Windows 10/11. Dorico 6.0
Transpostion_Test_2.dorico (2.3 MB)
- The above snippet is based on transpositions I am often faced with as a clarinettist. I double on A & B and have to play a violin cue. This posses no problem, however, my question concerns input of the notes which are written as they are to be played, whether the option Concert Pitch vs Transposed Pitch should be adjusted for Violin (Concert Pitch) and Clarinett (Transposed Pitch). I want to be able to play the cues so I suspect that it is important to input the violin cue when in transposed pitch.
- An additional problem occurs with creating a Cello cue for the Horn in F. The cue is written with an F Cleft and I want to change this to a G Cleft which suits the player better, however, I cannot find a way of doing this.
John McWilliam
I don’t quite understand your first question. Assuming that you’re using Dorico’s native cue function (rather than entering cues by hand), Dorico will automatically take care of the transposition for you. If you’re viewing the layout in concert pitch, then all notes (regular and cues) will display in concert pitch; if you’re viewing it in transposed pitch, all notes will be correctly transposed for the instrument in which they appear.
As for the second, if you select the cello cue and open the bottom Properties panel, you’ll see an option to select the Transposed clef if you’re viewing transposed pitch, and the Concert clef if you’re viewing concert pitch.
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Regarding the first question and to be more specific, I include the fist two bars of the Clarinett-1A:
Inputting this into Dorico in an abreviated form (bars 6-8 and transposed pitch) gave:
The Clarinet notes are correct but the cue is transposed and not correct for playing by the clarinet. If I switch to Concert Pitch the cue becomes correct but the clarinet notes are wrongly transposed.
I would be most grateful if you could throw some light on the problem.
As @asherber said, if you’ve entered the cues using Dorico’s Cue feature, it will take care of the transposition for you. Gif below where I’m switching between concert and transposed:
In concert pitch the cue is not transposed and the Clarinet in A part shows concert pitches. In transposed pitch the cue is correctly transposed for Clarinet in A and the part shows the correct transposed pitches.
In the first screenshot (published music), the violin cue is already transposed – the first written A for the clarinet is really an F# for the violins. In order to enter these notes into the violin staff in Dorico, you need to enter them into the violin staff as the violins would play them. Switching between concert and transposed pitch won’t help you here, because the violins play at concert pitch (that is, concert and transposed pitch are the same for violins).
If you don’t want to mentally do the transposition yourself as you enter the violin pitches, one way to do this is to enter the pitches in the clarinet staff (in transposed view), then move the notes to the violin staff (where they will transpose correctly), and finally add the cue to the clarinet staff. Here’s what that looks like (note that I am showing transposed pitch):
Thanks - all is well again. This is a common phenomenon I think. There should perhaps be a properties option for the cue function to take into consideration notes written in transformed notation.
Well, if your main interest is in producing clarinet parts, then another way around this would be to redefine the violin instrument as a transposing instrument in the same key as the clarinet (A, in this case). Then, in transposed pitch you could enter the violin notes in the violin staff just as they appear in the clarinet part and create the cue. This saves the one step of moving the source notes from the clarinet staff to the violin staff.
