Clarinet family playback pitches

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Graeme
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Post by Graeme » Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:21 pm

I have a clarinet sextet arrangement (in finale) with Eb soprano and Bb bass clarinet staves.
When played back, these are the wrong pitch, in that the Bass clarinet is (for instance) sounding an octave too high.
The Eb soprano part is sounding wrong too, since for both I chose "clarinet" as the voice used.

I want the score to look the same, (as the players part would look), but need the playback to be an octave lower (as it should sound).

Since I am exporting this to SmartMusic, this is critical.
Do I adjust the playback pitch in SmartMusic or where?

thanks... this is probably simple.... :?:


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miker
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Post by miker » Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:55 pm

Welcome to the Forum.

Is your score set up in Concert Pitch? Did you set up the score with the Wizard? (If you use the Wizard, the correct transposition will be automatically entered.)
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Graeme
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Post by Graeme » Mon Feb 18, 2013 10:17 pm

I used SmartScoreProX to create the basic Finale 2009 file..... (sorry I said 2011 by mistake).

The result was a pretty good file with few mistakes. After correcting everything it looked great!
That part is pretty amazing in itself.
So I have a great Finale file, problem is that to get the bass clarinet part to sound in the correct octave, I transpose it down p8th all right, but the written pitches all go down an octave too (I don't want that).

Are you saying that (when "display in concert pitch" is OFF), that I can transpose the part (sound) without changing the written part?
thanks for your answer
G

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miker
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Post by miker » Mon Feb 18, 2013 11:13 pm

I'll admit from the start that I'm not very clear on transposing instruments. Having said that, take a look at the screenshots. I set up a bass clarinet staff from the Wizard, and selected the key of C. It gave me a treble clef staff, with two sharps. I selected Display in Concert Pitch, and it changed to a bass clef, no accidentals.

I entered a C scale in the bass clef starting in the second space. It played back in that correct octave. I turned off Concert pitch, and the staff changed back to treble, two sharps, with the scale starting on the D. Looking in the Score Manager (which you don't have in 2009) the Transposition shows as (Bb) Up M9, Add 2 Sharps, Treble Clef. So everything makes sense.

When you scanned in your score, Finale had no way of knowing that it was a transposing instrument. So my feeling is that if you have the notes you want to see in the treble clef, you have to copy them, an octave and a second lower, and put them into the bass clef, viewing in concert pitch. Then, in your Instrument List, change the INSTRUMENT (in the left-hand column ) to bass clarinet. That will apply the correct transposition to the score, and give you both what you want to see, and what you expect to hear.
Attachments
Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 3.03.14 PM.png
Transposition
Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 3.03.14 PM.png (72.94 KiB) Viewed 14986 times
Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 2.54.33 PM.png
Transposed part for player
Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 2.54.33 PM.png (73.83 KiB) Viewed 14986 times
Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 2.54.17 PM.png
Displayed in Concert Pitch
Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 2.54.17 PM.png (63.38 KiB) Viewed 14986 times
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Graeme
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Post by Graeme » Tue Feb 19, 2013 3:51 pm

Thank you for your explanation.
I did manage to get a working SmartMusic file with the pitches correct, but it was a long process of trial and error,
so I'm still unclear as to exactly how I did it. It does stem from scanning in the first place and that the results need to be adjusted to allow for the "automatic" compensation for the transposing instrument.
Yes it's not clear how to re-establish the transposition correctly for playback, but it definitely can be done.
I should upgrade to 2011, so I'm happy that I DID get it to work in 2009.
SmartScorePro10 is amazing! In the scanning I did, (from score) there were very few note mistakes (unlike previous attempts with SmartScore (regular) which shipped with Finale. Some very complex scores (like a full orchestra score) may still be a challenge though because the note images are so tiny in a 20+ stave score!
However hats off for getting this to work as well as it does. It took me 10 hours to fix a 6part, 169bar score, but there was about half of that spent fumbling around with the transposition problem. In this case it should have been about 5 hours, which would be the time correcting the scan errors (which as I say were minimal).
Thanks for taking the time to delve into this, I'm sure that Finale 2011 has addressed this process path and a clear explanation is pending.... many teachers/musicians are interested in OCR music scanning because of their reliance on SmartMusic as the real working platform.
G

