Hi there,
I’m looking to use a custom electric bass VST in place of Dorico’s default electric bass sound.
However, I noticed that when inputting notes, the instrument sounds an octave below what it’s supposed to sound (what is supposed to be the bass’ low E string is sounding in the middle of the bass clef, instead of on the bottom).
I’ve looked up ways to fix this and one way I found was to use the Clef and Transposition Override window.
However, when changing the transposition override then applying and closing the window, nothing changes. The pitches still sound lower than they were supposed to. Am I doing something wrong or is this some bug? Are there any other ways to change how an instrument sounds?
There was also another problem I noticed: Changing the clef override for another one of my instruments in that same window also did nothing. Clicking on the instrument and picking “Clefs>Treble Clef 8 Below” also did nothing.
I had to apply a treble clef to the instrument (which is funny because it already had a treble clef) to make it selectable, then I went to Clefs>Treble Clef 8 Below and THEN it worked.
Can you hear Jankman slowly approaching? I can…
Have a good sunday,
There aren’t any known bugs in the Clef and Transposition Overrides feature, so I suspect you might be making a mistake: perhaps you are changing the transposition in a transposed pitch layout, but your layout is in concert pitch?
In any case, this isn’t the appropriate feature to use to satisfy this requirement, since a transposition override will affect the octave in which the music is written on the staff, rather than the octave in which it sounds: if you want to do that, your better option is to specify an octave transposition in the expression map. Use the Endpoint Setup dialog to override the expression map used for the bass guitar staff. I can’t remember off-hand whether both Transpose up 1 octave and Transpose down 1 octave are defined by default (though they are meant to be), so if you can’t find the one you need, go to Play > Expression Maps and make a new one based on the existing one, with the transposition adjusted accordingly. Choose this in Endpoint Setup and you’re all set.
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What’s important to note is that Clef and Transposition overrides are Layout specific. So, if you changed the Part Layout while viewing the Full Score layout, you would indeed see no change.
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Ok I see what I did wrong. I intuitively chose the Clef and Transposition Override window from the Bass Layout, instead of the Full Score Layout (although I will need to have both adjusted for the VST I’m using).
For anyone with a similar issue stumbling upon this thread:
If the clef and transposition isn’t changing when putting an override on the layout, and OP’s solution isn’t applicable: it could be a music entry issue. Mine probably stemmed from an xml import doing some weird stuff (or i could have done something stupid, who knows).
Anyway, I solved it by manually selecting the clef in write mode and deleting it. Putting on the override then displayed the correct clef and transposition.
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Yes, XML imports often result in some unnecessary clef overrides.
Leo posted a good method of finding them yesterday.
(Ignore the confusion about colors in that thread!)
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That’s an even better solution. Good find!