Greetings friends,
I suspect this has been asked before but I have not been able to find the answer. I would like to input octave transposing instruments with the written pitch. In preferences>Input I have made the selection to do this for transposing instruments but I don’t see any way to do this for octave transposing instruments. Thank you, in advance, for any help you can offer.
Maurice
+1 to this. It’s great that Dorico automatically knows how to correctly display octave transposing instruments, but I too would love an option to be able to input them at written pitch.
May I add onto this topic? I’ve been trying to enter a piccolo part that is written in sounding pitch in the original score. No matter what I click – concert or transposed — or when I select “input pitch – sounding pitch” – I can’t get the piccolo part to display an octave lower, as a piccolo player would normally read it. I’m trying to check the parts before I enter too much more music, to be sure I have everything set up properly. Is this still an issue?
Could you redefine the piccolo instrument (Library>Instruments….) and change the octave transposition?
So you don’t think I’m doing something wrong – but that Dorico doesn’t have piccolo as a transposing instrument by default?
Here’s notes on a Flute that have been copied to the Piccolo staff.
Is that not what you get? This is the same whether in Concert Pitch or Transposed.
Maybe this has been resolved with today’s update of Dorico 5.1.70?
Blood and Milk Songs – 2024 Golzmane Edition.dorico (529.7 KB)
Here’s my Dorico file, if that helps. I’m currently working on the second flow.
If I copy from your Picc. stave to the Flute stave, the note comes out an octave higher. I’m afraid I can’t see what the problem is. Playback, perhaps?
In Galley View it is normal for every instrument to have a stave. Dorico will manage the instrument changes for you automatically in Page View (as long as you don’t write simultaneously for both Flute and Picc., in which case they’ll show as two separate staves in those moments).
The problems is that I’m entering the piccolo part (as far as I know) in concert pitch. So I’m expecting the part to register it an octave lower. But it’s not.
Does this problem persist with Dorico 5.1.70 for you? There has been an update today addressing this area.
Yup. Just updated. Still a problem.
I didn’t realize this exact point was supposed to be part of the update. Maybe there’s something else I need to do. Or start entering the part again and it will fix itself with the update?
From the dorico blog (Dorico 5.1.70 update released – Dorico)
Secondly, a new option When inputting written pitches onto octave transposing instruments has been added to the MIDI Input page of Note Input Options. This allows you to determine whether the octave transposition of the instrument should be considered when inputting via your MIDI keyboard when Write > Input Pitch is set to Written Pitch (the octave transposition is always applied when set to Sounding Pitch ). This is especially useful when inputting into instruments like piccolo and double bass, as you can now play the written octave on your MIDI keyboard.
I am assuming you meant MIDI input but you actually never specified.
I’m curious what you mean here. As a piccolo player, I expect the part to be an octave below what the piccolo will produce when I play the written note. So the concert pitch is an octave above what’s written. I have never seen a piccolo part written at concert pitch.
This is my exact point. I think the conductor created a concert full score to make it easier for the conductor. What’s happening though is that Dorico is not transposing the piccolo notes in the actual piccolo part.
How are you trying to do that? You might have explained somewhere above but could you outline your idea again? It seems you want Dorico to do this automatically but my suggestion would be to select the Piccolo part entirely and just pop it up an octave. It will result in red notes but those don’t print.
Normally, there’s no difference between the written pitch of a Piccolo (or Double Bass, etc) in Concert and Transposed pitch, because most conductors know that these instruments play an octave up/down.
You may be able to achieve this by adding a clef with an Octave shift.
You’ll then need to make sure that you’ve got different clefs for the Transposed part and the Concert Score.
The score and the part are the same.
The score and the part should be the same.
If you switch between concert pitch and transposed pitch (buttons at the bottom left corner) you’ll see that other transposing instruments, such as Clarinet in Bb, move, but Piccolo/Double Bass won’t. It’s convention that octave-transposing instruments are always printed at the pitch that the player expects to see.
