How to change key label from major to minor

• Mar 7, 2020 - 08:14

Hello everyone, I have a question: how to label the key signature as major or minor?

It's because when I save the score to midi file, synthesia recognizes it as a major song. But it's actually a minor song. Although the song play the sound as minor, the key label is wrong.

When I create the score, I don't find the feature which can label it as major or minor, neither in advanced edited. Maybe I find the wrong feature...

I upload an E-minor scale midi file. Hope somebody can help me. Thank you.
e minor 1.png
e minor 2.png
e minor 3.png
test.mid

Comments

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 7, 2020 - 08:39

MIDI doesn't carry this type of information. And if is set to unknown in MuseSAcore, even less so., but IIRC this setting was mainly for MusicXML im- and export

jmensah

• Aug 24, 2020 - 23:26

I believe whether or not a key signature describes a major or minor key is specified in the last byte of the two-byte key signature meta-event "FF 59" defined by MIDI. Opening up a MIDI file generated by Musescore in a hex editor seems to always shows "FF 59 02 [XY 00]", where XY is a signed 8-bit number representing the number of sharps or flats. Here the last byte is 00 for major but should be 01 for minor.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 25, 2020 - 08:13

Interesting. Feel free to enter this into the issue tracker as a Suggestion.
Can that byte also carry the other possible types, dorian, phrygian etc.?
Hmm, apparently not

But indeed MuseScore's MIDI export explicitly sets that by to 0 (in audio/exports/exportmidi.cpp):

                  for (auto ik = sk; ik != ek; ++ik) {
                        MidiEvent ev;
                        ev.setType(ME_META);
                        Key key       = ik->second.key();   // -7 -- +7
                        ev.setMetaType(META_KEY_SIGNATURE);
                        ev.setLen(2);
                        unsigned char* data = new unsigned char[2];
                        data[0]   = int(key);
                        data[1]   = 0;  // major
                        ev.setEData(data);
                        int tick = ik->first + tickOffset;
                        track1.insert(pauseMap.addPauseTicks(tick), ev);
                        if (tick == 0)
                              initialKeySigFound = true;
                        }
                  }

MuseScore seems to read them though on import, (in audio/midi/event.cpp):

                       case META_KEY_SIGNATURE:
                              {
                              const char* keyTable[] = {
                                    "Ces", "Ges", "Des", "As", "Es", "Bes", "F",
                                    "C",
                                    "G", "D", "A", "E", "B", "Fis", "Cis"
                                    };
                              int key = (char)(_edata[0]) + 7;
                              if (key < 0 || key > 14) {
                                    qDebug("bad key signature %d", key);
                                    key = 0;
                                    }
                              QString sex(_edata[1] ? "Minor" : "Major");
                              QString keyName(keyTable[key]);
                              xml.tag(QString("Key tick=\"%1\" key=\"%2\" sex=\"%3\"").arg(ontime()).arg(_edata[0]).arg(_edata[1]),
                                 QString("%1 %2").arg(keyName).arg(sex));
                              }
                              break;

(I wonder why it uses German notenames there? Seems it's been that way ever since, at least since 2012-05-26)
But is also has (in importexport/midiimport/importmidi.cpp):

            case META_KEY_SIGNATURE:
                  {
                  const signed char key = ((const signed char*)data)[0];
                  if (key < -7 || key > 7) {
                        qDebug("ImportMidi: illegal key %d", key);
                        break;
                        }
                  KeySigEvent ke;
                  ke.setKey(Key(key));
                  staff->setKey(Fraction::fromTicks(tick), ke);
                  hasKey = true;
                  }
                  break;

Here ignoring the mode