Confused about transposition and concert key.

[fandango]

I'm transcribing "Venus, the Bringer of Peace", which has a key of C minor, and the Bb Clarinets are shown on the score in the key of D minor.

I have tried switching between "Concert Tuning" and "Concert Pitch" and even played around with the track settings, but nothing seems to fix them.

They play back (as you might expect) a Major Second higher than they should (and sound utterly dischordant, and if I manually drag them down a Major Second they sound fine) and I don't know what setting I need to change to fix it. Coming from a digital music background, I'm somewhat new to concert pitch and transpositions.

I've looked at sections 3.7 and 8.3 in the manual, but I'm still confused. Changing the transpose values in the Track Setup (on the second tab) doesn't seem to make any difference?? The octave updates if you change that, but not the other A-G options?

Any help from the orchestrally savvy would be much appreciated.

[fabiolcati]

- - Edit (massive)
I reviewed the text, looking for a clearer way to express my ideas in English. I mean, clearer than I usually express myself in my language...

Hi fandango.

I'm not as *orchestrally savvy* as you may need, but I would give my contribution with some suggestions.
In the meanwhile, I hope more experienced people can give you more stone rooted answers.

1. A Bb Clarinet staff showing D minor key in a C minor score is right, when viewed as *Transposed*.

2. Are you transcribing from a printed score? If so consider that notes on paper are already transposed. In this case do your work in *Transposed* view. Otherwise it will results in... a transposition of a transposition

2a. Entering notes in *Concert Tuning* view gives you actual pitches in actual key signature for the composition (eg. all instruments with a *three flats set* for C minor) written at proper place in a printed score (eg. a piccolo playing C7 is shown as C6), without transposition.

2b. *Concert Pitch* is same as 2a but notes are written at their actual pitch on the scale of sounds (eg. a piccolo playing C7 is shown as C7).

3. Check you've entered the key segnature as global at the beginning of your work, with *Enter all parts* checked. I mean: don't set clarinets' staff to D minor key individually, to avoid the double transposition issue (see above)

Hope it helps a little.

Greetings

[fandango]

Fabio: Thanks! You write excellent English, better than most natives I know, so no worries there!

2. I'm transcribing from a printed score (I'll post a snippet soon, afaik it's legal with regards to copyright as long as I only post a snippet - just getting my scanner installed!). I notice that if I switch between "Concert" and "Transposed" views, the notes on my Bb Clarinets (called "Clarinets in Bb" on the book script) don't move (i.e., and don't sound different)? i.e., making me think there's no transposition happening at all (either visibly, or acoustically).

2a. I'll play around with this now and see if I can hear differences with the Concert Tuning mode.

2b: Once again, I find no different in the notes or the audio when switching between these 2 modes.

3. Yep, I entered C Minor for the "Enter all parts" which was fine until I added clarinets and set their staff to D Minor individually.

I guess what I expected to find in Notion was some form of "MIDI Transpose" option for the staff where you could add/subtract semitones manually.

Thank you for your help!

[fandango]

2. Are you transcribing from a printed score? If so consider that notes on paper are already transposed. In this case do your work in *Transposed* view. Otherwise it will results in... a transposition of a transposition

Aha! This was it.

I should've started out in the "Transposed" view. It automatically labelled the tracks correctly as "Clarinets in Bb", "Horns in F", etc.

Everything sounds great now. Thanks for your help!

[fabiolcati]

Nice to hear that Planets are now set back to their proper orbits.

Merry Chrismas