The current “favourite” is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Behind-Bars-Definitive-Guide-Notation/dp/0571514561
There have been plenty of earlier books on notation, but not specifically about music software.
I tend not to bother much with playback except for proof reading, but I don’t remember ever discovering that about Finale. It certainly has never been the case for Sibelius.
Gould is pretty categorical about this:
Sam, I aim only for clarity. There’s no malice intended in anything I’ve posted in this thread, so I’m sorry if I’ve in some way offended you.
To my eye, Kenm’s first and second posts here give a pretty clear picture of what he’s looking for, and his third post clarifies further: playback is secondary, he’s using the bundled HALion sounds, and he’s confused by the notation he’s seeing on the screen with the layout set to concert pitch. My suspicion is that you’re inadvertently taking this thread down a rather irrelevant path, though I’d be very happy to be told otherwise.
No worries, pianoleo; you didn’t offend me and I certainly didn’t assume any malicious intent.
I never intended to take the thread on an irrelevant path, and I apologize that it came across that way. I’ve just been surprised far too often, when dealing with computers and multiple pieces of software that need to coordinate efforts with each other, to find that things which might seem irrelevant at first glance sometimes end up being precisely the culprit. And even when replying to a specific person, my tendency is to try to mention possibilities in the context of the entire thread, because I’m always hoping it might possibly help someone who finds the thread at a future date and is encountering similar symptoms. That way I might eventually contribute something of value, even if it doesn’t end up being of any use to the person who needs help right this moment. Trying to cover as many bases as possible, so to speak.
That’s just my personal default approach, and if it’s in conflict with the forum’s philosophy I certainly don’t want to impose my own upon it. I guess it’s time for me to re-read the forum guidelines again. I apologize that it came across as derailing the thread; my only hope was that it might help someone, someday, to find a shortcut to information that came to me only through frustrating trial-and-error.
Just a word of support from me here to both of you, Leo and Sam. We’re lucky to have people in this user community who are willing to put so much of their own time into helping others, whether they tread the straight path or a more discursive one. I am very appreciative of everybody who takes the time to try to help their fellow users, because often it means I don’t need to, and my advice would be to let a thousand flowers bloom.
And just for the avoidance of doubt, as Leo has said: we have no plans to introduce a mode where you could show the double bass, piccolo, guitar or other octave transposing instrument at sounding pitch in a concert pitch score. To me that would be a dangerous situation as it could lead to giving music to the player that he or she would not be able to play correctly. However, in a future version of Dorico (though not the next one) we anticipate that you will be able to edit instrument definitions for yourself, in which case you would be able to engineer this kind of transposition behaviour if you really need it. But I would really, really advise against it.
Rob and pianolio: Gould’s advice is very good for the publisher of concert pitch scores. It was the practice in the early Penguin scores that were produced under Gordon Jacob’s direction c.1950, including the omission of warnings that piccolo and double bass differ. My contention is that the optimum for the user interface of a computer program may differ in some respects; clearly Finale’s designers thought so. In this case, on reflection, I’m not sure it does: Dorico’s behaviour may well be better than Finale 2014’s (which I have just confirmed) but it should be based on the needs of its users, not music lovers who don’t want the bother of transposing in their heads. I don’t expect it to give me any more trouble now that I know what it is.
Rob, samreed and pianolio: I’m grateful for your help, and happy to read your posts, even when they are not precisely on the target of my current problem. The latter add to my understand of Dorico and might well turn out to help me solve a problem I shall meet later.
kenm, I can confirm that Finale 26’s default is to “keep octave transposition in concert pitch”. It’s clearly possible to turn this off, but by default it behaves the same way as Dorico.
Kenm, it’s been the standard practice for all “classical” music publishing for at least 250 years, which is why most published scores don’t say anything about it.
Why the Finale developers decided to have an option to do something different can only be answered by them. Some sample libraries do “unconventional” things with octave transpositions - maybe they were trying to compensate for that.
Finale introduced “Keep Octave Transposition…” in 25.2 (December 2016). And there was great rejoicing:
Finale v.25.2 maintenance update is released - Scoring Notes.
Like so many of Finale’s shortcomings, after decades of use they become ‘normal’. It was only when I started using Dorico that I realised what is possible, and what should have been. And for that, I am truly thankful to Daniel and the team.
The first rule of Finale new features: include an option to turn it off, so you don’t upset 30 years of documents that have gone without it.
