I understand that chords currently rely on key signatures as the basis for transposition settings. That's what needs to change! Otherwise, chords in pieces written without a key signature will never transpose correctly.
It can't possibly be that difficult to fix this. If the "Chromatic Transposition" option can transpose notes without using a key signature, it ought to be able to do the same for chord symbols. And it's not like the problem created by this bug is impossible to fix -- it's easy enough to select all and choose "Change Chord Assignments." It's just that you have to be aware of the bug, and you have to do it manually, when it really should be automatic. Selecting Chromatic Transposition in the staff attributes should transpose notes AND chords. It doesn't, and that's a bug, and it needs to be fixed. It should have been fixed five years ago. It's ridiculous that it never gets fixed.
I participate in the BMI jazz composers workshop in New York. Almost everyone in the workshop uses Finale (including the director, Jim McNeely), almost everyone writes pieces without key signatures that also involve chord symbols and transposing instruments, and *every* month, at *every* reading session, at least one person forgets about this bug (or didn't know about it in the first place) and hands out a transposed part with untransposed chord symbols, and the soloist enters in the wrong key.
This isn't exactly good publicity for Finale. Especially when the problem persists, year after year. And, I hate to say it, but especially when the Sibelius users in the workshop can say (correctly) "Well, Sibelius doesn't have that bug."
- Darcy
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
On 25 Feb 2004, at 11:43 AM, MacSupport wrote:
Hello,
I can look for this in our bug database, but I assume that it is a limitation of the "chromatic transposition" itself that does not lend itself to being able to transpose the chords correctly. The chords rely on the key signature as the basis for the transposition settings.
I hope this helps!
Brian Technical Support Representative MakeMusic!, Inc. Coda Music Technologies
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-----Original Message----- From: Darcy James Argue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 12:04 AM To: MacSupport Cc: Finale Subject: Bug Report - Chord Symbol Transposition
Hi guys,
I was *extremely disappointed* to find that in Finale 2004, you have still not fixed a long-standing but easy-to-fix problem with chord symbols.
When you have a staff which is set to use "Chromatic Transposition" instead of "Key Signature Transposition" in Staff Attributes (or using a Staff Style), the chord symbols assigned to this staff (still) do not transpose correctly. For instance, if I have a Bb trumpet staff which is set to "Chromatic Transposition: Bb (up M2)" and my score is set to Display in Concert Pitch, I might add the following (concert pitch) chord progression to the trumpet staff:
D-7 G7 Cmaj7
But when I turn off Display in Concert Pitch, or I extract the part, the music gets transposed for the player but the chords do not. What *should* happen in this case is that when I turn off Display in Concert Pitch, the chords should transpose along with the music -- i.e., the chord progression should now read:
E-7 A7 Dmaj7
But it doesn't. The music transposes but the chords don't. This is *obviously incorrect* -- a huge, glaring, embarrassing bug, behavior that is simply flat-out wrong. There are no circumstances when Finale's default behavior is correct or desirable. The only way to solve it is to go through and manually transpose all of the chord symbols.
This has been a problem ever since Finale added the "Chromatic Transposition" option back in Finale 97. It's very depressing that this simple, easy-to-fix bug *still* hasn't been fixed in Finale 2004. By now, I'm very used to the workaround, but many of my colleagues and students are new Finale users and I've seen them get bitten by this problem far too many times. They see that Finale transposes the notes appropriately, and it doesn't even cross their mind that the chords wouldn't be transposed as well. They bring parts to a reading session and everything's going fine until the solo section, when all of a sudden the soloist starts playing in the *wrong key* -- all because Finale doesn't transpose the chord symbols to match the music. I generally try to advocate for Finale over Sibelius every chance I get, but this behavior is impossible to defend and it's frustrating to see this one, easily fixable bug sour people on the program as a whole.
Especially when this bug persists, year after year.
Would you PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE fix this problem?
Thanks in advance,
- Darcy
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
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