Layout clef override doesn't override explicit clef at start of flow, nor can it be hidden

Dorico
,
1

I’m transcribing some bassoon music to have it played on a different instrument (tenorsax in this case, so a treble clef and Bb2 transposing layout).

The music for bassoon switches regularly between bass clef and tenor clef, which I can easily hide locally in the t.sax layout.

Making sure the t.sax part uses/starts with treble clef usually is equally as easy to do with the clef override window for the layout. However, the bassoon music starts in tenor clef, which I found less than intuitive to solve.

Attempted approaches:

  • Locally hiding the explicit clef in the t.sax layout. A clef-signpost appears, but the tenor clef remains. I expected this to work and “fall back” to the “override clef” setting of the layout.
  • Using the right-click context menu to assign different clefs to concert/transposing pitch, since the bassoon layout is technically also transposing.
  • Removing the explicit clef and adding a tenor clef override to the bassoon layout fixes both layouts, but now I have bass clefs in the (concert) pitch full score.

Seems right now there’s no way to achieve the perfect situation (score and bassoon layout have tenor clef, t.sax layout has treble clef), so I would consider this a bug or shortcoming. As mentioned, I would expect my first attempted approach to work (locally hiding the explicit clef at the start of the flow with a layout clef override).

Stravinsky - Octet.dorico (1.8 MB)

2

After posting I of course realised I can work around the full score display by setting clef overrides on the score layout, but I still think this solution is not as intuitive as it could be.

3

You could go less sophisticated and add a tenor sax player end copy the music without the clefs.

You lose the linking of the music, but if you have to transpose some of the notes in case some bassoon notes cannot be played on the sax (don’t know ..) that might be an advantage :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

True, but as you mention, I would lose the linked music which I would like to avoid.

Having arrived at transcribing the second and third movement, my solution with adding clef overrides to the full score is no longer sufficient, since these movement start with bass clef for the bassoon parts. This leads me back to my original expected behaviour: When I hide an explicit clef at the start of a flow, the clef used should be the one configured as the layout clef override.