Problem with transposing instruments in Musescore 3

• Jan 14, 2020 - 01:20

I'd rather write this in french, I'll do my best.

I work with a chart that I did not write, which is « I talk to the wind » by King Crimson.

The song is in E major (4 sharps).

If I look at the Bb clarinet parts, they can either appear in E major, which means that they then appear in the concert key, the actual sound that the listener will hear.

If I click to change to the transposed notation, the Bb clarinet parts then appear in D major (2 sharps), but they should appear in F# major, with 6 sharps.

Is the program responsible for that bug, or is it the person who wrote the parts ?

I'm new with Musescore, but I know for sure that the Bb clarinet players (or trumpet players, or soprano and tenor sax players) have to play one tone higher than the wanted concert pitch, not one tone lower !

Thanks for helping me if there's a way to solve this problem, or to avoid this bug.

Comments

• Jan 14, 2020 - 05:04

Whoever entered music - did it backwards. It is E major with concert pitch off, D with concert pitch on. Probably they misread the button on the toolbar, or they didn't understand how transposition works, or they simply figured it would be easier to play if written in E than in F#. To correct this, just use Tools / Transpose to transpose to the correct key.

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• Jan 14, 2020 - 15:06

Thanks Marc !

Transposing by key kept refusing to work for me, maybe I do something wrong. I took the clarinet parts written in D and try to transpose them in E concert, it would not transpose, it stayed in D.

But it worked when I tried to transpose by interval, everything is fine now.

I'm glad to see that it's not a bug but a mistake of the person who entered the notes.

Thanks again ! Merci beaucoup !

Reply

• Jan 14, 2020 - 18:21

Transpose by key always works in concert pitch. You select the concert pitch key that you want the notes to move to.

Perhaps the "by" key label is a bit misleading; "to" key might be closer to what it actually does. And "to key (concert pitch)" might save others from being misled, but concert pitch terminology is a minefield.

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