I am trying to create a common key signature type used in engraving early music where an accidental or two that are clearly implied to be in the key signature have been omitted in the original:
The custom key signature and tonality guide makes creating the key signature possible, but there’s a problem when we want to put an explicit Eb in the score. Now all Ebs are considered E(b)s – so showing the accidental shows it with a parentheses (and parenthesizing it puts a second parentheses around it)
Has anyone figured out a workaround for this situation? (I won’t say how I eventually got this working in Finale – too painful for words, but it did eventually do what I wanted.)
(related to but distinct from Brackets around editorial key signature? ; also would be great if in the custom key signature panel the space around individual accidentals could be modified – Bb to Eb here looks great but Eb to Ab is way too wide)
Is this what you’re looking for?
Instead of creating one custom accidental containing a flat in parentheses, I created two custom accidentals with pitch delta zero: a left parenthesis with a Y-Offset of 5.00 and a right parenthesis with an X-Offset of -0.50 and a Y-Offset of 2.50. Then I created a custom key signature with each flat and parenthesis as a separate accidental. Now explicit flats without parentheses can be added to notes.
However, this workaround has its drawbacks. The custom key signature I created has an accidental on every pitch, so this approach will not work for a key signature with more than three flats and two sets of parentheses. When entering notes, some of them have naturals attached rather than the parentheses in the custom key signature, and these naturals have to be manually removed.
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Thank you. That’s ingenious. Fortunately for me I’ve never needed to go beyond three sharps or flats for this (this example may be the first time I even needed three!)