StephenG
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Post by StephenG » Wed Dec 02, 2015 8:07 pm

I've just joined the forum because of the following problem that seems related to this post:

1. A wind quintet score wa imported from a TIFF file using SmartMusic.
2. I told SmartMusic that the 3rd staff was for a Clarinet in Bb.
3. The resulting Finale file correctly shows the clarinet part transposed to the key of F. (The concert key is Eb.), with the first note being an A, which should play as a concert G.
4. When I "display in concert pitch", the correct note, a G, is displayed.
5. The playback, however, sounds the WRONG NOTE, i.e. a concert F, one tone lower than the correct concert G.
6. The Score Manager shows the correct transposition for the Clarinet in Bb, "Up M2,Add 2 Sharps".
7. I changed the instrument to Soprano Sax in Bb just to see if this would fix the playback problem, but the wrong note, a concert F, still played.

I'll upload an abriged file showing the first page of this quintet. There are a lot of other routine things still to fix, but I am stumped with the clarinet playback.
I am using Finale 2014.5 running on Windows Vista.
I must be missing something obvious. Much appreciated if anyone tell me how to get the right pitches to play.

Oh Oh, my file was rejected for upload with the error message "The extension musx is not allowed," but this is the extension Finale 2014.5 uses. Am I in the wrong forum?

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miker
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Post by miker » Wed Dec 02, 2015 8:47 pm

To post a .mus or .musx file here, it must be compressed (zipped) and cannot exceed 100 kb in size.
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StephenG
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Post by StephenG » Wed Dec 02, 2015 9:59 pm

Thanks, Miker. I'll try again now with a zipped file.
Attachments
Cambini Quintet No 1 Mvt 2 first 8 measures.zip
(94.05 KiB) Downloaded 210 times

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu Dec 03, 2015 7:44 am

The culprit is that all the Clarinet notes are “flattened” by two half-steps, and the accidentals are hidden.
An example:
The Clarinet’s very first note looks like an ‘a’, but it is actually an ‘a♭♭’ where the note accidental
(double-flat) is hidden.

Fix:
1. Selection Tool.
2. Select the entire Clarinet part (click to the left of the staff).
3. Utilities menu > Transpose…
4. Choose Up, Chromatically, by an Augmented Unison.
5. Click OK.
6. Do the steps 3. - 4. - 5. again.

By The Way:
The pickup measure displays incorrectly as a whole rest in Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, and Bassoon.
I would enter a quarter rest.
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StephenG
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Post by StephenG » Thu Dec 03, 2015 5:44 pm

It was a simple solution that worked perfectly.
I am amazed. Seems like magic.
May I ask the secret of how you found out that the notes were double-flattened and the accidentals hidden? Did you have a way to "un-hide" them, or was it maybe a guess that you had to verify by trial and error? New territory for me.
Thanks so much for your help.

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu Dec 03, 2015 10:56 pm

StephenG wrote:…May I ask the secret of how you found out that the notes were double-flattened and the accidentals hidden? Did you have a way to "un-hide" them, or was it maybe a guess that you had to verify by trial and error?…
The first clue was this:
StephenG wrote:…A wind quintet score wa imported from a TIFF file using SmartMusic…
Obviously you meant SmartScore, not SmartMusic.
It is well known that Music OCR programs like SmartScore do some weird, crazy things when interpreting “the little dots”.
You have to spend some time “cleaning up the mess” after the OCR.
Some other examples in the document you attached, are the pick measure, and the missing triplet 8th definitions, causing some of the measures to get “overfilled” with regular 8ths.

