago. The established rule in music publishing is that octave-transposing instruments are always printed an octave away from their sounding pitch, regardless of whether a score or part is at Concert Pitch or Transposed/Transposing/Sounding Pitch. It doesn’t matter whether the clef is printed with a little “8” or not; no (e.g.) piccolo, guitar or double bass player, or tenor singer, is ever going to question the octave.

Dorico does now have Clef and Transposition Overrides at the layout level, local transposing clef overrides and a global switch (in Notation Options > Clefs), which it didn’t back in May 2018.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Guitar capo part transposition