Interesting! Adding it as the default but having the option is the sort of luxury that you can expect from a product that has been developed over decades, but it is also their thing. When Sibelius first came out, some people who knew both said that Finale’s defaults were pretty much rubbish but at least they were easy to change, whereas Sibelius had much better defaults but if they weren’t quite right for you they were very difficult to change. Of course they might have got that impression even if the methods were there if they were not adequately documented.
Finale is still being developed? Well, you learn something new every day. I thought they just changed the version number and tweaked the file format once a year to make it backwards incompatible.
The first and last versions of Finale I used were Finale 95 (back in 1995 - installed from two floppy disks) and 2014.5. The icons looked a bit prettier in 2014.5, but nothing much else had changed.
Somewhat OT, but of course Finale is still being developed, albeit slowly. Finale’s problem, as I see it, is that they have revealed no vision of where they are going, and the features they do release often mystify me. Finale originated when future plans were kept secret to avoid poaching by competitors. Dorico’s much more transparent roadmap is a welcome challenge to existing programs, as is their very responsive customer service. (Thank you, Daniel, Paul, Ulf, & company.)
Yes, all bass players, all competent orchestral conductors and a high proportion of instrumentalists know that. My comment referred to a published concert-pitch score, a fairly rare object that was not aimed at them, but at music-lovers who had perhaps learnt piano, sung in a choir or played in a brass band. A substantial proportion of them would not have been familiar with this convention. In the first Penguin score, Mozart Symphony 40, which is conventionally notated, Gordon Jacob explains carefully how to work out the pitches of the clarinets and horns, but says nothing about the double basses. By the fifth in the series, the publishers chose a concert-pitch score for two Mendelssohn overtures. Jacob explains how to work out what the transposing wind and brass parts would have looked like, but again does not mention the basses, who are playing from a combined vc/cb part.
I’ve read this thread and am confused if anybody can help.
I’m using the BBCSO Pro template kindly supplied by the Dorico team. I’m using transposed pitch to the Bb/F/etc instruments look correct and I expect octave transposers to not display as sounded. So I understand and expect the double bass will sound an octave lower than written, however that is not the case with this template and library. C2/65Hz on the bass line is sounding the same pitch as the cello. I can pitch it an octave lower, at which point Dorico gives me red notes to indicate “out of range”, however they now are sounding correct.
Am I still confused or is this template glitched in some way I don’t see? Thanks so much for your kind help!
I’m not a spitfire person, but if you think this is wrong, leave the notation as is, and use the Transpose feature in the Expression Map editor instead. You must do it for all techniques in the Bass map, but they can be selected all at once so that you only need to enter ‘-12’ in the transposition field once…
There are three ways to make something play a different octave:
If you’re getting notes an octave too high, then one of these is wrong.
Some players (such as HALion) have a transposition control within the player as well.
Ben, you missed the fourth option, which is that (at least in the past) some sample libraries had the octave transposition built in. When you played a MIDI note, it triggered a sample sounding an octave lower.
In fact the samples bundled with Dorico have some traces of that convention. There is a patch that plays “cello and bass in octaves” from MIDI notes at the cello pitch.
That was probably a good idea if you were using a DAW with a simple user interface and you didn’t know much about standard music notation, but having four different ways to do the same thing is a good way to create confusion.
dear all, my first contribution to this forum. Just changing from Finale to Dorico. Working as a composer and arranger but also as a teacher (arranging) and in that profession really missing the option of showing all these instruments above mentioned transposing in the octave or double octave. Of course these transpositions are clear to professionals in the field but definitely not to my arranging classes, especially not for vocalists and wind/brass players. The option to show how these transpositions work is very helpful. And it may be very true that Gordon Jacob suggested what is stated before and that it has been common practice for 250 years but at Jacob’s time nor 250 years ago computers were quite rare; and music notation software even more so! So if it would be possible to include this option in Dorico I would be really happy…
Welcome to the forum, @willemvanmerwijk. I believe you should be able to achieve the results you want using octave clefs and using the option on the Clefs page of Notation Options to respect the octave indicator on octave clefs. Please let me know if I’ve misunderstood you.
Thank you for the answer @dspreadbury! I do not follow unfortunately probably my fault… What I really meant is a simple option to have instruments transposing in the octave moving up or down when choosing the Transpose View. And not only see ‘regular’ transposing instruments change their position. Merry Xmas to all!