How can I get rid of double sharps/flats?
My director and I are arranging for our band and our members are not as advanced to be able to deal with double sharps and flats. Somehow the notes in the song we are working on were respelled to include double sharps and nothing I try will get them to respell back to the original note. First, how can I get rid of the double sharps, and second is there a way to turn that off so they are not used?
Example: I am supposed to have a C natural in first clarinet and a G natural in second. The score has a B sharp in first clarinet and an F double sharp in second. Other than doing individual notes, how do I make that read as C and G respectively?
Comments
first: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/accidental
Press J to toggle between enharmonics.
second: How did you get the double sharps in the first place? In general, MuseScore uses the correct enharmonic spellings.
In reply to first: by Fyrult
I don't know how the double sharps showed up, they were not there when I started and were there when I saved. Since I saved the file I can't back up to get rid of them, and J changed the double sharps to double flats and changed C natural to B sharp.
All I want is a score that a middle school band could play as we have a lot of people who have just started playing again after several years of not playing. MuseScore might be doing what it wants to do, but it's not what I want to do.
In reply to I don't know how the double by FarfalleAlfredo
J will toggle between *all* the possible spellings. Select only the note you want to change, and hitting J as many times times as necessary to get the spelling you want. Another approach - select a whole passage, hit up arrow followed by down to respell all accidentals using single flats only, or down followed by up to respell everything using single sharps only.
If you post the specific score you are having problems with, we can give you more specific advice.
Keep in mind: as mentioned, MuseScore will never enter double sharps or flats directly. If they exist in your score, it is because of something you did to create them. Either you accidentally pressed the double flat or double sharp key, or - more likely - you entered notes in one key but then used the Transpose function to transpose them and by default, MuseScore keeps the intervals the same, which can require the use of double sharps or flats in some case. So for instance, if you enter a passage in the key of A minor that uses G# (the leading tone in that key), and then you use the Transpose function to move this to the key of D# minor, that leading tone will by default be spelled Cx, which is the correct spelling for the leading tone in that key. If you wish to not use the correct spelling in these cases, then when using the Transpose function you should make sure the "Use Double Sharps and Flats" option is *not* selected.
In reply to first: by Fyrult
Thank you so much
Select all, go up to the Notes menu, and choose "Respell Pitches."
In reply to Select all, go up to the by Isaac Weiss
Respell Pitches did not work.
Often it's as easy as pressing F2 followed by [Shift]F2 or by selecting all the notes with [Ctrl]a and then pressing the up arrow followed by the down arrow but it depends on the Key Signature and other things. If you attach the score then others may have a better idea of a better solution for your situation.
If the score has B# in concept pitch, then Cx is indeed the correct spelling for the transposed parts. But as mentioned, if you prefer a different spelling for any given note, just select that not and press "J". It will cycle through all the different spellings. BTW, "Shift+J" will change just the spelling the current mode, so you can make it read D in transposed mode but still be B# in concert pitch mode. "J" by itself will change the spelling in both modes at once. So assuming you want the score to still read B#, use "Shift+J" on the note in the part.
I can't attach the score, it's on a different computer that I can't get to right now. The score is key of G Major concert.
What I THINK I did that caused it: There was a measure that has an "awkward" notation, showed a B sharp and my director wanted it to read C natural (the person playing has only been playing for about 5 years) and I highlighted the measure and clicked to "respell pitches", but instead of doing the measure, it respelled the full score...which I did not realize until after I saved so I couldn't go back and undo what was done.
We have a concert in about an hour, once I get back home I will try the suggestions again and see what happens.
Is there a toggle or something to turn enharmonics off for a particular score so I don't accidentally do this again? Or to turn off "Use double flats and sharps"?
In reply to I can't attach the score, by FarfalleAlfredo
You are right that Respell Pitches seems to ingore the selection - which I'd consider a bug. Feel free to submit that to the issue tracker via "Help / Report a Bug" from within MuseScore.
Normally, though, the respellings performed this way would not introduce double flats or double sharps very often if at all - indeed, it should do pretty good things in general. So there shouldn't be very many further corrections needed, especially if was a relatively simple score intended for beginners - I'm guessing it isn't highly chromatic, or all that long.
Again, without seeing the score, it's hard to do more than guess at what might be going on or what the best best fix might be, but again, select all then down/up will respell all accidentals using single sharps. You could then manually change those you prefer to be flats.
Here is the score I was working on that got the double sharps. The weird thing, on some measures it only respelled two out of four beats. Beats 1 and 2 were changed, beat 3 and 4 remained the same. Alto Sax measure 25 - 30 is an example.
In the mean time, I've been selecting and J to fix it (it did work, need to click it twice) but having to do it note by note, part by part. At least I don't need this until Tuesday :)
In reply to Here is the score I was by FarfalleAlfredo
In a score like this that is not too complex regarding accidentals, you might want to try underquark's suggestion, and indeed, respell pitches looks like it needs some fixing.
In reply to Here is the score I was by FarfalleAlfredo
Another possibility - switch to concert pitch mode, then do the respell again, then turn concert pitch back off. I think this probably does almsot exactly what you want. But maybe do it on a copy of the score so you can check it out without worrying about messing up corrections you have already performed.