Transposition question

• Nov 4, 2017 - 05:27

I have a strange issue with transposition. My score includes transposing instruments (i.e. alto, tenor sax, trumpet, etc. When I am editing the complete score all of the staffs for the individual instruments are correctly displayed in the proper key signature whether I have the concert pitch button on or off.

I set the concert pitch button off and generated all of the individual parts prior to exporting and when I view the individual part, the key signature is wrong. For example, my arrangement is in the key of D which puts the alto saxes in the key of F# for a playable score and this is what is displayed in the main edit window, but when I look at the sax part the key signature is in D. When I press the concert pitch button while on the sax part it changes to the key of F.

Can someone help me figure out what I have done to get the part generation confused?

Thanks in advance!


Comments

Hmm, something may already be wrong if in your score you are seeing "the proper key signature whether I have the concert pitch button on or off". What you should see is all keys the same - the concert key - with concert pitch on. Only with concert pitch off should you be seeing each individual instrument with its own key. So somehow your score seems to have been set up improperly. Did you create this score yourself with a recent version of MuseScore, or was it perhaps imported from another source (eg, MIDI, or MusicXML, or a very old version of MuseScore)? If the score wasn't set up properly before generating parts, then indeed you won't get correct results when the parts are generated.

Anyhow, as others have mentioned, in order to help more we would need you to attach the score.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I figured out what was wrong. I was experimenting to see what happened if I used the key signature drop down to change a key signatue. i must have not changed it back to the right key signature. The funny thing was that when I changed one part (alto sax) all other individual part pages were affected. When I put the key signature back to what it should have been (B, not F# as someone noted) all other parts corrected themselves. Any way everything is now copacetic and acting normally again.
Thanks everyone for your assistance.

In reply to by Richard Bagdazian

If you mean the master palette, then the effects of applying a custom key signature is exactly what you described. They don't transpose. They also don't change the pitch of notes, they are more or less ornaments at the present time. There have been multiple requests to have custom key signatures work. We'll see what happens in the future.

In reply to by Richard Bagdazian

Yes, it is normal/correct that changing the key signature changes all staves simultaneously. MuseScore handles transposition automatically, so there is not normally a reason to change key signatures for staves individually. When you apply a key signature, it applies to the whole score, and is correctly transposed for each staff. If you wish to change how the transposition is handled for any particular staff, right click it and go to Staff Properties, There you can change the transposition settings, or better yet, simply use Change Instrument and let MuseScore handle it for you.

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