I am new to having to deal with transposing instruments. I have a piece for bass clarinet and piano. The clarinet part covers a wide range and the MS from my colleague is in concert pitch and uses both treble and bass clef. At certain points there are far too many leger lines and there should be a clef change.
Is there any way to tell Dorico to make a clef change at some nominated split point when transposing?
For a Concert Pitch Score, the transposition is not in effect. So, you can use Bass to Treble Clef transitions without regard to Transposition. Clefs can be different between Concert and Transposed Layouts so you can keep the Part in Treble Clef.
As a general rule, Clarinetists do not read Bass Clef. Everything should be in Treble Clef for the Part. If you want to reduce ledger lines in the Part, an Octave Line should be used. Dorico can now hide Octave Lines for a Layout via the Properties Panel. So, it’s possible to use Clef changes in the Score and Octave Lines in the Part.
So, in the MS the composer alternates between bass and treble clef in the concert pitch score which I am expected to transpose. My question still stands - can Dorico put it all into treble clef or do some smart clef splitting? I’m not making parts as the composer wants piano and bass clarinet to read from the full score for purposes of tight coordination in this New Complexity School work.
Once everything is input in Concert Pitch, switch the Layout to Transposed. All the music will automatically be transposed.
Dorico can’t automatically assign different Clefs. That will have to be done manually. I would double check with the Composer as to the use of Bass Clef for the Clarinet. Maybe these New School Clarinetists do read it. Different genres have different rules.
I can recall of no way to automatically eliminate double flats/sharps. The Transpose dialog is still the way to go.
IMO You should put the transposed clarinet all in Treble clef and definitely avoid using 8ve lines. I think this is what a clarinet (or bass clarinet) player would tell you.
I would agree with that. The only reason I mentioned it is the Composer seems to want a reduction of ledger lines and Bass Clef is not the way to go for a Clarinetist.
About the clefs, since they were added in the full score, they will automatically appear in the part, BUT! …
If you go to the part and select the clef, you can change the “Clef for transposed layout” property in the lower panel. In theory it is a manual operation, but you could select all, filter clefs, and change it to have all treble. I’ve not tested it now, but I seem to recall that it should simply remove the bass clef from the part.
About automatic respelling, I don’t know the answer for now. Have you tried in the instrument definition? Otherwise in the Accidentals section of Notation Options? That’s where I would look.
Presumably the final full score will have the clarinet transposed in the score. Since the composer wants the Clarinettist to play from the score to keep track of the music, it would be unusual to also insist on a concert pitch score. So the clefs as well as the transposition should be set (as treble clef) in the final version of the full score.
An increasing number of living composers and publishers insist on a “Score in C”.
This creates confusion because Piccolo & Double-bass still transpose (i.e., show something, sound something else), but Bass Clarinet… kind of doesn’t because it uses two clefs for the non-transposed part. So, it should be a major 9th below what sounds, but sometimes it only does that for the bass clef part. In short, a mess…
Dorico appears here to do the M9 right but the clef is confusing.
