Transposition error
GIT commit: 3c7a69d
The attached file is the result of the following:
- Smart Score scan of music written for C-clarinet followed by generation of an xml. file subsequently read into Musescore ( Test.mscz )
Problem:
- When I try to transpose this up one tone in order to be played using a Bb clarinet I select the music and ask for transposion from the original key of Bb to C (up one tone). This gives an eroneous result ( Test_transposed.mscz )
Please confirm that the mistake is not mine and if so then what have I done wrong!
John McWilliam
Comments
Critical is reserved for crashes and corruption, the assigned field for the developer fixing the issue.
See also https://musescore.org/en/node/137546
If you want to change from C to Bb clarinet, don't actually transpose the music; instead, let MuseScore do the transposition for you. Simply right click the staff, Staff Properties, Change Instrument, and select Bb clarinet. This will do the right thin in terms of preserving the sounding pitch but moving the written pitch up a step, and then pressing the Concert Pitch button will toggle the display to show the sounding pitch.
Still, while doing the transposition manually is not the right way to do things - it will cause playback to not be correct, for instance, and the Concert Pitch button won't work - it shouldn't have caused the octave errors you see here. The original score you posted is corrupt - it contains incorrect pitch information for many notes, which you can see just by pressing the Concert Pitch button. So it is important to understand how it got that way. Can you post the MusicXML file you started with, and explain anything you did after loading it, so we can see where the problem occurred?
Thankyou for your reply which cleared up some points for me. I agree that somewhere dow the line a file is corrupted and enclose the xml. file as requested.
Mozart_Mass_C_Minor-Kl1.xml
I see that this file contains a bunch of "instrument change" instructions,. which are known to not work well if there are transposition changes as well. But loading that file, I don't see a problem. If I hit the Concert Pitch button, everything is transposed as expected. I assume you did something to it after loading it - can you describe what? Probably some combination of deleting measures, copying and paste, etc?
I can reproduce a problem if I select the passage from measure 45 to 56, copy, then paste into a a brand new score. I'll see the same sort of octave errors here and there. Is that more or less what you did?
Anyhow, for now, instrument change instructions can't really be used in conjunction with transposition, at least not reliably. This is mostly fixed for 3.0 already. Although I note there are still issues importing this file in 3.0 builds - the transpositions are wrong immediately upon import.
Your interpretation is correct. I loaded the .xml file generated in Smart Score. This contained all the music in the Mass. I then copied out each section so it had its own file. Section 1. is the attached Test.mscz Since this was written in C for C clarinet I tried to transpose it to D resulting en erroneous transposition inclusing octave errors. To date my solution is to select all the music in the file and press "up arrow" twice followed by a change of key signature from C to D. The octave errors remain a problem as well as the introduction of unwanted Bb and Eb. These errors have to be corrected manually. You mention reference to instrument changes, however, this was not introduced by me. Initially I would like to know if these problems come from a corrupted .xml file generated by Smart Score or from MuseScores reading of that file.
There are a whole bunch of spurious "instrument" tags in the MusicXML file you posted, so I guess I'd say Smart Score probably did something it shouldn't have. Hard to say without knowing what Smart Score was looking at that caused it to do this. But anyhow, the simple solution - since you apparently don't want or need these - is just to delete them all (right click one, select / all similar elements, delete). If you do this before attempting copy/paste operations, things work well.