woodwind instrument doubling
I write for my Big Band and its really really usual for the alto sax players (within one piece) to double on flute, clarinet and/or soprano sax. The baritone sax to double on clarinet or bass clarinet and the tenor saxes to double flute or clarinet.
Some while ago I asked a question as to whether or not MS v2 would support this. At the time (I think it was Marc S) said he thought not. As the nightlies must now be in quite an advanced state, I wonder if someone could give me an update on its likelyhood?
atm I'm creating an extra large score to accommodate the "extra" instruments tho' I'm unsure as to how I'll integrate them into the final score. At least this way I have an idea as to the sound of the arrangement.
Thanks
Comments
Depends on what kind of support you need. Sounds from your last sentence that you are thinking about playback. That much is there in the nightly builds that you can try for yourself (see Download link at right) via the new Instrument Change text. But the transpositions are not handled correctly, so if you enter notes at concert pitch, they;ll play correctly but won't look correct if the instruments have different transposition. Or, you can enter them at written pitch, in which case they'll look correct but not sound correct. Someday hopefully the ability to specify different transpositions for different passages will be implemented, but it seems not for 2.0.
I think the best way to deal with this for 2.0 will be to enter the pitches at correct written pitch, mute the notes (made much simpler in 2.0), then create an invisible playback staff (also made simple in 2.0) with the correct sounding pitches. Or even just put the playback notes in the same staff but in another voice and mark them invisible, but then you have to deal with making sure stems point correctly etc.
In reply to Depends on what kind of by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the reply Marc. I suppose the my main desire is to be able to print out each part, lets say, Alto1 whereby when he swops to Clarinet, the key signature changes for the relevant passage and then changes back to the original when he returns to the alto.
For playback, I have the extra staves at the top of the score for checking the voicing so that is less of an issue.
I had thought that the nightlies were essentially beta's and only to be approached by the brave and very computer savvy (to sort out any ensuing mess that betas can bring). Neither category do I fit in (unless there's a "foolish" category in which case its mine)!
I have also been hoping for this feature. In the mean time I've been using the following workaround:
Assume the Reed 1 part switches from Alto Saxophone to Bb Clarinet. In the score I have an Alto Sax staff and a Clarinet staff and write notation in the proper staff. Then when I create parts I check Alto Sax and Clarinet for the Reed 1 Part file.
Then edit the General Style for the Reed 1 Part (General Style>Score>Hide hidden staves). There is one caveat - rests. You can use the slash notation plugin for short sections, but staves that only contain multi-measure rests will be hidden.
I wonder if it would be possible to create a custom clef with whatever transposition you need. I'll start tinkering with my mscore-palette.xml...
Adam Arredondo, can you post an example please. I understand (and am excited by your workaound) up to the point of hiding parts. I'm trying to imagine what the part looks like. Cheers.
In reply to At Adam by onscuba
It looks exactly like any other score looks like with "Hide empty staves" enabled. If a staff contains no notes for a given system, that staff isn't displayed at all. Feel free to turn this on for one of your own scores to see the effect; you can then turn it back off with no harm done.
That means any systems containing only oboe notes but no alto notes will show only the oboe staff, and vice versa. But if the change from oboe to alto happens mid-system, you'll see both staves. So you may need to add manual line breaks or otherwise customize the formatting of the part to make sure the instrument changes happen only at system breaks. And in the score, you will still have both staves appear at all times, unless you also enable that option for the score, which you probably don't want as it will hide lots more.