Balancing Masterscore and Part Clefs Properly

• Jun 24, 2018 - 21:20

I’m having odd problems viewing certain instrumental parts in the masterscore with the correct clef. I’ve scoured the manual here:

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/clefs

and here:

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/staff-properties

Having specified baritone saxophone as an instrument in ‘Staff Properties’, its separate part looks OK, but the masterscore shows a treble clef for the instrument with lots of low down ledger lines.

I can’t change the clef of the baritone saxophone in the masterscore to bass clef, because this upsets the separate (player’s) part - affecting the clefs it shows. (Baritone saxophones sound a chunky octave and a major sixth lower than written.)

Today, masterscores using so-called ‘concert pitch’ often state:

‘All instruments sound as written, except for the usual octave transpositions.’

…Thus the masterscore can show all instruments in the same key, with clefs appropriate to the register of the notes used. ‘Usual octave transpositions’ would apply to instruments such as timpani (sound an octave lower than written) and glockenspiel (sounds an octave higher than written), piccolo etc.

My question is: how can I use one clef in the master score, without affecting the clefs shown in the parts? As MuseScore offers the possibility of setting staves to musical instruments with pre-set properties, one would have thought that the masterscore would present things more logically. …?


Comments

It would be best if you attached your score so we can see what is going on. Did it start life as an import from MusicXML? That can affect things. Normally, when creating a score from scratch in MuseScore, a baritone sax would show bass clef while in concert pitch mode and treble when not. You can change either independently. So if you prefer to show the score in concert pitch but an octave higher than sounding, you can change the concert pitch clef to treble-8. This will only affect the concert pitch view; transposed view will continue to show the standard treble clef.

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