Accidental inconsistency on 2 staves
Hi all,
I'm working with an SMF file and am having problems with inconsistent accidentals. Upon loading, I have 2 staves, the 1st with a key signature of B (5 sharps) and the 2nd with a key signature of Em (3 flats). The B stave has accidentals listed as sharps and the Em stave listed as flats.
I want to change the key signature of both staves to C, but when I do so, the 1st stave continues to lists accidentals as sharps while the 2nd stave lists accidentals as flats. I'd like both staves to list accidentals as sharps. I've tried everything I can think of but cannot convert the 2nd stave accidentals from flats to sharps.
Can anyone tell me how to make this happen?
Thanks!
Dennis
Comments
Try menu-notes-pitch spell
In reply to Try menu-notes-pitch spell by Jojo-Schmitz
Unfortunately, pitch spell makes things worse. Now I have a mix of sharps & flats in both staves. In some cases I even have a mix of sharps and flats in the same chord. I ran Note Name just for fun and this chord is identified as "Eb F# A# C#".
I've done some more research in the forum, and it appears pitch spell may be inconsistent in it's results. Can you think of a work around?
Note: Just noticed I was running MuseScore 1.2...am installing 1.3 now and will see if it makes any difference...
In reply to no go... by WytchCrypt
...no difference in 1.2 vs 1.3...still mixed flat & sharp accidentals in the same stave and even in the same chord...
In reply to same result by WytchCrypt
SMF is MIDI? Can you share that and the score? Are we dealing we dealing with transposing instruments here?
Have you checked the key signature(s) of the SMF in a sequencer?
In general, it is not musically correct to simply have all accidentals be flats or all sharps. The correct spelling of accidentals depends on the key, the direction of the line, and the prevailing harmony. It is not even necessarily incorrect to have both flats and sharps in the same chord, depending on the chord (shouldn't happen for simple triads, of course).
Which is to say, there really is no way to automatically get the "correct" results - there is no substitute for a knowledgeable musician making the decisions himself. But to be sure, getting the input file with correct key signatures in the first place helps.
In reply to In general, it is not by Marc Sabatella
Rather than attaching the SMF, I created a short musical sequence that illustrates the problem.
Accidental Test 1, I have 2 staves: 1 in G with sharp accidentals, the other in F with flat accidentals.
Accidental Test 2, both staves have now been changed to the key of C and continue to show sharps in stave 1 and flats in stave 2.
Accidental Test 3, I've run Pitch Spell and are left with a mix of sharp and flat accidentals in each stave.
My simple goal is to have all accidentals identified by sharps in both staves.
In reply to some small sample mscv files here by WytchCrypt
Well, you can certainly do that extremely easily: select all, down, up.
But I still question why you want to this, as it is almost never musically correct. That is, you seem to have an assumption that consistency of accidentals is a good or natural (pun not intended) thing to want, when this is not really true. So I wonder if there isn't something more going on.
With that in mind, I also question why your original input file would have had unrelated key signatures in the first place. Were there perhaps transposing instruments involved that you are not aware of, and now you have actually broken that by putting them both in the same key incorrectly?
In other words, while getting to your stated goal of all sharps is easy enough, it shouldn't ever be the case that what you are describing is something one would want to do. So I am a bit concerned that your goal may be based on incorrect assumptions about how things are supposed to work.
In reply to Well, you can certainly do by Marc Sabatella
Thanks so much, "select all down up" works perfectly and is a simple solution to do exactly what I want.
As far as your other questions...simply put, I find it extremely difficult to sight read a piece where my left hand is playing a stave with sharp accidentals and my right a stave with flat accidentals. I'm not the greatest sight reader in the universe and whether it's "good", "natural" or "musically correct" is immaterial to me...I need to be able to read the piece and consistent accidentals in the key of C works best for me :-)
In reply to In general, it is not by Marc Sabatella
If you consider this a bit more: in the example one staff is in B major, the other in E flat major (if I remember my school days correctly, such a piece is described as "bitonal"). So, leaving the accidentals as sharps resp. flats in the two staves is probably the correct notation, assuming there are no wider ranging modulations in either of the staves.
As to sight reading: a piece like this is naturally hard to sight read since sight readers rely in part on their memory of harmonies and recognize patterns they have seen many times before. In a bitonal piece like this such patterns are obviously not prominent. I don't know how good a sight reader you are, but I would not judge someone deficient just because he/she fails to sight read something like this. I do think though that leaving the original notation intact makes it easier for the player to understand what is going on musically, which ought to make playing easier too.
In reply to Maybe Musescore is correct after all by azumbrunn
I don't know that we know this. I am still missing some context to help me understand. I fear the reason these staves are in different keys is that they are actually for transposing instruments and thus need to be *transposed* back into concert pitch, not just arbitrarily changed to C major at the current (transposed) pitch. In which case, you'd get completely the wrong results using the approach being discussed here.
In reply to I don't know that we know by Marc Sabatella
Hi all, I've attached the original SMF to help give some additional data for those discussing this. I want to point out this SMF transcription of a 1974 Genesis song is NOT my own work and is "Copyright 1998 E.J. Zwart". Further, the website http://web.agria.hu/kepenu/ is where this and hundreds more SMF transcriptions of mostly 1970's progressive rock songs live and can be downloaded for no charge.
Hope this helps!
Dennis
In reply to Here is the original SMF that began the discussion by WytchCrypt
OK, that does help me understand. It seems the song is really in B and hence should have 5 sharps on all staves. The fact that a saxophone sound is being used for some of the staves is probably what is causing some to display the key signature as if it were transposed, although it seems to be the wrong transposition, and in any case, the notes themselves seem correct - just the key signature is wrong. I don't know enough about MIDI to say if the file itself is wrong or if MuseScore is importing it incorrectly.
The "real" solution is change everything to B, and then there would be very few accidentals at all. Changing to C when the song is actually in B does mean that all the sharps that should have been in the key signature are now rendered as accidentals. And those should indeed all be sharps, because that's what they are and would have been had you left the key signature as B.
So in this particular case, because the key signature actually includes all 5 sharps, then it does indeed happen to be correct to render accidentals as sharps all the time if you change the key signature to C - because these are not truly accidentals at all, but sharps that should be in the key signature.