| Author | Message | ||
     Jonathon Bell (jonathonbell) Registered Forum User Username: jonathonbell Post Number: 2 Registered: 2-2007 |
The documentation explains that when transposing the as-notated pitches of a staff to prepare a part for a transposing instrument, the chords symbols are left alone: "Chord names almost always are read only by non-transposing instruments..." I'm running into what i think may be a common exception: I've scored a tune for a jazz ensemble and want the various transposing instruments (alto sax, tenor sax, etc.) to take improvised solos; to do so, they must be able to read the changes in their key. It's true that these instruments don't (can't) *play* chords, but it is not true that they don't *read* chords. Any chance of Composer relaxing this constraint? The docs go on to say: "Composer does not transpose chord names for instrument transpositions has to do with the complications of ambiguous enharmonic spellings." I, for one, would gladly trade fixing up the possibly ambiguous or mis-notated enharmonic spellings of the auto-transposed chord symbols for the convenience of having the computer generate the basically correct transpositions for me as placeholders. | ||
| Mark Walsen (markwa) Notation Software Developer Username: markwa Post Number: 3183 Registered: 7-2003 |
Hello Jonathon, I understand your reasonable request for transposing chord names for transposing instruments. Composer currently has a limitation that chord names are stored only one place. It could dynamically transpose the chord names for a transposing instrument, but currently there is not a place for Composer to separately store a correction you might make to the enharmonic spelling of the chord name for the transposing instrument. You might find that you can use free text objects to work around this problem, but that isn't a very happy solution. I suppose that I should at least transpose the chord names for the transposing instruments, even if you can't then edit the enharmonic spelling. You could get a feel for what this would be like by doing a pitch transposition, and see how Composer transposes the chord names in that situation. I'd appreciate your giving that a try and let me know whether Composer's transposition of the chord names are mostly what you want with respect to enharmonic spelling. F# vs Gb is usually where most of the confusion is, and sometimes C# vs Db. Cheers -- Mark | ||
| Jonathon Bell (jonathonbell) Registered Forum User Username: jonathonbell Post Number: 8 Registered: 2-2007 |
Yes please! I see that 'supporting this feature the right way' might be tricky for you right now, but transposing the chords and leaving them non-editable in the transposed parts would get 90% of the useful functionality. FWIW, lead sheets so frequently contain enharmonic spelling errors like these that I'd guess most musicians are used to reading them anyway. | ||
| Mark Walsen (markwa) Notation Software Developer Username: markwa Post Number: 3191 Registered: 7-2003 |
Hello Jonathon, I try to slip the instrument transposition of chord names feature into the next 2.0.3 maintenance release, but it might get bumped out to 2.0.4. Thanks for your lobbying effort here. Cheers -- Mark |
