Band/orchestra conductors: some assistance, per favore!

Cafe Society
1

So a friend of mine has asked me to put together a midi file of an old (public domain) piece of music, and has requested an orchestrated rather than piano arrangement. I was able to find an online collection of scores – all in the same series – including first violins, 2nd violins, cellos, double-basses, violas – plus winds, brass, and percussion.

The software I use to compose MIDI files is old, but perfectly up to the task. I punch the music in one note at a time, which is tedious, but it gets the job done. It has the capability to store and play back multiple tracks and includes the basic tools of key, tempo, rhythmic and instrumentation changes.

So, for no other reason than it was the first instrument alphabetically, I entered five or six bars of the bassoon line. I then moved on to the clarinet score. Two separate lines were listed in the score, so I entered the same number of bars for each. Then on to the cornet (well, trumpet).

That’s when I noticed something odd. Apparently not all of the orchestra parts seemed to be in the same key.

The bassoon part is scored in B flat major. The scores for clarinets 1 and 2 do not actually have a key signature in the standard spot, but at the beginning of the song there is a prominent marking of “In B flat”. The cornet score likewise does not display a key signature, but has a similar marking of “in D natural”. Most of the rest of the parts seem to be scored in B flat major.

After I’d entered the first few lines for five different instruments, I played it all back. It was a mess. Nothing sounded right. Eliminating the key signatures entirely from the clarinet and chorus parts seemed to result in the correct sequence of notes, but the oboe – with or without the printed key signature – clashes.

I played trumpet in beginning band in high school, but have had no instrumental experience since. My knowledge of reading music is almost entirely from vocal scores. Anyone care to take a crack at explaining what is going on here?

2

Instruments aren’t all keyed to the same scale.

For a B flat instrument (say a clarinet or a B flat trumpet or a number of other instruments), playing a C “sounds” like a B-flat. Here’s the relevant wiki.

You probably also experienced this in high school band, even if you never realized it.

When the conductor calls for a “concert” B-flat, a trumpet player like yourself would probably have played a C (as B flat trumpets are pretty common).

For other instruments keyed differently, the amount you need to transpose will vary. Good musicians can often transpose on the fly, given the key.

Tubas, pianos, flutes, and a few other instruments need no transposition.

When writing musical parts of individual players, you need to take the transposition into account. Most music software will do this for you automatically. If you’re manually inputting the scores, you probably aren’t transposing all the parts correctly.

3

What specific music software are you using? In Sibelius, which I use, the default setting is for a ‘C Score’. This means that all the instruments in the full score will be written at their concert pitch, and will sound at concert pitch. The parts, when extracted, will be written out at the proper transposition for each instrument.

If I want it the other way around, I hit a keyboard shortcut to produce a ‘Transposing Score’. This means that each instrument is written in its transposition, but the score will still sound with each instrument at its proper concert pitch. In the score that I just started, the concert key is Db Major, but the trumpets are written in Eb Major, the trombones, xylophones and flutes are in Db.

It sounds like your software is set for a transposing score with the key signatures hidden, which is not going to be much fun to work with. See if the ‘Help’ section might give you information about writing a ‘C’ score, or about how it writes a transposing score…

Good luck!

4

I’m using a ten year old copy of Noteworthy. It will transpose individual “voices” for me, but since I don’t have the slightest clue what to transpose to what…

5

On re-reading, it sounds like the score you are copying from is a transposing score. I didn’t catch that on the first read; I thought it was your software that was hiding key signatures on you.

So, the thing is - the strings, piccolo, flutes, oboes, bassoon, trombones, tuba and any pitched percussion should all be notated in ‘C’, eg. un-transposed. If the bassoon part is in Bb Major, that means the piece is in Bb Major.

If the overall key is Bb Major, then French Horns and English horn will be notated as playing in a written key of F Major. Trumpets, Bb Clarinet, Soprano or Tenor Saxophones will be notated as playing in a written key of C Major. Eb clarinet, alto or baritone saxophones will be notated as playing in G Major.

So, stick to the first 8 bars for now. If you enter it as written, can you use the software to transpose a passage? If not, you will have to transpose in your head as you write - you’ll get used to this, but it’s not fun to start out on a big project with this…

On Great Antibob’s excellent Wiki link, there is a good list under the heading “List of instruments by transposition” - this will help you straighten out what octave the parts should sound in. (It’s not enough to just get them in C - if the alto and bari sax are playing in the same octave, it usually means one of them got transposed up or down by accident.)

Is this a good time to recommend upgrading to this year’s Sibelius or Finale?

6

Eureka! For those instruments that are specifically scored in B flat minor, I used the transpose tool to kick up the pitch a few notches. Now everything blends the way it should.

Huzzah!

Thanks for the assistance, all!