MuseScore does something wonky when I try to transpose a piece.

• Oct 10, 2018 - 01:48

Hi, when I transpose a piece, in this case, from C to Bb, the program does the transposition (changes key signature and the notes change, too), but then it goes through the piece and "corrects" the notes that got changed, putting a natural sign on all the E's and B's. Is there some way to set it to get that to stop? Also, it did not change the section that is in the key of D. I am very weak on the theory of key change-- could you tell me what the D section should be transposed to? Thanks. Beth


Comments

Dragging a key signature from the palette does not transpose - it leaves the (former) key of C pitches untouched and so adds the natural sign on all the E's and B's.

To transpose notes to a different key, you must use menu item: Notes -> Transpose... and then select Bb from the 'By Key' drop down list.

See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/transposition#by-key

For more detailed help, please attach your score and explain what your intent is.

Regards.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Yes, I selected Notes, Transpose and it changed the key signature, adjusted the notes properly, then, as I mentioned, went through the piece and unchanged all the notes that it had just flatted with the transposition, turning them all into naturals so that I had to go through the whole piece, natural sign by natural sign, and cut them all out so that the flats in the new key signature would apply.

It's not really clear what you were doing exactly or what might have gone wrong in your attempt. In order to understand and assist better, we'd need you to attach your score and tell us more specifically what you did. what you expected to see happen, and what happened instead.

If you had a piece in C, changing to D (a whole step above the starting key of C) part way through, and then you transposed it to start in Bb, then the D section will be transposed to C (a whole step above the starting key of Bb). This should all work completely automatically if you transpose correctly, for example as follows:

1) Ctrl+A to select all
2) Notes / Transpose
3) Select "Bb" as the new key
4) OK

This would also do the right thing in terms of accidentals etc. So I'm thinking that whatever you did, it probably wasn't that...

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

You are quite correct. I forgot to select the whole C section and just changed the key and the first measure. So, I went back and did it correctly and it came out mostly fine but now it threw in flats on the D's in two of the bass measures, but only two measures, so that was easy to fix. And thanks, I didn't know that transposing (correctly) the key signature would also correctly change the sections in other keys. I feared it would turn them all into Bb.

In reply to by Beths

I didn't look at the result carefully enough: The first section is 20 measures long, with the first 13 measures on the first page, where the change of key/transposition added in accidentals, only in the bass, of D and A flats. So, the history of my actions is: I blued out all the measures in the first sections (all 20), Selected Tranpose, chose Bb for my new key, hit OK, or whatever, and it did the change, but added the accidental flats to all the D's and A's in the bass line, but only on the first page, leaving the last 7 measures, on page two, with the correct transposition to Bb, with no accidentals.

In reply to by Beths

Oh, and it did not flat the D in the bass in the first measure, for some reason. I have included a bit of the beginning, so it has the first measure with no flat on the D and the next two measures where the program inserted a flat for the bass D's. It also flatted (first page only, again) the A's in the bass. Treble all came out fine.

Attachment Size
test piece for Rest.mscz 6.66 KB

In reply to by Beths

Well, it's hard to go back in time and guess what might have gone wrong. The most likely scenario is that in your initial attempts to do this, you didn't have selected exactly what you should have and ended up with a partial transposition that then got re-transposed on the next attempt, messing things up. Something like that. Anyhow, for now just correct these issues manually and hopefully next time you'll get it right the first time :-)

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.