I am new to Dorico (coming from Finale). I have set up a project, using one staff, that changes clef (it’s a reference sheet for other compositions). I copied the first bar into the second bar and transposed the music up. I then changed the clef of the second bar but the pitches stayed on the same lines and did not move as they should. I repeated this a couple of more times, having to correct the octave transpositions as I went along. That is problem one - why does the transposed music not shift when the clef is changed?
Then I played back what I had input and at two points, the music did not play in the correct octave. Also, midway through the playback, a second part joins in for several notes, but there are no other staves or parts. Does anyone have an idea for what is going on here?
Can you post a cut-down version of your project so we can take a look?
Mode 21oc.dorico (612.1 KB)
Clefs with octave transpositions are like regular clefs. So there is in fact no difference between a treble clef and a treble clef with “8”.
The reason for this mainly comes from the wide variety of traditions and how various VST instruments handle their input.
Michael, are you writing into a Transposed Score or into a Concert Score?
As @Estigy noted, octave transposition clefs don’t affect playback in Dorico. See this thread for some more discussion. Edit: This is wrong. See below for the correct answer.
As for the extra notes you’re hearing, your instrument is a piano, which of course uses two staves. You’ve hidden the treble staff, but it contains notes. You can see this by unhiding the staff – the easiest way is to delete the “-1 staff” signpost.
Then you can delete those notes and hide the staff again.
Thanks for the help. I have managed to unhide the staff, delete the notes and rehide it. Is it because it was defined as a piano part that the staff was hidden rather than deleted? If not, and I needed to delete a staff, how is that done?
This creates a new problem. If octave transposing clefs do not work, how do I get playback in the correct octave? Since I have written this for piano, not xylophone or other octave transposing instruments, is this broken as designed or is there another way? I do not want to use 8va for extended periods.
I think you did Edit > Notations > Staff > Remove Staff, which will hide a staff, not delete it.
If you want a one-staff piano, there are a couple of things you could do.
- In Setup mode, expand the Piano player card, then click on the three dots next to the Piano instrument and choose Edit Instrument Definition. Scroll down to the Staves and Clefs section, and set number of staves to 1. (This only affects the definition of piano in the current project.)
- Instead of adding a piano player, add the “Treble staff” player from the Sketch category. This staff is mapped to playback with a piano sound. You can also use Edit Names from the instrument’s 3-dot menu if you want the name to say something different.
Remember that in Dorico, the number of staves is an attribute of the instrument that is held by a player. If you add a piano, you can’t just delete one of its staves – you have to either hide it (as you did) or change the defined number of staves for a piano (my first suggestion above).
My previous answer was wrong. I hadn’t seen this option before (and didn’t scroll down far enough in the thread I linked to!), but Dorico actually does have a switch for octave transposing clefs. Under Notation Options > Clefs, change “Clefs with octave indicators” to “Respect octave indicator”. You’ll then have to move your notes on lines 1 and 4 into the correct octave, but I think this will then work the way you want it.
Here’s your project with the clef change applied.
Respect octave clefs.dorico (613.8 KB)
I’ve set “Respect octave indicator” but it has no effect. Will it only work with new projects?
A secondary question arises. I frequently use three staves for piano parts to avoid clef changes. If piano is defined as a 2-stave instrument, how do I make it 3-staves?
Just add a staff above/below (eg. right-click>staff>add staff above…)
I’ve got everything working as I would like for the moment. Thankyou all for your help.
No, it should work in existing projects; I just took your project and changed that setting (and then moved the notes on the first and last lines). Note that Notation Options are per flow, so if you have multiple flows in a project, you’ll want to set this for all of them.
@Janus has told you how to do this; here’s the help section for ossia staves.