Darcy James Argue wrote:
Eric, both of your solutions are quite cumbersome. All you need to do
is set the staff to use Chromatic Transposition instead of Key
Signature Transposition in the Staff Attributes dialog box.
But I think Chuck was asking what pitfalls exist when using Chromatic
Transposition. The biggest problems are:
(A) chord symbols attached to staves set to use Chromatic
Transposition do not automatically transpose. So if he copies chord
symbols from the piano part to the soprano sax part, he will need to
transpose the chords manually using Mass Edit -> Change -> Chord
Assignments.
Ah, but my #2 way doesn't have this problem.
Please complain about this to tech support. God knows I have. Maybe
one year it will actually be fixed. Sibelius has done this correctly
since they introduced" Open Key/Atonal" as a key signature option.
(B) Accidentals are extremely temperamental. The Respell Notes
function works as if the notes were in concert pitch, even when
working on the part, or on a transposed score. So even with "Favor
Flats" on, you will still get F#'s on the Soprano Sax, because Finale
thinks the note is "really" an E nat. The Cautionary Accidentals
plugin gets similarly confused, and puts extraneous F naturals and C
naturals all over the place because it thinks those notes are "really"
Eb's and Bb's.
Yeah, this is a problem, I'll admit that. I hate those Gbs!
(C) This doesn't really apply to the piece Chuck is working on, but
it's an enormous pain to set up a full score for Chromatic
Transposition when using the Setup Wizard, which defaults to Key
Signature transposition. Sibelius has a one-click solution (a key
signature called "Open Key/Atonal") -- Finale makes you change each
staff one by one.
(D) This also doesn't apply to Chuck's piece, but the default
instrument Staff Styles are all configured to use Key Signature
transposition. If you have an "Open Key" piece with woodwind doubles,
you will also have to modify the staff styles. There's really no good
reason why Staff Styles could not allow the possibility of respecting
the *type* of transposition specified in the Staff Attributes, while
changing only the *interval* of transposition.
Once you are aware of these issues, you can work around them, and
using Chromatic Transposition is certainly far better than manually
transposing the part. But sweet jeebus it would be nice if Finale
addressed these longstanding and very frustrating problems.
True enough.
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