Interesting, thanks for trying the repro, Paul, Michael
Just now I was not able to reproduce it in a new empty project.
This might mean that I haven’t found the steps needed yet…
One thing I noticed with your steps: I wasn’t familiar with the feature to activate Global Tracks as I don’t normally open the key editor on its own in a separate window. For years I’ve always just used the key editor in the bottom pane. I could not activate global tracks as explained in your repro steps because there were no global tracks like a time signature or tempo track, so I’m wondering if a step might be missing there, or if I might be misunderstanding somehow.
isn’t actually needed for the repro
@PaulWalmsley from seeing it happen countless times I think that specific sequence theory is correct as I am constantly selecting out a few individual parts to work on via Sync layout and then 1 time in 15/20 the instruments will change. I will try to observe my steps more and if I can record my screen for a while on the next project.
Also I wondered is if it’s anything to do with having multiple score windows open. As far as I can see Cubase tries to somewhat enforce there being only one - but you can open a second one if you click a midi part that is not on your main score tracks but then subsequently select your score tracks again and have 2 windows showing the same data. I’ve found this happens unintentionally quite often. So if one was Full Score and one was Sync Layout showing different tracks, could this lead to corruption.
This sounds very plausible. I will have to check, but I don’t think multiple score windows are supported, so if it is possible to open multiple windows then I don’t think that is intentional. It’s quite likely that if you do get into that situation then they share the same data structures. So if you open two score windows then change the selected track in one, then switch back to the other and make an edit, then the edit will be to the wrong track.
I am noticing that when I set an instrument to “Flute” and I click on Instrument Type again to reopen that dialog, “Alto Flute” has a check mark next to it. I’m not sure if that’s just a graphical issue or somehow related. It seems different than the violin/fiddle alias thing mentioned above because the alto flute doesn’t have the same transposition as a flute.
I still haven’t managed to reproduce the bug, however I can see from the project that Mads sent me what the symptom is, and maybe this will give clues how to reproduce.
When you change the instrument type in the score editor, it sets properties in the track with:
- instrument ID (this is an internal type that tells us the actual type of an instrument, eg wind.flute)
- name, full name, short name
What has happened in Mads’ score is that (eg) in the Bassoon track, the name properties are set correctly, but the instrument ID is wind.clarinet.bflat (another bassoon track is trumpet.bflat)
(output from an internal tool:)
If you open Score > Instrument Settings then this does appear to show the instrument is a bassoon,
but when you click on the Instrument Type field it shows that it’s actually a clarinet:
What should be happening (and this is working for me), is that when you change an instrument type it will change the ID and the names. But somehow the instrument ID has been changed but not the names.
What could be significant is that there are two ways of changing the instrument which have different code paths, but for me, both of them work as expected:
- Score > Instrument Settings
- Score > Change Instrument Type for Active Track
For those people who have encountered this problem: which of these methods do you use to change the instrument type? Or are you not changing the instrument type yourself, it’s just happening magically?
I think this is the same issue as violin/fiddle and is a bug where it’s displaying the wrong instrument type, so I think that is separate to the main problem (though it certainly confuses the issue)
I have tracks for different choir parts in my score - named Soprano, Alto1, Alto2, Tenor, Bass. These are set in my template that I can send you but I never change them.
They are set to Singers->Soprano, Singers->Alto, Singers->Tenor, etc. I never change them after that, but the problem still happens for me randomly when doing other things. I’ll be editing notes, working on parts and suddenly the score view changes and say a Bass part with a bass clef now has a treble clef.
When that happens I go to Score → Instrument Settings → Instrument and I see the behaviour you describe above. The main dialog looks ok, it would show the correct instrument type (e.g. Bass), but when I click into the Instrument Type it could show a random instrument nothing to do with Singers.
As mentioned before, the only 2 things that feel related to me in my workflow are the fact that I pick out random parts in Sync Layout to work on which constantly updates the track listing in the score window. Those parts could be selected out of order, e.g. I might click Bass then Soprano to work on those 2 together.
And the other thing I mentioned whereby I sometimes end up with 2 score windows.
I never use Score → Change Instrument For Active Track.
I work the same way as philmac.
Btw - I’m on Windows with a Nvidia Geforce 3070 with 3 monitors, if that matters.
@PaulWalmsley by the way the multiple score window bug is due to folder tracks. If you have an instrument with a midi part inside a folder track and you click on the folder part in the project area (e.g. Folder 01 RHS in the example below) and Open Score Window, a new score window opens. You can go forever clicking the folder and repeating that and multiple windows will open.
I managed to catch the other bug partly on video yesterday, but with multiple monitors it doesn’t show what I’m doing with tracks which I think is relevant. One further clue is that I was working for a long time on just the score tracks with no other midi in place and all was fine. When I started creating more tracks later to create music to sit underneath my score, the bug triggered quite quickly. Some of those midi parts would have appeared in the score window temporarily due to Sync Layout - and I have wondered if creating a track called Bass when I also have a Bass part in my score could be relevant. I feel I’m getting close! I’ll try again today.
Aha, nice work. Mads’ project also used folder tracks so that could be significant.
In the meantime I have fixed the Flute/Alto flute and Violin/Fiddle bug, though this was too late for the 15.0.30 update that was released today. I have also added a fixup step on loading that will detect when the instrument ID and instrument names are wrong, and it will set the correct instrument ID. If anyone has projects that are affected, then I will be happy to fix them up for you, or I can tell you which instruments have the wrong assignment.