Cautionary accidental plug-in adding irrelevant naturals

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David Ward
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Post by David Ward » Sun Aug 18, 2019 8:36 pm

Can someone please check this.

Set up a few bars for B flat clarinet choosing the ‘keyless’ option. Using QWERTY entry, enter something, anything, including at least one written F natural and/or C natural, which with QWERTY entry requires one to key the flat of the sounding note to get the written note without accidental. Now apply the cautionary accidental plug-in. Does it insist on quite unnecessarily adding naturals before the F and/or C?

This effectively makes the cautionary accidental plug-in fairly useless for a ‘keyless’ score in Finale 26 if one uses QWERTY entry. I don't currently have access to a MIDI keyboard and would be interested to know whether or not the problem persists with MIDI entry.
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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:11 pm

Clear Frozen Accidentals in the Canonic Utilities plugin can get rid of the naturals, if needed. I got the behavior you described, and then cleared the naturals as described.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:20 pm

Yes, it adds unnecessary naturals no matter how the notes are entered. When they added the "keyless" option they (typically) neglected to test the plug-in.

"Keyless" is not really keyless, as you discover when you press C in QWERTY Simple Entry and it enters a C#. Same with "Hide key signature" on a per-staff basis. The Cautionary Accidentals problem is even worse.

I write for key-signatureless Horn in F and was excited when the "hide key signature" feature was added, but have abandoned it for these reasons.

What I do for Horn in F is give it an independent key signature of F major, which results in no key signature. Then note entry and the Cautionary Accidentals plug-in work as expected. You could do this for B-flat Clarinet (key signature of B-flat), saxophones, English Horn, etc. The drawback is if you copy to or from one of these staves to a normal staff, or use the Cue Notes plug-in, you get an unwanted transposition that must be undone. Still, worth it for me.

Zuill slips in with a possibly more pragmatic solution!

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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:25 pm

"Clear frozen accidentals" alas gets rid of the cautionaries you do want, so you'd have to carefully go through your piece rather than apply it wholesale. This may be OK depending on the size of your piece, but for one of David's operas, maybe not!

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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:46 pm

Looks like JW Accidentals has the same problem, by the way (and inconveniently refers to the pitches by their concert pitch).

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:59 pm

My MO is to do the cautionary (courtesy) accidentals manually. It takes time, but gives me the control I want.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:20 pm

I don't trust myself to catch everything, alas. The MM plug-in, using only what they mysteriously call "courtesy naturals," seems to be error-free. I run JW accidentals after the fact to find accidentals tied over a system break, where I like to add a cautionary, and the case where an accidental is introduced by a grace note, where I like to restate it if a big note occurs.

dhemenger
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Post by dhemenger » Fri Oct 18, 2019 3:06 pm

Hey all
So somehow after using Cautionary Naturals, I find that almost all normal accidentals are in parens! I can manually go through and hit the P to get rid of them, but that could take hours. It's possible something else caused this, since I didn't notice it earlier in the piece after I ran the plug in, but it's really crazy. I tried re-running it but it didn't help. There isn't a 'remove cautionary accidentals' feature anywhere is there? I also tried removing frozen accidentals using that canonic plugin (which I had never heard of until reading this) but that didn't do anything. So, I remain with parens around normal accidentals. Any thoughts?

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motet
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Post by motet » Fri Oct 18, 2019 3:45 pm

I wonder why the canonic utilities didn't work. Can you attach your file or a snippet thereof for us to play around with?

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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:06 pm

There's a Utility, Check Notation > Check Accidentals. Worth a try?
N. Grossingink
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motet
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Post by motet » Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:49 pm

That seems to be gone, at least in 2014.5.

Fortunately, it looks like JW Change will fix this. Look at Accidentals/Parenthesize/Hide.

I tried the canonic utilities, and indeed it doesn't remove the accidental if parenthesized. Using "edit frame," I see there's an "accidental" flag, an "(accidental)" flag (parenthesize), and a "freeze accidental" flag.

The canonic utilities clears the "freeze accidental" flag and grays out the "accidental" flag. If "(accidental)" is not checked, the accidental disappears, but the canonic utility has not really undone what the cautionaries plug-in did. If "(accidental)" is checked, then the accidental is still shown. What a mess Finale is.

JWChange also has an "unfreeze," but it results in the grayed-out "accidental" flag just like the canonic utilities.

dhemenger
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Post by dhemenger » Sat Oct 19, 2019 4:55 pm

Hey Thanks for the replies! Trying to attach a snippet for you guys to take a look at, but I'm getting a 'file too large' message - but the file is only 287k! Is there any other way to upload a file?

