transposition / tablature

Dorico
1

Greetings All,

I hope everyone is safe and fairing well in the midst of current situation.

Question: I’m working on a piece for classical banjo and piano, and have noticed that the tablature feature for banjo isn’t making note of the proper transposition. Banjo, like guitar, sounds an octave lower than written - but the fingering options for any given note (all fret/string combinations) on any given note are only for the sounding note, not the note as written. I’ve looked through the forum but haven’t found any solutions to this problem.

I’ve forced a fix by shifting each string up an octave in the Edit Strings and Tuning option in Setup Mode. Let me know if there’s a better way of going about things.

All best,

Josh
www.joshuastamper.com

2

Yes, there’s a bug in the instrument definition. Tenor Banjo is wrong as well.

I hacked the instrument database. Try this file.
Banjo.zip (522 KB)

3

Thanks very much, Craig. Really appreciate your help. How does one hack the database?

Is there a way to import the hack into files I’ve already created, or do I need to just copy and paste everything into this new file that you provided?

Thanks again for your help!

Josh
www.joshuastamper.com

4

In the application install directory there is a file called instruments.xml which contains all the definitions. Editing this file will prevent any updates to that file. But D3 has seen its last update, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

It won’t help your existing files as once an instrument definition is embedded in the file, you can’t change it even if you delete the instrument and add it again. But it will help new files.

In the file, find the entry for Banjo. You will find 3 lines.

<concertOctaveTransposition>0</concertOctaveTransposition>
<transposedChromaticTransposition>0/transposedChromaticTransposition>
<transposedDiatonicTransposition>0</transposedDiatonicTransposition>

Edit it to this…

<concertOctaveTransposition>1</concertOctaveTransposition>
<transposedChromaticTransposition>12</transposedChromaticTransposition>
<transposedDiatonicTransposition>7</transposedDiatonicTransposition>
5

This is so helpful, Craig.

Thank you!!

Josh
www.joshuastamper.com

6

Thanks for letting me know about this. We’ll fix this.

7

Happy to help!