In some cases there is so much “mess clean-up” to do that it is faster to enter the music manually, from scratch.

Another clue was the fact that notes entered manually displayed and played back correctly in the Clarinet staff.

The final proof came from the (very technical) dialog box Edit Frame which revealed that each note was lowered by two half-steps, and that the note accidentals were hidden.
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StephenG
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Post by StephenG » Fri Dec 04, 2015 1:50 am

Got it. I never thought to try entering a note manually and checking the playback on that note. Also did not know about Edit Frame. Have spent quite some time fixing dots,triplets, wrong notes, and measures with funny meters in various scores, and have to agree it might be a good idea to just work on speeding up my manual entry skills. Still, some scores seem to OCR better than others. With your help I was able to get through this one. Thanks very much.
.

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Fri Dec 04, 2015 3:37 pm

StephenG wrote:…have to agree it might be a good idea to just work on speeding up my manual entry skills…
As you know, there are two entry tools: Speedy Entry Tool, and Simple Entry Tool.
Personally I use both Speedy Entry and Simple Entry, depending on the context.
Many users stick to one of the two entry tools.

I highly recommend the tutorial document EntryExercises - it reveals quite many good secrets
of Simple Entry.
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Dave Erickson
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Post by Dave Erickson » Fri Sep 02, 2016 1:16 am

I have the same problem as StephenG: a score imported to Finale 25 using SmartScore, and one of the parts (the Horn part) is playing the wrong pitch even though it displays fine. I even copied it to a new piece and transposed to bass clef, the problem remained.

Peter, I followed your suggestion and used the Edit Frame dialog box to check each measure for hidden accidentals. I unchecked the "Freeze Accidental" checkbox for every note it was selected on, and my first four measures went from this:
Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 6.02.23 PM.png
Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 6.02.23 PM.png (70.25 KiB) Viewed 13043 times
to this:
Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 6.01.51 PM.png
Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 6.01.51 PM.png (76.89 KiB) Viewed 13043 times
So it is no wonder the playback was wrong. It sounded like it was in Dorian mode...

Is there any way to do this operation for every note in the part in one operation, perhaps a plug-in? I am running Finale 25 so there are very few plug-ins available, but I have a copy of 2014.5 available for another day (until the trial period runs out!).

-Dave

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Fri Sep 02, 2016 5:09 am

Dave Erickson wrote:… I followed your suggestion and used the Edit Frame dialog box to check each measure for hidden accidentals. I unchecked the "Freeze Accidental" checkbox for every note it was selected on …
Dave Erickson wrote:… Is there any way to do this operation for every note in the part in one operation, perhaps a plug-in? …
To fix all the accidentals “at one fell swoop” I would try the plug-in “Canonic Utilities”:

Plug-ins menu > Scoring and Arranging > Canonic Utilities…
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Dave Erickson
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Post by Dave Erickson » Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:15 am

Peter Thomsen wrote:
Dave Erickson wrote:… I followed your suggestion and used the Edit Frame dialog box to check each measure for hidden accidentals. I unchecked the "Freeze Accidental" checkbox for every note it was selected on …
Dave Erickson wrote:… Is there any way to do this operation for every note in the part in one operation, perhaps a plug-in? …
To fix all the accidentals “at one fell swoop” I would try the plug-in “Canonic Utilities”:

Plug-ins menu > Scoring and Arranging > Canonic Utilities…
Peter, thank you. I ended up using the canonic utilities to clear frozen accidentals, then the command to remove all accidentals. I had to restore the correct accidentals, but all told the time to fix the piece was only a couple of minutes. Now the piece plays back correctly.

-Dave

Mouchette
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Post by Mouchette » Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:38 am

So, no way to erase hidden accidentals in the whole piece "at one fell swoop", while keeping the visible ones? Erase all accidentals and re-type the good ones can be an extremeley long operation...
Yours,
M.

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