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:25 pm

dhemenger wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 4:55 pm
… I'm getting a 'file too large' message - but the file is only 287k! Is there any other way to upload a file?
You can upload the file elsewhere, and then here add a hyperlink to the file.

Also, you might be able to reduce the file size considerably by clearing from the Selection dialogs all items not necessary for discussing the problem.
Since this is a problem with accidentals, you can safely delete
- all articulations from the Articulation Selection,
- all expressions from the Expression Selection,
- all chord suffixes from the Chord Suffix Selection,
- all shapes from the Shape Selection,
- all staff styles,
&c.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:45 pm

As I say, JWChange will fix this, and I confirmed that the canonic utilities won't remove parenthesized cautionaries, so I think there's no mystery and no need to upload your file.

dhemenger
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Post by dhemenger » Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:49 pm

Pretty weird you can't upload a 300K file... however, I managed to get that JW plug in installed, and indeed it did remove the weird parens on naturals and cautionary seems to be working normally now. There are a few places that it had put accidentals on tied notes, but I guess I can just manually check through those. Really appreciate this help! Now if one of you could tell me how to get accidentals on multiple layers to space correctly with music spacing, life would be good....

thanks again!

dhemenger
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Post by dhemenger » Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:47 pm

Hi Guys,
So the cautionary naturals is acting screwy again. I figured out what it's doing - It's putting parens on all naturals already in the measure, as well as adding appropriate ones. Tired restarting and also and old file, where it acted the same. Frustrating as I do need to run this plug-in on my files before releasing them to the world. I have some screen shots, but not sure how to put them on here. Love to hear thoughts.

Also, thanks to you guys I am enjoying playing with TG tools and some JW plug ins!

dhemenger
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Post by dhemenger » Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:06 pm

I tried creating a totally new file to see if it would behave normally, but it's still putting parens on naturals which are cancelling accidentals in the same measure, not just courtesies. If anyone has experienced this or has an idea, I'd really appreciate it. I'm working on a big orchestra piece and every page I have to run it then go through and remove parens. Huge waste of time and most likely I'll end up with mistakes. Otherwise, I guess I'll try calling Finale.
Thanks

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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:39 pm

It's obvious that the plugin included with Finale and the JW plugin are error prone. It's probably more time efficient entering these manually. I enter them as I do note entry. If someone else has entered the music, I make a separate pass through the entire file just for cautionary accidentals. It doesn't take that long and it's the only way to be assured the job is done right.
N. Grossingink
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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Dec 03, 2019 7:47 pm

I can confirm that it happens in 2014.5; I've never noticed it because I don't parenthesize cautionaries--it doesn't happen unless you do. No telling how long it's been this way (MakeMusic doesn't seem to test the plug-ins to make sure they don't break).

My suggestion would be not to parenthesize cautionaries. In my opinion it's usually unnecessary anyway and adds clutter. If you want a second opinion, I think Elaine Gould agrees with me.

Someone needs to write a new plug-in. I find JW Accidentals uncharacteristically painful to use. Maybe one of our JW Lua geniuses...
Last edited by motet on Tue Dec 03, 2019 7:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Dec 03, 2019 7:53 pm

In case any LUA writer takes me up on it, I suspect almost no one would want "Courtesy accidentals", "Diatonic accidentals", or "Naturals" in the picture below, so you could probably forget about those.

dhemenger
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Post by dhemenger » Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:06 pm

Thanks for the replies. Parenthesized courtesy naturals on the following measure after an accidental are fairly standard in my experience, and appreciated by most performers (I would never use any of the other options). If you just throw in unparenthesized accidentals that aren't cancelling something within the measure, it can make the performer nervous, thinking they missed an earlier accidental that wasn't actually there, which is the point of putting them in parens, as 'reminders.' Maybe I'm wrong, but I've always done it this way. manually checking all these on a large orchestra score is yet another thing to worry about and potentially miss. This tool has been a big time saver in the past, so it's very frustrating that it won't work correctly! I didn't know there was a JW accidental - I'm going to download it and try it.
Still, I don't see why this plug in suddenly started miss-behaving and no one else seems to have noticed...

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motet
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Post by motet » Wed Dec 04, 2019 12:07 am

It happens in Finale 2014.5, as I said, so I don't know how sudden the change is. It's OK in Finale 2011, so it was sometime between the two.

In my experience JW Accidentals produces a lot of false positives. Play around with the settings to minimize those. It's also designed with the philosophy that you will inspect and approve each cautionary before adding it.

I suspect that a JW Lua script to do what the plug-in calls "courtesy naturals" (rather misleading) would not be that hard.

There is truth in what you say about the advantage of using parentheses to distinguish real accidentals from cautionaries, but it does add clutter. I suspect it depends not only on personal taste but context.

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