Transposition Nightmare

Dorico
1

Hi Dorico Team,

I am writing to share some critical feedback regarding the current transposition system. I work under tight professional deadlines, and unfortunately, the complexity of changing a key in Dorico has repeatedly forced me to abandon the software and return to Sibelius just to get a job out the door. Most recently, this happened while trying to transpose a piece with notation and global chord symbols from Db Major to D Major to Eb to E man and then F minor. The notes ended up all over the place and chord symbols just made no sense. I wasn’t even able to reset back to the original.

While I understand and appreciate that Dorico uses a highly sophisticated “pitch intelligence” engine designed to prevent illegal musical spellings, the current UI restrictions cause severe roadblocks in real-world scenarios:

  1. Locked Menus: When selecting an entire piece that includes various key changes or accidentals, the Transpose dialog frequently locks out options like “Minor” or “Augmented.” While the engine is trying to prevent invalid keys, locking the user out of basic interval selections makes the software feel unresponsive and frustrating.
  2. Chord Symbol Splitting: Transposing via the standard dialog routinely causes chord roots to break, resulting in highly unreadable accidentals (such as double-sharps or obscure enharmonic spellings) that require tedious manual editing.
  3. Discoverability: While workarounds like the Shift+I popover (t aug1) or changing the key signature first exist, they are not intuitive for users coming from other industry-standard notation software where a semitone shift is a fast, two-click operation.

When a deadline is looming, I need the software to act as a tool, not a gatekeeper. There needs to be a simple, foolproof “Force Chromatic Transposition” or “Ignore Safety Rules” checkbox in the main Transpose dialog that allows users to shift notes and chord symbols up or down a semitone instantly without the software blocking the menu or overcomplicating the spelling math.

I want to use Dorico for all of my projects, but I cannot afford to battle the software over basic key changes when time is limited. I hope the team will consider a more user-friendly, flexible approach to global transposition in future updates.

Best regards,

Phil Hinton

2

Let me get this straight:

Originally the piece was i Db major - right?

Then, you transposed it to D major - right?

And then to Eb major - right?

And then to E major - right?

And then, finally to F minor - right?

- F minor, not F major - right?

I would call the change from E major to F minor a transformation, rather than a transposition.

3

No, the issue is that Dorico has trouble transposing music that contains key changes.

4

No, sorry - to F major. Dorico does not like semitone shifts and hates going from a flat key to a sharp key or vice verser.

5

Dorico has no problem with any single type of transposition. The problem is when your selection includes more than one key signature, which can’t all be operated on in the same way.