Possible to transpose a cue?

[Feufollet]

In December 2025 I got helpful info from the Forum on creating cues in an alto sax part and then hiding blank measures before and after the cues (see attachment). I’m doing some minor revisions after the premiere and I’d like to show the cues in the alto sax transposition – not the tenor sax (down M9th) or soprano sax (down M2nd) transpositions. I searched the Forum, tried transposing in Write and Engrave modes, and checked the Properties panel, but Dorico seems not to allow changes to cue notes.

Is the only way to put these cues in the alto sax transposition (down M6th) to create a separate staff and not use the Cue popover?

[asherber]

It’s a little hard to tell what’s going on without seeing the project file. If this is an alto sax part, and those are really cues entered with Shift+U, then they should automatically display in the alto sax transposition.

If that’s not what’s happening, then can you upload your project file so someone can take a look?

[Feufollet]

@asherber

If that’s not what’s happening, then can you upload your project file so someone can take a look?

sax quartet test file-partial.dorico (2.3 MB)

Just uploaded a reduced size project file (with later, unnecessary music removed).

Also tested adding a tenor sax cue to another test alto sax part, and it just copied the Bb tenor sax part into the Eb alto part without transposing to Eb. Maybe I have some settings wrong.

Thanks for taking a look.

[asherber]

Well, this is rather interesting, and complicated. All 4 of your saxes have been assigned to Dorico’s Alto Sax instrument – you can tell by expanding any of the player cards in Setup mode, clicking the three-dot menu, and choosing Edit Instrument Definition. This means that all 4 staves are using the Eb transposition.

You can verify this by looking at the first measure in concert pitch:

And then in transposed pitch:

The concert F# on the downbeat in the tenor sax should display as a G# for a transposed Bb instrument, but it’s displaying as a D#.

If the transposed parts look the way you intend, then I’m sure that playback in Dorico doesn’t sound right, and if playback does sound right, then the soprano and tenor parts are showing the wrong notes to the (human) player.

The cues you added are indeed Dorico’s Shift+U cues. In your screenshot above, you’re displaying the alto sax part in concert pitch. So it’s not that the cue notes are showing in the transposition of the tenor sax, it’s that all of the notes are showing in concert pitch.

If you switch to transposed pitch, it looks like the cues are displaying in the transposition of the tenor sax – but that’s only because your tenor sax staff is using Dorico’s alto sax instrument, with its Eb transposition.

Another possibility is that you entered all of your pitches in concert pitch view, but you entered the pitches the way that the players would see them in their parts. If that’s the case, then again, I bet the playback in Dorico doesn’t sound the way you want.

In any case, something is not quite right in how these notes are entered. If everything were entered correctly, so that playback sounds correct and the transposed parts look correct, then you’d see that Dorico does in fact display all cues in the key of the destination instrument, which is what you want.

This is all fixable, with a little work. What should the first pitch be for each instrument (downbeat for soprano/alto/tenor, beat 2 for bari)? You can give the pitches either as concert pitches or as written for each instrument.

[Feufollet]

Ah, I see what the problem is. This is the way I have always worked:

1. Compose piece in Digital Performer (midi sequencer).
2. Export as standard midi file with sounding pitches.
3. Import into Finale (to save time not having to enter notes).
4. Create score in C (usually).
5. Extract parts with appropriate transposition. (I never liked linked parts as I usually had to create extensive and somewhat complicated cues.)

I never used Finale (and haven’t used Dorico) to play back the file – I used Digital Performer for that. But I knew that there was a transposition problem when I printed Dorico parts and it always threw up a warning about the part being set to concert pitch when it was actually transposed pitch. I just clicked Proceed Anyway.

So, thanks to your incredibly helpful post, I now know that if I continue to work as outlined above, I need to pay close attention to the Setup menu. This was my first Dorico project and even though I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and took copious notes, I still didn’t do everything right. For example, I probably used Write>Transpose to transpose the parts and did very little in the Setup menu.

BTW, the notes you see in my project file (the top screenshot in your post) are the correct transposed notes.

One question: when I go to Setup>3 dots>Edit Instrument Definition and pick the correct instrument (e.g., Tenor Sax instead of Alto Sax), the OK button is greyed out. Why doesn’t it allow me to make that change?

Thanks so much for your help on this.

[asherber]

@Feufollet

One question: when I go to Setup>3 dots>Edit Instrument Definition and pick the correct instrument (e.g., Tenor Sax instead of Alto Sax), the OK button is greyed out. Why doesn’t it allow me to make that change?

Edit Instrument Definition only lets you change the way the currently assigned instrument is defined. If you want to change the tenor to an actual tenor sax, then you want to use Change Instrument.

[asherber]

@Feufollet

BTW, the notes you see in my project file (the top screenshot in your post) are the correct transposed notes.

So your basic workflow now should be to assign the correct instruments in Setup (using Change Instrument), and then transpose the soprano and tenor parts by the correct interval (using Write > Transpose or the Shift+I Notes and Intervals popup).

When you’re done, you should look at the transposed score or parts and make sure the notes are displaying as intended. You should see at that point that the cues are correctly displaying in the transposition of the destination instrument (e.g., cues in the alto part use an Eb transposition).

[Feufollet]

Bottom line is that I should have paid close attention to the Setup menu when I first started this project. Trying to correct the instruments and their transpositions after finishing the project is time-consuming – especially since it moves elements (rit., accel, metronome markings, etc.) around on the parts pages after they had been edited.

Following your instructions, I think I’ve got everything fixed now, including transpositions of the cues: