In order for notation to be technically correct this should not warrant a minor rating so have upped it to Normal
They are not just used after double sharp and double flats, but also in some chromatic melodies such as the score I'm currently working on with the progression E# F# Eb D - the Eb needs to be notated as natural flat other wise the flat sign would simply lower the E# to E.
This is from Saint Saen's 3rd Fantasie for Organ I entered the natural using Lasconic's workaround.
Incidentally the original score is technically wrong as it prints the Eb without the natural.
Some would argue for the avoidance of flats when the key signature has a sharp or sharps in it. Following that argument one could write the Saint-Saëns piece, above, as E#, F#, D#, D natural. Recognising, however, that a composer may want to write something a particular way for a reason and also that the rules aren't carved in stone, natural/flat and natural/sharp symbols would be useful. You'd also need to to add a natural/natural symbol to unambiguously cancel a double-sharp or double-flat.
I think Saint Saen's thinking was to keep the movement in seconds for aesthetic reasons, even though it is actually an augmented second, and thus a minor third.
The 19th/20th century French School music is littered with stuff like this, probably because they were pushing the boundaries of music into new, previously undiscovered areas, and weren't actually quite sure how to notate it.
It could also be something to do with a keyboardist's natural affinity for flats rather than sharps - I certainly prefer to play in Db rather than C#, and tend to enharmonically transpose E and A into their equivalent flat keys.
That's interesting to hear that a keyboard player prefers flats to sharps. When playing cornet I don't mind a few flats (up to 4 in Ab Major) but find, say, 5 or even 6 sharps easier to cope with than 5 flats as you just pretty much hold the second valve down for everything and pretend you're just playing in E. I wonder what an oboe-player, flautist (a proper flautist, not a Grade-1 flautist like me), violinist would think? Does it depend upon what music you often end up playing for your chosen instrument?
Hi everybody, Now I'm writing a new score and tonalitiy is D major and I want to use E # but mussescore autumatically create naturel F. How can solve this problem.
Thank you for all.
SMuFL does have naturalsharp and naturalflat. But I guess the real issue would be to handle these symbol correctly and not only adding them in the palette.
I was getting ready to put in this feature request when I realized it was already active. I have seen plenty of incidents of a natural-sharp or natural-flat outside of French Romantic music. I'm currently working on Mahler's 5th and ran into this several times
I was curious if this is going to end up in 3.0. As far as how to implement it, natural-sharp is played exactly as a sharp and natural-flat is played exactly like a flat. It is used as a courtesy accidental. The natural is not necessary any more than a natural is ever necessary for the first beat in the key of C, but nearly every publisher puts the natural there if the last occurrence of a note had an accidental.
The naturals don't affect the playback anyway and are a pain to add. These common annotations should be included in the premier notation program in the world.
This is about the combined natural+flat and natural+sharp, so these do affect the pitch of the note(s) following. But as said using them from the symbols palette won't reflect that. Only taking a regular flat/sharp and then manually adding a natural, would look and play OK
I'm the one who revived this after a 3 year hiatus. I revived it because I would rather not add the natural from the master palette for proper playback and display. One major problem with this is that if the first note of the measure has the natural-sharp or natural-flat, the natural ends up on the bar line. I know I can add to the leading space of the first note to work around this, but that makes it two workarounds necessary to add a common symbol. As I said, it should be easier. I realize it would break compatibility with 2.x because earlier versions would not know how to display or play it, so it's necessary to wait for the next major release.
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So are these being implemented in version 2.0?
In order for notation to be technically correct this should not warrant a minor rating so have upped it to Normal
They are not just used after double sharp and double flats, but also in some chromatic melodies such as the score I'm currently working on with the progression E# F# Eb D - the Eb needs to be notated as natural flat other wise the flat sign would simply lower the E# to E.
![pic]( "pic")
This is from Saint Saen's 3rd Fantasie for Organ I entered the natural using Lasconic's workaround.
Incidentally the original score is technically wrong as it prints the Eb without the natural.
Some would argue for the avoidance of flats when the key signature has a sharp or sharps in it. Following that argument one could write the Saint-Saëns piece, above, as E#, F#, D#, D natural. Recognising, however, that a composer may want to write something a particular way for a reason and also that the rules aren't carved in stone, natural/flat and natural/sharp symbols would be useful. You'd also need to to add a natural/natural symbol to unambiguously cancel a double-sharp or double-flat.
I think Saint Saen's thinking was to keep the movement in seconds for aesthetic reasons, even though it is actually an augmented second, and thus a minor third.
The 19th/20th century French School music is littered with stuff like this, probably because they were pushing the boundaries of music into new, previously undiscovered areas, and weren't actually quite sure how to notate it.
It could also be something to do with a keyboardist's natural affinity for flats rather than sharps - I certainly prefer to play in Db rather than C#, and tend to enharmonically transpose E and A into their equivalent flat keys.
That's interesting to hear that a keyboard player prefers flats to sharps. When playing cornet I don't mind a few flats (up to 4 in Ab Major) but find, say, 5 or even 6 sharps easier to cope with than 5 flats as you just pretty much hold the second valve down for everything and pretend you're just playing in E. I wonder what an oboe-player, flautist (a proper flautist, not a Grade-1 flautist like me), violinist would think? Does it depend upon what music you often end up playing for your chosen instrument?
As I understand it, string players prefer sharp keys - I certainly do when playing the guitar.
Not sure about woodwind - many accidentals require cross fingering so maybe they prefer everything in C?
But, interesting though this is, we digress :)
Hi everybody, Now I'm writing a new score and tonalitiy is D major and I want to use E # but mussescore autumatically create naturel F. How can solve this problem.
Thank you for all.
Enter E and add sharp from the upper edit bar
Thank you I got it :)
Are we going to implement natural flat and natural sharp then?
could be made additional palette entries, combining the existing glyphs, maybe?
Unless SMuFL has a single glyph for that already.
SMuFL does have naturalsharp and naturalflat. But I guess the real issue would be to handle these symbol correctly and not only adding them in the palette.
If it is going to slow down the stable release of 2.0 then I personally feel it would be better to wait to implement this until after the event.
I don't think it is worth delaying that for.
I was getting ready to put in this feature request when I realized it was already active. I have seen plenty of incidents of a natural-sharp or natural-flat outside of French Romantic music. I'm currently working on Mahler's 5th and ran into this several times
I was curious if this is going to end up in 3.0. As far as how to implement it, natural-sharp is played exactly as a sharp and natural-flat is played exactly like a flat. It is used as a courtesy accidental. The natural is not necessary any more than a natural is ever necessary for the first beat in the key of C, but nearly every publisher puts the natural there if the last occurrence of a note had an accidental.
In reply to I was getting ready to put… by mike320
It's interesting how it's been 6 years and this hasn't be implemented yet.
You can add them from the symbols palette, they won't affect playback though
In reply to You can add them from the… by Jojo-Schmitz
The naturals don't affect the playback anyway and are a pain to add. These common annotations should be included in the premier notation program in the world.
This is about the combined natural+flat and natural+sharp, so these do affect the pitch of the note(s) following. But as said using them from the symbols palette won't reflect that. Only taking a regular flat/sharp and then manually adding a natural, would look and play OK
And I've just checked: those are in master (and probably since quite a while), so will be in 3.0 once that gets released
In reply to This is about the combined… by Jojo-Schmitz
I'm the one who revived this after a 3 year hiatus. I revived it because I would rather not add the natural from the master palette for proper playback and display. One major problem with this is that if the first note of the measure has the natural-sharp or natural-flat, the natural ends up on the bar line. I know I can add to the leading space of the first note to work around this, but that makes it two workarounds necessary to add a common symbol. As I said, it should be easier. I realize it would break compatibility with 2.x because earlier versions would not know how to display or play it, so it's necessary to wait for the next major release.
Edit: cross post. I'm glad it will be in 3.0!
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.
See #279179: Natural-sharp/natural-flat not recognized as same accidental as sharp/flat.